Health by good living

Front matter

HEALTH BY GOOD LIVING.

BY W. W. HALL, M. D.

f Uniform with Sleep , Health and Disease , Bronchitis, Coughs and Colds.}

Chapter I. The Object Of Eating

We eat to live ; and if we eat wisely of what He has provided who giveth us all things richly to enjoy, we shall live well, healthfully, and long.

To- eat wisely, we must adapt our food to our age, to the various occupations and callings of life, and to the temperaments of the system. This may appeal to be a very discouraging complexity in the very outset, but it is only seeming ; for Infinite Wisdom and Fatherly Beneficence has implanted within us a kind of self-acting guide, has made it a part of our being, and, if it is wisely deferred to and considerately followed, half the ordinary diseases of humanity would be blotted out, and a score of years, added to the average duration of civilized life.

As soon as the little duck breaks its shell, it waddles toward the water, and sails away over the bosom of the tiny pond right gracefully.

The humble climbing vine will direct its course straight to the nearest bean-pole ; and the roots of flower, and shrub, and tree, as they delve down into

THE OBJECT OF EATING.

the hard earth, will ferret out the richness and the moisture of the soil, taking the very shortest course to the more favored spots ; and so the infant, in the first hours of its existence, greedily partakes of its mother’s milk, which contains in large proportions the elements which supply the first necessities of infantile existence. This wise and friendly guide to animal, and plant, and man is called u Instinct and is our kindly mentor and preserver from the first cry of infancy, until the fiat of the Maker calls the patriarch home to His bosom in heaven ! This instinct is chiefly our guide during the undeveloped mental condition of infancy and childhood ; at those accidental seasons of later life when reason may be in abeyance from disease or other causes ; and when action is necessary to the preservation of the body in the various emergencies to which humanity is subject, and which action must be taken before reason has had time to assert herself. This is familiarly illustrated in every day life when the child, or even the man, stumbles and falls forward, throwing his hands before him, to preserve the more important part, the face, from disfigurement. The writer has seen men fall from the tops of houses and from a mile in height, 1and the body was always noticed to assume the shape of a ball, as if to present the smallest possible surface for the terrible contact. The cattle in the field, in cold, windy, rainy weather and in the sleets of winter, draw up the body or contract the back to a circu/ar form, thus presenting less surface to the chilling blast. Men, in very 1 See Note IV. p. 274.

cold winds, thus contract themselves in walking or in sitting down, in the out-doors, by which means less of the surface of the body is exposed to the wind, and, as a consequence, less heat is carried from the system. This is the work of Instinct ; but few, comparatively, knewT the philosophy of it until explained to them, as now.

It is this same Instinct, exhibited in another direction, which calls for food to sustain nature. The animal creation is probably guided by it altogether in eating, as to time, quality, and quantity, and, as we see, is in a measure exempt from disease, dying more by age and violence than by sickness.

The animal, the infant, and the demented seem to be guided in their eating, mainly at least, by the instinct of a natural appetite ; and if men were more under this same influence, and were less the slaves of appetites which are artificial and acquired, it will scarcely be denied that they would be largely exempt from many of the maladies which now afflict civilized society. We eat to live, and life is warmth, growth, repair, and power of labor. The first necessity of human existence is warmth, alike indispensable to infancy, manhood, and old age. At eveiy period of life, at all seasons of the year, in the tropics and at the poles, the human body in health maintains the same temperature, which is about ninety-eight degrees, Fahrenheit. This warmth is derived from the food we eat ; and that which yields neat in large proportions is called u carbonaceous,” answering to one of the simple, original elements,

THE OBJECT OF EATING.

u carbon, the more familiar representative of which is charcoal. Carbon or charcoal burned before our eyes gives out heat ; when taken into the system in the form of food, it undergoes a process of burning there also, and throws out a warmth which, diffused over the body, is called vital heat. The amount of such heat necessary to the health of a good-sized man, and which is developed from the food eaten in twenty-four hours, would heat twenty gallons of ice-cold water to a boil, or from thirty-two degrees to two hundred and twelve.

Sugars, starches, and oils are the more concentrated forms of carbonaceous food, some of them having scarcely anything left after all the carbon has been withdrawn. And, as if to compel helpless infancy and feeble age to use the means necessary to keep the body warm enough to live, Providence has given to childhood an almost insatiable desire for sweets ; and without the element of sweetness in its food, the healthiest born infant would die in less than a month. In vain would it nestle in its mother’s bosom, in vain its exposure to the warming sunshine, and in vain the softest blankets and the finest furs to encase its body ; for the warmth which sustains human life must come from within, — must be generated by the internal combustion of the carbonaceous elements of eaten food.

As we turn the downhill of life, we begin to grow chilly ; the aged court the sunshine ; they covet the chimney-corner ; or, sitting before the fire on the hearth, they stretch out their feeble,

THE OBJECT OF EATING.

trembling arms, and spread abroad their thin and bony fingers, and, with open mouth, bend toward the cheerful blaze as if drinking in the delicious heat ; and, on reflection, it will be found that for long years there had been a growing love for meats, and fats, and butter, and oils ; it was instinct leading the way for the generation of that warmth which would be increasingly needed as years passed on, and wThich was to be more suitably derived from the carbonaceous elements of fats and oils than from the sweets of sugars, so coveted and so rioted in by children ; and it is just as unphysiological, and just as unwise, to deprive the old man of the fat meats on which he luxuriates, as to deny to childhood the sweets which constitute its heaven ; hence the prejudice which deprives the young of sweets is founded in ignorance. Childhood must have warmth, and wise Nature has implanted within it an overpowering appetite for the sweet foods from which that warmth is to be generated. Reason must be the guide, as will be seen hereafter, as to the times, and quantities, and qualities of the sweets to be taken.

It has now been shown that we eat to keep ourselves warm. In the Tables at the end of this book, some of the more familiar and common articles of food are named, with the amount of the carbonaceous principle in each. Not that we are to eat mathematically, by square or compass, by weight or measure, nor by any inflexible rule ; those who dG so will die early. There is not a straight line in all Nature. A loving Providence has created us with

THE OBJECT OF EATING.

wonderful adaptabilities ; has allowed us a libera, margin of action, that by the aid of reason we may accommodate ourselves to the various exigencies of human life. He has not placed us in this beautiful world to be put in a strait-jacket. He has not made it death to us, if we eat a minute before we are hungry, or drink a drop beyond the wants of the system, but has given our constitutions a certain pliability by which they are able to adapt themselves to the emergencies incident to our earthly condition.

We must not only eat to keep warm, we must EAT TO GROW.

The blade of grass of to-day is taller than it was yesterday ; *the sapling, larger than a year ago ; and the huge oak stretches its giant arms higher in the air, and wider, than a century since. All these grow in part by feeding on the air, by drawing its component elements to themselves, then condensing them into more solid substances, which are incorporated with themselves, and thus become part and parcel of the living body ; but, at the same time, the little roots below stretch out their tiny tendrils deep and broad, and by a mysterious agency dissolve the solid earth and its more solid metals into fluids and thinner gases, and then, drawing them up into the growing body, they become solidified, and make a part of the living whole. In ways like these, atom b/’ atom is added to blade, and stalk, and towering tree, and thus do they grow day by

WE EAT TO GROW.

Jay. Hence vegetation eats to grow, by appropriating exterior unliving tilings to its own living uses ; it takes the inanimate earth and air, and makes them a living part of its living self, and in turn is appropriated to the sustentation of a form of life as much higher than itself as it was above the baser dust on which it fed ; for upon this lower life of grass, and herb, and tree, the cattle on a thousand hills are fed, and they at last are given to men to eat, and thus become incorporated in turn into a still higher existence, are made a part and parcel of the living embodiment of man ; a candidate for an immortal state beyond, at so infinite a remove above the beasts which perish, that he is even now but a little lower than the angels, and is ordained to have a nobler name, a higher place, and a grander destiny than they !

In a deep, damp, dark dungeon, writes a lady of world-wide renown, I saw him chained to the cold, slimy stone floor ; his largest liberty was three steps back and forth ; that ugly, clanking chain never by any possibility allowed him to go further ; and all day long, and sometimes all night, for so many mournful years, the weary, naked foot had fallen on the same hard spot on that pitiless stone, and had worn into it a deep hollow ; yes, the solid stone had worn away, but not the soft skin of that unhappy prisoner’s foot ; it gave no sign of wearing out. The stone was dead matter, and when a portion of it, ever so infinitesimally small, was worn away, there was no power to replace it. The sole

THE OBJECT OF EATING.

of the fuot was a living thing. It wore away faster, much faster than the more solid stone ; but as soon as one particle was displaced, another was deposited in its stead ; as when a soldier falls in the front rank of battle, his brave comrade from the rear takes his position, and the line remains always full. This particle supplied to the worn foot is brought to it in the blood which circulates to every pin-point of the body, but that particle is supplied from the food eaten. Hence, we not only eat for purposes of warmth and growth, but

WE EAT FOR REPAIR.

All machinery, the most perfect piece of mechanism which ever came from human hands, will wear out, because there is friction. Its cogs, its wheels, its bearings, its axles, and its cylinders all move upon one another, more or less directly. Such motion implies friction, and friction causes loss of substance necessarily. Millions of money are expended every year for the purchase of oils and other lubricants to lessen the tremendous wear and waste in the running of our locomotives, the trains on our railroads, and the machinery of our numberless mills and manufactories. But the living human body came from the hands of the Infinite One. It is the perfection of mechanism, and has within itself the power of growth and development ; and more, it makes its own repairs and provides its own lubricants ; it works incessantly day and night, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, for a hun-

W E EAT FOR REPAIR.

dred years. It never stops, it never wears out, until the work is completed for which it was made, and the Master-builder bids it run no more ! It is made of its hundreds of muscles, and bands, and sockets, and hinges, and pulleys, all playing upon o • dragging across each other. The very smallest of these motions involves waste ; indeed, not a single crook of the finger, not a bend of the arm, not a twinkle of the eye, not a thought of the brain, but is at the expense of some solid portion of the human machine; and yet, at the end of a century, it remains a whole in all its parts ; while the most perfect constructions of man come to a dead stop in a very few months, and would stand still forever, unless some new cog, or pin, or pulley was supplied. But the tongue which speaks to-day, spoke a hundred years ago just as well, and the eyelid winks as easily at fourscore as in infancy ; it does not even wink tiredly. And all this, not because there are no wastes of substance in this wonderful frame of ours, but because they are as promptly repaired as made.

We not only eat for warmth, and growth, and repair, but for the generation of those internal forces of brain and body, of thought and action, of voluntary and involuntary motion, which together constitute man’s efficiency as an immortal being. All now understand that food gives nourishment, and nourishment includes warmth, growth, repair, and strength or power to work as to body and brain. The ordinary articles of food have one or more of

THE OBJECT OF EATING.

these elements in varied proportions. Some have all, as milk, and eggs, and bread ; and the instincts of the race have led to the adoption of these as articles of food the world over. But, whatever we eat, three things must be supplied to us daily, carbon to keep us warm, nitrogen to give us flesh and strength, and salts, which, in combination with carbon and nitrogen, makes them nutritious ; these “ salts ” are represented by the ashes which are left if we or the food we eat were burnt up. And any article of food which combines in it the three elements named, carbon, nitrogen, and salts, gives the idea of perfect food, of which bread, and meat, and milk are the most familiar samples.

POWER TO WORK.

The power for bodily labor and mental effort must be supplied from food which contains nitrogen, expressed hereafter by the single word albuminate, from its resemblance to albumen, the most familiar representation of which is the white of an egg. If the blood is cold, and is then heated, a portion of it melts, and becomes fluid ; this is called “ albumen.” All understand that the blood is our life. It is the blood which builds us up, which gives animation to the whole human system. The element which does all this, is the albuminate portion ; and this principle is found in all the food eaten by animals and men ; it is found alike in plant, and bush, and tree ; in the sap, and seed, and fruit ; and more especially, and in largest quantity,

POWER ro WORK.

ii in all the grains from which we make bread, which, from this fact, is emphatically the staff of life.

Foods which are rich in carbon, which give only warmth, such as starch, sugar, fats, and oils, give no strength, nor can they sustain life long, if not combined with albuminate and salts ; hence, if a man wants the power to work day after day, he must renew that power by eating food which gives it, which contains albuminate. And this is not by any means a mere theory or conjecture. It is the observation of men who, without science, have noticed, in the employment of large numbers of laborers on railroads, that those who had the best appetites did the best day’s work ; mere size was a secondary consideration, except the size of the ap«- petite, because, the more food of a mixed kind, such as comes upon our tables ordinarily, a man consumes, the larger the quantity of albuminate taken into the system. A good feeder makes a good worker, hence the poorest of all economies is the stinting of those who are employed to do work ; and not only does a man become unable to ‘do a good day’s work on a scanty allowance of food, but he requires time for recuperation ; for after you begin to feed him well, several days are needed to enable him to come up to his proper work. And what has been said of power of body, is equally true as to the brain, for the man who studies hard, must eat abundantly, else not only debility of body follows, but the brain begins to consume itself, to Feed on its own substance, — many a man has

THE OBJECT OF EATING.

thought himself to death. The intense thinking made the brain feed upon itself, because nutriment was not supplied to it fast enough by generous food and a healthful and vigorous digestion ; for, as digestion fails, the brain ceases to work clearly, legitimately, logically, and to advantage. There is a consumption of the brain as well as of the lungs, and both mean death, unless wise remedies are applied, and in a timely manner.

The amount of power supplied to the human body in the course of a life-time from the food eaten will strike the unreflecting with amazement. Leave out of the account all the steps a man takes during his threescore years and ten ; leave out, too, all the work he does with his hands, and all the turnings of his body ; and take into calculation the force which only one little organ expends during a life-time, the busy, busy beating heart, which beats three thousand millions of times without a stop, and, in doing so, propels from itself to the farthest extremities of the body which it serves, half a million tons of blood ! and in every such propulsion exists a force represented by thirteen pounds. We eat foi power to work.

Chapter II. When To Eat

The instinct, observation, and experience of civilized society have led to the practice of eating three times a day, — morning, noon, and night. Circumstances, habit, necessity, have caused the appointment of different hours for eating in some cases without demonstrably hurtful results ; but the great general rule, for those who work, is as above stated, and for them the best time for

BREAKFAST

is the early part of the morning, before they go out to their daily labor. A habitual compliance with this single, simple rule would almost exterminate the greatest scourge of the Western Hemisphere, fever and ague ; and this would of itself be a blessing of inconceivable value. Any reader who was in the habit of spending a night now and then with the hospitable old Dutch farmers around New York forty years ago, will remember that it was a custom among many of them to breakfast by daylight, especially in the winter-time, and very early in the morning in summer; who were healthier, and lived longer, than the old Knickerbockers ?

In the earliest years of the writer, in the great Mississippi Valley, the word —

WHEN TO EAT.

ANTIFOGMATIC

was an expression of every-day life, which carried with it a practice of great value. It then meant an “ early dram,” a good drink of honest whiskey, for it was in the very heart of “ Old Bourbon ” where these things transpired ; but the appellation originatei in the custom of taking something into the stomach very early in the morning, when the damp and pestiferous fogs and bad airs hung low over the country and the town ; for it came by degrees to be observed, that those who ate something very early in the day, were exempt from fever and ague. When it was not convenient to prepare a regular breakfast, it was thought something in its place might answer the same purpose ; and the most convenient substitute was a drink of whiskey, which then and there was very cheap, about two dimes a gallon. The “ tavern ” was the “ grog-shop ” in those days ; but even at that early time there was something in a name, and some respect for appearances ; and the sturdy old fellows, not willing to acknowledge they were going to get a drink of grog, would speak of it as an “ antifoginatic,” a rude combination of words intended to mean something which nullified the effects of the early morning fog upon the general system ; and a good many of those men who took their antifogmatics every morning, lived to the age of sixty, and seventy, and eighty years.

In one of the hottest of all hot summers; in the

ANTIFOGMATIC.

sickliest locality of all sickly places in the United States, so sickly that it was called “ the natural burial ground ; ” on the low-banked, stagnant, and slimy bayous of the South, — then and there, where death was so common, and sudden, and frequent, that men thought human life a mere bauble, and, not satisfied with the fearful fatalities of sickness, rioted in their desperate recklessness, and were hewing each other to pieces with their bowie-knives, for it was then and there that “ Jim Bowie ” lived, — in such a summer, in such a place, the author, fresh with his diploma, first began the practice of medicine. Riding day and night, early and late, through broiling suns and drenching rains ; prompt at every call from one plantation to another, from country to town, from swamps to pine hills; sleeping night by night on the very bank of the most sullen and stagnant and slimy of all the bayous of that region, — he never was sick for one single remembered half second. He never left the house under any circumstance, neyer went outside the door after daylight, until he had taken his breakfast. While one class of persons “died off like sheep,” it was noticed that another class did not die at all ; they lived and lived on indefinitely long, and finally dried up. Some of them the author knew ; they were old thirty years ago, are apparently no older now — the French Creole planters ; they would have a cup of strong hot coffee brought to their bedsides every morning before they rose to dress.

The principle under discussion is one of incalcu-

WHEN TO EAT.

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lable practical importance, especially in new countries, in all flat-lying lands, on all river bottoms, and wherever vegetation is rank, luxuriant, and of rapid growth ; hence pains have been taken to present facts which cannot be disputed, and if they but make a just impression on the mind of the reader, the practical carrying them out will bring its own reward. Here, in a Northern State, in a Western State, in a Southern State, one practice, adopted by different nationalities in different latitudes, was followed by the uniform result of a remarkable exemption from diseases which prevailed in every direction among those who neglected that practice, to wit, of taking something into the stomach very early in the morning after a night’s sleep.

WHY AN EARLY BREAKFAST.

The longer the interval between eating, the weaker does the body, as a whole, become ; and so with each individual member and organ. Five or six hours is the usual average between breakfast and dinner, and between dinner and supper ; and the reader is conscious of a weakness or faintness commonly preceding the eating hour, especially if work of body or brain has been done.

Another observation has been made, that after a meal, in health, we feel better, stronger, more vigorous. But from supper to breakfast there is an interval of ten or twelve hours, about double that between the other meals ; and although there may uot have been as much thought or work as between

WHY AN EARLY BREAKFAST.

the others, still there has been enough to leave the body more or less faint or languid, as witness our own sensations when we are about getting up in the morning ; witness, too, our indisposition to activity or labor for some time after rising.

In proportion as the body is debilitated, every individual part, member, or organ shares its proper portion of that debility. The whole body being more or less debilitated in the morning soon after we get up, the stomach and the heart are proportionally weak.

In proportion as the body is debilitated, it is susceptible to the influences of disease ; this is true the world over, and is admitted alike by all classes of practicing physicians and all schools of physiologists. Not only is the body more liable to disease in the morning from the long fast of the night and the consequent debility attending it, but it is more liable from the want of vigor of the circulation of the blood ; it lacks power to repel disease and all destructive agencies. The man who starts out in the morning without his breakfast to cross the Pontine marshes near Rome, will die of disease in a few days, — of some form of malignant fever. He who takes a hearty breakfast, and rides through without a halt, will suffer no harm. Very ignorant people in Rome know this, although they may not be able to account for it philosophically.

When food is taken into an empty stomach, it is said to “ stimulate ” it ; that is, the very contact of what was swallowed, with the coats of the stomach,

WHEN TO EAT.

excites a greater, a more active circulation of the blood, and in a very few minutes the body feels more or less of the strengthening influence of the nutriment derived from the food ; hence there is increased action and strength all through the system, which has the effect to prevent the mischievous ingredient of the air from entering the circulation of the blood, for by entering, it becomes a cause of impurity, of stagnation, of poison, and of death.

Men have been able to discover the laws of action of the poisonous ingredient of the early morning air upon the debilitated body and the unresisting stomach ; but every effort has hitherto failed to discover any of the physical properties of that ingredient, which is so subtle that a bottle of the air has been taken and analyzed by the best chemical tests known, and the air so taken has not been found to contain any other ingredient than portions of air of the healthiest regions. This proved, not that there was not an additional element in this disease-producing morning air, but that human skill and ingenuity could not detect it ; at the same time, the laws of its action were determined, and also the agencies by which that action could be antagonized with uniformity and certainty, as will be more specially detailed in treating the subject of “ Miasm,” in subsequent pages. Here it only concerns us to know that in temperate and tropical latitudes the ill effects of early morning air on the human system are measurably avoided

BREAKFAST IN WINTER.

by taking an early breakfast, warm and nourishing , the theory being that food, or whatever drink causes a healthful stimulus or stimulating action in the stomach, does, at the same time, give the system power to resist the ill effects of the agencies in question. Thus far as to the healthful effects of taking an early breakfast in warm weather ; for it will be seen hereafter that the malignant ingredient which is present in the morning air in warm weather, is wholly absent in cold weather, unless in circumscribed localities, as within houses where a warmth is kept up sufficient to generate the specific poison alluded to.

BREAKFAST IN WINTER.

It promotes health to take a good warm, nutritious breakfast early on a winter’s morning, because the heating material taken at supper has been used up during the night ; and if not early supplied in the morning by more food, the whole body is liable to cool down to a chill, which may produce inflammation of the lungs, and death within five days. Little children and old persons, and the feeble of every age, having but a small surplus of heat in winter, are especially liable to inflammatory diseases by being kept too long, in cold weather, without food. From supper to daylight is a long enough interval without food, except to the robust, active, and vigorous ; and even these latter are the safer for the shorter interval which the early winter breakfast gives.