XXX. THE OTHER SIDE…

XXX. THE OTHER SIDE

It's a very good rule in all things of life, When judging a friend or brother, Not to look at the question alone on one side, But always to turn to the other. We are apt to be selfish in all our views, In the jostling, headlong race, And so, to be right, ere you censure a man, Just "put yourself in his place."--ANON.

PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE.--STEALING FROM THE PROFESSION.--ANECDOTE OF RUFUS CHOATE.--INGRATES.--A NIGHT ROW.--"SAVING AT THE SPIGOT AND WASTING AT THE BUNG."--SHOPPING PATIENTS.--AN AFFECTIONATE WIFE.--RUM AND TOBACCO PATIENTS.--THE PHYSICIAN'S WIDOW AND ORPHANS, THE SUMMONS, THE TENEMENT, THE INVALIDS, HOW THEY LIVED, HER HISTORY, THE UNNATURAL FATHER, HOW THEY DIED, THE END.--A PETER-FUNK DOCTOR.--SELLING OUT.

While I trust that respectable, educated physicians will take no offence at the exposé in the foregoing chapters, as nothing therein is intended to lessen them in public opinion, or detract from the merit of the TRUE PHYSICIAN of any school, I cannot leave the subject without presenting some facts to show that the people are not blameless in creating and maintaining so many humbugs and impositions, to the damage and scandal of respectable practitioners and legitimate medicine.

STEALING FROM THE PROFESSION.

I need not tell men of any profession, that there are those, even in the respectable walks of life, who will watch their opportunity to button-hole the lawyer or the doctor, in the public streets, to "just ask him a question," rather than call at his office, where a fee would certainly be a just compensation for the expected advice.

One of these highway robbers once overtook Mr. Choate, the great Boston lawyer, on a public street, and asked him if he should sue Mr. Jones, so and so, briefly stating his case, if he, the lawyer, thought he, Smith, would win the suit.

"O, yes," replied the great lawyer; and Smith went on his way rejoicing.

The case went to trial, Smith vs. Jones. Smith employed a cheap pettifogger. Jones employed Mr. Choate to defend him, and gained the suit.

"Didn't you tell me I had a good case?" demanded the irascible plaintiff of Mr. Choate, when he found that the case had gone against him.

"Well, I think you did say something to me about it," replied Mr. Choate, very indifferently.

"Yes, and didn't you advise me to sue him?" cried the infuriated Smith.

"Let me see, Mr. Smith: how much did you pay me for that advice?"

"Nothing, sir! nothing!" roared Smith.

"Well, that was all it was worth," remarked Mr. Choate, quietly.

Another of these free advice fellows detained the author at the post-office last week, and very patronizingly asked,--

"What would you take for a code id de ed, docdor?"

"Take? take two pocket handkerchiefs," was the cheap prescription for a cheap patient.

INGRATES.

"What, then! doth Charity fail? Is Faith of no avail? Is Hope blown out like a light By a gust of wind in the night? The clashing of creeds, and the strife Of the many beliefs, that in vain Perplex man's heart and brain, Are nought but the rustle of leaves, When the breath of God upheaves The boughs of the Tree of Life, And they subside again! And I remember still The words, and from whom they came, Not he that repeateth the name, But he that doeth the will!"

"Of all men, the physician is most likely to discover the leading traits of character in his fellow-beings; on no other condition than that of sickness do they present themselves without those guards upon the countenance and tongue that an artificial mode of life has rendered almost indispensable to their existence; in city life, more especially."

"The confiding patient often hangs, as it were, with an oppressive weight upon the conscientious physician, and if he be afflicted with a generous, sympathizing soul, farewell to his happiness. His heart will bleed for distress, both bodily and pecuniary, that he cannot alleviate, and he gives up in despair a profession which will so severely tax his nervous system as to render the best medical talent comparatively useless....

"Those who speak of the gratitude of the low Catholic Irish in this (New York) city, or any other city, as they present their true characters to the young practitioner, will find but one opinion,--a more improvident, heartless, and dishonest class of people never defiled the fair face of the earth. They are indeed a bitter curse to the young and humane physician."

And this from the pen of one of the most noble and humane physicians of the great metropolis, whose generosity forbids him ever to refuse a visit, day or night, to the distressed, even amongst the lowest of the class he so bitterly condemns. The above is the experience of other physicians besides Dr. Dixon, and in other cities besides New York.

During my days of extreme poverty in H., an Irish woman, whose child, suffering with cholera infantum, I snatched from the very jaws of death, cheated me out of my fees, when I afterwards learned that she owned two tenements, and had money in the Savings Bank.

While I was practising in H., one cold winter's night, an Irishman came for me to go to Front Street, as a man had fallen down stairs, and was "kilt intirely."

"Then it is Mr. Roberts, the undertaker, whom you want," I replied.

"O, no, he isn't kilt intirely, but broke his arrum, doctor."

Therefore I drew on my boots, took my hat and case, and was soon at the designated number. A drunken row, as usual. It was near midnight, Saturday night. A big, burly fellow lay on the bed in a large front room, surrounded by a dozen men and women, nearly all drunk, except the patient. His arm was dislocated at the shoulder downward. I drew off my coat, jumped upon the bed, set the man up, raised the limb, clapped my knee under the limb, raised the arm, and using it for a lever, the bone snapped into the socket as quickly as I am telling the story.

"Ah, that gives me aise; ah, God bless you, docther. How mooch is the damage? Get the wallet, woman, and let me pay the good docther," said the grateful patient. "How mooch? Say it asy, noo."

"Two dollars." A very modest fee for such a job at midnight.

"O, the divil!" cried the woman. "And is it two dollars for the snap of a job likes to that, noo, ye'll be axin' a poor man?"

I made no reply. The man asked for the money.

"Will yeze be axin' that much?" asked a six and a half foot Irishman who stood by the opposite side of the bed.

"Do you have to pay the bill, sir?" I demanded.

"Noo," he replied.

"Then mind your own business," I exclaimed, with a clincher, and a flash of the eyes that somehow caused him to cower like the miserable drunken coward he was, amid the laughs and jeers of the bystanders.

"There, take the money," said the woman (boarding mistress). "Dr. B. would come ferninst the railroad over for half of it, he would," she added.

"Woman," said I, "when next any of your kind want a doctor, do you go ferninst the railroad for Dr. B." (I knew she lied), "and get him for a dollar. As for me, I never, for love or money, will come to your call again."

I never heard of money enough to induce me to visit Front or Charles Street after that night, and I have seen some anxious faces looking about for a doctor, in case of emergency, in that locality.

"SAVING AT THE SPIGOT, AND WASTING AT THE BUNG."

Again, there is a class in every city who, to avoid a physician's fee, go to an apothecary, briefly and imperfectly state their case, perhaps to a green clerk, or a proprietor who is as ignorant of the pathology of the disease as the miserable applicant; and who ever knew of a druggist too ignorant to prescribe for a case over the counter? The result is often the administration of harsh remedies, which aggravate the present, or produce some other disease worse than the original, and in the end the patient is obliged to seek the advice of a physician.

Now the patient is ashamed to tell the whole truth, the doctor has yet to learn what drugs are rankling in the system, and the disease is often protracted thereby ten times as long as it need have been, had the man at the outset sought the advice of a respectable physician. This is an every-day occurrence. I knew a young man who recently went into consumption from having a comparatively simple case prolonged by this apotheco-medical interference.

SHOPPING PATIENTS.

"A queer kind of patients!" you exclaim.

Yes, very queer. One class of them go round from office to office, to "just inquire about a friend" (themselves), "if they could be cured," how long it would require, and, ten to one, even ask what medicines "you would give for such a case."

Such persons, if females, usually come into the city for the double purpose of seeing a doctor, or a dozen, and shopping,--doing the shopping first; tramping from one end of the city to the other, visiting the doctor last, with bundles and boxes by the score, "in a great hurry; must catch a certain train; all tired out;" making the opportunity for diagnosis an unfavorable one, and not unusually asking the doctor--a stranger, perhaps--to trust them till they come again.

Whoever "O. SHAW" may be, he knows a thing or two. Hear him.

AN AFFECTIONATE WIFE.

A poor mechanic, three weeks after marriage, was addressed by his wife thus:--

"Harry, don't you think a new silk dress would become my beauty?"

He answered affirmatively, of course, and promised that when his present job was completed, which would be in about a fortnight, the necessary stamps would be forthcoming, and that she might then array her loveliness in the wished-for dress. The affectionate wife kissed him, and thus rewarded his generosity. Three days afterwards the man met with an accident, and was brought home on a shutter, and it was evident that for weeks he would be confined to his bed. On beholding him, his wife gave vent to repeated outbursts of agony, as an affectionate woman should, considering the cause. This touched the unfortunate man, and he said, consolingly,--

"Dry your tears, dear Nettie; I'll be all right again in a few weeks."

"Perhaps you may," she answered; "but all your earnings for a long time after you resume work will be required to pay your doctor's bill, and you won't be able to get me that new silk dress."--O. SHAW.

A SENSIBLE PRESCRIPTION.

A doctor up town recently gave the following prescription for a lady: "A new bonnet, a cashmere shawl, and a new pair of gaiter boots." The lady, it is needless to say, has entirely recovered.

RUM AND TOBACCO PATIENTS.

Then there is a large class,--men, mostly; males, at least,--who, having spent all their substance and much of their health in excess of tobacco-using and whiskey-drinking, apply to the physician for aid, "in charity, for God's sake," as they have nothing with which to pay him, and usually a numerous family dependent upon their miserable labor for sustenance. Woe to the physician who gets a reputation for benevolence at this day and generation of "cheek."

"Doctor, I hope you will do something for my distress," said a gentlemanly-dressed individual, not many months ago. "I have but sixteen cents in my pocket, and I owe for four weeks' board, and am out of employment." He was a play actor. Could I say no to so honest a statement of his low state of finance? I treated him faithfully, without a penny.

Not many weeks afterwards I knew of his going away and stopping two days at a hotel with a strange woman.

Still there are others who are quite able, but who think it no sin to cheat a doctor by misrepresenting their inability to pay. They work upon the sympathies of the benevolent doctor; they "would willingly pay a hundred dollars, if they had it," etc.; and thus slip off without compensating him for his services. Every physician knows that I have not overstated the above.

There is also a large class of patients, with whom, like the "old clo' Jew," wisdom, brain work, advice, go for nothing. You must represent their case as perfectly fearful, and do something perfectly awful for them, or you are of no account.

Selden, who understood these failings in mankind vastly well, gives them a sly hit in his "Table Talk." If a man had a sore leg, and he should go to an honest, judicious surgeon, and he should only bid him keep it warm, and anoint it with such an oil (an oil well known), that would do the cure, haply he would not much regard him, because he knows the medicine to be an ordinary one. But if he should go to a surgeon that should tell him, "Your leg will gangrene within three days, and it must be cut off; and you will die unless you do something that I could tell you," what listening there would be to this man!

"O, for the Lord's sake, tell me what this is; I will give you any content for your pains."

THE PHYSICIAN'S WIDOW AND ORPHAN.

Scenes from "Practice of a New York Surgeon."

I have abridged the following truthful story from the above work, which book I recommend to the perusal of all lovers of moral and entertaining literature.

The Summons.--The experienced physician knows, from the sound of the door bell, whether it is the representative of wealth or penury who is outside at the bell-pull.

The doctor opened the door to the timid summons.

"Will you please come and see my mother?" asked a little delicate and thinly-dressed girl. "She has been very ill for nearly a year, and I'm afraid she's going to die." The poor little heart was swelling with grief.

Almost ashamed as I donned my heavy coat, for the night was bitter cold, and the shivering little girl pattered after me with her well-worn shoes and scanty dress, I hurried along to the abode of poverty.

The Tenement.--The faint rays of a candle issuing from an upper window of one of those wretched wooden buildings, guided us to the invalid's tenement, and as we approached the house the little girl ran ahead of me, and stood shivering in the doorway, while I carefully walked up the rickety steps.

Poor as the tenement was, its cleanliness was noticeable, from the fact that it was isolated from the loathsome Irish neighbors, whose superior means and brutal habits allowed them to occupy the lower and more accessible apartments almost in common with the swine which are fed from their very doorsteps.

The Invalid.--A violent paroxysm of coughing had just seized the lady, and I waited some moments before I could observe her features. She had surely seen better days. There were about her and the little apartment evidences of refinement, from her own tidy person to the little sweet rosebush in full bloom, and the faultless white board, and the scanty, though snowy curtains that shaded the attic window, which produced a melancholy effect upon me, which was not lessened when good breeding required me to address my patient.

Her countenance had evidently been beautiful; an immense mass of auburn hair, such as Titian loved to paint, yet shaded her brow; the eyes were large and lustrous; the nose was slightly aquiline, the lips thin; and every feature bespoke the woman of a highly refined and intellectual nature. When her gaze met mine for an instant, I felt that pity was misplaced in the emotions which swelled my heart, for the lofty dignity, almost hauteur, in that look, would have become an empress in reduced circumstances.

"Go, dearest, to your little bed, and close the door, my love," she said, turning to the child.

The girl lingered an instant. I stood between the dying mother and her child. I turned aside whilst their lips met in that holy kiss that a dying mother only can give, ay, and a prayer that she alone can breathe.

When the little creature had withdrawn, by a narrow door scarcely distinguishable from the rest of the rough, whitewashed boards that divided her little closet from the main room, the mother turned her earnest gaze upon me, and said,--

"I have troubled you, doctor, not with the view of taxing your kindness to any extent, but to ask how long I may yet linger,"--placing her hand on her wasted bosom,--"depending for every service upon that little fragile creature, for whom alone I have, I fear, a selfish desire to live."

I could not answer immediately. My heart was too full. I had recognized the dreadful malady at a glance. She was far gone with consumption.

"I have a duty to perform, connected with her, that depends upon your answer--one that I have selfishly, alas! too long deferred."

* * * * *

As I arose to take my departure, she requested me to open the door to the little chamber. I did so, and there lay the poor, pale child, with her clothes unremoved. Merciful God! an infant watching its dying mother, a refined, delicate and intellectual woman, the wife of an educated physician, in a wretched tenement, surrounded by palaces!

How they lived.--O, my God, what a discovery was made on my next visit, the following morning! Then I saw what had before excited my curiosity, viz., the manner in which my patient contrived to support herself and child, for I was quite sure that she would never condescend to beg.

I had observed, during my visit the previous evening, a very large package, tied up in commercial form, and by its side a large square board. The widow was now sitting up in bed, propped up with some coarse straw pillows, her cheeks burning with hectic, and the square board resting upon a couple of cross-pieces to keep it from her wasted limbs, and she and the child were at work putting up soda and seidlitz powders. Several dozen boxes had been filled during the morning, placed in envelopes, and labelled.

"'Tis the lot of humanity to labor," she said, when I had detected her at the task which taxed the last mite of her remaining strength, and I stood horrified looking on; "and why should I be exempt?" she asked, actually smiling gracefully.

I removed the board, but allowed the girl to resume her work by the little table near, saying that her remark was applicable only to those able to labor. She assured me that their contracted circumstances had "compelled her to make this exhibition of her industry."

Her History.--Twelve years before, this beautiful and refined lady had left a home of wealth and affluence to share the fortunes of her husband, Dr. ----, who was worthy of all the love that a pure and affectionate woman could bestow. He struggled on manfully and hopefully against misfortune until two years ago....

I had once met her husband. It was under the following circumstances. A child had been run over, and much injured. I was called, but found, on my arrival, that this young doctor had been before me, and done all that was required; but the gentleman whose duty it was said if I would attend the case he would pay all charges, and the young physician, on learning this fact on the next visit, retired in my favor. That evening I called at his office, and insisted upon his accepting one half of the fees which I knew I should receive. He hesitatingly accepted, after much persuasion on my part; and I remember that it was my impression at the time that he was excessively proud.

Now, the poor wife informed me that, at the time, their means were entirely exhausted, and when he came home that evening with a large basket of necessaries, and some little delicacies to which they had long been unaccustomed, and upon her expressing her astonishment, he sat down and wept like a child.

"Great God," he cried, in agony of soul, "why did I take you from your father's house, where you had plenty? What a reward for devoting the flower of life to such a profession! To hear a wife, and the mother of my child, expressing astonishment and joy at the unwonted sight of the very necessaries of life!"

It was only when the note-books and manuscripts of this truly meritorious and unfortunate young man fell into my hands, that I discovered what a loss his family and the profession had sustained.

He was too proud to ask assistance. Even in his fatal sickness, he continued, until a late period, to decline medical treatment, rather than expose his poverty to his brethren. Finally he became known to Dr. ----, who devoted his time and purse to him until he died. That season Dr. ---- died also.

After his death, the lady with her child had removed to these miserable quarters. The needle, and coloring of prints, had sustained them both for a year, when, finding it impossible, with her failing health, to earn a living at that employment, she resumed the one by which her noble husband had been compelled to eke out his miserable income,--putting up seidlitz powders,--in order to sustain them.

Often, she told me, had she sat by his side till late in the night reading to him, whilst he plied his fingers industriously at this employment, so utterly repulsive to an intellectual man; and when she would beg him to retire, he would often cheerfully obey the summons to an all-night visit to some wretched and dishonest Irishman--who could not get the service of a more knowing (pecuniarily) physician without an advanced fee--in the remote hope of obtaining a few dollars, which his refinement taught these wretchedly dishonest people they had only to refuse, as they almost invariably do, in order to escape entirely the obligation! This is the gratitude (!) of which we have spoken before. It was whilst attending one of these miserable people that he imbibed the fatal disease which swept him from the earth, and left his poor wife and child to struggle on alone in their cheerless journey.

It is needless to say that from the time of the visits of the benevolent physician, the widow wanted for nothing that earth could bestow, to the day of her death, which soon occurred; else she would have died at her task!

The Unnatural Father.--On the fifth day, evening, a man entered my office and inquired for me. He was plainly dressed in black, and possessed one of those hard, immovable countenances which admit of no particular definition.

"I received a letter from you relative to my daughter."

This was said in such a perfectly business-like manner, without the least emotion, that I was shocked, and my countenance must have expressed my astonishment, for he immediately added,--

"A sad business, my dear sir. Well, well, I will not detain you. The corpse is here?"

"No, sir. I will accompany you to the late abode of your daughter." I was glad that she had not been removed; I thought it might do his moral nature some good to see the condition to which his unnatural conduct had brought her.

Not a muscle of his countenance changed, as we ascended the wretched steps. The watcher admitted us to the poor, low room, and handing him a letter from my pocket, I said, "These are your daughter's last words to you, which she intrusted to my keeping for you. I will not intrude upon your privacy, but will await you at my office;" and bowing, I retired, leaving him beside the corpse of his neglected child.

In less than fifteen minutes he returned, and, without any allusion to the event, thanked me for my attentions, declining a chair, saying,--

"You will please make out your bill. I wish to be ready to start early in the morning, and take the corpse with me." He inquired for the address of an undertaker, and the present abode of her child!

I stood speechless! He was an anomaly. I measured him with my eyes; he cast his own for an instant to the floor, and then said,--

"My business habits, I fear, shock you, sir. I have been in a hurry all my life. I have never had time to think. I owe you an apology, sir--pardon me."

I thought of the future fate of the poor child, and I must acknowledge I hypocritically, for once in my adult life, took the hand of the man I totally despised, as I asked him mildly if his daughter had not requested to be buried by the side of her husband, whom she loved so well.

"No, sir," he sharply replied; "his name was not mentioned in the letter; very properly too. I had no respect for him, sir, none whatever; nor should I have acceded to such, had she made the request."

I gave him the address of the grandchild, and also an undertaker's.

"I am much obliged to you," he said, hurriedly. "I will trouble you no further. I will send for the bill in the morning. Good evening, sir."

I wanted the man (brute!) to love the poor little orphan, his grandchild, and that night I prepared a letter--instead of a bill--which I hoped would benefit him, without aggravating his feelings towards her. I said that I deemed such a privilege a sacred one, not to be soiled by a pecuniary return. I said other things to him, in the note, which I need not repeat. Near spring, in a kind, almost affectionate letter, he announced to me the death of his grandchild. She had fulfilled her mission. She had greatly subdued his nature by her lovely character....

I learned that the remains of Dr. ---- were afterwards interred by the side of his wife and child, and I received but lately the assurance that the wretched father, before his death, admitted that money was not the chief good.

Thus perished a noble physician, a devoted wife, and their lovely offspring, because of the selfish ingratitude of one to whom they were and still might have been an inestimable blessing.

THE PHYSICIAN.

"Honor a physician with the honor due unto him, for the uses which ye may have of him: for the Lord hath created him; for of the Most High cometh healing, and he shall receive honor of the king. The skill of the physician shall lift up his head: and in the sight of great men he shall be in admiration."--Ecclesiasticus xxxviii.

If there is one class of men in the world who deserves the gratitude of their fellow-creatures above another, it is the physicians. By physician I mean not him who alone can theorize garrulously upon anatomy and physiology, chemistry and therapeutics, but who can render assistance, in time of need, to the sick and distressed. In ancient days physicians were reckoned "as the gods." I much wonder, as I turn the leaves of the Testament, at the abuse heaped upon the Saviour; for he went about healing the sick, and casting out devils (evil diseases). Surely society was at a very low ebb in those times.

Who has greater, firmer friends than the physician! The good physician is sure to prosper. Certainly "envy increases in exact proportion with fame; the man who is successful in his undertakings, and builds up a character, makes enemies, and calls forth swarms of stinging, peevish, biting insects, just as the sunshine awakens the world of flies;" but the true physician, having the desire at heart to benefit his fellow-creatures, is strong, is beloved, is blessed! He calls forth hosts of friends on every side, just as the pure morning air calls fragrance from every lovely flower. Would you have the prayers and blessing of the good? then

"Go to the pillow of disease, Where night gives no repose, And on the cheek where sickness preys Bid health to plant the rose. Go where the sufferer ready lies To perish in his doom, Snatch from the grave his closing eyes, And bring a blessing home."

A PETER-FUNK DOCTOR.

One day, passing up Washington Street, Boston, I detected a familiar voice issuing from a store, on the window-panes of which lately vacated premises was pasted "Removal," and, looking in, I saw a man mounted on a box selling a pinchbeck watch. The place looked a deal like a New York Peter-Funk shop. However that may have been, I recognized the hired auctioneer as once having been a medical practitioner. He was a graduate of C---- Medical College. Owing to his honesty and lack of acquisitiveness among dishonest and niggardly creatures in ----, whom he faithfully served in his earlier efforts at his profession, he was compelled to resort to other means of gaining a support for himself and family, and finally was reduced to clerking and selling goods for those whose business tact exceeded his own.

SELLING OUT.

Everybody has heard of Leavitt, the dry little joker, the humorous and popular auctioneer of Hartford, who sells everybody, and everything, from a riddled sauce-pan to a nine-acre lot in the suburbs.

One fine day he was selling, in front of the State House, a various collection of articles, with a lot of ancient and modern household furniture and traps that would have made Mrs. Toodles happy for a six months, and was "looking sharp" for some one to help him over a tough place on an odd lot, when he discovered in the crowd a pleasant, open, upturned countenance,--a sort of oasis in the desert,--to whom he at once appealed for assistance. A knowing wink from young rusticus was the response, a return from the auctioneer, and the bids went on with astonishing rapidity, till down went a big lot of goods, which everybody seemed to have wanted--a truckle-bed and fixings, with earthen ware, etc.

"Yours, sir--what's your name?" said L. to the young man from the agricultural district.

"Mine? O, no; I didn't bid on 'em," said rustic.

"Yes, you did," replied the auctioneer.

"Well, I guess not, much."

"But you did--the whole lot. You winked every time I looked towards you."

"Winked?"

"Yes, and kept winking; and a wink is a bid always," said L., the least taken aback at the prospect of losing a good sale.

"Wal--as for that--so did you keep winkin' at me. I thought you was winkin' as much as to say, 'Keep dark; I'll stick somebody onto this lot of stuff;' and I kept winkin' back, as if to reply, 'Well, I'll be hanged if you don't, mister.'"

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XXXI

"THIS IS FOR YOUR HEALTH."

"Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, Now green in youth, now withering on the ground; Another race the following spring supplies; They fall successive, and successive rise; So generations in their course decay, So flourish these when those have passed away."

THE INESTIMABLE VALUE OF HEALTH.--NO BLESSING IN COMPARISON.--MEN AND SWINE.--BEGIN WITH THE INFANT.--"BABY ON THE PORCH."--IN A STRAIT JACKET.--"TWO LITTLE SHOES."--YOUTH.--IMPURE LITERATURE AND PASSIONS.--"OUR GIRLS."--BARE ARMS AND BUSTS.--HOW AND WHAT WE BREATHE.--"THE FREEDOM OF THE STREET."--KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN AND MOUTH CLOSED.--THE LUNGS AND BREATHING.--A MAN FULL OF HOLES.--SEVEN MILLION MOUTHS TO FEED.--PURE WATER.--CLEANLINESS.--SOAP VS. WRINKLES.--GOD'S SUNSHINE.

HEALTH IS ABOVE ALL THINGS.

Health is that which makes our meat and drink both savory and pleasant, else Nature's injunction of eating and drinking were a hard task and a slavish custom. It makes our beds lie easy and our sleep sweet and refreshing. It renews our strength with the morning's sun, and makes us cheerful at the light of another day. It makes the soul take delight in her mansion and pleasures, a pleasure indeed, without which we solace ourselves in nothing of terrene felicity or enjoyment.--Mainwaring.

Without health there is no earthly blessing. In comparison with health all other blessings dwindle into insignificance. Life is a burden to the perpetual invalid, for whom the only solace is in the silent grave. Nor can such always look forward with perfect confidence to rest even beyond the dark portals of the tomb; for the infirm body is not unusually attended by an enfeebled mind which often jeopardizes Hope:--

"And Hope, like the rainbow of summer, Gives a promise of Lethe at last."

If, then, health is so essential to our earthly happiness, and to our hope of peace in immortality, O, let us who possess the boon strive to retain it, and we who have it not seek diligently to regain that which is lost.

The farmer does not consider it a compromise of his dignity to search out the best modes and means for increasing the quality as well as the quantity of his stock--his horses, his oxen, his sheep, and his swine,--and is man, the most noble work of his Maker,--man, created but a little below the angels,--is man an exception to this rule, that he should cease to be the study of mankind? Is humanity below the animals?

Mankind deteriorates while domesticated live stock improves.

God has given us bodies formed in his own likeness, and has pronounced them "good," hence, not diseased; and it is evidently our most imperative duty to regard it as a great gift, and preserve these bodies as the inestimable boon of the Almighty.

It is very evident that man has fallen far short of the requirements of his Maker.

From Adam to the flood--a space of time estimated at upwards of fifteen hundred years, according to Hebrew chronographers--the average of man's years was nine hundred. From Noah to Jacob, by the same chronology, it had dwindled to one hundred and forty-seven years. In the ninetieth psalm we read, "The days of our years are threescore years and ten." From actual statistics it is shown to average now less than one fourth of threescore and ten years.

And this fact in the face of civilization, enlightenment, and Christianity! Why so? How shall we account for the evil?

The Psalmist above quoted says further, "and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years," etc., which implies that strength prolongs, and weakness--reversing the matter--shortens our days.

Let us begin at the beginning.

ABOUT THE BABIES.--HOW THEY ARE REARED AND HOW THEY SHOULD BE.

BABY ON THE PORCH.

Out on the porch, by the open door, Sweet with roses and cool with shade, Baby is creeping over the floor-- Dear little winsome blue-eyed maid!

All about her the shadows dance, All above her the roses swing, Sunbeams in the lattice glance, Robins up in the branches sing.

Up at the blossoms her fingers reach, Lisping her pleading in broken words, Cooing away, in her tender speech, Songs like the twitter of nestling birds.

Creeping, creeping over the floor, Soon my birdie will find her wings, Fluttering out at the open door Into the wonderful world of things.

Bloom of roses and balm of dew, Brooks that bubble and winds that call, All things lovely, and glad, and new, And the Father watching us over it all!

"Select the best sprouts for transplanting," says the "Old Farmer's Almanac." And here you have the whole root of the matter in a nut shell; for sickly-looking sprouts produce only sickly-looking plants. Like begets like.

Now, how about the babies? Women's rights are advocated. Men take their rights. But who shall defend the babies' rights? Poor, helpless little non-combatants! Let me say a few words in their behalf.

Children, from the cradle, are wrongfully treated. Their first rights are here curtailed. Look at the baby that is permitted to creep out "on the porch," or over nature's green carpet, and there bask in the sunshine and frolic in the open air; then look in pity upon the pale weekly house-plant child. The contrast is as striking as lamentable.

"O, he'll get his death's cold if the air blows upon him," hysterically screams the ignorant mother. Yes, "ignorant"--that is the adjective I want to describe her.

The young mother has doubtless been sent to a fashionable boarding-school, where she was taught algebra, French, (?) the art of adornment, how to walk fashionably, eat delicately, and dress à la mode, and even how to make a good "catch," but never how to preserve her health or rear an offspring. O, this would be shockingly immodest, or "counting chickens before they are hatched," I once heard a lady affirm.

Nine tenths of our American wives are totally ignorant of everything that pertains to their own health, or that of the healthful rearing of an infant.

BABY IN A STRAIT JACKET.

At first the infant is usually bound tightly in swaddling clothes, lest it move a limb, or for fear (like the down east orator) that it will "bust," and thus kept from air and exercise the first year or two, till it not unusually becomes a stunted, rickety thing, hardly worth "transplanting" or raising. Haven't you and I, kind reader, been subjected to something of this sort of strait jacket insanity?--insanity of parents! And having been tolerably strongly constituted from a "tough stock," we survived that first wrong, whereas thousands of "nicer" babies have succumbed to the swaddling and stifling process.

This is wrong, all wrong. The infant should be left free, at least as to its chest and limbs, in order to breathe, kick, and expand. How happy the little fellows are at evening to get rid of the murderous clothes which have been bundled about them all day, and how they will fight and squirm to get down on the carpet all stripped, and creep, or, if old enough, run about in freedom! How they crow and prattle!

Now, don't swaddle them--a simple, easy bandage is early admissible,--or cover their heads and faces with caps, sheets, or blankets. Inure them to the air early and continually, and they will have less colds and "snuffles" than if you confined them within doors. Give them air and sunlight, and away with your "goose-grease." Yes, I have even known some country people to apply skunk's oil, and others who larded the infant's nose and chest for the "snuffles." Croup delights in such babies!

Then from the strait jacket, baby is taken to the other extreme--bare arms, neck, and chest. Old Dr. Warren once said, "Boston sacrifices hundreds of children annually by not clothing their arms and chests." Once, when in remonstrating with a mother against this barbarous practice of thus exposing her little one-year-old to a chilling atmosphere when my arms and chest were not over warm as wrapped in an overcoat, she replied to me,--

"O, the little dear looks so pretty with its little white arms and neck all bare!"

"Yes," I replied, sorrowfully, "it will look pretty, also, laid out in its coffin."

She was greatly shocked by the remark, which, however, too soon proved true.

"Doctor's stuff" cannot counteract the fatal results of such ignorance and exposures.

TWO LITTLE SHOES.

Two little shoes laid away in the drawer, Treasured so fondly--never to be worn; Two little feet laid away in the tomb, Cold and all lifeless--sadly we mourn. What trifling things does not a mother keep, Tokens of love the swelling heart to ease; Useless little toys--a lock of golden hair; Something to fondle--to cherish like these Two little shoes laid away in the drawer, Treasured so fondly, never to be worn!

These little shoes are only left us now; Gone is our "darling," ever to remain; Dear little feet, so plump and all dimpled, Never will press them--never again! But heavenly thoughts shall cheer me on my way: Death is but life, in fairer, sunnier view; Busy little feet but just run on before; This is my solace as my tears bedew Two little shoes laid away in the drawer, Treasured so fondly, never to be worn.

IMPURE LITERATURE AND PASSIONS.

It is as marvellous as true that some children survive this treatment; besides the stuffing with meat victuals, candies, and cookies, inducing colic and dysentery; then dosing with rhubarb, paregoric, peppermint, and worse. Soothing syrups! Eternal quietuses! Yes, in spite of extremes of heat and cold, stuffing and dosing with crude and poisonous articles, some babies actually reach the next stage--youth!

From chilled blood, indigestion, poisonous air and drugs, repeated attacks of croup, bronchitis, dysentery, etc., the majority who have reached puberty are afflicted by some scrofulous taint, or development, or broken constitutions.

Now, they have appetites and passions to grapple. We have already, in chapter fifth, shown how the school-girl is cheated out of health by the deprivation of her "rights," among which are air, freedom, and exercise. Here is another evil, which must not be passed over unnoticed. A New York physician, who wields an abler pen than myself, thus expresses my ideas. What he applies to females is not limited by copyright. Males, help yourselves; it belongs to you quite as much as to the beautiful.

"It sickens the heart to contemplate the education of female children in this city." (And let me add, in this country.) "Should nature even triumph over all the evils above enumerated, no sooner has the poor girl attained the age of puberty, than her mind and nervous system are placed upon the rack of novel-reading and sentimental love stories. There is just enough of truth in some of these mawkish productions to excite the passions and distract the attention of the young girl from the love of nature and its teachings, and all rational ideas of real life, and to cause her to despise the commonplace parents whose every hour may be occupied for her consideration and welfare."

This writer goes on to condemn those selfish, money-grasping wretches "professors of religion, too," in our city, who publish this impure and overstrained literature, to the great injury of the morals of the young; adding, "What language can be too strong for such disgusting hypocrisy? We punish a poor wretch for the publication of an obscene book or print, and give honor and preferment to those who instil poison into the minds of our children by a book prepared with devilish ingenuity, and in every possible style of attraction and excitement.

"It is the premature excitement of the nervous and sexual system that should be avoided. The licentious characters presented in all the glowing tints of a depraved imagination cannot fail to injuriously affect the youthful organism."

The dissolute and immoral characters whom we debar from the personal friendship of our sons and daughters, whom we exclude from our parlors, and even street recognition, are sugared over, and, between gilded covers, passed freely into the boudoirs, school-rooms, and seminaries of our children, for their companionship at their leisure. The vile characters in person would be far less injurious, for in that case their hideousness would the surer be revealed.

"Nothing can be more certain than the production of these works of a precocious evidence of puberty. The forces of the young heart and vascular system are thus prematurely goaded into ephemeral action by the stimulus of an imagination alternately moved to laughter, and tears, and sexual passion."

Mr. Baxter, in Part 2, ch. xxi., direction 1, of his Christian Directory, which is a direction for reading other books than the Bible, says, "I pre-suppose that you keep the devil's books out of your hands and house. I mean cards, and idle tales, and play-books, and romances or love-books, and false, bewitching stories, and the seducting books of false teachers.... For where these are suffered to corrupt the mind, all grave and useful writings are forestalled; and it is a wonder to see how powerfully these poison the minds of children, and many other empty heads."

It would astonish and shame some parents if they would take pains to look over the books which are daily and nightly perused by their children. It is not enough for you to know that such books were obtained from a "dear friend," or from a respectable publisher, or pious bookseller, or that they are lawful publications. Parents and guardians, I pray you take warning.

"OUR GIRLS."

I want everybody, male and female, old and young, to read that most excellent book, "Our Girls," by Dr. Dio Lewis. It will do you good. For humanity's sake, and particularly for the benefit of females, I recommend it. Lest some of my readers should not follow this advice, I want to tell you what it says about

LOW NECK AND SHORT SLEEVES.

"Many a modest woman appears at a party with her arms nude, and so much of her chest exposed that you can see nearly half of the mammal glands. Many a modest mother permits her daughters to make this model-artist exhibition of themselves.

"One beautiful woman said, in answer to my complaints, 'You should not look.'

"'But,' I said, 'do you not adjust your dress in this way on purpose to give us a chance to look?'

"She was greatly shocked at my way of putting it.

"'Well,' I said, 'this assurance is perfectly stunning. You strip yourselves, go to a public party, parade yourselves for hours in a glare of gas-light, saying to the crowd, "Look here, gentlemen," and then you are shocked because we put your unmistakable actions into words.'

"In discussing this subject before an audience of ladies in this city (Boston), the other evening, I said, 'Ladies, suppose I had entered this hall with my arms and bust bare; what would you have done? You would have made a rush for the door, and, as you jostled against each other in hurrying out, you would have exclaimed to each other, "O, the unconscionable scallawag!" May I ask if it is not right that we should demand of you as much modesty as you demand of us?' But you exclaim, 'Custom! it is the custom, and fashion is everything.'" Again the author says,--

"This exposure of the naked bosom before men belongs not to the highest type of Christian civilization, but to those dark ages when women sought nothing higher than the gratification of the passions of man, and were content to be mere slaves and toys.

"Boston contains its proportion of the refined women of the country. We have here a few score of the old families, inheriting culture and wealth, and who can take rank with the best. A matron who knows their habits assures me that she never saw a member of one of those families in 'low neck and short sleeves.'

"In the future free and Christian America, the very dress of women will proclaim a high, pure womanhood.... We shall then discard the costumes devised by the dissolute capitals of Europe.

"What a strange spectacle we witness in America to-day! Free, brave American women hold out to the world the Bible of social, political, and religious freedom, and anon we see them down on their knees, waiting the arrival of the latest steamer from France, to learn how they may dress their bodies for the next month."

Well, he does not censure ladies in the above manner all through; but yet, in a most earnest and interesting way he divulges the most startling truths, and even very young misses are delighted with the whole argument. "Why, it's just like a story," exclaimed my twelve-year-old Katie on reading it.

What Dr. Lewis objects to on the score of immodesty, I also oppose on the ground of unhealthfulness. The idea of preventing or curing the laryngitis, or consumption, in a lady, when there is nothing but gauze, or a bit of ribbon and a galvanized bosom pin, between her neck and the cold and changeable atmosphere of the north or east, is ridiculously absurd. No doctors or doctors' pectorals can save such. "High necks," warm flannels, or make your wills.

HOW AND WHAT WE SHOULD BREATHE.

It would disgust the reader if I should enter into the details of telling him what people--respectable people, even, in nice houses--breathe over. Air is life. The purer the air, the purer the life-stream that courses through our hearts. You cannot get too much of it. Take it in freely. Have only pure air in your houses, in your sleeping-rooms and cellars. Particularly see that the children have the freedom of the air, day and night, at home, at school, everywhere. It is free--costs nothing!

THE FREEDOM OF THE STREET.

"I dwell amid the city, And hear the flow of souls; I do not hear the several contraries, I do not hear the separate tone that rolls In art or speech.

"For pomp or trade, for merry-make or folly, I hear the confidence and sum of each, And what is melancholy. Thy voice is a complaint, O crowded city, The blue sky covering thee, like God's great pity."

"Heaven bless the freedom of the park," has exclaimed a child of song; and he might also have invoked the same blessing upon "the freedom of the street." The street is free to all; to high and low, young and old, rich and poor. It recognizes no distinctions or castes; it is the very expressiveness of democracy.

The child of fashion, arrayed in silks, ribbons, and furbelows; the child of penury and want, in rags, filth, and semi-nakedness; the shaver of notes and the shaver of faces; the college professor and the chiffonier, all mingle in common on the street. Now walking side by side, now brushing past each other, now stopping to look at the same cause of excitement, now each jostled into the gutter. No distinction in wealth, birth, or intellect is recognized; no one dare attempt to restrict the freedom of the thoroughfare, and none dare say to another, "Stand aside, for I am better than thou."

The little boy trundles his hoop against the shins of the thoughtful student; the little girl knocks the spectacles from the nose of the man of science with her rope, while the preacher runs against an awning-post to make way for a red-faced nurse with a willow carriage; the antiquated apple woman, and the child with its huge chunk of bread and butter, sit on the curb; the painter digs the end of his ladder rather uncomfortably into some pursy old gentleman's stomach; while the sweep, with the soot trembling upon his eyelashes, strolls along as independently and leisurely as the dandy in tights, and with the sweeter consciousness that he is doing something for the public good.

The street is a world in miniature, a Vanity Fair in motion, a shifting panorama of society, painted with the pencil of folly and fancy. It is the only plane upon which society, "the field which men sow thick with friendships," meets on a common level. It does not flaunt in aristocracy, and never dares to be pretentious.

"KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN AND MOUTHS CLOSED."

There's true philosophy in the above saying of a wise savant. But there is more wisdom in the latter clause than he even dreamed of in his philosophy.

The Book informs us that God breathed the breath of life (air) into man's nostrils. Nothing is more injurious, save continually breathing foul air, than the habit of breathing through the mouth. Keep the mouth closed. A great many diseases of the teeth, mouth, throat, head, and lungs may be traced directly to the pernicious and general habit of breathing with the mouth open--inhaling and exhaling cold air directly into the mouth and throat, inflaming and chilling the mucous membrane and the blood. The nostrils are the only proper passages for the air to the lungs. Here are filterers to exclude particles of dust and foreign matter, and various ramifications, whereby the air is properly warmed before reaching the lining of the throat and lungs. In infected air you are less injured, and less liable to contract contagious diseases, when inhaling only through the natural channel, the nostrils.

I think it was Dr. Good, of London, who wrote a book on the subject, which Carlyle pronounced "a sane voice in a world of chaos."

George Catlin says he learned the secret of keeping the mouth closed while among the North American Indians. They would not allow themselves or their children to sleep with the mouth open (though their reasoning is questionable), because the evil spirit would creep in them at night. Hence the parent went around after the pappooses were asleep, and closed their mouths. Pulmonary diseases are seldom found in the "close-mouthed." Kant, the philosopher, claims to have cured himself of consumption by this discovery. Persons never snore except by breathing through the open mouth. O, give us quiet, you snorers, by keeping your mouths shut, even at the expense of "keeping your eyes open" to watch yourself, and thus deliver the world from the disturbance of snoring.

THE LUNGS.--BREATHING.

All that live, down even to vegetables and trees, breathe, must breathe, in order to live; live in proportion as they breathe; begin life's first function with breathing, and end its last in their last breath. And breathing is the most important function of life, from first to last, because the grand stimulator and sustainer of all. Would you get and keep warm when cold, breathe copiously, for this renews that carbonic consumption all through the system which creates all animal warmth. Would you cool off, and keep cool, in hot weather, deep, copious breathing will burst open all those myriads of pores, each of which, by converting the water in the system into insensible perspiration, casts out heat, and refreshes mind and body. Would you labor long and hard, with intellect or muscle, without exhaustion or injury, breathe abundantly; for breath is the great re-invigorator of life and all its functions. Would you keep well, breath is your great preventive of fevers, of consumption, of "all the ills that flesh is heir to." Would you break up fevers, or colds, or unload the system of morbid matter, or save both your constitution and doctor's fee, cover up warm, drink soft water--cold, if you have a robust constitution sufficient to produce a reaction; if not, hot water should be used. Then let in the fresh air, and breathe, breathe, breathe, just as deep and much as possible, and in a few hours you can "forestall and prevent" the worst attack of disease you ever will have; for this will both unload disease at every pore of skin and lungs, and infuse into the system that vis animæ which will both grapple in with and expel disease in all its forms, and restore health, strength, and life.

Nature has no panacea like it. Try the experiment, and it will revolutionize your condition. And the longer you try, the more will it regenerate your body and your mind. Even if you have the blues, deep breathing will soon dispel them, especially if you add vigorous exercise. Would you even put forth your greatest mental exertions in speaking or writing, keep your lungs clear up to their fullest, liveliest action. Would you even breathe forth your highest, holiest orisons of thanksgiving and worship, deepening your inspiration of fresh air will likewise deepen and quicken your divine inspiration. Nor can even bodily pleasures be fully enjoyed except in and by copious breathing. In short, proper breathing is the alpha and omega of all physical, and thereby of all mental and moral function and enjoyment.

A MAN FULL OF HOLES.

Yes, made of holes!

A gentleman once told me a story, as follows. We were travelling on the Ohio River, on board of a steamer.

"You see that bank over opposite?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Well, thereby hangs a little story. I always laugh when I think of it, or pass the spot, which is often. A fellow sat looking at that spot, watching the thousands of swallows that were continually flitting to and fro, in and out of their nests, and laughing immoderately to himself. I approached, and ventured to inquire the cause of his mirth, that I might partake of it.

"Well, you see that bank and all them nests? Well, one day I went down on the boat and noticed them. When I came back, there had meantime been a heavy rain storm which washed the bank away, and left the holes all sticking out;" and the fellow continued to laugh as though he would split himself, probably from the idea of the holes "sticking out." I wondered how he could see them if the bank around was washed away.

Still the man full of holes is a fact. According to Krause, quoted in Gray's and Wilson's works on anatomy, there are twenty-eight hundred (2800) pores in the skin of the human body to the square inch; and the number of square inches to an average-sized man is twenty-five hundred (2500). This would give some seven million pores in the whole body. These pores, or tubes, are one fourth of an inch in length; hence, the entire length of them all is twenty-eight miles.

That part of the skin is the healthiest which is the most exposed to the air, as the face and hands. That part the most diseased from which the air is most excluded, as the feet. Three fourths of all persons over fourteen years of age have diseased feet; either corns, chilblains, or diseased joints or nails.

SEVEN MILLION MOUTHS TO FEED.

These seven million mouths must be fed daily and hourly. Their food is light and air. Man is not only fed and nourished through the portal of his mouth, but through all the pores of his body, by drawing in nutriment from the surrounding elements, even from the viewless air.

These little mouths also need moisture. This fact is revealed to the senses through the medium of the nerves; for, how grateful to the dry, parched skin, is a bath of cold water! or, if the blood is in a "low state,"--impoverished by disease,--let it be a tepid bath. Let it feel comfortable and grateful to the user. This is a good rule to direct you. The little children love it--love to paddle and splash in it. If they cry and fight against washing, it is usually because of the rudeness of the operator, who, with brawny palm or rough sponge takes the child unawares, nearly suffocating it, and briskly and rudely rubbing over the surface of the tender face, regardless of such small obstructions as nose, chin, and lips, and not unusually dashing a quantity of yellow soap suds into the infantile eyes. The next time the little fellow is requested to be washed, he, remembering the last scouring, naturally objects to a repetition of the unpleasant process.

As the nostrils inhale pure air beneficially, they also exhale impurities. The pores also excrete, or throw off impurities. A healthy skin will throw out, by the pores, from two to three pounds of impure matter every twenty-four hours. To be sure a greater quantity of this impurity is a vapory substance, yet that holds in solution solid particles of corrupt matter, which greatly tend to clog the pores if left to obstruct free perspiration.

WATER.

Then, aside from cooling and nourishing the skin and the system through the pores, cleanliness and health demand oft and repeated ablutions of the whole body. In order that the perspiration may be unobstructed, it is absolutely necessary to wash the whole surface of the body in water, and on account of the acid and oily substance collecting on the skin, using a small quantity of alkali, as soap or soda in the water, and thus, by good brisk rubbing, using the hand in preference to a cloth or sponge, thoroughly cleansing the little mouths referred to, else their action is retarded and suspended. This should be done daily during the summer season.

This is a simple process, indispensable to health, and the unwashed can hardly believe what beneficial results follow such a plain course, or know the healthful influence or the comfort derived from a frequent use of pure water.

Those who bathe thus daily seldom take colds. During the winter, in cold climates, weekly or semi-weekly bathing may suffice.

A statesman, in seeking an illustration of the difference between price and value, very happily hit upon water, which costs nothing, and yet is of inestimable worth. Water, next to air, is the most indispensable of all the productions of nature. "Unlike most good things providentially supplied for our use, it is hardly capable of abuse. The more common danger to be feared is from too little, not too much, water.

"Simple a thing, however, as it may be to quench the thirst from the running stream, or the mountain spring, there are but few people who know how to drink. Most people, in the eagerness of thirst, swallow with such avidity the welcome draught, that they deluge their stomachs without proportionately refreshing themselves. The slowly sipping of a single goblet of water will do more to alleviate thirst than the sudden gulping down of a gallon. It is more frequently the dryness of the mouth, during hot weather, than the want of the system, which calls for the supply of fluid. When larger quantities, moreover, are poured into the stomach than are required, that organ becomes oppressed mechanically by the distention, and the digestion is consequently weakened."

The prescribed ablutions of the Jews and Mohammedans have not only a spiritual but a hygienic value. "The washing of the body not only whitens the outside of the sepulchre, but purifies the internal organs, and renews the spiritual man as well.... Hence, when the body becomes foul by the retention of worn-out and corrupt material accumulated on the surface and the interior of the structure, it becomes a cage suitable only for the dwelling of unclean birds, and no others will descend and make their nests therein. It is a vessel fitted to receive only the lower passions and feelings of human nature.

"Public bathing-houses are as important a means of grace as our poorly ventilated churches, and many an unhappy soul would be brought nearer to heaven by a judicious application of soap and water than he could be by listening to a sermon about that of which he comprehends little and cares less."--Rev. W. F. Evans's "Mental Cure."

SOAP VS. WRINKLES.

How much younger and fresher the wayworn traveller or the outdoor laborer looks after a thorough washing of the face and hands only. Many who complain of "bird's claws" and wrinkles might murmur less if they made a thorough use of warm water and "old brown windsor soap," or better, the true castile soap. Nearly all the soap sold at groceries for castile is spurious. A good druggist will have the desired article, and for rough, chapped skin nothing is better, not even glycerine.

Then wash out the furrows of fine dirt that gather in the little wrinkles, and it will surprise some folks to see how, thereby, they have reduced the size of their wrinkles. It is like cleansing an old coat!

GOD'S SUNSHINE.

Next to air and water in importance to health and happiness is sunlight. O, "let there be light" in your houses, that there may be light in your hearts also!

Our houses should be so constructed and located that the sun may shine into every room some time during the day. Too many build houses and live in the rear. The hall and large parlors are usually situated in front, to the south or west, throwing the sitting, dining, and working-room--kitchen--in the shade. Let the cheering, life-giving influences of God's dear blessed sunshine flood the working, sitting, and, particularly, the sleeping rooms. He or she who sleeps in a room from which the sunshine is totally excluded will be pale, weak, tired, and die prematurely of consumption. Try a plant in such a room. It soon turns pale and sickly. Just so your children and yourself. I have such patients daily. Medicine cannot substitute sunshine.

Throw open the blinds, dash aside the curtains, and let in the light and sunshine to your homes and hearts. Never mind the carpets; they may be replaced, but you and your children, never! Save your health, if you ruin an old carpet in so doing!

Cholera, dysentery, scrofula, nervous diseases, and consumption prevail more extensively in narrow and darkened, as also in the shady side of streets; also in darkened prisons and hospitals.

A heavy heart walks in dark and cheerless apartments. The cheerful, happy man, the joyous, contented wife, the beautiful, healthy children, dwell and rejoice in homes where flows full and free the pure air and the life-keeping, health-giving sunshine.

Christianity is more likely to take up its abode with the latter. There only green leaves and beautiful flowers can gladden the sight and exhilarate the senses.

Air, water, sunlight! "These three." Don't neglect them. So shall you live long, live healthy, and at last die happily!

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXII. HEALTH WITHOUT MEDICINE

How shall I stay life's sunny hours? For though the summer skies are clear, Foreboding thoughts steal o'er my heart, And autumn sounds oppress my ear. While heart with hope beats warm and high, And pleasures drink in summer bowers, I know that autumn frosts will come-- How shall I stay life's sunny hours?

CHEERFULNESS.--GOOD ADVICE.--REV. FRANCIS J. COLLIER ON CHRISTIAN CHEERFULNESS.--WHAT GOD SAYS ABOUT IT.--WHINING.--LOVE AND HEALTH.--AFFECTION AND PERFECTION.--SEPARATING THE SHEEP AND GOATS.--THE FENCES UP AND FENCES DOWN.--SIXTEEN AND SIXTY.--ACTION AND IDLENESS.--IDLENESS AND CRIME.--BEAUTY AND DEVELOPMENT.--SLEEP.--DAY AND NIGHT.--"WHAT SHALL WE EAT?"--A STOMACH-MILL AND A STEWING-PAN.--"FIVE MINUTES FOR REFRESHMENTS."--ANCIENT DIET.--COOKS IN A "STEW."--THE GREEN-GROCERIES OF THE CLASSICS.--CABBAGES AND ARTICHOKES.--ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE DIET.

CHEERFULNESS.

I place cheerfulness next, in the catalogue of essentials to long life and happiness; before "diet," for, unless a man eats cheerfully, nothing will agree with him; and if he be constantly cheerful, nothing that he eats will injure him.

"How shall I be cheerful when all the world goes wrong with me?" asks the diseased and despondent man or woman.

Put on cheerfulness as a garment. Assume it. Try my suggestion. Use a little hypocrisy with yourself. Go before your glass, if necessary, and assume a cheerful countenance. Keep it up, and before long you will be astonished to find that Mr. Melancholy don't like it, and begins to withdraw his sombre person. Keep on "keeping it up," and the most happy results will soon follow your exertions.

Try the reverse, and melancholy will return. This is cheap medicine. "[R]--A cheerful face, taken daily, feasting."

CHRISTIAN CHEERFULNESS.

The following prize essay was written by Rev. Francis J. Collier:--

"Cheerfulness as a Medicine.--Perhaps nothing has a greater tendency to cast gloom over the spirit than disease. The mind sympathizes with the body as much as the body with the mind. Their union is so intimate, so delicate, so sensitive, that what affects the one necessarily affects the other. Each to a certain degree determines the other's condition. If the mind is joyful, its emotion is betrayed by the expression of the body. 'A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance.' But if the body is injured, or the physical system deranged, the mind at once suffers, and forthwith droops into sadness. It becomes, therefore, your Christian duty, if you have health, to study the laws of your physical being; to compel yourself both to labor and to rest; to avoid unnecessary risks or exposure; to abstain from injurious indulgences; to be prudent, temperate, chaste, and, by every proper means, to try to preserve what is so essential to your spiritual comfort. If you have lost this boon, strive to regain it. Think not, speak not, all the while about your malady. Suppress moans and complaints. They are always disagreeable to others; they can never be beneficial to you. Count your mercies, and not your miseries. Try upon your body the stimulus of a cheerful spirit. It may not insure your recovery, but it will certainly produce a pleasant alleviation. 'A merry heart doeth good like a medicine; but a broken spirit dryeth the bones.'

"Borrowing Trouble.--Forebodings of evil rob the mind of cheerfulness. 'Ills that never happened have mostly made men wretched,' says Tupper. Casting our glance ahead, we see 'lions' in the way; difficulties which we are sure we can never overcome; griefs under whose heavy weight we shall be utterly crushed. Not satisfied with our present troubles, we borrow misery from the future. The Holy Scripture instructs us to do otherwise. 'Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.'--Prov. xxvii. 1. 'Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.'--Matt. vi. 34. And then it gives us a golden promise, 'As thy days, so shall thy strength be.'

"The life of many Christians is a life of constant sadness and gloom. They seem to be entire strangers to all the happiness of earth and all the hopes of heaven. Their faces commonly appear as sombre as the stones which mark the dwelling-places of the dead. Their feelings are better expressed in sighs than in songs. Unhappy themselves, they make others unhappy. They come and go like clouds, shutting out the sunshine from cheerful hearts, and for a while casting upon them shadows cold and dark.

"Arise, O, desponding one! Quit your tearful abode in the valley of gloom, and come and make your dwelling on the bright hill-top of cheerfulness. Look up! look up! and behold the sun shining through the clouds, and the stars through the darkness."

WHINING.

This is a habit opposed to cheerfulness, and producing contrary results. It is half-sister to scolding, and equally as obnoxious. Don't fret and whine. It makes you look old and cross. The disease soon becomes chronic if indulged in. It is a disease that not only the doctors know at sight, but every one can read it in the face of those thus afflicted. "O, what a cross face that lady has got!" I heard another female exclaim but yesterday, as they passed on the street. You cannot hide it; then don't induce such a look.

Somebody has written the following, which so completely expresses my ideas of the matter, that I quote the item verbatim:--

"There is a class of persons in this world, by no means small, whose prominent peculiarity is whining. They whine because they are poor; or, if rich, because they have no health to enjoy their riches; they whine because it is too shiny; they whine because it is too rainy; they whine because they have 'no luck,' and others' prosperity exceeds theirs; they whine because some friends have died, and they are still living; they whine because they have aches and pains, and they have aches and pains because they whine, no one can tell why.

"Now, we would like to say a word to these whining persons. Stop whining. It's of no use, this everlasting complaining, fretting, fault-finding, scolding, and whining. Why, you are the most deluded set of creatures that ever lived.

"Do you not know that it is a well-settled principle of physiology and common sense that these habits are more exhausting to nervous vitality than almost any other violation of physiological law? And do you not know that life is pretty much what you make it and take it? You can make it bright and sunshiny, or you can make it dark and shadowy. This life is only meant to discipline us, to fit us for a higher and nobler state of being. Then stop whining and fretting, and go on your way rejoicing."

LOVE.

"Well, what has that to do with health and long life?" ask the cynic, the bachelor, the old maid possibly, and the plodders.

Everything, I reply.

The man, woman, or child who loves well and wisely, who loves the most, is the happiest, healthiest, and will live the longest.

"That is a bold assertion," says my quizzer.

Yes, and true as bold. Now listen in silence to my statement.

Who loves, what loves, and what is the result?

"God is love." Here is the first, the fundamental principle.

He is the oldest of all beings. To be like him is to love,--to love all things which he has created. This is Godlike. If you are not thus, you are like the ungodly, who "shall not live out half their days." "Love God, and keep his commandments."

"Love thy neighbor as thyself."

Is there not more happiness and health in the obeying of this command, than in disobedience to it? Whatever is conducive to happiness is healthful. Whatever produces unhappiness is injurious to health. Love is undefinable.

"There is a fragrant blossom that maketh glad the garden of the heart.

Its root lieth deep; it is delicate, yet lasting as the lilac-crocus of autumn.

* * * * *

I saw, and asked not its name; I knew no language was so wealthy.

Though every heart of every clime findeth its echo within.

And yet, what shall I say? Is a sordid man capable of love?

Hath a seducer known it? Can an adulterer perceive it?

* * * * *

Chaste, and looking up to God, as the fountain of tenderness and joy.

Quiet, yet flowing deep, as the Rhine among rivers.

Lasting, and knowing not change, it walketh in truth and sincerity.

Love never grows old, love never perisheth."

AFFECTION AND PERFECTION.

Love is so closely connected with our lives, and all that makes or mars our peace and pleasure, health and beauty, that I should feel guilty of a sin of omission by excluding this item from my chapter on health and happiness.

To be unloved is to be unhappy. Do not forget the connection between health and happiness. They are all but synonymous terms.

You may know the unloved and unlovely by the lines of care, dissipation, or crime that are furrowed upon their brows. Go into the highways, and you may readily pick out the unloved child by its unsatisfied expression of countenance. It lifts its great, hungry eyes to yours instinctively, and asks for love and sympathy as plainly by that searching look, as the child of penury, the bread-starveling asks for alms when it presents its scrawny hand, and in pitiful tones says, "Please give me a penny, for God's sake."

O, give the child "love," for God's sake; for he so loved the world that he gave us his only begotten Son, who only in turn taught us to love.

Physical perfection is never found in the unloved.

The unloved wife is not long beautiful, nor the child of such. There is a marked difference between them and the wife and child that the husband and father cherishes and caresses with unrestrained affection. In sickness love divides the burden, as in the common toils of life.

Disguise or deny the truth of the assertion if you will, woman must love somebody or some thing. She were not otherwise a true woman, nor made in the image of her Maker. If the husband denies her that affection which truly belongs to her nature, he must not blame her, but himself, if she loves another. She will cling to something. If she has no children upon whom to lavish her affections, she will love some other's, or a pet canary, or even a cat, or lapdog; but love she will.

SEPARATING THE SHEEP AND GOATS.

I place cheerfulness before love, because angry and melancholy people are unlovable. If you wish to be loved and happy, be lovable. Strive to please, to make those about you happy, and then you will be lovable. Cheerfulness is the first step.

A very sensible writer in the Phrenological Journal says,--

"There is not enough thought, and time, and consideration devoted to this inevitable requisite, love. It is kept too much in the background. How many years are given to preparing young people for professions, trades, and occupations; how much counsel and advice are heaped around these topics; and yet how little importance is attached to the very influence which will probably be the turning-point of their lives. No wonder there are so many unhappy marriages. If we could only remember that boys and girls are not to be educated for lawyers, merchants, school-teachers, or housekeepers alone, but for husbands and wives, as well."

Those girls are the most chaste and ladylike who have been brought up with a family, or neighborhood, or school of boys; and on the other hand, those boys who have from their earliest days been accustomed to female restraint and girlhood's influences, make the best men, and most faithful, loving husbands and fathers.

What shall I say of those demoralizing institutions where the "young ladies" are taught algebra, languages, and ill manners? Where they are forbidden to recognize a gentleman in the school-room, prayer-room, or street? Can you, honest reader, believe there are such institutions in our enlightened land? Yet there are; where the sexes are denied not only the association with, but are forbidden the common courtesies of life; where, if a friend or brother lifts his hat to the young lady, while belonging to that institution, she is forbidden to acknowledge the courtesy.

I remember Mrs. Brandyball, in one of Theodore Hook's novels of society, boasting of her seminary for young ladies as one of the safest in the world, being entirely surrounded by a dense wall, eight feet high, surmounted by sharp spikes and broken glass bottles. I reckon all the virtue preserved in this way was not worth the cost of its defences.

FENCES BROKEN DOWN.

The writer passed some time in a town where these discourtesies were promulgated. I boarded with a pious family, where a large number of male students boarded also. There was one class of influences and passions pervading that place. All female influence and restraint were withdrawn. And what was the result? The boys were forbidden to smoke, or chew tobacco, or play at cards. They reckoned me as a "right jolly good fellow," because I could be induced to play a game of euchre with them; but they occasionally smoked me out of their rooms, and I was repeatedly compelled to check their wonted flow of licentious conversation. Cards, as an innocent amusement, I could stand, but the "accomplishments" referred to I could not endure. Shall I, as a physician, mention the positive evidence, the pathognomonic indications which were revealed to me in the faces of many of those young men; of vulgar habits, which are less often or seldom revealed in those who customarily associate in pure female society? They had little or no respect for the opposite sex. Their ideas of them, thoughts and conversations, were most gross. If some now and then, as they occasionally would, took a stolen interview, a walk at night, when "Old Prof." was asleep, it was with no more exalted views of purity than any other midnight criminal prowlers are supposed to cherish.

And the girls? Alas! they were ready to flirt with every strange man, drummer, or else, who came into the village. The aforesaid pious landlord assured me further, what my eyes did not see, that he knew of girls climbing out of the windows at night, and partaking of stolen rides and interviews as late as midnight; and he pointed out to me one coy, plump little miss, who he knew "had been out as late as one or two A. M., taking a ride with a gentleman scholar."

The scholars all met in the "chapel" for prayers. Are sly glances, winks, or billets-doux prayers? If so, they prayed fervently.

Any well read, observing physician will tell you of the ruined healths of the majority of females educated at such exclusive seminaries.

And what is the reverse of this exclusiveness?

Bring the sexes up together. Teach them together, as much as is consistent. They will each have better manners, be more graceful, and possess clearer ideas of propriety, more beauty and better health, than by the plan of a separate education.

We all dread to grow old. Don't talk of second childhood. Keep the first youthfulness fresh till the last. Love will do much towards continuing this desirable state. Says the Phrenological Journal, beauty comes and goes with health. The bad habits and false conditions which destroy the latter, render the former impossible. Youthfulness of form and features depends on youthfulness of feeling.

"Spring still makes spring in the mind, When sixty years are told; Love wakes anew the throbbing heart, And we are never old."

If, then, we would retain youthful looks, we must do nothing that will make us feel old.

O, the folly of parents in some things! The nonsense of sixty is the sweetest kind of sense to sixteen; and the father and mother who renew their own youths in that of their children may be said to experience a second blossoming of their lives. Teach them to talk to you of their friends and companions. Let the girls chat freely about gentlemen if they wish. It is far better to control the subject than to forbid it. Don't make fun of your boy's shamefaced first love, but help him to judge the article properly. You would hardly send him by himself to select a coat or a hat--has he not equal need of your counsel and assistance in selecting that much more uncertain piece of goods, a sweetheart?

There is a great deal of popular nonsense talked and written about the folly of our girls contracting early marriages. It is not the early marriage that is in fault, it is the premature choice of a husband. Only take time enough about selecting the proper person, and it is not of much consequence how soon the minister is called in. Keep him on trial a little while, girls; look at him from every possible point of view, domestic or foreign. Don't be deluded by the hollow glitter of handsome features and prepossessing manners. A Greek nose or a graceful brow will not insure conjugal happiness by any means. A husband ought to be like a watertight roof, equally serviceable in sunny or rainy weather.

ACTION AND IDLENESS.

While action is surely essential to our physical and moral being, all extremes should be avoided. Excessive labor, even out of door, in the air and sunshine, may be injurious. On this point I quote the Scientific American:--

"It has oftentimes been asserted that those exposed to severe labor in the open atmosphere were the least subject to sickness. This has been proven a fallacy. Of persons engaged at heavy labor in outdoor exposure, the percentage of sickness in the year is 28.05. Of those engaged at heavy labor in-doors, such as blacksmiths, etc., the percentage of sickness is 26.54--not much to be sure; but of those engaged at light occupations in-doors and out, the percentage of sickness is only 20.80-21.58. For every three cases of sickness in those engaged in light labor, there are four cases among those whose lot is heavy labor. The mortality, however, is greater among those engaged in light toil, and in-door labor is less favorable to longevity than laboring in the open atmosphere. It is established clearly that the quantum of sickness annually falling to the lot of man is in direct proportion to demands on his muscular power.

"How true this makes the assertion,--'Every inventor who abridges labor, and relieves man from the drudgery of severe toil, is a benefactor of his race.' There were many who looked upon labor-saving machines as great evils, because they supplanted the hand toil of many operatives. We have helped to cure the laboring and toiling classes of such absurd notions. A more enlightened spirit is now abroad, for all experience proves that labor-saving machines do not destroy the occupations of men, but merely change them."

IDLENESS INDUCES CRIME.

This fact cannot be too strongly or repeatedly impressed upon parents and children.

Warden Haynes, of the Massachusetts State Prison, lately uttered these emphatic and significant words, which are worthy to be written in letters of gold: "Eight out of every ten come here by liquor; and a great curse is, not learning a trade. Young men get the notion that it is not genteel to learn a trade; they idle away their time, get into saloons, acquire the habits of drinking, and then gambling, and then they are ready for any crime." How many young men we see every day who are in the pathway to this end. Fathers and mothers who hold the dangerous view that it is not genteel for their children to learn a trade, can see where such ideas lead. The words of wisdom quoted above are full of weighty import for both parents and children.

BEAUTY AND DEVELOPMENT.

Activity of body and mind are conducive to health.

Everybody ought to know that moderate exercise develops the muscular and nervous power, hence the vitality of all creatures. Is the active, prancing steed, or the inactive, sluggish swine, the better representative of beauty, strength, and long life?

"The horse," answers everybody. Then avoid the habits of the other, and you will be very unlike that indolent, unclean, and gluttonous animal. When you see a man who reminds you of a hog, be assured he has swinish habits.

Mental activity, unless it is excessive, is conducive to beauty, to strength, and health. A writer in the American Odd Fellow has some good ideas illustrative of my argument, that I may be pardoned for quoting him:--

"We were speaking of handsome men the other evening, and I was wondering why K. had so lost the beauty for which five years ago he was so famous. 'O, it's because he never did anything,' said B.; 'he never worked, thought, or suffered. You must have the mind chiselling away at the features, if you want handsome middle-aged men.' Since hearing that remark, I have been on the watch to see whether it is generally true--and it is. A handsome man who does nothing but eat and drink grows flabby, and the fine lines of his features are lost; but the hard thinker has an admirable sculptor at work, keeping his fine lines in repair, and constantly going over his face to improve, if possible, the original design."

Therefore, we infer that this moderate (outdoor) exercise is conducive to beauty, health, and longevity. Moderate activity of the mind the same.

Idleness begets licentious thoughts and deeds. Activity of body and mind in honorable pursuits calls away the nervous power from the lower to the higher organs. A lively, cheerful, clean man or woman, is seldom wicked or licentious.

SLEEP.

By the assistance of John G. Saxe, we have already given those

"Early to bed, and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,"

fellows a touch of our opinion on too early rising. I base my judgment upon careful and continued observation during many years.

The Scriptures teach that the day is for work, and night for sleep. This turning day into night, sitting up till near midnight, is all wrong. It is ruinous to health and beauty. This other extreme, of rising at four or five o'clock and pitching into hard labor, is wearing and tearing to the constitution; and though nature for a while adapts herself to the necessity, by browning and unnaturally developing the exposed parts of such deluded or unfortunate persons, it does it at the expense of his length of days. He will not live so long for his over-doing.

Begin by retiring earlier, at the first indication after nightfall of fatigue and sleepiness. If sweaty, wash the skin quickly, as previously directed, with warm water, rubbing dry and warm, and cover up. Lie on one side. Do not sleep on your back. You are more liable to dream laborious or frightful dreams, snore, or have nightmare. Do not sleep in clothes worn during the day.

Unfortunate is the man or woman, who, from necessity, arises before six or seven in winter, or five to seven in summer.

Literary persons require more sleep than laborers. Children require more than adults. Do not lie in bed long after awaking at morning. Open your window wide as soon as you arise--it is supposed to be partially open at the top all night.

In inhaling air at night or morning, do it only through the nostrils. Night air is not injurious any more than day air if so inhaled. Sleep when sleepy--this is a good rule, unless disease induces unnatural sleep.

WHAT SHALL WE EAT?

Eat what relishes well, and agrees with you afterwards. This is the best general rule I have been able to adopt for eating.

There has been so much ridiculous stuff written upon "diet" that most sensible people have given up trying to follow the prescribed rules of writers, if not their physician's directions on that score.

Take the following, by one celebrated Dr. Brown, of England, for an example, although we may find others quite as ridiculous nearer home:--

"For breakfast, toast and rich soup made on a slow fire, a walk before breakfast, and a good deal after it; a glass of wine in the forenoon, from time to time; good broth or soup to dinner, with meat of any kind he likes, but always the most nourishing; several glasses of port or punch to be taken after dinner, till some enlivening effect is perceived from them, and a dram after everything heavy; one hour and a half after dinner another walk; between tea-time and supper a game with cheerful company at cards or any other play, never too prolonged; a little light reading; jocose, humorous company, avoiding that of popular Presbyterian ministers and their admirers, and all hypocrites and thieves of every description.... Lastly, the company of amiable, handsome, and delightful young women and an enlivening glass."

Dr. Russell, to whom we are indebted for the quotation, might well say that "John Brown's prescriptions seem a caricature of his system."

A "STOMACH-MILL" AND A "STEWING-POT."

There have been many speculations about the nature of the digestive process, and in relation to them the celebrated Hunter remarked, playfully, "To account for digestion, some have made the stomach a mill; some would have it to be a stewing-pot, and some a brewing-trough; yet all the while one would have thought that it must have been very evident that the stomach was neither a mill, nor a stewing-pot, nor a brewing-trough, nor anything but a stomach." All that can be said is, that digestion is a chemical process, the mechanical agency spoken of being of service only in thoroughly mixing the gastric juice with the food.

"FIVE MINUTES FOR REFRESHMENTS."

"Murder! murder!" the conductor might as well cry to passengers, as "Five minutes for refreshments."

Now it makes less difference what we eat than how we eat. Cold hash, eaten slowly, therefore, well masticated, and mixed with the saliva, is more likely to "set well" than a light cake or a cracker, though it be "Bond's best," if hurried down the throat.

What the English call the "blarsted Yankee style" of gulping down the food half masticated, washing it down with drinks, will ruin anything but a sheet-iron stomach in a cast-iron constitution. Talk about "mills." Why, that most excellently contrived mill in the mouth is not suffered to perform its duty. The hopper is too crammed; it clogs the whole machinery.

Eating between meals destroys the regular periods naturally established by the stomach for digestion. Three meals should be sufficient for twenty-four hours.

"Much has been said about exercising after eating, and the truth has been often over-stated. The famous experiment with the two dogs is cited to show that exercise after eating interferes with the process of digestion. Observe just how much was proved by the experiment. Two dogs were fed to the full, and while one was left to lie still, the other was made to run about very briskly. In an hour or two both dogs were killed, and it was found that the food was well digested in the dog that remained quiet, but not in the other. (I have seen it stated the reverse.) This proves simply that violent exercise, taken immediately after eating, interferes with digestion. Other facts show that light exercise rather promotes than impedes the process, and that even very strong exercise does not interfere with it if a short interval of rest be allowed, so that the process may be fairly commenced.

"The same is to some extent true of exercise of mind. It seems to be necessary that there should be some measure of concentration of energy in the stomach for the due performance of digestion, and any very decided exercise, bodily or mental, tends to prevent this. In the dyspeptic, even a slight amount of effort, either of body or mind, often suffices to do it.

"It is very commonly said that it is wrong to eat just before going to bed. Is this true? Cattle are apt to go to sleep after eating fully. Do sleep and digestion agree well in their case, and not so in the case of man? In some seasons of the year the farmer takes his heartiest meal at the close of the labors of the day, and soon retires. Is this a bad custom? Our opinion is that food may be taken properly at a late hour, provided, first, that the individual has not already eaten enough for the twenty-four hours,--that he has done so being true, probably, in most cases; and provided, secondly, that he is in such a state of health that digestion will not so act upon his nerves as to disturb his sleep. If it will thus act, it is clear that he had better be disturbed when awake, for he can bear the disturbance then with less of injury to his system."

ANCIENT DIET.

"How did them old anti-delusion fellows live?" once asked an honest old farmer of the writer. "They must have lived differently than we live, or they would not have told so many years as they did."

True, true. The difference between ancient and modern diet is remarkable. The ancient Greeks and Romans used no tea, coffee, tobacco, chocolate, sugar, lard, or butter. They had but few spices, no "nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, or cloves," no Cayenne pepper, no sage, sweet marjoram, spinach, tapioca, Irish moss, arrow-root, potato, corn starch, common beans; no oranges, tamarinds, or candies, or the Yankee invention, "buckwheat cakes and molasses." What would our modern cooks do without the above enumerated articles in the culinary department? And the butter! Down to the Saviour's time butter was unknown. Dr. Galen (130-218, A. D.) saw the first butter only a short time before his death. Tea is comparatively a modern introduction.

THE GREEN GROCERY OF THE CLASSICS.

The cabbage has had a singular destiny--in one country an object of worship, in another of contempt. The Egyptians made of it a god, and it was the first dish they touched at their repasts. The Greeks and Romans took it as a remedy for the languor following inebriation. Cato said that in the cabbage was a panacea for the ills of man. Erasistratus recommended it as a specific in paralysis. Hippocrates accounted it a sovereign remedy, boiled with salt, for the colic. And Athenian medical men prescribed it to young nursing mothers, who wished to see lusty babies lying in their arms. Diphilus preferred the beet to the cabbage, both as food and as medicine,--in the latter case, as a vermifuge. (Horace Greeley prefers the latter, for he says that "a cabbage will beat a beet if the cabbage gets a-head.") The same physician extols mallows, not for fomentation, but as a good edible vegetable, appeasing hunger and curing the sore throat at the same time. The asparagus, as we are accustomed to see it, has derogated from its ancient magnificence. The original "grass" was from twelve to twenty feet high; and a dish of them could only have been served to the Brobdignagians. Under the Romans, stems of asparagus were raised of three pounds' weight, heavy enough to knock down a slave in waiting with. The Greeks ate them of more moderate dimensions, or would have eaten them, but that the publishing doctors of their day denounced asparagus as injurious to the sight. But then it was also said that a slice or two of boiled pumpkin would reinvigorate the sight which had been deteriorated by asparagus! "Do that as quickly as you should asparagus!" is a proverb descended to us from Augustus, and illustrative of the mode in which the vegetable was prepared for the table.

A still more favorite dish, at Athens, was turnips from Thebes. Carrots, too, formed a distinguished dish at Greek and Roman tables. Purslain was rather honored as a cure against poisons, whether in the blood by wounds, or in the stomach from beverage. I have heard it asserted in France, that if you briskly rub a glass with fingers which have been previously rubbed with purslain or parsley, the glass will certainly break. I have tried the experiment, but only to find that the glass resisted the pretended charm.

Broccoli was the favorite vegetable food of Drusus. He ate greedily thereof; and as his father, Tiberius, was as fond of it as he, the master of the Roman world and his illustrious heir were constantly quarrelling, like two clowns, when a dish of broccoli stood between them. Artichokes grew less rapidly into aristocratic favor; the dictum of Galen was against them, and for a long time they were only used by drinkers against headache, and by singers to strengthen their voice. Pliny pronounced artichokes excellent food for poor people and donkeys. For nobler stomachs he preferred the cucumber--the Nemesis of vegetables. But people were at issue touching the merits of the cucumber. Not so regarding the lettuce, which has been universally honored. It was the most highly esteemed dish of the beautiful Adonis. It was prescribed as provocative to sleep; and it cured Augustus of the malady which sits so heavily on the soul of Leopold of Belgium--hypochondriasis. Science and rank eulogized the lettuce, and philosophy sanctioned the eulogy in the person of Aristoxenus, who not only grew lettuces as the pride of his garden, but irrigated them with wine, in order to increase their flavor.

But we must not place too much trust in the stories, either of sages or apothecaries. These pagans recommended the seductive but indigestible endive as good against the headache, and young onions and honey as admirable preservers of health, when taken fasting; but this was a prescription for rustic swains and nymphs. The higher classes, in town or country, would hardly venture on it. And yet the mother of Apollo ate raw leeks, and loved them of gigantic dimensions. For this reason, perhaps, was the leek accounted not only as salubrious, but as a beautifier. The love for melons was derived, in similar fashion probably, from Tiberius, who cared for them even more than he did for broccoli. The German Cæsars inherited the taste of their Roman predecessor, carrying it, indeed, to excess; for more than one of them submitted to die after eating melons, rather than live by renouncing them.

I have spoken of gigantic asparagus: the Jews had radishes that could vie with them, if it be true that a fox and cubs could burrow in the hollow of one, and that it was not uncommon to grow them of a hundred pounds in weight. It must have been such radishes as those that were employed by seditious mobs of old, as weapons in insurrections. In such case, a rebellious people were always well victualled, and had peculiar facilities, not only to beat their adversaries, but to eat their own arms! The horseradish is probably a descendant of this gigantic ancestor. It had at one period a gigantic reputation. Dipped in poison, it rendered the draught innocuous, and rubbed on the hands, it made an encounter with venomed serpents mere play. In short, it was celebrated as being a cure for every evil in life, the only exception being that it destroyed the teeth. There was far more difference of opinion touching garlic than there was touching the radish. The Egyptians deified it, as they did the leek and the cabbage; the Greeks devoted it to Gehenna, and to soldiers, sailors, and cocks that were not "game." Medicinally, it was held to be useful in many diseases, if the root used were originally sown when the moon was below the horizon. No one who had eaten of it, however, could presume to enter the temple of Cybele. Alphonso of Castile was as particular as this goddess; and a knight of Castile, "detected as being guilty of garlic," suffered banishment from the royal presence during the entire month.

It is long since the above instructive article on the "Green Groceries of the Classics," by Dr. Doran, was in print, and I think it will be new to most of my readers. I hope it will prove interesting as well as instructive.

ANIMAL OR VEGETABLE DIET?

Both, if considered in regard to health. With an eye to economy only, I should recommend vegetable diet.

I think that poor people lay out more, in proportion, than the rich, for the purchase of animal food. They often buy extravagantly, on the credit system, purchasing on Saturday nights, when there is a rush at the stalls, and less opportunities for good bargains than when there is more time. Again, the lower classes fry their meats, losing much of their flavor and substance, by its going up chimney; or by boiling, and throwing away much of the nutriment with the water, which stewing in a covered dish would obviate.

I have been into various markets, and observed the poor as they made their purchases. I have seen them count into the butcher's hand their last penny for a rib roast, a piece of pork to fry, a hind quarter of lamb to bake, or beef to boil, when a piece to stew, with nourishing vegetables, would cost far less, and return double the nutritive principle.

Beefsteak, which contains seventy-five per cent. of water, is poor economy of both money and health. The flank and neck pieces are better. The more fatty and nutritive fore quarters are better than the hind quarters. Ask the Jews. Coarse vegetables, as carrots, cabbages, turnips, and potatoes, contain more nourishment than beef, though far less than the cereals, as wheat, barley, corn, and buckwheat. Beans, peas, rice, cracked wheat or hominy, cooked with meat, make a most wholesome and nourishing diet for laborers, for the sedentary, and for invalids. Meat should never be given to toothless infants. Milk, or bread and milk, is all they require until they have teeth.

A cheap, innutritious regimen is scarcely conducive to longevity, any more than a stimulating and high living is contributive to that end. A great quantity of hot roast meats is objectionable. Also hot fine flour bread. Let those particularly interested in the matter see our article on bread, etc., in chapter on Adulterations. Also, as respects coarse sugar against the refined. See, also, Nutriment for Consumptives, in next chapter.

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XXXIII. CONSUMPTION (PHTHISIS PULMONALIS)

CONSUMPTION A MONSTER!--UNIVERSAL REIGN.--SIGNS OF HIS APPROACH.--WARNINGS.--BAD POSITIONS.--SCHOOL-HOUSES.--ENGLISH THEORY.--PREVENTIVES.--AIR AND SUNSHINE.--SCROFULA.--A JOLLY FAT GRANDMOTHER.--"WASP WAISTS."--CHANGE OF CLIMATE.--"TOO LATE!"--WHAT TO AVOID.--HUMBUGS.--COD-LIVER OIL.--STRYCHNINE WHISKEY.--A MATTER-OF-FACT PATIENT.--SWALLOWING A PRESCRIPTION.--SIT AND LIE STRAIGHT.--FEATHERS OR CURLED HAIR.--A YANKEE DISEASE.--CATARRH AND COLD FEET, HOW TO REMEDY.--"GIVE US SOME SNUFF, DOCTOR."--OTHER THINGS TO AVOID.--A TENDER POINT.

Phthisis Pulmonalis is consumption of the lungs, which is the common acceptation of the term consumption. Phthisis is from the Greek, meaning to consume. This fearful disease, from the earliest period in the history of medicine to the present day, has proved more destructive of human life than any other in the entire catalogue of ills to which frail humanity is heir. In Great Britain, one in every four dies of consumption; in France, one in five. In the United States, especially in New England, the number who die annually by this fearful disease is truly startling! One in every three! One reason for this fatality is because of the prevailing and erroneous idea that it is inevitably a fatal disease.

Consumption is a relentless monster, and insidious in his approaches. He spares not the high or the low. Oftener known in the hovel, he fails not to visit dwellers in palaces. He paints the cheek of the infant, youth, maiden, the middle-aged, and the aged with the false glow of health. The delicate and beautiful are his common subjects.

Tupper wrote with an understanding when he penned the following:--

"Behold that fragile form of delicate, transparent beauty, Whose light blue eye and hectic cheek are lit by the bale-fires of decline; All droopingly she lieth, as a dew-laden lily, Her flaxen tresses rashly luxuriant, dank with unhealthy moisture; Hath not thy heart said of her, 'Alas! poor child of weakness'?"

Yes, the monster "Decline" seeks particularly the fair-skinned, of "transparent beauty," and those of the "light blue eye and flaxen hair," for his victims. Nor are the illiterate alone his subjects, but men of the most talented minds, men versed in arts, sciences, and belles-lettres, professors of hygiene and physiology, and the very practitioners of the art of medicine themselves, are often the shining marks of the insidious monster whom they by erudition diligently seek to repel.

Because of the too prevalent belief of the invincibleness of consumption, it has been neglected more than any other disease. The victims to its wiles have hoped against hope, while the enemy has woven his web quietly and flatteringly around them.

You must first be warned of his earliest aggression.

SIGNS OF HIS APPROACH.

He is a deceiver. Let us be wary of him.

We have been too negligent in this matter. Let us remember that prevention is far better than cure.

The slight fatigue on the least exertion we have counted as "nothing." The hectic flush of the cheeks is too often mistaken for a sign of health. The cursory pains of the chest, or left side, or under the shoulder-blades, are disregarded, or, if noticed at all, are mentioned as though "of no account." The slight hacking cough is scarcely heeded; for do not people often cough without having consumption, and without raising blood? True, true; and this is the stronghold of the deceiver.

Consumption is a disease which is not entirely confined to the lungs. It is often a depraved condition of the system, particularly the blood. There is a "consumption of the blood," and a variety of morbid phenomena, which cannot be expressed in the single word consumption. It not unusually results in a scrofulous predisposition. An hereditary predisposition may or may not be the cause. If the former, its development must depend upon some exciting cause, which will be mentioned hereafter. The intermarrying of persons of like temperaments and constitutional dispositions inevitably results in children of scrofulous and consumptive diathesis.

A neglected cold, cough, or catarrh may soon develop this fatality. The peculiar changes in females at certain periods of life often awaken the slumbering enemy. Teething in infancy not unfrequently develops the scrofulous element, and a wasting of the system--either marasmus or tabes mesenterica--follows, which, under the best treatment, may prove fatal.

The slip-shod, doubled-up way that many people have of lying, sitting, and standing, are conducive to consumption.

Badly-ventilated school-houses have heretofore been a source of great injury to children, developing scrofula and consumption in constitutions where it might have remained latent during their lifetime. Every reflecting parent should rejoice in the improvements which have been made during the last few years in the matter of ventilation in buildings, particularly in churches and school-rooms, although janitors, porters, and teachers have as yet too limited ideas on the subject of wholesome air. The dry furnaces are a very objectionable feature, and not conducive to health.

Early Symptoms.--Fatigue on the least exertion; a languid, tired feeling in the morning; rosy tint of one or both cheeks during the latter part of the day, caused by unoxygenized blood rushing to the surface; swelling of the glands of the neck, or elsewhere; enlarged joints; paleness of the lips; areola under the eyes; sensitiveness to the air; chills running over the body; taking cold easily; catarrhal symptoms; premature development of the intellect; and early physical maturity, are among its initiatory indications. Also, when the disease is located in the lungs, spitting of white, frothy mucus, or blood, with catarrhal symptoms; cough, which is noticed by others before by the patient; hacking on retiring, or early in the morning; varied appetite; tickling in the throat; short breath on exertion, with rapid pulse.

Second Stage.--Cough, and difficult breathing; increased difficulty of lying on one side; sharp, short pains; diminution of monthly period; swelling of the lower extremities, leaving corrugation on removing the hose and garters at night; raising greenish yellow matter, with (at times) hard, curd-like substance; sweating easily (sometimes the reverse); night sweats; restless, feverish, either dull or sharp bright cast to the eyes. Sputa increases to the

Third Stage.--Diarrhoea not unusually supervenes; spitting of blood; the person emaciates rapidly; the face changes from a bloated to a cadaverous appearance, with hectic fever; the patient faints easily; debility increases with the cough, or hæmoptosis occurs often, until death finally closes the scene.

These are merely some of the external symptoms. Let the patient mark them, not so much to fear, as to provide against them. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. I caution you against the causes, and give you the benefit of my extensive experience with this disease, both in New England and three years in the South, that you may avoid its development by attention to rules for health and longevity.

If this fearful disease was better understood by the people, it would prove far less destructive of human life. Undomesticated animals do not die of it; domesticated ones do. What does that imply? That the people have engendered the disease! Let the "people," then, take the first step in preventing its ravages.

THEORY OF CONSUMPTION.

At a sitting of the Academy of Medicine at London, Dr. Priory read a paper on the treatment of phthisis, in which he developed the following propositions:--

1. Pulmonary phthisis is a combination of multifarious variable phenomena, and not a morbid unity.

2. Hence there does not and cannot exist a specific medicine against it.

3. Therefore neither iodine nor its tincture, neither chlorine, nor sea salt, nor tar, can be considered in the light of anti-phthisical remedies.

4. There are no specifics against phthisis, but there are systems of treatment to be followed in order to conquer the pathological states which constitute the disorder.

5. In order to cure consumptive patients, the peculiar affections under which they labor must be studied, and appreciated, and counteracted by appropriate means.

6. The tubercle cannot be cured by the use of remedies, but good hygienic precautions may prevent its development.

7. The real way to relieve, cure, or prolong the life of consumptive patients, is to treat their various pathological states, which ought to receive different names, according to their nature.

8. Consumption, thus treated, has often been cured, and oftener still life has been considerably prolonged.

9. Phthisis should never be left to itself, but always treated as stated above.

10. The old methods, founded on the general idea of a single illness called phthisis, are neither scientific nor rational.

11. The exact diagnosis of the various pathological states which constitute the malady will dictate the most useful treatment for it.

PREVENTIVES OF CONSUMPTION.

If a man desires a house erected, he consults a carpenter, or if a first class residence, he employs an architect. If our watch gets out of repair, we take it to a skilful jeweller. If our boots become worn, want tapping, they are sent to the cobbler. But how many people there are, who, when the complicated mechanism of the system gets out of order,--which they cannot look into as they can their watch or old boots,--first try to patch themselves up, instead of employing a professional "cobbler of poor health and broken constitutions."

Before me are Wistar's, Wilson's, and Gray's Works on Anatomy. I have read them, or Krause's, more than twenty years. They contain all that has been discovered relative to the human system. But I do not know it all. I never can. I doubt if the man lives who knows it all. Then here is "Physiology," which treats of the offices or various functions of the system. I do not comprehend it all. "Great ignoramus!" Nobody is perfected in it. Next is Pathology, which treats of diseases, their causes, nature, and symptoms. Then there are Materia Medica, Chemistry, and much more to be learned before one can become competent to prescribe for diseases safely.

Can a carpenter, or any mechanic, a lawyer, minister, or other than he who devotes his whole powers to the theory and practice of medicine, be intrusted with the precious healths and lives of individuals, about which he knows little or nothing? Or can I, in a few chapters, instruct such in the art of curing complicated diseases? O, no, no. But I can do something better for such. I can tell you how to avoid diseases. I am quite positive of it. I should wrong you, and endanger your lives by the deception thus put forth. There are some books written on the subject which are useful to the masses in the same manner in which I trust this will prove, by instructing in the ways of health, and warnings against that which is injurious; but there are far too many issued which are but a damage to the public by their false claims of posting everybody in the knowledge of curing all diseases, particularly that complicated one termed consumption.

Among the preventives of this fell destroyer I enumerate,--

First, Plenty of God's pure, free air; and second, sunshine. These are indispensable. He who prescribes for a patient without looking into this matter has yet to learn the first principle of the healing art.

A lady recently came to my office with her son for medical advice. She was a robust, matronly looking individual, who might turn the scale at one hundred and eighty pounds, while the twelve-year-old boy was almost a dwarf, pale and delicate. The contrast was astounding.

"Madam," I said, "I perceive that your son sleeps in a room where no sunshine permeates by day;" for I could liken the pale, sickly-looking fellow to nothing but a vegetable which had sprouted in a dark, damp cellar. A gardener can tell such a vegetable, or plant, which has been prematurely developed away from air and sunshine. And though she looked astonished at my Oedipean proclivity in solving riddles, it was nothing marvellous that a physician should detect a result in a patient which a clodhopper might discover in a cabbage.

"Yes, sir," she finally answered, "he always sleeps in a room where the sunlight don't enter; but I did not think it was that which made him so pale-like; besides, I have taken him to several doctors, and they said nothing about it; but their prescriptions did him no good, and I am discouraged."

Such stoicism was unpardonable, but I said in reply,--

"Take your son into a light airy room, to sleep. Try a healthy plant in the cell where you have so wrongfully intombed him, and observe how speedily the color and strength will depart from it. When you can come back and assure me of his change of apartment, I will prescribe for him."

She went away, repeating to herself, as if to impress it firmly upon her mind,--

"Put a plant into his room--plant into Johnny's room."

The lady afterwards returned, saying that she was sorry that the plant had died, but was glad to say that Johnny was better.

It is a daily occurrence for physicians to see patients who are dying by inches from the above cause; nor are they the low foreigners alone, but, like my stoical one hundred and eighty pounder, of American birth, and without excuse for their ignorance.

Do not sleep or live in apartments unventilated, or where the life-giving sunshine does not penetrate during some portion of the day. It is living a lingering death. If the patient is scrofulous, let him or her employ such remedies as are known to remove the predisposition, or seek aid from some physician who has cured scrofula. The regular practitioner seldom desires such cases. One who has devoted much time to scrofula and chronic diseases should be preferred. I think chronic practice should become a separate branch in medicine as much as surgery is fast becoming. Take the disease in season. Do not neglect colds, coughs, and catarrh.

Persons of a low state of blood, who are weak and debilitated, should wear flannels the year round--thinner in summer than in winter; keep the feet dry--avoid "wafer soles,"--and the body clean, but beware of what Artemus Ward termed "too much baths." Employ soap and a small quantity of water, with a plenty of dry rubbing, till you get a healthy circulation to the surface.

Mothers, see to the solitary and other habits of your daughters. Fathers, instruct your sons in the laws of nature, and of their bodies. Do you understand?

See our youth swept off by the thousands annually, for want of proper care and instruction!...

A JOLLY FAT GRANDMOTHER.

"Wasp Waists."--This is what I heard a fine-looking though tobacco-sucking gentleman utter, as with his companion he passed two young and fashionably dressed ladies on the street recently.

So I fell into a reverie, in which I called up the image of a fat, jolly old lady whom I knew as my "grandmarm." She had a waist half as large around as a flour barrel.

"O, horrid creature!" exclaims a modern belle.

But, then, my grandmother could breathe! You cannot--only half breathe! And my "grandmarm" had a fresh color to her cheeks and lips, and a good bust, till she was over sixty years of age, and she lived to be almost a hundred years old. You won't live to see a third of that time. Did our grandfathers or mothers die of consumption? O, no. Still they lived well--mine did. When I see a modern mince pie, it quickly carries my mind back to childhood days, when I think of a little boy who thought grandmothers were gotten up expressly to furnish nice cakes and mince pies for the rising generation.

O, but she was jolly--and so were her pies!

An Irish blunderer once said, "Ah, ye don't see any of the young gals of the present day fourscore and tin years ould;" and probably we should not see many of our present "crop" if we should survive that age.

Drs. A., B., and C., tell me how many ladies who visit your offices can take a full, deep breath. "Not one in a score or two!" So I thought.

Lungs which are not used in full become weak and tender. Do you have sore places about your chest? Practise inflating your lungs with pure air through the nostrils,--where God first breathed the breath of life,--and give room for the lungs to expand, and the "sore places" will all disappear after a time. See my article on breathing. Put it into steady, moderate practice, and the result will be beneficial beyond all conception.

CONSUMPTION IS CURABLE.

"Is it true that consumption of the lungs is ever cured?" is a question which is often seriously asked.

"O, yes," I reply.

"What are the proofs?"

Where on dissection we find cicatrices,--places in the lungs where tubercles have existed, sloughing out great cavities, which have healed all sound, the scar only remaining--what then? Here is positive proof that consumption had been at work, was repelled by some means, and the patient had recovered, subsequently dying of some other disease, or from accident.

Such is the fact in many cases. It is an error--fatal to thousands--to suppose that the lungs, of all substance in the body, cannot be healed. Yet it is a fact patent to most educated physicians, that many cases of consumption are cured in this country, while others are prolonged, and the patient made comfortable during many years.

Change of climate may be much towards saving a patient. Before deciding upon such change, consult your physician. Ought not he to know best? A climate adapted to one constitution may be quite unsuited to another. What a wise provision in Providence in giving this little world a variety of climates! There are certain portions of the States and world where consumption seldom prevails. The climate of California and the western prairies, as also some portions of the South away from the coast, is less conducive of lung and throat diseases than the more bleak and changeable climate of New England and the Northern States. A change is only beneficial in those cases where there is a mere deficiency of vitality in the system. If the disease depends upon a scrofulous or other taint in the system, one gains little by going from home. Change of climate does not alter the condition of the system materially, so much as it relieves one from atmospheric pressure, reducing thereby the demands upon his small stock of vitality,--just as some places are less expensive in which to live, and your funds hold out longer. The writer resided in the Southern States during three cold seasons, and carefully studied the effects of changes. He has two brothers in California, who, during the past ten years, have often written respecting the climate west of the Rocky Mountains. If ever called upon to decide on a climate for a friend or patient who had determined to change from this, I would advise him, or her, to select California.

Do not change too late! going away from home and friends to die among strangers....

AVOID HUMBUGS.

Do not run to clairvoyants and spiritual humbugs for advice. A clairvoyant physician once said to me,--

"Mr. So-and-so has just called upon me to learn where he shall spend the winter. He thinks he has the consumption, and that I can tell him where he will pass the winter safely. What confounded fools some of these men are, to be sure!" she exclaimed. "Why, I have got that disease myself (not the foolish disease, but consumption), and don't know what to do to save my own life."

That lady is living in Boston to-day. The gentleman went to St. Thomas, dying in the hospital in January, amongst strangers, where every dollar he possessed was stolen from him.

Nearly all patent medicines are humbugs. Avoid them. Dr. Dio Lewis says that "the bath-tub is a humbug." I believe him. While you avoid drowning inside by pouring down drugs, do not exhaust your vitality externally in a bath-tub. The hand-bath is all-sufficient for consumptives.

COD-LIVER OIL AND WHISKEY.

"Take cod-liver oil and die!" has become proverbial. The oil is utterly worthless as a medicine, and the whiskey usually recommended to be taken in connection is decidedly injurious. It is poisonous. I defy one to obtain a pure article of whiskey in this country. If it could by any means be obtained in its purity, it would not cure this disease any more than the nasty oil from fishes' livers. The oil is often given, not as a medicine, but as an article of nourishment. If the patient so understands it, all right; it will do no harm; but if he thinks that he is taking a remedial agent, he is deceived thereby, and losing the precious time in which he ought to be employing some remedy for his recovery. The statements that cod-liver oil contains iodine, lime, phosphorus, etc., is all bosh. A most reliable druggist of this city, who has sold a ton or two of the oil, told me that "all the iodine or phosphorus that it contains you might put into your eye, and not injure that organ."

If good, wholesome bread, butter, milk, eggs, and beef, will not give nutriment to the wasting system, cod-liver oil will not, and the patient must die--provided he has trusted to nutriment alone.

I have never known a consumptive patient to recover upon cod-liver oil. I have known them to recover by other treatment, particularly by the use of the phosphates, as "phosphate of lime," and iron, soda, and other combinations. I have intimated that a patient should be advised by "his physician;" but if that physician is one of the old-fogy style who insists upon cod-liver oil and whiskey as a cure, why, you had better "change horses in crossing a river," than to perish on an old, worn-out hobby! There are two classes of patients which the doctor has to deal with; one will follow no instructions accurately, the other swallows everything literally.

I remember a story illustrative of the latter. A dyspeptic applied to Dr. C. for treatment. The doctor looked into the case, gave a prescription, telling the patient to take it, and return in a fortnight.

At the designated time he returned, radiant and happy.

"Did you follow my directions?" inquired the physician.

"O, yes, to the letter, doctor; and see--I am well!"

"I have forgotten just what I gave you; let me see the prescription," said the doctor, delighted at his success.

"I haven't it. Why, I took it, sir."

"Took it--the medicine, you mean," explained the man of pills and powders.

"Medicine? No. You gave me no medicine--nothing but a paper, and I took that according to directions. That's what cured me."

The clown had swallowed the recipe!

The consumptive requires nourishment. He must derive it from wholesome food,--even fat meats are beneficial,--not from medicines. Let food be one thing, medicine another. I believe that a man would starve upon cod-liver oil. He would not upon bread or beef.

SIT AND LIE STRAIGHT.

Go into one of our school-houses, and you may there see subjects preparing for consumption. Our illustrations will give the reader a correct idea of our meaning, without any explanation. The sewing-machines, or rather the position which many girls assume while sitting at their work by them from three to twelve hours a day, tend to depression of the lungs, obstruction of circulation, reduction of the vitality, dyspepsia, and sooner or later lead to consumption.

Let everybody when walking stand erect, with shoulders slightly thrown back rather than inclined towards the chest, then outward, and keep the mouth closed. When sitting, keep the body erect, or lean back slightly, resting the shoulders, rather than the spinal column, against any substance excepting feathers, changing the limbs from time to time to any easy position. If tired, and one can consistently "loll," recline to one side, resting the cheek upon the hand. If one is very tired, and desires to "rest fast," sit with the feet and hands crossed or arms folded.

If you lie crooked in bed, do it on the side. "To bend up double, man never was made," says the song. Do not bolster up the head so as to get a square look at your toes, or, being in a feather bed, till you resemble a letter C. Rather use but one light curled-hair pillow. It is cool and healthy. Avoid feather beds and pillows.

"Didn't your 'grandma sleep during nearly a hundred years' on a feather bed?" My quizzer has returned, peeped over my shoulder, and asked this question. Now see me quench him at a swoop.

"Yes, she did; and I think it probable that if she had not she would have been living now. My grandmother's good habits, free use of muscle, sunshine, and air, more than offset the use of mince pies, and the evil of sleeping on a feather bed in winter."

I sleep on a hair mattress and pillow the year round. They are the best.

CATARRH AND COLD FEET.--HOW TO CURE BOTH.

Catarrh is peculiarly a Yankee disease. Now, how does a Yankee differ in his habits from the rest of the world's people?

Let me tell you wherein he differs. The "five minutes for refreshments" is an illustration. He hurries, he rushes, he's a talker; and having hurried unnecessarily, and got himself all in a perspiration, he stops to talk with a friend on the street, in a current of air, possibly in a puddle of water, the consequence of which is checked perspiration, a cold, the catarrh. If the circulation to the skin is checked, that excretory organ ceases to throw off the waste and worn-out matter of the system, and the work is thrown upon the mucous membrane, which if failing to perform the unnatural office, the patient goes into a decline. Set this down as reason No. 1 for the catarrh being peculiarly a "Yankee disease."

Chronic catarrh necessarily must be connected with a bad circulation of the blood, a want of action in the skin, and usually with cold feet. I must take time to explain these causes of a disease which usually leads to the more fatal one--consumption. Now we have cold feet and loss of action in the skin. Result, catarrh, terminating fatal in consumption.

To keep the feet warm is to restore the circulation. Has your doctor failed to do this? I fear he did not understand the connection, or the patient did not follow his instructions. Dip the cold feet into a little cold water! Is that "too homeopathic?"--cold to cure cold! Never mind, do it. It feels cold at first. Well, catch them out, rub them vigorously with a towel, then with the hands, and when quite red, cover them up in bed, or in stockings and boots. Repeat it daily till cured. Wear thick-soled boots and shoes always. Meantime, take a dose of the third dilution of sulphur mornings, or at ten A. M., and the third trituration of calcarea-carbonica at early bedtime.

To restore the loss of circulation to the skin, meantime--for they must both be cured together--take a daily hand-bath; that is, with the hand and in a comfortable room, apply a dose of castile or Windsor soap to the skin, half of the person at a time, if the weather is cool,--avoiding a current of air,--then, with cool or cold water, and the hand only, wash rapidly over the surface, following quickly with a dry towel and the dry hand, till warm. Cover the upper extremity, and proceed to wash the other portion of the body in the same manner. I really believe that there are individuals with such peculiar temperaments, or low state of the blood, that they cannot bear cold water. See to it that it is not fear, or habit, which prevents its use, before abandoning a remedy of such curative powers.

Now, there is no other way under heaven whereby man can be saved from catarrh than this which I have here given. If the patient requires further medical treatment, he or she surely requires this, else there is no catarrh in the case.

"But can't you give me some snuff, doctor?"

Snuffs and nasal injections are humbugs. They will not cure a chronic catarrh. The sugar and gum arabic powder is excellent for the local irritation. That is all any local remedy can reach. Thousands of dollars are expended annually for "Catarrh Remedies," which never cured a case yet, but have been the death of thousands, by aggravating and prolonging the disease.

Indigestion and "a goneness at the stomach" not unusually accompany the above disease. In addition to the instructions here given, rubbing and slapping the region of the stomach with water and the hand, and taking small quantities of extract gentian, orange-peel, dock, and ginger, equal parts, twice daily, following the directions regarding slow eating and cheerfulness, will eventually remove the distressing disease.

OTHER THINGS TO BE AVOIDED.

For consumption, the old-fogy treatment by squills, ipecac, laudanum, and the host of expectorants, is worthless. One of the fatalities in this disease has been the sticking to these useless medicines by a certain class of physicians and patients.

Use no tobacco. If tight-lacing and confined habits, as want of air and exercise, have been conducive to the development of consumption in females, more repulsive habits have led to catarrhal affections, destruction of the vitality, and finally to consumption in many of the opposite sex. Does the mother, by habits which injure her health, jeopardize the life and health of her offspring? The husband and father, by the debasing and health-destroying habit of tobacco-using, injures both mother and child. The description which I have given in the article on tobacco, respecting cleansing the young man, and purifying him fit for society, is no joke! The clothes, skin, blood, muscle, and bones,--even the seminal fluid,--of the confirmed tobacco-user, all are impregnated with tobacco poison. Does any one question but something of this virus is transmitted to the offspring? Further, I have known many a wife to become tobacco-diseased,--nervous, yellow, sick at the stomach, dyspeptic, neuralgic, etc.,--suffering untold horrors, from lying, night after night, during year in and year out, beside a great, filthy, tobacco-plant of a husband!

Perhaps some sensitive gentleman--user of the weed of course--may object to my way of putting it. Sound truths, like sound meat, require no mincing. We know that children, sleeping constantly with elderly people, become prematurely old and infirm. We know also that nurses and others, sleeping with perpetual invalids, imbibe their diseases. The skin of the tobacco-user is continually giving off the tobacco poison--nicotine--and the more susceptible skin of the female, or child, by its absorbent powers, is as continually taking in this poison. There are many tobacco-users, who, if they knew this fact, would for this reason, if no other, abandon the injurious and sinful habit; would not want to continue a habit--be it never so slavish--which, aside from its injury to themselves, was destroying the health and lives of his wife and his children.

Tobacco exhausts the saliva, the fluids, the blood, often the muscle, and destroys the recuperative powers of the human system. It weakens the power of the heart. Nine tenths of the reported deaths from "heart disease" really originate, or result directly from the effects of tobacco-using. And, finally, it destroys the good effects of nearly all medicines. I positively affirm that no patient afflicted with a chronic disease can recover by the use of medicines if he continues the excessive use of tobacco.

I think these are good and conclusive reasons why one should not use that pernicious weed--tobacco.

Avoid all excesses, particularly of coition. Consumptives should husband all their resources. One other way of doing this is to keep from wasting the breath and caloric of the system through the mouth. Again, I say, breathe only through the nostrils. Keep out of crowded and unventilated halls, school-rooms, churches, and houses. Air! air and sunshine! don't forget them.

Avoid patent medicines. They are worthless. Even if one in a thousand were adapted to the disease in question, it might not be to the peculiar constitution of the invalid.

People are so differently constituted that one kind of food, clothing, or medicine cannot be adapted to all. I wish that I could tell every reader of these pages what remedies are adapted to persons suffering from not only consumption, but from a hundred other diseases. But it is impossible, as intimated in the fore part of this chapter. Not only the quality of a medicine suited to one constitution may not be at all suited to another, but the quantity is even as uncertain. It requires much knowledge and long experience in the disease, and its various peculiarities, as also of the varied constitution and idiosyncrasies of different patients, in order to prescribe successfully.

As the majority of the readers of this work are predisposed to consumption, let them seek to prevent its development in their systems. The writer has done this; he has told you in plain terms how it was done, how it still can be; but it is you who must believe in and abide by these instructions. Do this, and you will scarcely require to obtain and retain the knowledge of a thousand remedies and a complete knowledge of yourself, which it requires a lifetime of practice and study to possess.

Dr. Worcester Beach, of New York, in one of his botanical works, tells of a country-woman who, having been given up as incurable with consumption, gathered and boiled together all the different kinds of herbs and barks which she could find upon the farm, and making this decoction into a syrup, drank of it freely, and was cured thereby! I would not recommend this empirical sort of practice, but quote it to show the uncertainty of what medicine was adapted to the case.

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XXXIV. ACCIDENTS

RULES FOR MACHINISTS, MECHANICS, RAILROAD MEN, ETC., IN CASES OF ACCIDENT.--HOW TO FIND AN ARTERY AND STOP THE BLEEDING.--DROWNING; TO RESTORE.--SUN-STROKE.--AVOID ICE.--"ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN."--WHAT TO HAVE IN THE HOUSE.--BRUISES.--BURNS.--DO THE BEST YOU CAN, AND TRUST GOD FOR THE REST.

Mechanics, machinists, railroad men, etc., may find the following rules of the most vital importance in case of accidents, whereby valuable lives may be saved:--

1. When a person is seriously injured, do not crowd around him; give him air.

2. Send for a surgeon or physician at once.

3. Lay the patient on his back, and ascertain whether he is bleeding. If it is from the artery of the fore-arm, it must be compressed immediately. If from the artery, the blood will spurt out in jets. Do not try to stanch the blood at the wound, but find the main artery. Strip the arm, feel for the artery, a little below the arm-pit, just inside of the large muscle. (Fig. 1.) You can feel it throb. Press it with your thumbs or fingers, while an assistant folds a large handkerchief, or piece of shirt, if necessary, and ties a knot in the middle, or places a flat, round stone in it, puts this over the artery, ties the handkerchief below the thumbs, puts a stick through, and twists it just tight enough to stop the bleeding. (Fig. 2.) The first man may relax his grasp, to ascertain if the compress is sufficiently tight. If you get the knot (or stone) on the artery, a few twists will check the blood. If the limb becomes cold and purple, you have got it too tight. One end of the stick may be tucked under the bandage to hold it from untwisting. The surgeon will arrive and take up the bleeding vessel and tie it.

4. If it be the leg which is cut or mangled and bleeding, find the artery, inside the thigh, quite high up, back of the large muscle. (Fig. 3.) Bear on quite hard, for it is deeper than in the arm, till you feel it throb. Compress it hard, and proceed with the bandage as above directed for the arm. The large artery (femoral) bleeds fast. Work quickly, and do not get excited.

A schoolmate of mine died in a few moments, in a blacksmith shop, from a piece of steel flying into his leg. If the smith had known this simple process, stripped the boy, and compressed the artery till help arrived, he would have saved a life, an only son, the support and solace of a widowed mother.

5. If the wound is much below the knee, find the artery (Fig. 4.) in the hollow back of the knee (popliteal space), and proceed as above directed.

6. If a wound is not of an artery, that is, if the blood does not spurt out, bandaging the wound may do till the doctor arrives.

7. If the shock has prostrated the patient, give him a teaspoonful of brandy or other liquor--always provided he has not been drinking. Many accidents occur in consequence of liquor-drinking. If the patient is cold, faint, and prostrate, wrap him or her up warm, placing hot bricks, or jugs of hot water, at the feet. When he can swallow, some hot tea, or soup, may be given, if necessary.

8. If the patient has delirium tremens, give him strong coffee.

9. To remove an injured person, do not call a carriage, but take a shutter, or board, or door, throw your coats upon it, and tenderly place him thereon. Carry him carefully. Don't keep step in walking; he will ride easier without.

10. If a patient faints, give him air. Let him lie on the back. Wipe the face with a little water. A little camphor in water may be applied to the face and temples, provided he has not been using it already to excess. Camphor, used excessively, may keep one faint a long time. Let the clothes be loosened. Keep cool, and wait.

11. Avoid all rude and alarming conversation around the patient. When he recovers a little, do not press around and confuse him with questions of "What can I do for you?" etc. Let him rest.

12. If a person has been under water, don't roll him to get the water out of him. There is no water there beyond the mouth. The life has been rolled out of many a poor wretch, over a barrel, under this foolish delusion of "getting the water out of him." Lay him on his side, in a warm room, or in the sun. Try to inflate the lungs. Don't get a "bellows," and blow him full of wind. He is not like a bladder, or a balloon, that he needs inflating thus. To breathe is what he needs. Let the water, if any, in the mouth, run out. Wrap him warm--hot water at feet. Rub the limbs, if cold, for a long time. Persevere. Do not give him up until a good physician has arrived, and pronounced him beyond all hope of recovery.

SUN-STROKE (COUP DE SOLEIL).

The "ounce of prevention" must first be considered in this case.

1. All who can should keep in the shade during the extreme heat of the summer days. You who must "bear the heat and burden of the day" may not be able always to avoid the direct rays of the scorching sun. Wide-rimmed palm or straw hats should be worn, and when the noonday sun pours down its sultry beams, wet the hair, or keep a green leaf, or wet handkerchief, in your hat. This will surely prevent sun-stroke, by the evaporation of moisture. If away in the field, swinging the scythe, or with spade levelling the "everlasting hills," and no water is near, place some green grass or damp earth in the hat,--any way to avoid sun-stroke and sudden death!

2. You will see, every summer, a paragraph in the newspapers recommending the application of ice to the head in case of threatened sun-stroke, or after sun-stroke. Do not believe all you see in the papers. Just sit down and reason a moment. Think of the great, extreme transition from the powerful heat of the sun's rays on the brain to that of the application of ice! It requires but little thought to convince one that the extreme contrast must give such a shock to the brain (or blood therein) as nature cannot resist. Did you ever know a patient to recover from sun-stroke when ice had been applied to his head? I think not.

I have known one to recover from warm, moist applications. Let the head be kept wet (moist) with tepid water, and covered over by a dry cloth. He cannot swallow. Do not choke him by villanous whiskey poured into the mouth. Having placed him in a warm bed, removed his clothes, and made him comfortable, send for a physician.

"ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN."

Yes, and every family should be prepared for them.

1. As a remedy against fatal results, in severe cases, and for deliverance from pain, even in smaller accidents, every family should keep in the house an ounce bottle of tincture of arnica, the cost of which is trifling. Keep it well labelled, and out of the reach of children. To drink it is injurious.

2. For a bruise, or any injury, put half a teaspoonful of the arnica into a teacupful of tepid water, and bathe tenderly the wound. Then wet a cloth in the liquid, bind it on with a dry cloth outside to exclude the air. When dry, if pain or tenderness remains, renew the application. This will soon reduce any "bump" on your little ones' heads, except a real phrenological "bump." A woman once brought a boy to my office, to have me give her some "liniment for a bad bump on the child's head," showing me the place.

"Madam," I said, "I think a considerable persuasion, with plenty of patient kindness, will do more than medicine to reduce that bump. It is called, by phrenologists, 'firmness.' By the development, I should judge that the boy was very stubborn."

3. For burns and scalds, keep in the house a vial of tincture of urtica urens. Apply it to burns as above directed for wounds. When the smarting ceases, and the wound is whitish, omit it, and dress the wound with a little mutton tallow on a linen cloth.

Keep no patent medicines about; then you will be less likely to be dosing with them. It is hard to tell what are good, and do not make a medical depot of your stomach to ascertain.

The individual who is continually dabbling in medicines is a perpetual invalid, from the result of such everlasting dosing.

If you regard the concise, yet sufficient, instructions for preserving health laid down herein, particularly after noting the hints thrown out all through the body of the book, you will annually have less and less occasion for the use of medicines.

When you actually think you require a physician, get the best,--the best article is the cheapest in the end,--and abide by his counsel. I have told you of some remarkable characters in the history of medicine; but the harp and flowing locks of Apollo, the caduceus of Mercury, the staff of Æsculapius, the hoary beard of Hippocrates, the baton of De Sault, the three-tailed wig of Atkins, the silken coat and charming address of Dr. Reynolds, the gay equipage of Hannes, the library of Radcliffe, or the knowing nods and significant silence of some of the more modern doctors, will avail nothing in the time of great danger and distress.

It is the truly kind-hearted, humane, and educated physician upon whom you must depend in your time of need. Seek such. There are yet many; humanity is not a thing entirely of the past. Who loses faith in humanity has lost it in God. Do the best your circumstances allow in all things,--

"Angels can no more,"--

receiving all afflictions cheerfully, looking hopefully to God for his blessing, which faileth not, in all the walks of "this life and in that which is to come."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Small door or window, through which to receive night calls, etc.

[2] The art of embalming was known, and even practised by "servants," translated or called physicians, or sometimes apothecaries (or "by his arts"), four thousand years ago. Jacob, Joseph, Asa, and others were embalmed. The Egyptians were early versed in this art, which now is almost, or entirely, lost.

[3] Dover's Powder.

[4] See Frontispiece.

[5] This illustrates our "Origin of Ghosts."

[6] An Irishman, who was once asked why the parents of Christ were obliged to lodge in a stable on the night of the Saviour's birth, replied, "And weren't the inns full of the crowd, who had gone up before to celebrate Christmas?"

[7] The writer was fortunately born on Christmas (Sabbath) day. He hopes the publishers will present his picture in this book to prove his "fairness," and let the wisdom of these pages prove the remainder.

[8] The medical man in quest of a curiosity will be gratified by looking on page 228 of Hastings' Surgery, where he will find the head and face of a female engraved on the nude body of a male. I discovered it accidentally, but how such an error (?) could have occurred I cannot say.

[9] Casa Wappy, a self-conferred, pet name of the little boy.

[10] ESQUIMAUX HOSPITALITY.--Dr. Kane relates that one day, worn out by fatigue, he turned into an Esquimaux hut to get a little sleep. His good-natured hostess covered him up with some of her own habiliments, and gave him her baby for a pillow; which, Dr. Spooner says, was a living illustration of the kindness of woman.

Transcriber's Notes:

The original text includes the prescription symbol that is represented as [R] in this text version.

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