Euthenics, the science of controllable environment Part 2

When an idea has won in a certain circle, it quickly spreads to the other members, thence to active communities. So the universal law of imitation may be the greatest help in the spread of ideas. The individual eats a certain food because his neighbor does. Boston determines to make an effort for a better city because Chicago has felt the stirrings of civic pride.

A gifted individual with a deep sense of the need of his community sees an ideal condition, which by his thought becomes a possibility.

These beliefs he shares with a few choice spirits till the circle has widened. The new ideas come to the notice of the city or the town officials, new means are adopted of educating the whole community, and, if necessary, legal measures are pa.s.sed. But the new means to betterment must be applied by the individual. Beginning with the exceptional individual and ending with the average individual, the perfect circle is rounded out.

The leaders must show convincingly that the laws which they have discovered may be applied to daily life, but the _individual himself_ must adopt them. When he has been saturated with knowledge, his inertia will break down, his hopelessness give way to its very ant.i.thesis, a strong hope for a better future. Every known method must be used by the laboratory to develop this hope into a belief wide enough to reach all members of every section of the community and deep enough to become a vital working principle. Only through a belief strong enough to ride over unbelief and inertia, a belief in the value of science for personal life strong enough to make a wise choice possible, can the will to obtain a better environment be developed.

The belief in better things must be thoroughly impressed on the individual mind. Each individual must understand that it does affect _him_, that it is _his_ concern, that _he_ must give heed to his environment. Then he may have the will and make the effort to combat dangers to body and mind.

Today, belief is much more difficult than ever before because the dangers are unseen and insidious, and our enemies do not generally make an appeal through the senses of sight and hearing. But the dangers to modern life are no less than in the days of the pioneers, when a stockade was built as a defense from the Indians. We have no standards for safety. Our enemies are no longer Indians and wild animals. Those were the days of big things. Today is the day of the infinitely little. To see our cruelest enemies, we must use the microscope. Of all our dangers, that of uncleanness leads--uncleanness of food and water and air--uncleanness due to unsanitary production and storage, to exposure to street dust, or to cooking and serving of food in unclean vessels. Such conditions result not only in actual disease, but in lowered vitality and lessened work power.

Lack of knowledge on the part of some, heedlessness on the part of others who should be intelligent enough to interpret such conditions, are responsible for their continuance. A few timely suggestions will accomplish more in remedying many evils than any amount of attempted legal enforcement. The very fact of a law makes many persons defy it.

They feel justified in showing their wit by outwitting the law's representatives. Many of our newer citizens have come to us from the protection (?) of a personal authority that they can see and feel. In this country of ours, we have taken away that binding regard for authority, and we must as far as possible lead rather than compel.

It is, after all, what a man determines for himself and for his family that affects both his views of life and his wish to secure for himself and for them that which he believes to be best. It is not what some other man believes for him that affects his life.

Evolution from within, not a dragging from outside, even if it is in the right direction, is the method of human development.

Nevertheless, if the bale of hay is skillfully hung in front of the donkey's nose it will often serve to start the wheels on an easy road.

Evidence of the value of concerted effort by individuals and of the power of suggestion was given by a woman's club in a small town. The members became aware of the dangers in exposed food, and on investigation found their own market to be very low in standards of cleanness. At a certain meeting they agreed to ask the proprietor why he did not protect this and cover that article. Certain members were told off for the duty and the days agreed upon. Mrs. A., making her usual purchases, casually asked why such an article was not covered.

"I never thought about it," was the answer. Mrs. B., the next day, asked why such an article was left out for the flies. "I never thought about the flies." Mrs. C. asked the same question on the third day.

The proprietor said: "You're the third woman who has asked me that. No one ever suggested it before, but it would be a good idea." Before the end of two weeks the provisions and groceries were covered. The end had been gained without resort to coercion.

We know that our capacity for mental and bodily work depends on our supply of food. Proper food is necessary as a source of power for the work of the body as well as to furnish material for growth and repair of the losses of the body. Taking food is the most interesting of the vital processes. It appeals to all the senses (except hearing).

Professor Dawson calls attention to the fact that the richest food areas in the world have provided the most powerful stocks of men of which we have any record, and it has been pointed out by many that improper food is closely connected with mental and moral defects.

Strong men and women are not the product of improper food. Dr. Stanley Hall says: "The necessity of judicious, wholesome food is paramount.... You can educate a long time by externals and not accomplish as much as good feeding will accomplish by itself. Children must be supplied with plenty of nutritious food if they are to develop healthily either in mind or body."

Mr. Robert Hunter says: "All that we are, either as individuals or as a complexly const.i.tuted society of men, is made possible by the food supply.... Perhaps more than any other condition of life it lies at the door of most of the social and mental inequalities among men."

In these days of irresponsibility there is probably more harm done to the health by ignoring physical law in the matter of eating than in any other one thing.

It is in the study of food substances and their possibilities in relation to better sanitary conditions that the widest field is open to housekeepers, and the subject should be especially fascinating to women of education and ability. All the skill and knowledge of the best educated women should be enlisted in the cause of better food for the people. Certainly no subject, except that of pure air, can have a closer bearing on the health than right diet. Much sound teaching will be needed before bad habits of eating and drinking will be conquered.

A strong, well man whose work is muscular and carried on in the open air, as is that of the farmer and of the fisherman, will have the power to a.s.similate almost anything, and can maintain abundant health on the coa.r.s.est food poorly prepared, provided, only, that it is abundant and composed of the chemical const.i.tuents that the body requires.

Only a small proportion of our people, however, engage in work of this sort. The majority are compelled by occupation, age, or health to remain indoors. For them nutritious, readily digested food is a requisite. The farmer or the fisherman can digest, even thrive upon, food which would be deadly for a woman working in a factory.

In the fourth report of the Ma.s.sachusetts State Board of Health (1873), Dr. Derby, the secretary, holds that "we have good reason to believe that the many forms of dyspepsia which are so commonly met with among all cla.s.ses in Ma.s.sachusetts, in country quite as much as in town, are but too often the danger signal that Nature gives us to show that the food, either in its quality, or its preparation, or its variety, is unsuited to maintain the vital processes. If this warning is rejected, the result of malnutrition is frequently chronic disease of the so-called major cla.s.s."

Sanitation in relation to food deals first with wholesome and clean materials--meat from animals free from disease; fruit and vegetables free from decay; milk, b.u.t.ter, etc., free from harmful bacteria. The dangers are the transference to the human body of encysted organisms like trichina; of the absorption of poisonous substances as toxins or ptomaines; of the lodgment of germs of disease along with dust on berries, rough peach skins, crushed-open fruits; of dirt clinging to lettuce, celery, and such vegetables as are eaten raw.

For the next cla.s.s of dangers we turn to the handling of foods with unclean hands.

In countless ways disease is spread mysteriously, all due to unclean habits. It is a safe precaution to patronize only those restaurants in which the waiters are evidently trained to handle the food and vessels with care. It will pay well to take care of one's hands and learn sanitary habits when one is young; then one will do right without effort. Whatever change of ideas may come with increase of knowledge, these habits will not need to be unlearned. Without knowing the reasons for them, they have been proclaimed in civilized lands.

It should be the part of the physicians to take pains to advise, for most of our people are accessible to ideas; yet from these can come no improvement until the people are convinced that it is needed. Just as soon as the individual fully realizes that he himself is to blame for his suffering or his poverty in human energy, he will apply his intelligence to the bettering of his condition. If he can, in a short time, make as good a showing as public effort has made in the case of water supplies, he will accomplish much for the race.

Of equal importance to food, in the proper care of the human machine, comes the air we breathe.

Many of man's present physical troubles are due to the roof over his head confining the warmed, used-up air, which would escape freely if there were an opening provided. The first law of sanitation requires the quick removal of all wastes. Once-breathed air is as much a waste as once-used water, and should be allowed to escape. Sewers are built for draining away used water. Flues are just as important to serve as sewers for used air. Air is lighter than water, and out-breathed air being warmed is lighter than that at room temperature. It rises to the ceiling, where it will escape if it is allowed to do so before it cools sufficiently to fall.

The roof also keeps out sunlight, and some late investigations indicate that gla.s.s cuts off some of the most vitally important light rays. The "glame" of the Ralstonites--"air in motion with the sunlight on it"--may have a scientific basis.

It will at once be retorted, "But we cannot heat all out-of-doors."

A partial reply is: Do not try to make your house a tropical jungle.

Travelers a.s.sure us that such an atmosphere is not conducive to work or to health.

All great nations have lived in a temperate climate, where physical and mental activity was possible for many hours a day. Science is more and more clearly giving reasons for the cooler temperature in certain physiological laws. The habits of life in regard to air and food are largely under individual, or at least under family control, and should be studied as personal hygiene.

The lessons being so clearly taught in the treatment of tuberculosis should be heeded in forming the general living habits of the people.

If loss of life can be lessened and working power increased by man's effort, why does he not make the effort? Why are men and women so apathetic over the prevalence of disease? Why do they not devote their energies to stamping it out? For no other reason than their disbelief in the teachings of science, coupled with a lingering superst.i.tion that, after all, it is fate, not will power, which rules the destinies of mankind.

Perhaps it is too much to expect that a st.u.r.dy plant of belief should have grown since the days of Edwin Chadwick and Benjamin Ward Richardson (1830-50), less than a century ago, when there were perhaps not a dozen men and women who believed that man had any appreciable control over his own health.

This early school of sanitarians endeavored to "get behind fate, to the causes of sickness." The modern socionomist is, by a study of the mental conditions of communities, endeavoring to get behind the causes of poverty and consequent suffering to the reasons for _fatal indifference to dirt_.

It is well recognized that in severe sicknesses of many kinds the will to get well is more powerful than drugs, that something which we call nerve force acting upon the physical machine sends a vital current through the arteries, coerces the heart to renewed pumping action, and life comes again to the blanched cheek and glazing eye. This more often happens by a mental stimulus than by any medicine. In like manner the improvement of the body's sh.e.l.l, the home, like that of the soul's sh.e.l.l, the body, comes more often from an inward impulse than from outward coercion.

Appeal to the loving but listless parent will reach the heart quickest through love for the child. Therefore stress should be laid on the child, its habits, its surroundings, its ideals. By ideals is meant the very real stimulus to action coming from within. Action must come through the material things which ideals control and through which they express themselves.

Certain notions which have crept into popular currency need to be corrected before the individual can free himself from bondage sufficiently to attempt constructive advance and improvement.

Only a small percentage of adults obtain the full efficiency from the human machine--the only means they have of living, working, enjoying.

They permit themselves to stand and walk badly, they breathe with only a portion of their lungs, and so fail to furnish the blood stream with oxygen. They dress unhygienically. They eat wrongly. They exercise little. In short, they subject their bodies to abusive treatment which would ruin any machine. Because retribution does not instantly follow infraction of Nature's laws, they become callous and unbelieving.

Economy and efficiency in human time and strength is one of the lessons to be taught the young people, so that they may not waste their patrimony.

The youth feels as rich in his fifty years to come as he does with a legacy of $50,000 in the bank. The years, however, can yield only small variations from the established rate of interest. The human machine can manufacture only a limited amount of energy. It remains to utilize that quant.i.ty to the best advantage. This can be done only by having a purpose in life strong enough to resist alluring temptations to fritter away both time and strength.

One of the world's busy workers found that the distractions of urban life were breaking in upon his working time and making inroads upon his physical vitality. He recognized that work for the body and work for the mind must be balanced, and he evolved an acrostic to be followed as a rule of life, the fulfillment of which has meant prolonged years of efficient work and has kept the freshness of middle life with the advancing years. Taking the six days of the week as a unit, the acrostic is as follows:

_The Feast of Life_

F Food One-tenth the time E Exercise One-tenth the time A Amus.e.m.e.nt One-tenth the time S Sleep Three-tenths the time T Task Four-tenths the time

The first and last are nearly fixed quant.i.ties, the other three may vary within certain limits as to amount of time given and intensity of effort. Amus.e.m.e.nt and exercise may be taken together; exercise and sleep may be somewhat interchangeable.

The task, or daily work, is a necessity for mental and physical health. It should be accepted as a part of human life and the will and energy should be directed to doing it well. It may be a pure delight, the most entertaining thing that happens; _it should be interesting_.

It is astonishing how interesting a dull piece of work may become if one sets one's self to doing it well. That which one subconsciously knows one is doing badly is drudgery. The real pleasure in life comes not from so-called amus.e.m.e.nts--things done by other people to make one laugh; to "take one's mind off"--but from seeing the work of one's own hand and brain prosper. The work of creation, of transformation to desirable result, is the purest joy the human mind can experience.

Fourteen hours a day is not too much for this kind of task. The difficulty is to gain skill of hand and eye, or training of mind, to this end. A fallacy, a canker at the heart of our social fabric today, is that the daily task is something to be rid of.

The psychology of doing is clearly ill.u.s.trated in the character of Fool Billy, as drawn by the author of "Priscilla of the Good Intent."

"Is there nought ye like better than idleness?" asked the blacksmith.

"Think now, Billy--just ponder over it."

"Well, now," answered the other, after a silence, "there's playing--what ye might call playing at a right good game. Could ye think of some likely pastime, David?"

"Ay, could I; blowing bellows is the grandest frolic ever I came across." ...