Health, Happiness, and Longevity Part 2

"Of right choice food are his meals, I ween."

Now as to what you should eat, what you should not eat, and how you should eat. This is perhaps the greatest problem for a man to solve. A man with a bad digestive apparatus is practically an invalid. We have no hesitation in saying that there is as much bodily injury done by over and careless eating among people commonly called temperate as among those who drink alcoholic liquors to a large extent. If you would preserve your vital strength and capabilities for a happy, long period, mind your diet. Don't rest too much on the insane idea that you have a _stomach_ of _iron_ and that you can digest shingle nails. You are not a species of the genus ostrich, or goat. Then if you really do possess organs that can take care of all kinds of food, their splendid power should not be destroyed or even weakened by improper indulgence. The mightiest engine is soon as valueless as old iron if it is continually exerted to its greatest velocity. If inanimate mechanism cannot stand a permanent strain surely bodily flesh would be quickly disabled.

Some foods are particularly muscle formers, others produce fat, and still others brain and nerve, while most of the common articles of diet combine these uses in varying degrees.

But the question to cover our entire physical needs requires to be broadened into this: What combination of food will best nourish the body? Even then the answer must be modified to suit individual cases, for the digestive power differs greatly in different persons. Moreover, there is an interdependence between the different bodily organs and tissues, so that the body must be built up as a whole. If one part lacks the whole suffers, and if one part is overfed the others will be underfed.

Thus a person who becomes unduly fat loses in muscular fiber, either in quant.i.ty or quality. One who overfeeds the brain loses in muscular strength. So, too, muscular development may be carried to such excess as to impoverish the brain, and also to reduce the fat of the body below what is necessary both as surplus food laid up for emergencies, and as a protection against sudden changes of temperature.

The best food for producing muscle, therefore, must, while being duly appetizing, contain a large per cent of nitrates for the muscles, of phosphates for the brain and nerves, and of carbonates for the fat.

Of nitrates, beans stand at 24 per cent, then peas at 22, cabbage and salmon at 20, oats at 17, eggs and veal at 16, and beef at 15.

Of phosphates, salmon stands first at 7, then codfish at 6, beef and eggs at 5, beans and veal at 4, and cabbage, peas, and oats at 3.

Of carbonates, b.u.t.ter stands at the head at 100, rice at 80, corn and rye at 72, wheat at 69, oats at 66, peas at 60, beans at 57, and cabbage at 46.

Fresh codfish fried in fat or served with b.u.t.ter gravy about equals beef in all respects, and so do eggs fried in fat. But we must add:--

The mere eating of food cannot make muscle. The muscles must be called into vigorous daily exercise, yet without overdoing.

Excessive eating is weakening, and must be avoided. It is the amount digested and a.s.similated that tells, not the quant.i.ty taken into the stomach.

All the laws of health must be steadily observed. We are in favor of a diet that excludes meat entirely; and once a day should be the excess of those who indulge in the flesh-eating luxury. A suspicion that there is a difference between merely getting food down into the stomach and its digestion, is abroad, and that a peach, an orange, an apple, a spoonful of flour, or something similar, which is digested, is really better for a man than a beefsteak, which simply pa.s.ses through the alimentary ca.n.a.l. See "Food" for further consideration of vegetarianism.

For _breakfast_ have any of the numerous preparations of _mush_, such as oatmeal, cracked wheat, and germea, every other day some kind of fish; of the miscellaneous, potatoes baked or boiled, eggs poached, boiled, or omelette, and natural fruit; of drinks, water, filtered or boiled, and not below 56 Fahr., milk, pure and sweet but not cream, cocoa, chocolate, tea, or coffee. These are good and beneficial in the order they are placed. The following from the N. Y. _Medical Record_ is invaluable information:--

"Stimulants (drink most healthful).--Milk heated to much above 100 degrees Fahrenheit loses for a time a degree of its sweetness and density. No one who, fatigued by over-exertion of body or mind, has ever experienced the reviving influence of a tumbler of this beverage, heated as warm as it can be sipped, will willingly forego a resort to it because of its being rendered somewhat less acceptable to the palate.

The promptness with which its cordial influence is felt is indeed surprising. Some portion of it seems to be digested and appropriated almost immediately, and many who now fancy they need alcoholic stimulants when exhausted by fatigue will find in this simple draught an equivalent that will be abundantly satisfying and far more enduring in its effects. There is many an ignorant overworked woman who fancies she could not keep up without her beer; she mistakes its momentary exhilaration for strength, and applies the whip instead of nourishment to her poor, exhausted frame. Any honest, intelligent physician will tell her that there is more real strength and nourishment in a slice of bread than in a quart of beer; but if she loves stimulants it would be a very useless piece of information. It is claimed that some of the lady clerks in our own city, and those too who are employed in respectable business houses, are in the habit of ordering ale or beer at the restaurants. They probably claim that they are 'tired,' and no one who sees their faithful devotion to customers all day will doubt their a.s.sertions. But they should not mistake beer for a blessing or stimulus for strength. A careful examination of statistics will prove that men and women who do not drink can endure more hardships, and do more work, and live longer, than those less temperate."

If you must eat meat for breakfast, have your _steak rare_, mutton chops well done; if fish, always well done; and if each are fried, use b.u.t.ter, not lard--the same applies to everything else that has to be fried. All meats are sweeter and more healthful broiled than fried. Of bread, for health, natural _graham_ comes first; and, in order of nutrition, corn, corn and wheat mixed, rye, and wheat. They should be taken cold and at least twenty-four hours after baking. If the midday meal is a lunch, all dishes should be cold. It can be made up largely from dishes left over from the morning meal, such as cold cracked wheat with milk, natural fruit; add nuts, sauces, jellies, and prepared fruit.

If _dinner_ is taken at noon instead of lunch at that hour, any one of the score of vegetable soups are first in value; all other kinds are secondary; let there be from three to six kinds of vegetables cooked; any of the drinks mentioned for breakfast may be used, but none of them iced; cold bread, and no pastry unless an open pie with unshortened undercrust. An excellent morsel for _dyspeptics_ is _sea biscuit_ dipped in cold water and then placed in a hot oven from three to five minutes.

If meat is to be a portion of this meal, you can have beef, mutton, or venison, roasted or broiled, the former rare, and the two latter well done. Provided dinner is enjoyed at the close of the day, it should occur before 5:30 P. M.; if at midday, then the lunch meal can be renamed supper, and can be partaken of as late as 6 or 7 P. M. Let there be no eating two meals for Sundays and holidays, and three for other days, or indulging in them at later hours in the morning and earlier in the evening; for this irregularity will detriment more than many kinds of improper food.

Do not eat _fresh pork_, for this and every other kind of swine flesh is an abomination. Eat no _kidney_, _liver_, or _tripe_; deal sparingly with _fowl_ and all the bird family. Outside impure water and uncleanliness, there can be but one cause for _skin diseases_, eczema, boils, and the dread leprosy, which is the eating of pork, kidney, liver, duck, etc. If the lion indiscriminately kills and eats all kinds of flesh, and thereby is made ferocious, if the lamb is rendered pa.s.sive and inoffensive by gra.s.ses and grains, then what the swine or different domestic fowls eat must have something to do with the make-up of the flesh of their bodies. The hog is the most filthy animal of that nature, while chicken and duck are the most so in the line of fowls used by man for food. It is offensive but true that they will not only _eat_ but relish both their own and man's _excrement_.

We cannot use s.p.a.ce foolishly, if we show plainly why pork should be abandoned. Did you ever stop to think on what most _swine_ live? _Swill_ is the most common term for it. Anything and everything that is the refuse of a boarding-house will they eagerly devour. Give them _rotten_ apples and potatoes, full of innumerable microbes, and they will relish the repast. Place them in a dung heap--they will root, and eat much of what they find. Now all meat, all flesh and tissue, is made from what an animal or person eats--if he doesn't eat he grows thin and starves. Then the hog's flesh is made from elements derived from swill, decayed substances, and everything either cooked, uncooked, or even digested, that man is through with or has cast off. You who eat pork relish that which once you have refused to eat--only in another form. Can you enjoy this meat when you consider all this? Surely its use means bad health and contamination. Skin diseases and _poor complexions_ are found almost entirely among those who live on these improper foods. Again, even if you feed swine on clean corn, milk, and water, we ascertain by careful experiment and examination that pork is most susceptible to bacteria of almost any meat. Better boycott it altogether. _Leprosy_ and skin troubles are found largely among pork-eating people--such as the inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands, where there are 749 lepers. On the other hand, Jews, who everywhere are marked with clear skins, avoid pork. In Constantinople there are 250 lepers, in Crete upwards of 3,000, and quant.i.ties in the islands of eastern Mediterranean Sea, and 1,000 in Norway. These places are all characterized by the great amount of pork, and duck too, that they consume.

Other things not good for _invalids_, and will make strong persons invalids, are: Fried potatoes, hot cakes, warm bread, pound cake, green cuc.u.mbers, and rich pie-crust. Eat only those things that will excite the salivary glands to a.s.sist digestion. The walls, not the center of the alimentary ca.n.a.l, need attention.

Have your _soup cool_ enough so that it will not cause tears in your eyes when you swallow--same with your coffee, tea, and other warm drinks; take no _ice drinks_; if you are used to having water only with your meals, drink it warm with sugar and milk, and _not hot_. If you are obliged to live in a second-cla.s.s boarding-house or restaurant, and are obliged to take one of three meals each day at such a place, insist on having a _napkin_. Use it first to wipe your gla.s.s for water, then follow by polishing every utensil set before you for use at your meal.

If note is taken of the napkin before and after each meal, you will be able by a mathematical calculation to tell just how much _real estate_ did not belong to you.

How you should eat: Begin with one swallow of cool water. Eat slowly; take full 20 minutes for a hurried meal, and 45 minutes when you have the time. If you eat beefsteak, have it rare; if mutton chops, have them well done; if _fish_, well done and brown; if potatoes, first choice, baked; second, boiled; third, stewed or mashed. Never eat decayed vegetables or fruit; have them fresh or do without them. At table, see that the conversation is pleasant and mirthful. Should any of the younger members of the family insist, at each meal, in changing this order of things, cause them for a short season to sit at a separate table in the kitchen, until this sort of disease--for disease it is--may be cured. Nothing r.e.t.a.r.ds digestion, brings dyspepsia, or creates neuralgia, to such extent as a sullen disposition. We will end this chapter with a remarkably bright paraphrase on the ten commandments, which we recently ran across:--

THE TEN HEALTH COMMANDMENTS.

"1. Thou shalt have no other food than at meal-time.

"2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any pies, or put into pastry the likeness of anything that is in the heavens above or in the waters under the earth. Thou shalt not fall to eating it or trying to digest it. For the dyspepsia will be visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that eat pie; and long life and vigor upon those that live prudently and keep the laws of health.

"3. Remember thy bread to bake it well; for he will not be kept sound that eateth his bread as dough.

"4. Thou shalt not indulge sorrow or borrow anxiety in vain.

"5. Six days shalt thou wash and keep thyself clean, and the seventh thou shalt take a great bath; thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy man-servant, and thy maid-servant, and the stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days man sweats and gathers filth and bacteria enough for disease; wherefore the Lord has blessed the bath-tub and hallowed it.

"6. Remember thy sitting-room and bed-chamber to keep them ventilated, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy G.o.d giveth thee.

"7. Thou shalt not eat hot biscuit.

"8. Thou shalt not eat thy meat fried.

"9. Thou shalt not swallow thy food unchewed, or highly spiced, or just before hard work, or just after it.

"10. Thou shalt not keep late hours in thy neighbor's house, nor with thy neighbor's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his cards, nor his gla.s.s, nor with anything that is thy neighbor's."--_New England Farmer._

With the use of the foregoing as a guide, and ordinary judgment in the affairs with your fellow-men, life will run smoothly, happiness will follow, and a long life be the result.

CHAPTER VI.

"Let the jewel of happiness poise in the setting of health."

If you are a reader of this work to find out a cure for consumption, catarrh, bronchitis, constipation, hemorrhoids or piles, hernia or rupture, rheumatism, fever and ague, cataracts on the eyes, warts on the hands, corns on the feet, and how to abstain from drink and tobacco in all injurious forms, we will try and not disappoint you. Under the head of each disease above named, see index and second part. We offer you a remedy. All of these troubles I have had (and a score not mentioned), of the entire list of which _=I=_ am now _free completely_. In short, the whole number of diseases that beset the human family can be cured by care, cleanliness, regularity, fresh air, cold water used internally, and by compress, proper clothing, right food, regular exercise, an even disposition, a clear conscience, intelligent and agreeable a.s.sociates, and a reasonable amount of time.

It took me 30 years, 25 of which I spent ascertaining the way. If someone could have informed me, as this book does you, I would have enjoyed full health _twenty-five_ years earlier than I did. Anyone observing the rules I have recounted can restore a broken-down _const.i.tution_ in less than 5 years--yes, even if one foot is already in the grave! Soon you will begin to lift it out, and it will be a long period before you will take that step again. I do not exaggerate when I state that I had _both feet_ in the grave. Fortunately, however, my head was above-ground, and I began to reason how to get the rest of myself away. The secret was discovered, the causes set to work, and finally the end achieved. To use another figure, my coffin had many nails already driven in it when I secured a clincher, pulled them all out, and then split up the old wooden hulk to make fires with which to start the steam of my new energies.

All of my _time_ is _employed_. I do some sort of laborious work every day to start my blood coursing vigorously, and open the pores of my skin. By a proper adjustment of my under-clothing, I prevent a cold, and am always ready with a good appet.i.te when meal-time comes. I have never studied _Anatomy_, _Medicine_, or _Surgery_, know but little about the niceties of the English language, but I have studied the Materia Medica of myself, and am aware of just what is beneficial and what is injurious for me.

There is a duty each individual owes to his fellow-man, each munic.i.p.al corporation to its citizens, and each State and general government to those over whom they preside. Every individual should strive to see how much distress he can relieve during his short stay on this earth; how few thorns he has to place in the pathway of others, and how many drops of oil he can pour on the disturbed waters of the ocean of life.

_Accidents_ that are _preventable_, caused by carelessness, laziness, and ignorance, cost more money, suffering, and life than viciousness and incendiarism, in the ratio of 3 to 1. Every man who builds a mill, manufactory, or a business block, makes his own rate of insurance.

A slight variation in the construction of a building, the omission of certain details, the wrong location of hazardous machinery or materials, or the neglect of cleanliness and order, may very seriously affect the _fire hazard_, and consequently the _rate_ of insurance which must necessarily attach to the property.

The _Fire Losses_ in the United States amount to $125,000,000 per annum, and the great ma.s.s of this enormous loss is chargeable to bad construction of buildings, the lack of necessary apparatus for extinguishing fires, and carelessness in the management of property. The _unavoidable_ losses are few in number; the _avoidable_, many. Insurance companies _restore no value_, _repair no loss_; they can only _distribute_ the loss throughout the community. Careless, ignorant, annihilative, is the term to be applied to 75% of the fire losses. The destruction of life by accidents, where immediate death follows, in the United States is large; but, in comparison with those that a.s.sist in shortening life, they are about in the ratio of 1 to 100. Only such persons as have undoubted _integrity_, coupled with order, cleanliness, and carefulness should be allowed to insure their property, and this should be restricted by law. A certain sect in our population that now have to be charged from 50 to 100% more for insurance than other people, should be stricken from the list of the insured, until they have by personal action abolished this difference in risk.

When the time comes that only such persons as attend to all the details of cleanliness and prevention of the loss of property and health can be insured, the cost will be reduced 50%. Until we are willing, or educated up to that point, to protect our neighbors' lives and property as if they were ours, we must expect to pay this 50% more for everything we have, use, drink, eat, and wear. Longevity will be restricted in the same proportion. Hundreds of accidents would be prevented by proper care. Throwing foolishly the match, cigar, cigarette, etc., any and everywhere, causes great loss of property, and often life; the unthinking eat oranges and _bananas_ in the _street_ and cast underfoot the rinds and skins to cause the next moment the _dislocation_ of a limb, or broken skull. Over 500 accidents have occurred in this city alone during the last 5 years, occasioned by some sort of vegetable or fruit refuse lying upon the pavements; fatal results, though not all immediate, happened to 15 persons, and a number were maimed for life.

Broken bottles and gla.s.s thrown into the street and on the sidewalks bring about at times frightful accidents to both man and beast; and if a correct report could be had from each livery-man and teamster in this regard, it would startle the most inhuman of our race.

The _tax-payer_ has a tendency to be selfish when he is really doing himself severe injury. It is a case of reflex action. In pa.s.sing along a thoroughfare he sees a banana skin lying on the sidewalk. He cannot possibly stop or trouble himself to push it into the gutter. Almost immediately another man comes along, steps on the skin, slips, breaks his leg, and is carried to the hospital. He remains there a month, supported by the city, that is, by money paid by the same tax-payer. In this manner, and other ways, can every man act, both selfishly or unselfishly. If selfish in pa.s.sing this by, it is sure to come back on him a hundred-fold to the original trouble required. His unselfishness will consist in saving his fellow-men from danger by removing the cause.