Think Part 19

[Sidenote: What Our Bodies Need.]

Scientists tell us that the whole body is replaced every seven years.

Every move you make destroys cells which nature has to replace. Isn't it reasonable then to conclude that if a man should fail to eat enough lime for his body-building, his bones would suffer? If he does not get enough iron, his blood will suffer, and so on. I am convinced that most physical ailments are caused by a deficiency of the mineral elements in the body.

Phosphorus and potash are necessary to human welfare. These elements are in the husk of the wheat, and when the husk is taken off in making flour, the resulting product is mostly starch. The person who lives mostly on white bread will suffer from lack of phosphorus and potash.

Nothing could be better for the health of the American people than the nation-wide food campaigns the government is conducting. The educational value of these campaigns is enormous.

Eat less wheat! White bread is unessential. Bran, or whole wheat bread, is far more healthful and nourishing, and contains more of the elements the human body needs.

Eat more fruit. People do not eat enough fruit. Every year thousands of bushels of peaches and grapes and other fruit go to waste because the demand is not great enough to ship the entire output to the great consuming centers.

Study your body's needs. Health is maintained at its proper level only so long as you eat carefully and wisely.

37.

The practice of medicine in the past has been directed towards the curing of disease and physical ailments already developed. The practice of medicine in the future is to be along preventive lines. Science is showing us how to prevent infection. Science is fighting the deadly microbe which comes to us in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, and the infected things we touch.

[Sidenote: The "Why" of Disease.]

Nature has supplied the human body with a home guard of necessary bacteria, and in the circulation system are phagocytes which fight the invading microbes and generally destroy them. When the system is weakened through disease, through lack of exercise, or through improper food, disease has an easy time.

I want you to remember this golden prescription. It is composed of the following: Good Air, Good Water, Good Sunshine, Good Food, Good Exercise, Good Cheer, Good Rest and Good Thought. If you take this golden prescription, you will make of yourself a giant in brain and brawn strength.

You can't get health out of a bottle. You can't get the system to absorb iron if you take it in the form of tincture of iron. You can eat a pound of rust, which is oxide of iron, and none of that iron will be absorbed in the system.

[Sidenote: What to Eat.]

As I have explained in another chapter, you must take the mineral in the system through the vegetable route. You will get iron that will be a.s.similated when you eat beefsteak. Beefsteak has blood; the blood has iron. You will also get iron when you eat spinach.

Every element necessary for your body is found in some vegetable or animal food; therefore, you should refrain from confining yourself to a very few articles of food.

[Sidenote: Fads, Cults, Isms.]

Don't pay any attention to the faddist who gives you a rigorous diet or unpalatable food. You simply make yourself miserable, and you generate more worry and unhappiness by your discipline than the good you get from these freak fads. There are a thousand different fads and cults and isms, each one claiming to be right. Probably each one contains a small portion of right. But it is a sure thing that The Right is too big a thing to be confined within narrow formulae and creeds.

We all eat too much meat, but that a strict vegetarian diet is the necessary thing for good health I deny. The sheep, the cow, and horse are vegetarians, and they are short lived. The eagle, the lion, the man, eat animal food, and they are long lived.

I may be prejudiced, but it does seem to me that the strict vegetarians are a skinny, sallow-looking lot of humans, speaking generally. I do find that the healthier specimens of vegetarians are those who eat plenty of eggs and drink plenty of milk, both of which are animal food, and both of which have nearly all the elements necessary to sustain life.

I don't like fads in the matter of eating. The amount a person consumes should be in exact accord with the body's requirements--neither more nor less.

The human body is a machine from a food standpoint. It is an engine that has work to do, and accordingly the amount of fuel necessary for the engine should be in proportion to the amount of work that the engine is called on to perform.

[Sidenote: Eat Less, Exercise More.]

The majority of city-dwelling people eat too much. This is especially true of men in sedentary occupations, and women whose household duties are light. If your engine needs twenty pounds of steam, how foolish it is to keep up a hundred pounds pressure! If you had five-horsepower work to perform, how foolish it would be to install a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound engine!

Eat less of everything. Fat and flabbiness and over-feeding is a national vice with us. The fashionable cafes and restaurants are thronged with puffy, heavy-jowled men and women, eating and drinking.

Hotels and food-purveyors are constantly inventing new palate-tickling dishes to tempt your appet.i.te. Orchestras and dramatic troupes are engaged to entertain and amuse you while you overload your stomach, take on fat, and lay the foundation for future cases of indigestion or dyspepsia.

There is no escaping a day of reckoning for such mistreatment of yourself. If you would keep yourself fit, it is important that you eat only what is necessary to maintain yourself at normal weight and strength.

You do not often find dyspepsia or indigestion among men or women who work hard physically. Isn't it reasonable to suppose that this is because they work hard?

You who work indoors, with little physical exercise, will find wonderful benefits if you will cut down the fuel.

Much of the physical trouble comes from filling up the boiler too much.

Cut down the food and you will feel better.

38.

Anger and revenge are great pull-backs to health.

Anger makes the blood rush to the head, weakens the body, and distorts the vision.

When a woman gets angry, she quarrels with her lover, her husband or her children. Any one of these things is a calamity.

When a man gets angry, he is a wild man. His eyes glitter, his mouth is cruel, his fists clinch, his body trembles, his blood veins strain, and he does more harm to his system in five minutes of anger than nature can repair in a day.

[Sidenote: Anger and Poise.]

Anger makes weak stomachs, dizzy heads, poor judgment, lost friends, despair and sickness, and if the habit becomes confirmed, will likely lead to apoplexy. When two men have differences, watch the cool man finish victor; the angry man always loses. Keep your head; let the other fellow fret and fume.

He will tie himself up in a knot, and when the gong is rung, he will be the loser.

Serenity is one of G.o.d's blessings. Fortunate is the man who can hold his serenity.

When you get a letter that stirs you to anger, don't answer that letter for forty-eight hours, then write a moderately vitriolic letter--and then tear it up.

[Sidenote: The Futility of Revenge.]

I know you are tempted and goaded, and your limit of endurance is sometimes reached. But I know that revenge is sweet only in antic.i.p.ation. I know that revenge by anger and by the cruel "eye for an eye" measure is never, never sweet.

I have been the victim of imposition, ingrat.i.tude and insincerity, and advantage has been taken of me because I kept my poise and serenity.

I have been called easy, and soft, and friends have shown me where I was imposed upon, but I was stooping to conquer. I kept my reserve, my resistance, and my power ready until time, place, and preparedness let me spring my coup, and then I cashed in beautifully in princ.i.p.al and interest for those acts and hurts.

I have power now in my hands to make others suffer keenly and deeply for wrongs they have done me. Yet I do not exercise that power to revenge.