The Farmers Own Book 13
Children should always take light suppers and light breakfasts. Their
dinner should be of more substantial food and taken freely. But they
should never be allowed to eat in haste, as nothing aids the powers of
digestion more than the perfect mastication of food.
HEALTH.
ITS VALUE, CONDITIONS, PRESERVATION AND RESTORATION.
Health consists in the vigorous and normal or constitutional action of
all the physical organs and functions. Life consists in precisely the
same action: in proportion to the vigor of this action is the amount of
both health and life, but in proportion as the physical functions are
enfeebled or diseased, is health enfeebled and life diminished. But in
proportion as we improve our health do we thereby increase life itself.
Viewed in any and every aspect, health is life and life is health. By as
much therefore as life is valuable should health be preserved if good and
restored if feeble.
Health is the great seasoner or relish of all our blessings; nor is it
possible to enjoy the latter except by means of the former: without
health what can we be? What can we do?--What can we enjoy? For other
things being equal, our capabilities of accomplishing and enjoying are
proportioned to our health and diminished by disease. If we possessed
all the wealth, and all the honors, and all the blessings mortals can
possess, we could enjoy them only in proportion as we had health, and
their value would be diminished just in proportion to its decline.
Suppose we were sick and our appetite thereby destroyed, the richest food
and most delicious fruits, instead of rendering us happy would nauseate
us. How different if we were healthy. How a good appetite, the produce
of health, would enjoy them. Well might the glutted alderman offer a
ragged boy a guinea for his appetite for breakfast. The rich invalid is
poor, but he who is healthy is rich, because his fund of life and his
capacities for enjoyment are proportionally great. Reader, if brought to
the brink of the grave, your last hour come, what would you give? What
that you possessed would you not give for another year of life and its
pleasures? Astor’s thirty millions would be cheap. To impair health in
obtaining any amount of earthly goods is a dear exchange, since then to
preserve or regain health is to preserve, prolong or regain life itself,
and to impair the former is to destroy the latter and its pleasures,
as well as hasten death; and since the value of life so infinitely
surpasses that of all other earthly blessings, what consummate folly to
trifle with health on any account. Then how much more foolish and even
wicked virtually to throw it away for nothing, in our eager pursuit
of those trifling objects, wealth, honors, and the like, which mainly
engrosses mankind? What, sacrifice life upon the altar of mammon? For be
it remembered, that no human being can impair his health at any period
of his life, without proportionally shortening his days; without being
brought to a strict account at the close of life, and he compelled to
end it as much sooner than he otherwise would, as he has injured his
health during his whole lifetime. Let me urge upon you the infinite
importance of preserving your health. This effectually done, millions
of money bestowed on each reader could not equally benefit you, because
of the incomparable greater value of health than money. Let your own
experience testify. Which of you has not, some time or some how, induced
debility or pain in one portion of your system or another, which will
cripple you for life. A foolish ambition breaks down the constitution of
an incalculable number of our youths, unwilling to be outdone they will
work at the top of their strength as long as they can stand, perhaps
over heat themselves, or in a single day or week bring on some complaint
which debilitates them for life, and carries them to a premature grave.
An ambitious youth wishing to show his employers what a great day’s work
he could do, shovelled till he lamed his side, so that for fifteen years
he has been a partial invalid, cannot do any kind of work, nor more than
half the amount he formerly did, besides working in almost perpetual
pain. Nor is this the half; whatever enfeebles the health enfeebles the
mind by weakening and disordering the brain. So perfectly are body and
brain inter related, that all the conditions of either react upon each
other; whatever augments the health, strengthens the body and thereby
invigorates both the brain and the mind. What is the true value of the
mind? How much could you afford to give for double the amount you now
possess? Neither money nor any thing else can measure its value. To
improve our minds is the most effectual mode possible of augmenting all
the capabilities, all the pleasure, all the virtue of this life, and
ripening for another, and hence should be the paramount business of our
whole lives. Health allows you to be always on hand for business, from
which sickness takes you and compels you to entrust its management to
others, always disastrous, or cuts off your wages if a laborer, creates
large doctors, nurses and a host of other incidental bills, and occasions
a great variety of pecuniary losses. So measurably if any member of your
family is sick, especially a wife. How many, reader, if they and their
families had always been well, would have been rich who are now poor?
Considered which ever way you will, to preserve the health if it be good,
and if poor to regain and then preserve, should be the paramount business
of life, should take precedence over all others, and be our first great
concern. Come then readers one and all and let us make it our permanent
business to preserve and augment our health; let us allow ourselves to do
nothing that shall impair it; let us make and take time to do every thing
in our power to invigorate it.
HOW TO PROLONG LIFE.
The following should be carefully perused especially by the young. Are
there any among you my young friends, who desire to preserve your health
and cheerfulness through life, and at length arrive at a good old age? If
so listen to what I am about to tell you.
A considerable time ago I read in one of the newspapers of the day, that
a man had died near London at the advanced age of 110 years, that he had
never been ill, and that he had maintained through life, a cheerful,
happy temperament. I wrote immediately to London to know if in the man’s
treatment of himself there had been any peculiarity which had rendered
his life lengthened and so happy, and the answer I received was as
follows:
“He was unusually kind and obliging to every body; he quarreled with no
one; he ate and drank merely that he might not suffer from hunger or
thirst and never beyond what necessity required; from his earliest youth
he never allowed himself to be unemployed; these were the only means he
used.”
I took a note of this in a little book where I generally write all that
I am anxious to remember, and very soon afterwards I observed in another
paper that a woman had died near Stockholm at 115 years of age; that she
never was ill, and was always of a contented disposition. I immediately
wrote to Stockholm to learn what means the old woman had used for
preserving her health, and now read the answer:
“She always had a great love of cleanliness, and in the daily habit
of washing her face, hands and feet in cold water, and as often as
opportunity offered she bathed in the same.--She never ate or drank any
delicacies or sweet-meats, seldom coffee, seldom tea, and never wine.”
Of these likewise I took a note in my little book. Sometime after
this I read that near St. Petersburg, a man died who had enjoyed good
health until he was 120 years old. Again I took my pen and wrote to St.
Petersburg, and here is the answer:
“He was an early riser, and never slept beyond seven hours at a time;
he never was idle; he employed himself chiefly in the open air, and
particularly in his garden; whether he walked or sat in his chair he
never permitted himself to sit awry or in a bent posture, but was always
perfectly straight. The luxurious and effeminate habits of citizens he
held in contempt.”
After having read all this from my little book I said to myself: “you
will be a foolish man indeed not to profit by the example and experience
of these old people.” I then wrote out all that I had been able to
discover about these happy old people upon a card, which I suspended over
my writing desk, so that I might always have it before my eyes to remind
me what to do, and from what I should refrain. Every morning and evening
I read over the contents of my card and obliged myself to conform to its
rules.
And now my dear young readers, I can assure you on the word of an honest
man, that I am much happier and in better health than I used to be.
Formerly I had the headache every day and now I suffer scarcely once in
three or four months. Before I began these rules I hardly dare to venture
out in the rain or snow without catching cold. In former times a walk of
half an hour’s length fatigued and exhausted me, now I walk miles without
weariness. Imagine then the happiness I experience, for there are few
feelings so cheering to the spirits as those of constant good health and
vigor. But, alas! there is something in which I cannot imitate these
happy old people, and that is I have not been accustomed to all this from
my youth. Oh! that I were young again that I might imitate them in all
things; that I might be happy and long-lived as they were.
Little children who read this, you are the fortunate ones who are able
to adopt in perfection this kind of life. What then prevents your living
henceforward as healthful and happily as the old woman of Stockholm or as
long and useful as the old men of London and St. Petersburg.
LIQUID OPODELDOC.
Take ½ pint 95 per cent. alcohol, 1 ounce camphor, ½ pint turpentine;
dissolve the camphor in the alcohol; then add the turpentine. For
rheumatism, head ache, sore throat, old strains, swellings, cramps,
numbness, stiffness, weakness, pains in the joints, corns, slight burns,
frost bitten feet, &c.
DIRECTIONS FOR USE.
Rub it well on the part affected with your hand or a piece of muslin,
night and morning, and if convenient, at noon. In obstinate cases avoid
as much as possible exposure to a damp atmosphere, to the extremes of
heat and cold. Keep the feet dry and comfortable, and be temperate in
eating and drinking. For corns, lay a piece of flannel on them and
moisten occasionally with the opodeldoc, avoid tight shoes. Travellers
and families ought always to keep a bottle by them; it only requires a
trial to prove its efficacy; keep the bottle closely stopped. In some
cases of rheumatism and other affections, if a piece of flannel be worn
over the part, relief will be obtained sooner.
DR. WICKEY’S CHOLERA MEDICINE.
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