How to Live Longer;
The Gospel of Good Health.
-A. Simple Treatise Designed To
Correct tlie Large IDeatli Rate
.Ajmong tlie ]?eople Botli
In Oity and CJonntry.
BY
H. T. KEALING, A. M.,
Editor of the A. M. E. Review, Philadelphia
PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR.
Copyright 1905
HOW TO LIVE LONGER: THE GOSPEL
OF GOOD HEALTH.
Chapter Telling Why.
This is a plain talk by a man who sees hundreds of people
dying because they don't take enough care to live; who ob¬
serves that many a person thinks he needs a doctor when,
in fact, he needs a guardian; and who believes that fresh
air, pure water and proper food will prevent most diseases,
cure many, and cause none.
It has become the general custom to violate Nature's
laws at pleasure and then buy a bottle of patent medicines,
to correct the ills that result; and that, too, without hav¬
ing the least idea of the drugs composing these medicines,
or their effect upon the general system. You simply com¬
plain of being sick, and some silly friend tells you of
something that he took for relief when he was sick; you
rush to get it and take about half a bottle, when another
friend tells you of something else that is much better.
You get that also, and, in order not to lose the money
spent for the first bottle, you proceed to use first one and
then the other preparation, till a third friend tells you of
another remedy that he can recommend. You get that
also. By this time, not only is your body diseased, but
your imagination has become unhealthy, too, and you are
in danger of becoming a chronic medicine taster, trying
every thing you hear of and, for a litttle while, imagining
each one helps you. Remember, please, that all this time
you do not know what ails you, nor what the medicine you
are taking is composed of; you simply know that, when
you get up in the morning, you feel tired and unrefreshed;
that your tongue is coated; that your back is stiff, or aches;
3
that your head is dizzy; that you have a cough; that your
breath is bad; that you are constipated, or that you have
cramps.
THE PATENT MEDICINE FAD.
Nothing can convince the average man, under these cir¬
cumstances, that his liver, kidneys, heart, lungs, spleen, ap¬
pendix, intestines, blood and lymphatics are not all out of
order, and he is a clamoring applicant for any opiate, stim¬
ulant, purgative, alterative, diuretic or cardiac that he sees
advertised or hears recommended. He will drench himself
with Gump Root, Bile Buster, Kidney Candy, Tasteless
Tongue Tablets, Cough Controller, Pink Pancreatic Pills,
or Buncombe's Back-bending Belladonna Bandages, till he
is so sick that nothing but a little straight whiskey will
do him any good. Then, when the wakes up in the morn¬
ing, he will tell you that if he had not taken all of these
medicines he would have been dead long ago.
As a matter of fact, the poor fellow has been filling his
body with the most active poisons and deadly nerve de¬
stroyers, and is surely breaking down a naturally strong
system and committing slow suicide. In fact, if some other
person should dose him secretly with these same drugs,
and it was discovered after the victim's death, the doser
would be tried in the courts of the land, and probably
convicted for murder by the administration of slow poison,
poison.
If it did not lay him open to a suit for damages, the
writer could name a popular patent medicine that is gener¬
ally used for coughs, and which does stop them foi^ a
time; but it is because of the chloroform the remedy con¬
tains. The patient simply is chloroformed into a nerve
deadness that stops the irritation that causes one to
4
cough; j ust as soon as the effects wear off, the cough re¬
turns and the process must be repeated continually. The
cause of that cough is not touched; but the nerves are
being destroyed day by day, so that in a few years the
patient is a physical wreck and dies of consumption—all
caused by the very medicine he took to cure him.
The ministers of the Gospel are largely to blame for the
general and excessive use of patent medicines to cure trivial
and temporary ailments that are caused by indiscretions,
and that can be removed by simply obeying the dictates
of common sense in the matter of exposure, over-eating
and exercise. Every second or third preacher these days
carries around with him a bottle of medicine for his
throat, his stomach, or his back. If his own bottle hap¬
pens to be forgotten or become empty, he borrows a dose
of the medicine some brother preacher happens to have,
no matter whether it is the same kind or not; all that is
necessary is for the brother to tell him it is the best thing
in the world.
THE REAL TROUBLE.
Now, as a matter of fact, if you examine into the cause
of most of the afflictions of these men, what do you find?
Why, that they are constantly traveling and overloading
their stomachs with "big dinners" consisting of chicken,
beef or pork, and sometimes all three; rich salads, which
the Southern cook knows so well how to prepare; deviled
crabs and' lobsters; cucumbers and cabbage; peas and
potatoes; hard-scrambled eggs; beets and butter-beans;
pickles and preserves; then pies—rhubarb pies, mince pies,
apple pies, peach pies, green grape pies, blackberry pies,
strawberry pies, lemon pies; then cakes—angel cake, devil
cake, silver cake, gold cake, fruit cake, pound cake, sponge
5
cake, bad cake, sad cake and glad cake; then ice cream—
vanilla, chocolate, lemon and strawberry; then nuts—hickory
nuts, hazel nuts, chestnuts, walnuts, pecans and butternuts;
then final coffee to go on top of iced lemonade or ice
water.
When this mass of mess has been crowded in, the good
brother doses awhile in the parlor or porch in a boa-
constrictor stupor, and finally asks for a place to lie down.
There he falls into a heavy slumber which interferes with
the work of digestion he has just put upon the poor stom¬
ach. At last, compelled by the fact that the hour to
preach has arrived, he arises, dull, heavy and headachey,
and enters the pulpit a sinner before God from gluttony.
WORSE AND WORSE.
Notwithstanding his deplorable physical condition, the
minister feels that he must preach a big sermon to meet the
expectations of the people, and so for an hour, sometimes
more, he labors with great physical exertion to sustain his
reputation for eloquence and depth. He closes bathed in
perspiration, becomes chilled and stiff on sitting down, and
soon begins to feel ill. Meanwhile, the great mass of food
he ate is lying in his stomach undigested and fermenting
because the blood has all been called away from stomach
to the brain and other parts of the body to enable them
to stand the strain of the sermon. Of course, the man
becomes sick, but who is to blame? and how did it co»r§
about? Instead of resorting to medicine to tone up the
system and prevent a return of the trouble, is it not clear
that if the man will have more care as to what he eats
and how he acts after eating, he will have no further
trouble of that kind? Most assuredly he will have cramps
and colds and backaches as long as he is so foolish as
6
to violate all the simplest laws of his being. What are
nerves for if they do not resent such treatment?
STILL WORSE.
But is that all ? Unfortunately, no; our preacher goes
home and goes to bed in a little room in which eyery
window and door is shut and locked as tight as a trunk,
so that not a whiff of the air as God made it can get in.
If you want to open a window to get a little air, he ob¬
jects on the ground that he can't stand the draughts;
yet he stands the poison of air breathed over and over
again till the carbonic acid is so thick that, figuratively
speaking, you can almost crumble it betweeen your fingers.
All the oxygen, the ingredient that the lungs need to burn
the blood rich and red, is used up in the early part of
the night, and the rest of the time till morning the
poisoned mixture, becoming ranker and ranker, must be
used over and over again. The same man would be highly
insulted if you told him to save his saliva for repeated
use; yet that would be far less unhealthy than the other
practice. No person who does not get fresh outdoor air
constantly in large quantities can expect to live out half his
days.
It is all very well to say that every one will live till his
time comes. You need to remember that your time is like
India-rubber, you can stretch it or shorten it by the amount
of pull you put upon it. Doubtless you have heard of a
sliding scale of wages, in which the price of labor rises or
falls in accord with the rise and fall of other things. Well,
it is just so with your life; it can be shortened either by a
bullet or a billet, and sometimes by a biscuit: or it can be
prolonged "to your full three score and ten, if you observe
the laws of health.
7
My friend, the salvation of the body is closely bound up
with the salvation of the soul, and it may be said, without
sacrilege, of the first as well as of the second: "How shall
ye escape, if ye neglect so great salvation.'"
THE RELATION OF AIR TO HEALTH.
The lungs, the main organs of respiration, need pure air
in order that the blood may be cleansed of its load of
poisonous matter collected in its circulation through the
body. Oxygen is the part of the air that the lungs need
to burn up these impurities in the blood.
THE NEED OF THIS BOOK.
The different statistics gathered from time to time agree
on one fact—that the death rate of the Negro is much
greater than that of the Caucasian. This can only come
from two things: either the Negro is weaker physically
than the Caucasian; or the health conditions around the
former are inferior to those around the latter. That the
Negro is not constitutionally weak is shown by the fact
that his birth rate is higher than the Caucasian's, and by
the further fact that he does a class of taxing labor in the
severe Southern climate that no white man, native or
foreign, has ever been able to do equally well.
On the other hand, investigation has shown that the
health conditions surrounding the Negro are almost uni¬
formly inferior to those of the other class and that among
Negroes themselves the death rate varies from small to
great directly as sanitation and regularity improve or
deteriorate.
It is well for the race that such is the case; for consti¬
tutional weakness, after all these years of acclimatization in
America, would mean that the Negro is doomed to exter¬
mination ; but a death rate due to unhealthy habits or sur-
8
roundings is reducible to the normal when improved en¬
vironments are provided and intelligent conformity to
Nature's laws is established. We know that our largest
death rate is found in the large cities where our poverty
and the white man's prejudice compel us to huddle to¬
gether in damp, bacteria-infected shanties in back alleys
ornamented with dead cats and enlivened by active rats. In
all such cases the cause of disease lies in the lack of proper
ventilation, overcrowding, leaking sewage and germ-covered
food. The advice needed for this class is quite different
from that required to improve the health of the second
class of which we now speak.
There is a very large body of colored population, found
mainly in the South, living in the country, whose health
troubles come, not so much from crowding or lack of ven¬
tilation in the home, as from exposure and insufficient pro¬
tection against draughts and dampness, and from ignorance
in selecting and cooking the food eaten. The vast sections
around the Mississippi river, called the Mississippi Bot¬
toms, and the low' valleys along the Carolina coasts are
typical regions. Here, too, will be found the great malaria
beds. These people live in cabins built of logs, mud-
daubed, without glass windows and with floors so open
that the writer has known children to step through and
bark their shins. Sometimes these cabins are built of.
rough lumber instead of logs. The window openings are
glassless and fitted with a wooden shutter to keep out
some of the cold, but when the shutter is closed the light is
shut out; for the only openings through which it can
come are these windows and the single door. Consequently,
when the residents desire light, they must open the door
and w indows and let in the cold also; and when they desire
protection against the cold, they must close these openings
9
and shut out the light. And it must not be forgotten,
either, that the open floor goes on with its work of death
whatever you do.
These are the people who need this book most, and it is
mainly for them that it is written. There is nothing tech¬
nical about it; nothing learned in it, nor anything re¬
quiring learning to understand it. The school boy can use
it as a guide, or read it to his illiterate parent as a warning
without requiring an interpreter or a dictionary. The
best proof that a doctor is not needed to explain anything
here set down, is that a doctor did not write a word of it.
It is all by a common man to common men about common
things, and as such requires only a common understanding;
but for all that it is on a subject meaning life or death.
CHAPTER TELLING HOW LONG WE
OUGHT TO LIVE.
"More life, and fuller, that I want."
Science and the Bible agree substantially that the
normal life of an average man ought to be about three
score and ten, or seventy years; and the fact that so many
do not.live to that age is a pretty fair index to the number
who do not take care of themselves, or whose fathers did
not.
There is' a law governing the life and death of man; it
is this law which makes it possible for life insurance com¬
panies to take risks and become wealthy in doing so. Dr.
Southwood Smith says, "Mortality is subject to a law, the
operation of which is as regular as that of gravitation."
This law has been discovered by long years of close and
continued observation among all classes of civilized people
10
in every land. The study of this subject began over two
hundred years ago, and has continued until to-day, when
a man can figure as accurately upon his expectation of life
as he can upon his expectation of reaching a given destina¬
tion on the train at a given time when he holds the time-
card in his hand.
It will be of interest and advantage to our readers to
state a few basic principles and facts concerning the natural
expectation of life for people of different ages and employ¬
ments, as revealed by a scientific study of vital statistics.
SOME ESTABLISHED FACTS.
The experience of the world seems to agree upon the fol¬
lowing as being generally true:
People live longer in the country than in cities.
Women have a better chance of life than men.
The first five years of life shozv the greatest death rate.
Outdoor labor is healthier than indoor labor.
Farm laborers and carpenters live longer than those en¬
gaged in other trades.
People who drink alcoholic stimulants die sooner than
abstainers; those who drink spirits die sooner than beer-
drinkers; those who drink both spirits and beer die sooner
than those who drink only one of these.
Low altitudes are less healthy than high.
The deaths rate among Negroes greatly exceeds that
among Caucasians.
EXPECTATION OF LIFE.
The expression, "Expectation of life," is used by insur¬
ance men to indicate how long any person of a given age
may reasonably expect to live. Experience shows that this
period is somewhat longer in the United States than in
England.
ii
The table below shows how long one ought to live after
reaching the ages indicated in the first column.
Table Showing Expectation of Life During Each Ten Year
Period from the Ages of Ten to Seventy Years.
AGE. TIME TO LIVE.
From 10 to 20 , 45.8 years.
From 20 to 30 39.1 years.
From 30 to 40 32.1 years.
From 40 to 50 24.9 years.
From 50 to 60 17.7 years.
From 60 to 70 11.4 years.
The figures in the above table are ten year averages made
by the writer from the American Experience Tables of
Mortality, and may be relied on as being scientific and ex¬
act, embodying, as they do, the experience of seventeen
of the oldest and largest insurance companies in America.
With these figures as a guide as to how many years we
are rightly entitled to before we go hence, we may con¬
clude that every death short of the expected period is some¬
body's misdemeanor, if not somebody's crime. The respon¬
sibility may not be in the person dying, for the entail¬
ment of physical weakness from ancestors must not be
forgotten; but it is more often the fault of the sufferer
himself.
Let us now consider what things are most necessary to
the prolongation of life and how they are to be used to bring
health and beauty to a people who have managed to exist
without a saving knowledge of them.
CHAPTER TELLING THE ELEMENTS OF
HEALTHY LIFE.
"That Is thy charge; then to the elements!"
There are seven things absolutely essential if a man
wants to live long—seven physical things; one, we might
say, if the reader would pardon the fancifulness of it, for
12
each decade of the seventy years allotted to life. They are:
air; sunlight; water; food; dress; housing; exercise.
People partially reprived of one or more of them may
linger, but can hardly be said to live in the full and robust
sense.
The vital functions of the human body are Respiration,
Circulation, Digestion, and Excretion; and the proper exer¬
cise of these functions depends upon the wise application
of the seven elements just named.
Out-door air, or air as it exists in a natural state, is
composed of nitrogen, oxygen, and a small amount of car¬
bonic acid. By measurement, there are about 4 parts of
nitrogen to 1 part of oxygen; to put it differently, in 5
pints of air there are 4 pints of nitrogen and 1 pint of
oxygen.
Oxygen is the gas in nature which causes wood to burn,
iron to rust and vegetable matter to decay. All these pro¬
cesses are really burning, only rusting and decaying are so
much slower than what we ordinarily call burning that we
do not readily see the identity.
Now, when the blood goes through the body, it gathers
up all the waste and dead matter in the veins and brings
it back to the lungs to be burned up, just as the garbage
of a city is disposed of; it is the work of the oxygen of
the air, which meets the impure blood in the lungs, to burn
up the impurities, changing the blood from a black muddy
stream to a bright red life-giving current. But the result
of this purifying of the blood is the formation of carbonic
acid, a gas which is a deadly poison. It is thrown off
every time we breathe out the air we have taken into the
lungs.
Suppose a person should be confined in an air-tight room
full of good fresh air; -with every breath taken in' he
13
would use up a lungful of oxygen, and with every breath
he expelled he would throw back into the room a certain
amount of carbonic acid. This would continue till all the
pure oxygen was gone and the room was full of the
poisonous gas. What would then happen? Why, he would
die in a few minutes. Indeed, that is precisely what hap¬
pened in the Black Hole of Calcutta, in 1756, when 146
English prisoners were cast into a room only twenty feet
square, cut off from outside air, and left all night. When
the prison was opened next morning all but twenty-three
were dead, and the survivors were saved with great diffi¬
culty. Not long ago we read of the death of some un¬
fortunate Frenchmen caught in a submerged submarine
boat, because they used up the supply of oxygen in the
air-chamber before the boat could be raised. In a small
way, this is exactly what tends to happens every time
people shut themselves up in an unventilated bed room
and sleep there all night; the oxygen is used up gradually
and replaced by carbonic acid till finally every breath, in¬
stead of refreshing the body znd purifying the blood,
actually poisons the system, and the individual awakes in a
worse condition than when he went to bed. He feels jaded
and stupid, but blindly attributes it to overwork or nervous
trouble. The writer has frequently seen four men, and
sometimes six, occupy a small, unventilated bedroom all
night, when the odor, to one entering from the outer air,
was so offensive that the wonder was how the occupants
could be unaware of the staleness. If, now, we consider
that this consumption of oxygen is greatly hastened and
aggravated by hot stoves in winter and gas or kerosene
lamps at night, the wonder is that more people do not be¬
come ill and die than is the case. 1
14
CONSUMPTION MAINLY FROM BAD AIR.
Every person has heard the remark that, in slavery, con¬
sumption was almost unknown among Negroes; and every
person knows that to-day it is the most common and fatal
ailment among them. Do you suppose Mr. Lincoln gave
out the disease by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation;
No? Well, what has caused the change? Simply this: in
slavery, the Negro was out in the open air from two-
thirds to three-fourths of his time, working in the fields;
at night he slept in open cabins which freely admitted
the night air that some people are so afraid of now. To¬
day, he houses himself in half of his time, either in some
stuffy little house or in some sealed up crowded church or
dance hall, cutting off God's pure air as much as possible
and breathing the breath of another man instead of the
breath of heaven.
Wouldn't you think it a disgusting proposition if some
friend should offer you meat that he had already chewed?
or some of his saliva to moisten your food- or his tooth
brush to clean your teeth? Horrible thought! you cry;
and yet you use his second-hand air with much pride and
many bows. You joyfully make your lungs an orphan asylum
for his cast-off germs of consumption, and wonder why the
Lord cuts off your life of usefulness while even the alligator
piles up fifty or sixty years of existence. The explanation,
in all reverence, is that God can't help you half so much
as you can help yourself. He made carbonic acid poison¬
ous, and if you insist on breathing it instead of the oxygen
He gave you to breathe, you must be poisoned. It is a
question of free agency.
If proof that consumption is caused by bad air were neces¬
sary, it is found in the fact that the leading hospitals of
the world are using the open-air treatment, compelling
15
patients to live out-of-doors day and 'night; the result is
that fifty per cent, of the cases, if not too far gone, get
well. Why wait, we ask, till we take the disease by breath¬
ing impure air, and then go to a hospital to get cured by
the very fresh air that is all around us at the old home?
Then again, how many of the poor consumptives are able
to go to a hospital up in the Adirondack Mountains to get
cured, even if they knew about it, which most of them do
not? Better stay cured by not getting it.
WHAT IS PURE AIR?
Pure air contains about 4 parts of nitrogen, 1 part of
oxygen, and a small fractional part of carbonic acid, to¬
gether with traces of other substances too small to be noted
here. It would take 2,500 parts of air in the natural state
to contain 1 part of carbonic acid, which, as we have
said, is poisonous to animal life. This quantity is so small
that it is not injurious to the health; but where there is
more than one part of carbonic acid to 500 parts of air,
it is very unhealthy. Now, the amount of this gas in each
breath we throw out of our lungs is over 21 parts in 500,
enough to kill anything that breathes. To render this
air harmless, it must be weakened by being mixed with
pure air enough to bring it down to 1 part of carbonic
acid to 500, or more, parts of air. This is accomplished
by ventilation.
HOW BREATHING POISONS THE AIR OF A ROOM.
A man takes about 18 breaths a minute. In each breath
he throws out about 2-3 of a pint of poisoned air. This
amounts to \}/2 gallons per minute, or 90 gallons per hour—
enough to render unfit for use more than twenty times that
much pure air, or 1800 gallons.
A bedroom xo feet long, 10 feet wide and xo feet high
contains 7,500 gallons of air. Now if you will divide this
16
7,50° gallons that the room contains by the i,8oo gallons
tainted every hour "by one man's breathing, you find that in
4 hours the whole roomful has been tainted. In 8 hours,
supposing the man goes to bed at ten and rises at six, he
will have breathed every gallon of air in that room over
twice. That is bad enough; but when four men sleep in
the room, as is not uncommon, each one must breathe this
poison over and over eight times. Surely a person must
be a pretty strong fellow to stand much of such living with¬
out getting a free ticket to the Promised Land.
A FEW THINGS TO REMEMBER.
Remember that oxygen is life; carbonic acid is death.
Oxygen comes from the outdoor air; carbonic acid from
indoor air.
The fuller the breath you take, the more oxygen you get.
Closing up your room opens up your grave.
Oxygen kills consumption; carbonic acid kills men.
Always keep at least one window open, night and day.
You cannot have a draught through one opening, so don't
fear.
Consumption comes from a living germ call d a microbe.
It is found in the spittle. If a consumptive spits on the
floor and it dries, the microbes will float about the room
and breached in by some other person, giving that person
consumption. Therefore do not spit on the floor.
Take more care and less medicine.
Cold weather is no excuse for keeping out fresh air.
Have your roof and floor tight even if your windows
rattle.
The Japanese put on thick coats and open their houses
in cold weather. They are a very healthy people—at least
the Russians think so.
17
CHAPTER ON SUNSHINE.
"Get out of my sunshine.'"'
The story of Diogenes is over two thousand years old and
certainly the saying attributed to him as used at the head
of this chapter is too generally known to be novel; but
the writer finds sufficient excuse for bringing the old
philosopher into a twentieth century audience in the fact
that he was the Apostle of Sunshine—not cheerfulness—
figurative sunshine—but literal sunshine—the very thing
we are to consider in this chapter.
His father was a defaulting banker and he himself a
rowdy, or man about town, a combination not unknown at
the present day. But when Mr. Diogenes^, Sr., was sent to
jail, his son quit his meanness, stopped sleeping all day
and eating all night, and took to regular habits and ~m;
baths in a tub.
He was the Booker T. Washington of his day, for he
was a practical man, holding that nothing was good that
could not be used, and nothing useful that did not come
in its proper time and order. He put sensible living be
fore literature, money before music, and practice before
precept. But best of all, and the thing which gives him
a right to a place in this little book where space is so
scarce, is the fact that he took good care of his health from
the time he reformed tifl he died ninety years of age. He
wore coarse clothes and ate plain food; slept on the ground
in the open air; rolled in the hot sand in summer, and
hugged a snow man in winter.
He lived in his tub, which is the smallest one-room cabin
on record and the healthiest, for it did not interfere with
his oxygen or his sunshine. It may add interest to his
character to know that he was a slave; but so great wa«
18
his spirit that when he was put up for sale, he said, "Sell
me to some one who needs a master."
The story goes that Alexander the Great, having heard
of Diogenes, visited him as he sat in his tub-house taking
his usual sun-bath, and asked:
"What can I do for you, Diogenes?"
"Get out of my sunshine," was the reply.
This brings us to our subject—Sunlight.
SUNLIGHT AND LIFE.
Long ago, the value of sunlight was so fully recognized
in England that the law prevented one man from building
his house in such a position as to cut off another man's
light. It is a pity that such a law has not prevailed all
these years in our great American cities where skyscrapers
and sunless tenement houses have doomed thousands to
darkness and death. In the last few years New York has
passed a law compelling every house builder to give each
room in his building access to outside light and air; but
think of the untold thousands who have died before the
stupid lawmakers saw the point!
It would not be true, of course, to say that sunlight is
just as necessary to life as air, for people have existed for
years in unlighted dungeons; but it certainly is true that
sunlight is necessary to a full term of healthy living, and
that many of the diseases men suffer come from the
absence of this elemnt. Every one will recall that the
death of Toussaint L'Ouverture was caused by taking him
from the accustomed light and air of his beloved Hayti
and casting him into the dark dungeon of Anjou. Others
have lived in such dungeons for many years, in spite of
being cut off from the light, but their pitiful pallor, weak¬
ness and helplessness when released have shown how' much
of health, vigor and happiness depends upon the sun.
19
THE NATURE OF SUNLIGHT.
Sunlight is the only perfect light. Nothing looks the
same when seen by such artificial illumination as comes
from candles, kerosene lamps or electric lights as it does
when the sun shines on it. You well know that the real
color of a piece of cloth cannot be told by artificial light,
you always want to examine it by day.
Then again, you know how well it makes the sick man
feel when he can sit in the sun aw hile; you never saw him
get any such benefit from sitting under the lamp-light. A
plant deprived of sunlight will die; grass under a plank
will turn white; potatoes in a cellar will grow towards the
window where the light is. Taking the things of common
experience, then, even if the matter had never "been studied
scientifically, we should reach the conclusion that sunlight
was necessary to the best development of all kinds of life,
vegetable and animal. But science comes and clinches this
conclusion by revealing scores of hidden facts proving the
same thing.
The sun has three main uses": it gives light, supplies
heat and acts chemically. All of these functions are im¬
portant and, in tact, we cannot definitely tell the dividing
line; but we do know this: that in a ray of white light
composed of the seven colors, the quality that makes it
possible to take photographs is found next to the violet
color. These photographic rays are called actinic or chem¬
ical. These rays, or for all that we know, some other un¬
discovered ones, also exert an influence over both animal
and vegetable life, as we shall show. We speak of other
undiscovered rays because scientific men are adding to our
knowledge on this subject every day. It was only a few'
years ago that Professor Roentgen astonished the world
by discovering a ray capable of piercing through flesh and
20
revealing the bones in a living body, or enabling us to see
the money in a closed purse by looking through the skin
of which the purse was made. No one, therefore, can be
sure that we know all that is to be known about light; but
we may, at least, seek to inform ourselves on what is al¬
ready known, especially as it relates to our health and long
life.
Low, damp places without sunlight produce a vegetable
growth of an inferior kind, such as mildew, seen on clothes;
mould, seen on old shoes in damp dark places; mushrooms,
found in wet pieces of soil where it is low and shaded,
and other species more or less well known. Altogether,
there are said to be nearly, or quite, 30,000 different
varieties of this kind of low vegetation. The name fungi has
been given to them. Most of them flourish in dark places. You
know that common blue mould, as seen on old bread and
old shoes, is found in dark places like pantries and cellars;
and this may be taken as typical of the habits of most kinds
of fungi. Everybody recognizes that places where mould
and mildew are found are unhealthy, and that the first
thing to do is to let in the sunlight. This alone win kin
the fungi and make the place healthy. Stick a pin there,
if you please.
There is another class of fungus life called by the doc¬
tors bacteria; they differ from the kind we have just men¬
tioned in attacking living animals. They are the cause of
most of the diseases men have, such as intermittent fever,
malaria, consumption, pneumonia, yellow' fever, cholera,
small-pox, skin diseases and lockjaw. It is impossible to
escape bacteria, for they are found everywhere. The air is
■full of them, we take them in by the million every time
we breathe; and the particles of dust that rise when a
room is swept are crowded with them.
21
Some of these bacteria are our friends; they make us
healthy, and we could not live without them, but those that
interest us now are those that give rise: to sickness.
Wherever there is a piece of sour or fermenting food, or
any decaying substance, there you will find the kind that
are enemies to health. Usually, in speaking of the bacteria
that cause disease, we call them microbes, because they are
so small.
A natural question would be, since these disease germs
are found everywhere, how is it that everybody does not
contract some of the diseases they cause ? Simply because
these germs cannot live in any body whose system is in
good order. One man will breathe in the germs of con¬
sumption and take the disease; another will breathe them
in, but he will not be affected. That is because, in the
first man's case, his physical condition was poor and the
microbes attacked the weakest part; in the case of the
second man, the physical condition was so perfect that the
germ could find no nourishment and therefore died. In
this fact lies the secret of protection.
WHERE SUNLIGHT COMES IN AS A REMEDY.
Experience has taught us that high surroundings with
plenty of sunlight are the greatest enemies fungi, bacteria,
or microbes (call them by any of these names) can have.
Just as mould breeds in the dark and damp, so will it die
if you throw open your closets and cellars to the sun. On
a mountain or a high plateau, you find plenty of sunshine
and there you get rid of malaria, because the germ loves
darkness rather than light. Physicians, in compelling con¬
sumptive patients to take outdoor air, make them take
it on the sunny side of the house. Heavily timbered lands
where the sun' cannot reach the soil are nearly always
sickly, especially if the altitude is low; but where the
22
timber is cut away so that the light can shine in, these
same places become healthy. While some microbes thrive
in the light, the dangerous ones, as a rule, grow best in
darkness. It is not clear, then, that the motto of the
health-seeker should be, "Turn on the light and turn up the
microbe ?"
But there is another reason for having plenty of sunlight
in the home besides the fact that it destroys the bacteria
that produce disease; it has a tonic effect upon our bodies
themselves, builds them up, gives a healthy tone to all of
our organs and prepares the system to resist and throw
off any germs that naturally attack a weakened or de¬
bilitated body. Certain chemical effects are produced in
our bodies by sunlight as surely as changes take place
in the vegetable world by the same agency. You can no
more raise a robust, red-blooded child out of the light
than you can a strong green potato vine. Some of those ac¬
tinic rays that take photographs or make X-ray pictures, or
make freckles in the pug-nosed country boy, or tan the
skin of the farmer, act also on the vital organs and aid
digestion, circulation, respiration and excretion, both
through the skin and the internal organs.
A FEW THINGS TO REMEMBER.
Nothing is a substitute for sunlight.
Ver/ few disease microbes can live in the light.
In ;t ray of sunlight are found the following powers: to
enable us to see; to give color to leaves, fruits and flowers;
to at.t chemically on mineral and animal substances; to
produce electric currents; to stimulate the body; to throw
off dead matter faster; to give added tone and strength to
the whole system.
Never live in a house that has dark rooms.
A house dry and dusty beats one damp and musty.
23
Mould and mildew are advertisements for an under¬
taker.
A low shady lot makes a good burial spot.
Outdoor work is the healthiest.
Sunlight was all Methuselah had, and he became 969
years old.
Wherever moss and live-oaks grow look out for malaria.
Sun your bedding once a week at least; it won't get sun¬
burned.
Clothes that are not washable ought to go out on the
clothes-line as often as the underwear.
The sun may fade your carpets, but the sun's absence
will fade you—take your choice.
CHAPTER ON WATER.
"Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink."
We now come to the third of the seven essential things
necessary to long and strong life—water.
Most people think that if water is clear, it is pure; but
there never was a greater mistake. Did you ever stop to
consider that water with strychnine in it is clear? That
ought to dispose of the idea that the way to tell good
drinking water is to see that it is clear. The mistake is a
natural one, however, for all pure water is clear; hence
people ordinarily suppose that all clear water is pure, which
mistake has led to many a death.
WATER AND LIFE.
There are two distinct classes to be reached in this dis¬
cussion of water and its relation to life and health: (1)
those living in cities and dependent upon water works
systems for their supplies; (2) those living in the country
and drawing their supply from wells, springs, lakes, brooks
and rivers.
24
Water for ordinary use should have no color, no smell
and no taste. It may not be pure even then, but it cannot
be pure without these qualities. Rain-water caught after
a shower has fallen for some time is as pure as water
can be found in Nature. It contains air and traces of am¬
monia. The first water that falls in a rain washes the dust
and impurities out of the air, and is consequently not fit to
drink. In cities like New Orleans, dependent upon rain-water
caught in large tanks or cisterns and kept for drinking pur¬
poses, the first water that falls should not be allowed to run
into the cistern. Even with that precaution, mosquitoes and
various kinds of organic matter render the water unfit to
drink, besides supplying breeding places for the little
pests that spread malaria and yellow fever.
But most cities depend for their water supply on rivers
or great lakes. Where the latter is true, the problem of
supplying pure water is not so difficult, for lake water, if
taken far enough from the shore, is fairly pure; but cities
obliged to draw their water supply from rivers have a very
serious question to deal with, owing to the pollution of
the stream above them "by the drainage of the sewage and
refuse of other cities into the river. New York City has
been fortunate in having the Croton river as its source of
Supply, the water of that stream being unusually pure and
kept carefully guarded from pollution.
On the other hand, Philadelphia draws its water from
the Schuylkill whose banks are lined with numerous towns
and cities which pour their refuse and effete matter into
that stream to be pumped into the homes of the unfortun¬
ate dwellers in the Quaker City. The result, as might have
been expected, has been a heavy death rate, especially from
typhoid fever and other enteric ailments. It is no uncom¬
mon thing for 120 deaths from typhoid fever to be re-
25
ported per week. These cases are directly traceable to the
water. The city is now building filters, and wherever one
has been completed and put in use, the health of the sec¬
tion of the city served by it has been greatly improved.
It is authoritatively stated that typhoid deaths in the city
of Munich were reduced from 21 to 6.4 per 10,000 persons
by filtration; Berlin from 9.2 to 2.9 per 10,000; while Al¬
bany, New York, has diminished its typhoid death rate by
75 per cent, by the same means.
A striking proof of the part water plays in the matter of
health was given in the city of London during the cholera
epidemic of 1853-4. There were two water companies sup¬
plying the city at the time, one drawing its supply from
the upper portion of the Thames river, where it was com¬
paratively pure; the other drawing its supply from the
lower portion of the same river, where the water was de¬
filed by the sewage of many cities. Four thousand people
died of the epidemic. When an investigation was made, it
was found that among those using the foul water, 130
deaths occurred among every 10,000 persons, while only 37
deaths occurred among every 10,000 persons who used the
purer w'ater; in other words, where impure water was used
there were three and a half times as many deaths as oc¬
curred when better was provided.
Of course, the fact is recognized that in cities having
water works, the individual citizen has no control of the
kind and quality of water furnished. If it is pure and good
he may count himself fortunate and be grateful; if it is
polluted and unhealthy, the best he can do is to adopt some
means of purification. Of this we shall speak later.
WATER AND LIFE IN THE COUNTRY.
In the country it is different. There the people get
their water from wells, springs, brooks or lakes. It is true
26
that water from these sources is not so apt to be poisoned
by organic matter coming from human sources, but there
are other impurities to be guarded against. For instance,
wells left open to falling leaves, insects, dust and growing
plants speedily become unfit for use; so likewise is it with
springs which are not protected. Brooks and lakes are
subject to this contamination also, and to the additional
one of the washings of the surface during rains, and the
droppings of animals frequenting them.
We have spoken of organic impurities several times. It
may be well to explain that by these are meant those com¬
ing from decaying animal er vegetable matter, such as
dead leaves, dead animals and all kinds of excretion. There
is also another kind of impurity called mineral which must
be guarded against in drinking water. This consists of
the different salts and acids which water is likely to hold
dissolved in it, such as lime, soda, potash, magnesia, etc.
Every housekeeper knows what it is to have hard water.
Well, this hardness is caused by lime in the water. The
lime comes from the earth through which the water runs,
especially if it be chalky earth. Such water is easily known
by the fact that it will not lather, and, on being boiled,
leaves a white crust of lime on the inside of the tea-kettle.
It is injurious to the health in two ways: first, when taken
as a drink, it tends to produce gravel, or stone in the
bladder; and when used in cooking, it is combined with the
food and is generally supposed to make the bones over
brittle, leading to stiffness, withering and early old age.
Water from wells and springs is usually hard owing to its
coming from the interior of the earth where these mineral
beds are.
Where people draw their drinking supply from standing
ponds or lakes, mineral impurities are less, but organic
27
contamination is greater owing" to the main water feed
coVning from surface drainage. The result is an infusion
of dead leaves, animal offal, insects, dead bodies, garbage
and suspended sand, mud and clay. It is really a cold
tea of death, getting stronger and deadlier eyery day it
stands. Aside from its danger as a drinking fluid, it fur¬
nishes a breeding place for the mosquito whose bite pro¬
duces fever and ague. The water of brooks, rivers not
artificially polluted, and other bodies of running water is
safer to use than any kind of standing surface water; for
it is found that moving water tends to purify itself by bring¬
ing the impurities constantly to the surface where the sun¬
light and the oxygen decompose them into harmless sub¬
stances. When Chicago built the great canal which turned
the filth of the Chicago river into the Mississippi, the
people of St. Louis strongly objected on the ground that
it would render the water unfit for use; but it was soon
seen that by the time the water reached St. Louis, the
constant motion and exposure to air and light had purified
it so that it was about as pure as before the canal was
built. At the. same time Chicago's typhoid death rate de¬
creased from 15.9 to 4.6 per 10,000 inhabitants. Where the
stream is shallow, the purifying process goes on more
rapidly. Other things being equal therefore, a running
source of water supply is to be preferred to a standing one.
THE NECESSITY OF WATER TO LIFE.
If water were a luxury, it would be safer to do without
it, since it is so difficult to get it pure; but it is a necessity
for which there is no substitute; so, if we cannot get it
pure, we must do the best we can to make it so.
Our bodies are chiefly water; in a man weighing 154
pounds, n6 pounds are water, the other 38 pounds being
divided as follows: 24 pounds of flesh and fat, and 14
28
pounds of bone; or, to state it differently, 28 pounds are
organic matter and 10 pounds are mineral matter. The
blood weighs 20 pounds, 15 2-3 pounds of which are water.
It requires a certain amount of water taken into the system
each day to furnish the liquid elements needed to make up
our bodies and dissolve the solid food we take in. To
drink too little means liver and kidney troubles; to drink
enough when it is not pure may mean typhoid fever,,
diarrhoea, dysentery, diphtheria or malignant sore throat.
This brings us to the practical question, how shall we get
pure water to drink?
The first thing to do is to have the water analyzed, hut
as very few people, especially those living in the country
will take the trouble to do this, the following suggestions
are made:
1. Wherever there is cause to suspect the purity of the
water, or where it is very hard, boil it. This will throw-
down the lime, kill injurious animal life and render harm¬
less decaying organic substances. The boiled water must
be kept covered, or it will absorb impurities again from the
air. For the same reason, water should never be kept
standing in a bedroom, as it takes up the effete matter we
breathe out and becomes unfit for use.
2. Filter it. If you cannot buy a filter, you can make one-
by placing in a vessel alternate layers of sand and charcoal'
through which the water is allowed to seep and flow' out.
This will catch all mud, floating particles and mechanical'
adulterations, leaving the water clear and free from every
thing except the minerals that have been dissolved, and
these are not the things that do the most harm. Filtration
is the method now being used in most of the great cities
to purify their water.
3. Allow the water to settle. This is done by permitting:
29
it to remain perfectly still for an hour or two till all sand,
clay and chalky substances fall to the bottom. The clear
water can then be drawn or dipped carefully from the top
for use. A little powdered alum will assist in settling the
water.
The first two of these methods are the best, and, if used
regularly, will do much to keep the family healthy.
BATHING.
So far, we have said nothing about bathing, for its neces¬
sity is so well known that it ought not to need mention
but for the purpose of making up the record, we do say:
bathe. Whether in hot water or cold water, hard water
or soft water, salt water or fresh water, clear water or
muddy water, tub water or river water, bathe.
It is no use to tell the average farmer to bathe once a
day, especially in winter, for he will not do it; but any
man who will not bathe at least twice a week, ought to have
the good grace to become a hermit so as to have a monopoly
of his own redolence.
The politeness of bathing lies in our neighbor's nose;
the philosophy of it lies in our own health, since it keeps
the pores of the skin open to assist the lungs in throwing
off the waste matter of the body. So important is this office
of the skin that if a body be covered with varnish so as
to stop up all the pores, the person will die. Not only
does the skin cast off perspiration and oily matter, but it
throw's off carbonic acid also, thus doing' a part of the
work of the lungs. Bathing keeps it free to do this.
If you are to build a house, be sure to have a bathroom
in it. It is more important than the parlor.
THINGS TO REMEMBER.
All clear water is not pure.
The bedroom is no place for drinking water to be kept.
3°
Hard water is not healthy.
Rain water towards the end of a shower is the purest ob¬
tainable in Nature.
Boiling purifies water by killing living germs.
Filtering purifies water by catching all undissolved par¬
ticles.
Settling purifies water by removing the particles too
heavy to float.
Wells and springs should be covered.
Wherever there is a case of typhoid fever or of diph¬
theria, lay the blame on the water.
Sometimes the impurity comes from ice put into the
water.
Wells near barnyards, cemeteries, water closets and
trash piles are dangerous, no matter how .clear or cold the
water.
CHAPTER ON FOOD.
"Upon what meat doth this Caesar feed?"
The ancients thought that the stomach was the seat of
the soul and of the affections, and even to-day it is a
common saying that the best way to reach a man's heart is
through his stomach. The writer does not subscribe to
either of these opinions, but one thing is certain: the
stomach is the seat of most of man's physical troubles. We
ought to have a good deal of sympathy for the dyspeptic
who declared he couldn't see how a cow could be so kind
arid contented with four stomachs, when he was as cross as
a bear with only one. We are going to examine into that
matter right now.
FOOD AND LIFE.
The stomach is for holding food, and food is for impart-
3i
ing strength, health and life to man. Where it does not do
so something is wrong.
The amount of benefit derived from eating depends upon
three things: the kind of food, the way it is cooked, the
stomach receiving it.
In considering the kind of food, it is necessary to remem¬
ber that there are about thirteen elements in the human
body which must be supplied by the food we eat. They are
carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulphur,
chlorine, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron and
fluorine. If we fail to use food containing these elements
and all of them, to that extent we starve the body.
Speaking in a general way, food may be divided into two
classes: that which contains nitrogen, called nitrogenous,
and that which contains no nitrogen, called non-nitrogenous.
The nitrogenous foods, such as lean meat, fish, eggs, beans
and peas, are the main producers of blood and muscle; the
non-nitrogenous foods, such as sugar, starch and fats, are
heat producers.
If we know what each article of diet contains, we shall
then know' what to eat to give the body what it requires to
nourish and develop it.
Sometimes food is divided into the following classes:
(i) The aqueous, or watery, group, because of the amount
of water they contain. This group includes water and the
different drinks, besides such solids as have a large percent¬
age or water in* them, as potatoes and cabbage.
(2) The saccharine, or sugar, group, which includes sugar,
starch, gums, ripe fruit, vinegar, etc.
(3) The oleaginous, or oily, group, including all fats and
oils, such as butter, fat meat, nuts, cream, etc.
These three groups do not contain any nitrogen, and are
32
therefore non-nitrogenous. As has been stated, their main
function is to fatten and keep up the heat of the body.
Next w'e come to (4) the proteid, or albuminous, group,
the best representative of which is the white of an egg.
Lean meat, the gluten which makes flour pasty or tough
when made into dough, and the caseine of cheese belong
to' this group. This is the blood and muscle-forming
group, and as such is the most important. The very name
proteid means first. This fourth class is highly nitro¬
genous.
It must not be forgotten that the foods we have just
mentioned are all organic and are necessary for the produc¬
tion of soft animal tissue such as skin, flesh, fat, blood,
nerves, and the softening of bones; but the body must have
mineral substances also to give hardness to the bones, the
teeth, the nails, as well as color to the blood, etc. These
must be supplied by the food; consequently be have group
(5) The saline, or mineral, group. Under this head we
may bring common salt, and all food containing iron, sul¬
phur, phosphorous, potassium and the other minerals that
enter into the make-up of the body. Among the articles
which contain these minerals may be mentioned the yolk of
eggs, containing iron; the whites of eggs, containing sul¬
phur ; fish, containing phosphorus; and so on.
Note one thing: though the different food elements have
been gathered into one or another group, several of these
elements are to be found in one article. Fojt^ instance, milk
contains all the elements necessary to sustain life, and for
that reason Nature has made it the infant's food before he
is able to eat anything else. The egg also has in it albumen,
which is nitrogenous, and sulphur and iron which are
minerals, to say nothing of other substances. In selecting
a ^veil-balanced ration for feeding all parts of the body, we
i
33
do not find it necessary to eat so many different things;
vi e have only to select those few articles containing all the
elements in the right proportions. Let us now consider
that.
What has been said above about the different groups and
food elements is intended for those who wish to know the
reasons for selecting one diet rather than another. For
those who simply wish to know' what to eat, without caring
to make a close study of the subject, we now take up the
more practical part of the subject.
APPETITE AS A GUIDE.
Appetite was given as a guide to the food the system
needs, and it would be perfect, were it not for the fact
that we have abused it so much that it has been vitiated
and become diseased. In this respect it is like conscience,
which was designed to be a perfect moral guide, but has
been abused so long that it cannot always be depended
on to sanction the right thing. Appetite does, however,
make many valuable suggestions as to the food we require,
has sugar, water, gluten, starch, and mineral matter, it is
For example, we like butter on bread "because, while bread
lacking in fat, and this butter supplies. We like beans
cooked with bacon because the meat furnishes the needed
fat. Here are a few other combinations that our appetite
calls for because one is the supplement of the other:
Milk with fruit and all kinds of cereals.
Meat with bread and vegetables.
Codfish with potatoes and butter.
HOW MUCH SHOULD A MAN EAT?
No two men require exactly the same amount of food to
keep them in good condition. It depends upon the man,
the state of his health, his work, and the climate in which
he lives. We may, however, strike a fair average for men
34
under the same conditions of life.
The ; British government allows each sailor 26 ounces of
vegetable, and 9 ounces of salt meat, or 4^2 ounces of fresh
meat, with sugar and cocoa, as a daily ration. It allows
each soldier 1 pound of bread and % of a pound of meat
per day. Prisoners at hard labor are allowed about 36
ounces of food, but only a little of it is meat.
In America, laboring men eat, on an average, 45 or more
ounces of food, a very large part of which is meat; but it
is generally conceded that we over-eat in this country, espe¬
cially when it conies to meats and fats. Strange to say,
though the object of fats is to create heat, more fat meat is
eaten in the South, where it is hot, than in any other
part of our country. Here is a case where the appetite has
been educated to do wrong. The case of the young Esqui¬
maux who ate 35 pounds of food, mainly fat meat and
tallow candles in a day, has some excuse when we consider
the severe cold of the Arctic regions; though we may well
wonder where he put it, seeing that the adult human
stomach is usually only about 12 inches long and 4 inches
wide.
As a matter of fact, we eat too much even when we eat
the right food; then, we eat many things which the system
does not call for, and which are positively injurious. We
are thus guilty of the double sin of overloading our best
servant in the one case and poisoning it in the other.
SOME EFFECTS OF OVER-EATING.
Probably the most noticeable and acute effect of over¬
eating is some form of indigestion. The stomach, being
unable to control muscularly the great mass forced into it,
becomes paralyzed and throws up the job; it cannot secrete
enough of the digestive j uices to change the food into blood
and tissue, and hence it becomes a dead weight, leading to
35
fermentation (as shown by belching), inflammation (as
shown by cramps), irritation (as shown by diarrhoea), and
general nervous prostration, in the long run.
The next effect is seen in biliousness. It is ascertained
that the amount of bile secreted by the liver increases ac¬
cording to the amount of food put into the stomach. When
this amount is more than can be used, or is needed to com¬
bine the water and fats in the stomach, it remains in the
system to poison it, giving rise to bilious fever, yellow
jaundice and other serious diseases. The kidneys, too, be¬
come deranged and poison the body with uric acid, result¬
ing, in many cases, in Bright's Disease, which is almost cer¬
tain death.
These are only a few of the penalties that come upon us
from over-eating, but surely they are serious enough to set
us to thinking.
THE VALUE OF DIFFERENT FOODS.
Among the great number of things which have been
placed in the world for us to eat, we should select a few
which best combine the elements our bodies need. Set
it down as a useful rule that a few' essential articles at a
meal are better than a great variety of rich highly-seasoned
things. Ask the man with the gout about it.
The food first in importance for the grown people is
bread. It is called the staff of life, not because the poets
say so, but because science proves it.
A French scientist ascertained that i pound of bread is
equal to 3 of potatoes, 10 of cabbage, 7^ of turnips, 5 of
carrots and spinach.
In a grain of wheat, the basis of bread, about one-half is
starch, while the other half consists of sug r, oil, gluten,
albumen and salt; these are added to, of course in the
make-up.
36
For the purpose of creating tissue and strength, the fol¬
lowing are to be highly recommended; beans, peas, cheese,
codfish, lean meat, oatmeal and eggs.
To enrich the blood by adding iron: beef, spinach, aspara¬
gus, yolk of egg, apples, strawberries, red cherries, etc.
To fatten: potatoes, smoked ham and bacon, lima beans,,
cereals, nuts, rice, milk, sugar, butter, and oils.
It is possible to get all of the elements we need without
the use of meat, and it is advisable that we use far less-
of it than we do, because the tough fiber makes it one of the
hardest things to digest in the list of foods. Especially is
fat meat hard to digest because the juices of the stomach
seem to be unable to handle it without the assistance of
bile, which, when secreted too largely, leads to biliousness.
Coffee and tea are injurious, giving artificial stimulation,
but afterwards leading to constipation. Milk and cocoa, or
chocolate, are excellent foods.
Spices and high seasoning of all kinds debauch the appe¬
tite and irritate the stomach, thus often making suitable
food hurt us by inducing us to eat too much.
Cabbage, which so many are fond of, is a very poor food,
as most of it is water and waste matter. For instance, one
pound of beans will furnish 12 ounces of nourshing food,
but it would take about 15 pounds of cabbage to supply that
much nourishment; that is to say, you get only about four-
fifths of an ounce of nourishment to each pound of cabbage
eaten. That, it seems, is a little too much quantity for the
amount of quality.
FOOD AS MEDICINE.
If there is anything wrong with a man's system and he
can correct it by the food he eats rather than by medicine
he ought to do so. Now, this can often be done.
For soothing the nerves use celery, lettuce and onions.
37
For producing sleep, use onions, lettuce and apples.
For rheumatism and gout, use celery, spinach and dande¬
lions.
For the liver, use tomatoes, artichokes, rhubarb and
apples.
For the kidneys, use spinach, dandelions and apples.
For gravel and bladder, use spinach, turnips, radishes and
apples.
For the complexion, use cucumbers and carrots.
For asthma, use carrots.
For diarrhoea, use blackberries.
For malaria, use cranberries.
The advantage of using these vegetable correctives in¬
stead of patent medicines is that there are no bad after¬
effects, no injurious drugs and opiates to lay the seeds of
another disease to cure the one you have. They are medi¬
cines compounded by God Himself.
COOKING AND LIFE.
Notwithstanding all that has been said about proper and
improper food, bad cooking can ruin the good effects of the
best. There would be more Christians in the world if there
were more good cooks,—cooks who knew why a thing
should be cooked one way rather than another, and could
cook it that way. The South is famous for its "good"
cooks, but unfortunately much of their fame arises from
high seasoning and their ability to make indigestible food
taste so good that we eat too much. Very few of the finest
Virginia cooks know anything about what elements different
articles contain, what the system needs, and how to cook a
thing to get the most nourishment out of it. Some of
these matters we have tried to make clear in this little book.
We wish to give a few hints on cooking now before we
close the subject.
38
Cooking has a very remote history; it arose from the de¬
sirability of softening the food fibers so that they might be
more easily digested, and also that the temperature of what
we eat might be more nearly that of the stomach. Seasoning
food came later. The Greeks grew to be great cooks. One
of them, Athenaeus, became as famous for his writings on
cooking as Isaak Walton did later for what he wrote about
fishi'ng. This old Greek quotes some lines which are good
enough and true enough to be repeated. Here they are:
"To roast some beef, to carve a joint with neatness,
To boil up sauces, and to blow the Are,
Is anybody's task; he who does this
Is but a seasoner and broth-maker;
A cook is quite another thing. His mind
Must comprehend all facts and circumstances;
Where is the place, and what the time of supper;
Who are the guests, and who the entertainer;
What fish he ought to buy and where to buy it."
The ancients cooked their meat by roasting or boiling;
they did not fry it. Frying is the most unhealthy way of
cooking anything, for it puts a crust on the surface that
makes it very hard for the stomach to digest. Never fry
your food if you seek health and good digestion; boil or
roast it.
The proper way to boil meat so as to keep all of the
juices in it is to put it into water already boiling, as this
hardens the albumen on the outside at once and keeps the
juices from running out. If, however, the object is to make
soup, then the meat must be put into cold water and allowed
to heat slowly; in this way the substance escapes into the
water, making it rich and nutritious. Meat to be roasted
^should be thrust into^a hot oven. The rule for boiling fresh
meat is to allow 20 minutes to the pound, except in very
cold weather, when 20 minutes extra should be allowed.
Salt meat has had its pores closed already by the process
of curing, and therefore, after soaking for two hours in
cold water, should be put into cold water and "brought to
39
the boiling point. The following time is usually allowed:
For a 16-pound ham, 4 hours; a 16-pound tongue, 2 to 4
hours; a 16-pound pig's head, 2 hours; a 4-pound piece of
bacon, 2 hours.
Boiled vegetables are done when they sink. Cabbage
should be put into two waters. A piece of common soda
the, size of a marble will help the boiling of cabbage and
peas, if the water is hard. Vinegar rubbed over meat be¬
fore cooking will make it tender.
Meat from which soup has been made has little nourish¬
ment and is hard to digest. It is better to make it into
hash cut very fine or shredded.
ABOUT BREAD, EGGS, ETC.
It is not our intention to tell how to make good "bread;
t'lis is not a cook-book, and if it were, no man can make a
book-cook. Books can give you ideas, but they cannot give
you instinct, and that is what makes the great cook.
Bread is nearly half water. In too many cases, the other
.half is lead. To be wholesome, bread does not have to be
white, but it ought to be light. It ought not to be eaten
hot. It is healthier stale than fresh. Hot rolls are the devil's
cannon balls.
Eggs in their raw state, or when slightly boiled, are an
almost perfect food; when cooked hard, they are fit only for
fools and railroad lunch-stands.
There is nothing better than rare eggs for yellow jaun¬
dice, as they possess the power of doing the work of bile
in combining water and fat into a digestible emulsion.
Poached eggs are excellent also, but fried eggs, even when
rare, are not to be recommended.
ABOUT ADULTERATIONS OF FOOD.
This is an age of adulterations. In milk, we find water
and chalk; in flour, ground beans, alum, chalk, bone-dust,
40 *
plaster of Paris and clay; in sugar, flour and sand; in red
pepper, brick-dust, red ocher and salt; in mustard, pea-
flour and linseed meal; in coffee, chicory, acorns, saw¬
dust, and horses' livers; in chocolate, mutton-suet, chalk,
red earth and plaster of Paris; in vinegar, v, ater and sul¬
phuric acid; in pickles and green-colored fruits, copper;
and so on throughout the chapter. Some of these are rank
poisons, such as sulphuric acid and copper. As so many
pickles, olives, gooseberries, greengages and other bottled
fruits are used, it is well to warn our readers to suspect
any of these that are bright green of being made so by
copper. The matter may be easily tested by adding a little
ammonia to the liquid; it will turn blue if copper is present.
We have spent considerable space on the various phases
of cooking, because of the importance of the subject; but
now we must turn to other things, in the hope that
enough has been said to lead to thought and investigation.
Simply fix in your minds the truth that the cook is the
household doctor whose duty it is to keep people well, and
you will have a proper conception of the nobility of the
profession, realizing that Voltaire uttered the truth when
he said, "Every cook is a divine mortal!"
CHAPTER ON DRESS AND HOUSING.
"Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coata
of skin, and clothed them."
«**•****•
"Follow this fair lady wherever she doth go,
And where she houses, come and let me know."
For the sake of brevity and because protection from the
weather is the object of both, we may treat of dress and
housing in the same chapter.
This is neither a treatise on style nor architecture, hence
we must be excused from paying attention to beauty of
dress or building. Our purpose is purely practical, as the
4i
character of the quotations prefacing this chapter clearly
indicate.
DRESS AND LIFE.
God saw that the fig-leaf afterthought of Adam and Eve
was too full of holes to stand the winter outside of Eden,
and too tender to bear the strain of work; so He, with His
own hands, tmade them a dress of skins as better adapted
to meet both these ends. Only the question of comfort
and decency was considered—the very things that we most
frequently forget these days.
The American climate, even in the extreme South, is very
changeable, and any sensible mode of dress ought to take
that into notice. Instead o£ the tight lacing that is squeezing
the life out of our women, if they would put on chest
protectors and woolen underwear till all danger of sudden
cold spells were over, we should have fewer orphans and
fewer heartaches.
Most of the cases of consumption begin in a cold caught
by a sudden chilling of the body. The pores become
closed and extra work is laid on the poor lungs, which al¬
ready have twenty-four hours hard work on their h^nds.
The result is, they break down, and the disease germ, which
is always on watch, steps in and slowly eats the sufferer up.
Then we shake our fists in the face of God and sulk. It
is criminal; it is suicide; and to lay it on God is bearing
false witness.
Wool was made for protection; cotton was made for
show. Put on the cotton goods, if you will, and look
pretty, if you can; but wear something underneath that will
keep the temperature of the body even, in spite of the daily
changes. Put on your flannels early and take them off
late. Wear thick-soled shoes. It is better ^o be a live clod¬
hopper than a dead fairy.
42
Some people go thinly clad on principle, claiming that it
hardens them. Have you ever seeen a mummy? He is
hardened, but he's dead, too. It is true that people strong
enough to stand unusual exposure do become stronger by
being exposed. Among savage tribes, you rarely find a per¬
son weak or sickly, and yet they expose themselves ito
cold and wet; but the reason all the living savages are
strong is because all the weak one^ are dead. Did you ever
look at it that way? You may belong to the weak side.
Your mother or your brother did. Think this over, and put
on some warm woolen undershirts this fall.
Remember another thing—an overcoat is a necessity. Two
coats are better than any one, no matter how/thick it is; for
"between the two there is always a layer of air that acts
just like the air between the outer wall of a house and
the plaster in keeping in heat.
Never throw off clothing when you are perspiring from
exercise. Never lie down to sleep without some light cov¬
ering. Never let wet clothing dry on you in a draught.
Women should never go out in the evening without a
wrap.
HOUSING IN THE COUNTRY.
The house we live in should be warm enough in winter
and cool enough in summer to keep us comfortable, and its
air pure enough at all times to keep us healthy. It need not
be a big or a fine one, but it ought by all means to be as
clean as care and elbow-grease can make it. There ought
to be a room or two for sleeping, one for eating and one fpr
social purposes; that is, the humblest home ought to
have at least three rooms. It ought to have a front and a
back door; windows sliding up and down on cords, so as
to open top and bottom for ventilation. The floor ought to
be close so as to prevent the cold air from entering. And the
43
roof ought not tc leak. These are bed-rock requirements.
Then whatever in the way of comforts, conveniences and
"beauty can be added, such as wall paper, pictures and car¬
pets, should be supplied. If the occupant is able to ceil the
walls and overhead, it will make the house much warmer
in cold weather, much cooler in warm weather, and much
more attractive all the time. Once for all, let it be said that
the old death-trap of a cabin with one door to go in and
none to go out; one glassless, wooden-shuttered window
for keeping out the light; a sag-bellied floor whose gaping
cracks resemble the slicing of a piece of baked fresh pork,
and a pepper-box,,roof for playing peep-eye with the in¬
habitants of Mars, must go if the man is to stay. Con¬
sumption, pneumonia and rheumatism are bound to sweep
us away as fast as we are born if we do not begin to
use common sense in these matters. If, a man is a renter
on a farm or elsewhere, he ought to make it perfectly plain
that his continuance depends upon decent, comfortable and
healthful housing. Landlords are not expected to see after
a tenant's health out of pure benevolence; it must be made
to their interest. If you are a valuable tenant and will not
live in a shack, it will be to the landlord's interest to keep
you by building you better quarters. We take too many
bad things for granted and consequently do not seek to
better them.
If you are the owner of your home, then there is abso¬
lutely no excuse for exposure in the home. In such a case,
every picket ought to be on the fence, and paint should make
everything shine with newness from house to hen-coop.
No wonder boys leave home so early in life. A boy who
would not leave some homes by early moonlight proves
that it hurts his feelings to be considered human. Let the
programme of your physical life (and that is what this book
is about) be in the following upward order: House, Home,
44
Health, Happiness, Heaven. Be not like so many whose-
route is Hut Hell, with no way-stations between..
CITY HOUSING.
Most of these remarks on housing so far have had.
special reference to farm life, but we do not forget that a
terrible condition exists in our cities where respectable
colored people are forced to live in alleys and tough dis¬
tricts because landlord Christianity is a failure. There
must be no letting up in our efforts to establish our right
to live according to our means and in any section suited to
our character and taste. It is identically the same outrage
to compel all brown or black people to live in a fixed sec¬
tion as it is all white people. Such repression of the as¬
pirations of any people cries shame on fair-play, which is •
the American pass-word.
HOPEFUL SIGNS.
Evidence is not lacking to show that the Negro has taken *
up the righting of some of his own wrongs. The Afro-
American Realty Company, in New York, has set itself to-
remedy conditions in that city, and already its influence is
felt in breaking up the compulsory colonizing system of *
landlords and agents as applied to the Negro. Other move¬
ments with like intent are forming in other cities. Away
doww in Texas, the Farmers' Improvement Society, or¬
ganized by a little one-armed Abou ben Adhem named"
R. L. Smith, is teaching the black farmers of the South the
lesson of better living in a material as well as a moral sense.
These two movements—city and country—will meet in time,
if the Negro is made according to the recipe for making -
real men, and then the stork will fly into our doors as fast
as ever, but the raven of undue mortality will quit his
place above our "bust of Pallas," and the census man will <
no longer be the undertaker's statistician.
45
CHAPTER ON EXERCISE.
"A man must often exercise, or fast, or take physics, or be sick."
In the above quotation from Sir William Temple, he put
exercise first and physic last among the means of staving
off sickness. That is the right order, too.
Fortunately for the Negro, his economic condition has,
up to the present, compelled him to take all the exercise
he needed; he has to work all day and every day to
live. He has not found it necessary to belong to a yacht
club, to play polo, hockey, croquet, tennis, or golf to get a
chance to stretch his muscles. And after all, honest toil is
the best form of exercise. There is growing to be a class
of clerks, stenographers, and business men, who need to be
reminded that, with the passing of physical exertion for
bread-winning, they should keep it up for health-holding. It
will not hurt any one, whether student or day laborer, to
learn a few gymnastic movements for the development of
the body. All exercise hastens the vital processes, such
as breathing, blood circulation and digestion. Unless, how¬
ever, it is taken systematically and with a definite object,
we are in danger of taking none when we feel lazy, and
too much when the boss of the job is standing near. If
your chest is flat, learn what muscles control it, and exer¬
cise them; if it is the back, the abdomen, the neck, the arms,
or the legs, know what to do and do it. Women, especially,
need this advice. Girls in school need it.
Remember that, in cold weather, heat produced by exer¬
cise is worth all the stoves, hot rocks, and hot water bags
in the town. Cold feet indicate poor circulation and sug¬
gest vigorous bodily motions to set the blood in quicker
flow. Cold hands warmed by swinging the arms feel
better than any other kind of warm hands, and they stay
warm longer, too.
46
Never exercise right after a meal, for then the blood is
needed in the stomach to digest the food, and .exercise
draws it away.
Never begin exercising suddenly or too vigorously. Like
any other machine, the body must have time to get up
steam. Warm up gradually. Go at it intelligently. Keep
at it steadily. Send the rich red blood bounding under
velvet black skins till every dimple and every mountain of
eager and able muscle shall issue the assurance, "I am black,
but comely."
AFTERWORD.
It is not polite to leave a friend without saying good-bye,
even if you have detained him a long time. The writer,
knows the limitations of this book, but he knows its value,
too, to tens of thousands of worthy people whose lack of in¬
formation is their worst fault; in an unpretentious way he
is trying to help them where they most miss help—in the
way to health and life. Simplicity, so far as the subject
permitted, has been the effort here ; and sincerity, in the in¬
terest of brothers and sisters beloved, has attended without
effort.
May God bless the thought of these pages, and may a lov¬
ing motive apologize for a faulty execution.
DEDICATION.
It is the custom to offer the dedication of churches after
they are entered, and of books beforehand; thus religious
and literary practices vary in their order.
As our motive is religious rather than literary, we now
offer and dedicate the foregoing pages:
To the little back-alley bred black boys and girls of the
great cities who have a God-given right to space on the
front streets of life;
47
To the hopeless, helpless, air-starved tenement dwellers
whose little ones are measured for coffins before they need
clothes;
To the humble home-spun mothers whose hearts frame
futures for their children unlawful for a black;
To the pitiful tide of Canaan-seeking black men and
women who are flung back on crime because no man
careth for their souls;
To the splendid Southern tenant who pays the coin of
suffering to purchase the inheritance of the meek;
To the school-room battalions who are charging the
strongholds of prejudice at the point of a pen;
To the fifteen thousand Negro clergymen who are mor¬
ally bound to preach health cn earth as well as happiness
in heaven;
Lastly, to the critics, fault-finders, Pharisees, turnkeys
against opportunity and turncoats against religion , of either
race,
THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
BY THE AUTHOR.
48