Health Lessons Book 1

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

CARING FOR THE HEALTH

Good Health better than Gold.—Horses and houses, balls and dolls, and much else that people think they want to make them happy can be bought with money. The one thing which is worth more than all else cannot be bought with even a houseful of gold. This thing is good health. Over three million persons in our country are now sick, and many of them are suffering much pain. Some of them would give all the money they have to gain once more the good health which the poorest may usually enjoy by right living day by day.

How long shall you live?—In this country most of the persons born live to be over forty years of age, and some live more than one hundred years. A hundred years ago most persons died before the age of thirty-five years. In London three hundred years ago only about one half of those born reached the age of twenty-five years. Scarcely one half of the people in India to-day live beyond the age of twenty-five years. In fact, people in India are dying nearly twice as fast as in our own country. This is because they have not learned how to take care of the body in India so well as we have.

Fig. 1 —By right living this woman remained in good health for several years after she was a century old.

The study which tells how to keep well is Hygiene. Whether you keep well and live long, or suffer much from headaches, cold, and other sickness, depends largely on how you care for your body.

Working together for Health.—One cannot always keep well and strong by his own efforts. The grocer and milkman may sell to you bad food, the town may furnish impure water, churches and schools may injure your health by failing to supply fresh air in their buildings. More than a hundred thousand people were made very sick last year through the use of water poisoned by waste matter which other persons carelessly let reach the streams and wells. Many of the sick died of the fever caused by this water. Although it cannot be said that we are engaged in real war, yet we are surely killing one another by our thoughtless habits in scattering disease. We must therefore not only know how to care for our own bodies, but teach all to help one another to keep well.

A Lesson from War.—The mention of war makes those who know its terrors shudder. Disease has caused more than ten times as much suffering and death as war with its harvest of mangled bodies, shattered limbs, and blinded eyes. In our four months' war with Spain in 1898 only 268 soldiers were killed in battle, while nearly 4000 brave men died from disease. We lost more than ten men by disease to every one killed by bullets.

In the late war between Japan and Russia the Japanese soldiers cared for their health so carefully that only one fourth as many died from disease as perished in battle. This shows that with care for the health the small men of Japan saved themselves from disease, and thus won a victory told around the world.

Fig. 2 —The Surgeon General who, by keeping the soldiers well, helped Japan win in the war against Russia....