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CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS.
Writings on hygiene and health have been accessible for centuries, but never before have books and magazines on these subjects been as numerous as they are today. Most of the information is so general, vague and indefinite that only a few have the time and patience to read the thousands of pages necessary to learn what to do to keep well. The truth is to be found in the archives of medicine, in writings covering a period of over thirty centuries, but it is rather difficult to find the grains of truth.
Health is the most valuable of all possessions, for with health one can attain anything else within reason. A few of the great people of the world have been sickly, but it takes men and women sound in body and mind to do the important work. Healthy men and women are a nation's most valuable asset.
It is natural to be healthy, but we have wandered so far astray that disease is the rule and good health the exception. Of course, most people are well enough to attend to their work, but nearly all are suffering from some ill, mental or physical, acute or chronic, which deprives them of a part of their power. The average individual is of less value to himself, to his family and to society than he could be. His bad habits, of which he is often not aware, have brought weakness and disease upon him. These conditions prevent him from doing his best mentally and physically.
This abnormal condition has a bad effect upon his descendants, who may not be born with any special defects, but they have less resistance at birth than is their due, and consequently fall prey to disease very easily. This state of impaired resistance has been passed on from generation to generation, and we of today are passing it on as a heritage to our children.
About 280,000 babies under the age of one year die annually in the United States. The average lifetime is only a little more than forty years. It should be at least one hundred years. This is a very conservative statement, for many live to be considerably older, and it is within the power of each individual to prolong his life beyond what is now considered old age.
Under favorable conditions people should live in comfort and health to the age of one hundred years or more, useful and in full possession of their faculties. Barring accidents, which should be less numerous when people fully realize that unreasonable haste and speed are wasteful and that life is more valuable than accumulated wealth, human life could and should be a certainty. There should be no sudden deaths resulting from the popular diseases of today. In fact, pneumonia, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, cancer and various other ills that are fatal to the vast majority of the race, should and could be abolished. This may sound idealistic, but though such results are not probable in the near future, they are possible.
All civilized nations of which we have record, except the Chinese, have decayed after growing and flourishing a few centuries, usually about a thousand years or less....