The following volumes are in press, and will be issued about one a month. 
Hearing, and How to Keep It, 
By CHAS. H. BURNETT, M.D., of Philadelphia, _ 
Consulting Aurist to the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumbfc 
Aurist to the Presbyterian Hospital, etc. 
II. Long Life, and How to Reach It, 
By J. G. RICHARDSON, M.D., of Philadelphia, 
Professor of Hygiene in the University of Pennsylvania, etc. 
III. Sea-Air and Sea-Bathing, 
By WILLIAM S. FORBES, M.D., of Philadelphia, 
Surgeon to the Episcopal Hospital, etc. 
Summer and its Diseases, 
By JAMES C. WILSON, M.D., of Philadelphi; 
Lecturer on Physical Diagnosis in Jefferson Medical Coli 
Eyesight, and How to Care for lt,i 
By GEORGE C. HARLitfLM.D., of Philadelphia, 
Surgeon itrthe H'TKMfAtmL Hospital. 
The ThftQat and the Vofdlity 
1„P?*&f Philadelphia, 
Medical College. 
V!L The Winter and 'ft&YtaJDgers, 
VI. 
ByJ- 
Lecturer on Diseasej 
rCQHE: 
etc. . 
By HAMILTON OSGOOD, 
Editorial Staff Boston Medical and Surgi 
VIII. The Mouth and the Teeth, 
ByJ. W. WHITE, M.D., D.D.S., of Philadelphia, 
Editor of the Dental Cosmos. 
IX. Our Homes, 
By HENRY HARTSHORNE, M.D., of Philadelphia, 
Formerly Professor of Hygiene in the University of Pennsylvania. 
X. The Skin in Health and Disease, 
By L. D. BULKLEY, M.D., of New York, 
Physician to the Skin Department of the Demilt Dispensary and of the 
New York Hospital. 
XI. Brain Work and Overwork, 
By H. C. WOOD, Jr., M.D., of Philadelphia, 
Clinical Professor of Nervous Diseases in the University of Pennsylvania, etc. 
Other volumes are in preparation, including the following subjects: “Preventable 
Diseases,” “Accidents and Emergencies,” “Towns we Live In,” “Diet in 
Health and Disease,” “The Art of Nursing,” “School and Industrial Hygiene,” 
“ Mental Hygiene,” etc., etc. They will be i6mo in size, neatly printed on tinted 
paper, and bound in cloth, 50 cents. Mailed free upon receipt of price. 
LINDSAY & BLAKISTON, Publishers, Phila. AMERICAN HEALTH PRIMERS. 
EDITED BY 
W. W. KEEN, M.D., 
Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 
and Surgeon to St. Mary’s Hospital. AMERICAN HEALTH PRIMERS. 
Long Life, 
AND 
HOW TO REACH IT. 
BY 
Professor of Hygiene in the University of Pennsylvania, Membre 
Associe Etranger de la Societe Francaise d’Hygilne. 
JOSEPH G. RICHARDSON, M.D., 
PHILADELPHIA: 
LINDSAY & BLAKISTON. 
i 8 79- v i wi»| wi v» 
Copyright. j 
LINDSAY & BLAKISTON. 
18 79- CONTENTS. 
CHAPTER I. 
Introductory Considerations .... 9-18 
Healthy minds in healthy bodies invaluable, 10; Deaths, 
except from old age, generally unnecessary, 11; Innumerable 
precautions are needful, 13; Hygiene is “the ounce of pre- 
vention,” 14; Definitions of Life, Health, and Disease, 16; 
Results already attained by Sanitary science, 17. 
CHAPTER II. 
Causes of Disease, and How to Avoid them . 19-26 
Temptation to forget warnings against danger universal, 20; 
Deficiency of light hinders development, 22; Electricity as 
a cause of disease, 23; Diseases are modified by Race, 23; 
Likewise by Temperament, Idiosyncrasy, and Age, 25; “ The 
Extinction of the Unfit,” 26. 
CHAPTER III. 
Heat and Cold as Causes of Disease . . 27-33 
Sunstroke, sunburn, etc., 27; How to avoid frost-bites, 29; 
Extreme cold quickly fatal; Story of Dr. Solander, 30 ; Con- 
gestion of internal organs produced by cold, 31; Danger of 
draughts of cold air, 32; Do not leave off warm clothing t!oa 
early in the spring, 32; What to do when threatened with a 
cold, 33. 
CHAPTER IV. 
Contagion, and Howto Escape it. . . 34-48 
Contagious or “catching” diseases, 34; The Germ Theory 
of contagious maladies, 35 ; Every small-pox patient a “ hot 
bed” for seeds of disease, 37; Contagious diseases do not 
spring up of their own accord, 38; Outbreak of imported 
V VI 
CONTENTS. 
measles in the Faroe Islands, 39; Vaccination an inestimably 
blessing, 40; Mode of performing vaccination, 41; Varioloid 
will communicate true small-pox, 43; Danger lurking in 
drinking-cups, etc., 44; Modes of “disinfecting” or destroy- 
ing contagion, 46. 
CHAPTER V. 
Clothing, and How to Wear it . . . 49-57 
True object of clothing is to preserve health, 49; Modes 
in which the human body cools, 50; Hardening one's self and 
making one’s self tender, 51; Clothing a great economizer of 
nervous energy, 53; Texture and color of clothes, 55; Cover- 
ings of the Head and Feet, 56; Poisonous clothing (from 
aniline dyes), 57. 
CHAPTER VI. 
Pure Air, and How to Breathe it . . 58-69 
Promptly fatal effects of impure air, 58; Composition of 
air, 59; Mechanism of respiration, 60; Vileness of foul “sec- 
ond-hand air” in crowded rooms, 61; Test for carbonic acid 
in air, 63; Fatal results from breathing effluvia from drains, 
etc., 64; Irritating effects of dust in the air, 65; Ventilation, 
and how to manage it, 67; Everybody needs one thousand 
cubic feet of air space, 69. 
CHAPTER VII. 
Pure Water, and How to Obtain it . . 70-80 
Curious epidemic from lead in rain-water, 71; Impuri- 
ties in rain-water, 72; The Broad Street pump and the 
Cholera, 73; Typhoid fever from contaminated drinking 
water, 75; Distance from which cess-pits, etc., may poison 
wells, 76; Filtration through the earth does not always 
purify water, 77; Prof. Parkes’ Cottage Filter, 78; Danger 
of sewer gas from stationary washstands, etc., 80. 
CHAPTER VIII. 
Baths, and How to Take them . . . 81-90 
Anecdote of Dr. Abernethy, 81 ; Structure of the skin, 82; 
Important office of the sweat-glands, 83; Warm baths, 85; CONTENTS. 
VII 
Excessive indulgence in bathing, 86; Hot and cold baths, 87; 
Sea-bathing, 88; Poisonous hair-dyes, 90. 
CHAPTER IX. 
The House, and How to Build it . . 91-97 
Dangers of city homes, especially from impure air, 91; 
Dangers of country farm-houses from bad water, 92; Man- 
agement of sewer-pipes and cisterns, 94; Day and night 
nurseries for children, 96; Arsenical wall papers, 96; Never 
inhabit a new house until the walls are dry, 97. 
CHAPTER X. 
Food, and How to Digest it 98-110 
Good digestion makes life worth living, 98; Overpowering 
necessity for certain ingredients in food, 100; Office of food 
to supply animal force and heat, 101; Amount and variety of 
food required, 102; Quantity of food needed to support ac- 
tive exertion, 103; Articles of diet suited to different meals, 
104; Modes of cooking and indigestible foods, 105; Experi- 
ments on St. Martin’s stomach, 106; Ruinous effects of con- 
stipation, 107; Tea, Coffee, Alcohol, and Tobacco, 109; 
Care of the Teeth, no. 
CHAPTER XI. 
Impurities in Food and Drink, and How to Detect 
THEM I 11 —I 19 
Some adulterations easily recognized, 112; Adulteration of 
Flour and Bread, 112; Falsification of Butter and Milk, 114; 
Danger of Typhoid Fever, etc., from contaminated Milk, 115 ; 
Sophistications of Tea, Coffee, and Spices, 117; Danger of 
Verdigris in preserves, etc., 119. 
CHAPTER XII. 
Exercise, and How to Take it . . . 120-129 
Effect of exercise on the circulation, 120; Excessive exer- 
cise liable to produce heart disease, 122; Amount of muscu- 
lar exertion which is useful, 124; Relative value of different VIII 
CONTENTS. 
kinds of exercise, 126; Regulation of exercise in childhood, 
youth, and old age, 127; Muscles brought into play in walk- 
ing, rowing, etc., 129. 
CHAPTER XIII. 
Sleep, and How to Secure it 130-139 
Vital importance of suitable repose, 130; Great amount of 
sleep required in infancy, 132; Sleep as influenced by tem- 
perament, etc., 134; Profound slumber most refreshing, 135; 
Symptoms of deficiency of sleep, 136; Simple means for pro- 
moting sleep, 138. 
CHAPTER XIV. 
Mental Power, and How to Retain it . 140-147 
Mind and body alike need nourishment, exercise, and rest, 
141; Brain diseases now especially prevalent, 143; The “six 
hours’ law” for intellectual laborers, 144; Perils of unremit- 
ting mental strain, 145 ; Signs of approaching mental failure 
from overwork, 146; We cannot live fast and live long, 147. 
CHAPTER XV. 
Parasitic Enemies, and How to Escape them 148-153 
The Trichina spiralis, or pork-worm, 148; Trichina pos- 
sess the secret of long life, i. e., toughness, 150; The “Itch” 
insect and its habits, 151; Vegetable parasites causing Favus, 
Ringworm, etc., 152; Caution to young ladies about avoid- 
ing the barber’s itch, 153. 
CHAPTER XVI. 
Old Age, and How to Meet it . . . 154-160 
We all wish to “grow old a while longer,” 154; Decay of 
the teeth an important cause of indigestion, 155; Failure of 
muscular strength from insufficient repair, 156; Artificial 
warmth especially necessary to old people, 157; Tendency to 
constipation from impaired muscular power, 158; The aged 
must live within their diminished vital income, 159; Intel- 
lectual decay often gradual and insidious, 160. LONG LIFE, 
AND 
HOW TO REACH IT. 
CHAPTER I. 
WHEN King Solomon, “ the wisest man the world 
e’er saw,” chose wisdom as his portion, length 
of days was accorded him as one of the choicest 
added gifts which heaven could confer; and the 
“elixir of life” has been the dream of poets and 
philosophers from the days of the Chaldean sages 
down to those of the alchemists and Rosicrucians who 
flourished some three centuries ago. Yet it is ob- 
vious that longevity, if it means naught but a greater 
period of suffering physical pain, or even decided dis- 
comfort, is only, humanly speaking, an additional 
burden, and that therefore, to constitute a real bless- 
ing, it must be accompanied by that greatest of all 
earthly means of happiness—health of body and mind. 
INTRODUCTORY CONSIDERATIONS. 
9 10 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
For who can deny that the richest prince, the most 
powerful king, or even the wisest philosopher, if de- 
prived of health, is more miserable than its very 
meanest possessor. 
Of course, it is impossible for me to condense into 
such a tiny volume as this which you now hold in 
your hand, full directions for the preservation of 
health, and avoidance of actual disease in all the va- 
rious conditions of life upon our planet. I can only 
hope to present some general rules for the protection 
of our invaluable bodies, (worth far more to us than 
an equal weight of the finest gold could ever be,) and 
a few directions for recognizing and escaping, as far 
as possible, the thousand external and internal ene- 
mies which are ever on the watch to spring upon us 
in some unguarded moment, and as they are strong or 
weak, numerous or isolated, either kill us at once out- 
right, or slowly and insidiously undermine our vitality. 
According to the inexorable laws of our stern step- 
mother, Nature, bare existence itself, and still more 
healthy and comfortable life, is the reward solely of 
unceasing watchfulness, the prize of a constant strug- 
gle, the crown of a merciless warfare, with all the 
opposing powers and forces which incessantly strive 
to extinguish our race from the face of the earth. If 
for a little time the hostility of these adverse influ- 
ences seems to be lulled into slumber, this peace is a 
delusive one, and we may be sure that the enemy is INTR OD UCTOR Y CONSIDER A TIONS. 
11 
steadily at work sapping the foundations of our cita- 
del of life, and taking advantage of every careless 
imprudence, every neglect of sanitary ordinances, to 
plant the seeds of grievous punishment for ourselves 
or our descendants — seeds which are almost sure, 
if neglected, to ripen at some future time. 
If we consult any register of interments, as, for 
example, that of Philadelphia for the year 1877, we 
will find that the mortality from old age (619 out of 
16,004, or only about four per cent.,) forms but a 
very small part of the total number of deaths. The 
remainder, 15,385, or ninety-six per cent., is made up 
of deaths from inherited maladies, such as consump- 
tion or cancer, together with those from what we may 
call accidental diseases, such as typhoid fever, diph- 
theria, cholera-infantum, or small-pox, which cut off 
about seventy-five people in every hundred, or in 
the city of Philadelphia, 12,500 persons every year. 
Now I have no doubt — and statistics in regard to the 
gradually increasing success of sanitary precautions 
abroad prove there can be no doubt—that all of these 
“accidental” deaths, and a large proportion of the 
deaths from inherited diseases, might, by proper 
hygienic management, be absolutely prevented; in 
other words, that by due attention to the rules of the 
most perfect science of hygiene, nearly 300,000 in- 
habitants of the United States might escape dying, 
as they do, of painful diseases in their youth and 12 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
their prime, living out instead the full measure of 
their usefulness to extreme old age, and then almost 
without reluctance putting off this mortal life by a 
nearly painless process of its gradual extinction. 
It is true, sanitary science must advance much be- 
yond the point it has at present attained in regard to 
the prevention of diseases before such a beneficent 
result is accomplished, and the list of preventable 
maladies, already a long one and becoming longer 
and longer every year, must be still further extended; 
but the fact that so much has been already done, 
should incite us all to renewed efforts to reduce fur- 
ther still the catalogue of wasted lives, which care- 
lessness, ignorance, or mercenary selfishness annually 
sacrifice so unnecessarily. 
Preventable diseases, which, according to this view 
of the subject, cost annually with us 300,000 use- 
ful lives, and probably twenty times that number, 
say six million attacks of illness, may, if we ex- 
cept Providential visitations, be chiefly prevented 
by the proper exercise of mere human care, caution, 
and foresight, in the adoption of suitable sanitary 
regulations; and my great object is to point out 
clearly and plainly what are the most approved sani- 
tary rules under the various contingencies of daily 
life, and how hygienic measures can, with our pres- 
ent knowledge, be best put into practice, in order to 
add most, on the one hand, to human happiness, and INTK OD UCTOR Y CONSIDER A TIONS. 
13 
most to diminish, on the other, the sad sum total of 
human suffering in our world. The science of hygiene 
teaches us the care of the house we live in, just as the 
science of medicine instructs us how to repair (oft- 
times very imperfectly) that same house when it be- 
comes damaged through neglect or ignorance. What 
credit for wisdom would you accord to the owner of 
a costly mansion who left his doors and windows open 
during storms, so that the rain and snow could beat in 
and decay the floors of his tenement; or to one who 
allowed the furnace-fires to burn so low for want of 
good fuel, that Jack Frost effected an entrance, and 
bursting the water-pipes, flooded the whole building; 
or again to one who, when a portion of the roof was 
carried away by some accidental tempest, left his 
attic uncovered to the mid-day sun and the dews of 
the night? Would you not pronounce such an indi- 
vidual one of the foolish men of the world, one whose 
folly was so ingrained, that Solomon’s experiment of 
braying him in a mortar must prove quite worthless 
as an analytic process ? And yet such a fool, since he 
has the chance of buying or renting a new dwelling 
in perfect order, when his own habitation becomes 
comfortless or untenantable, is tenfold wiser than he 
who permits his own body—the body that, sound or 
damaged, he must always inhabit —to fall out of repair 
in any way which the most unceasing care and watch- 
fulness can prevent. We physicians, whose life-work 14 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
is with the sick and suffering, have impressed upon 
us daily and hourly the unspeakable value of health, 
a value which, unfortunately, is often only recognized 
by members of other professions when too late, and 
after the blessing of perfect health is forever lost to 
the unhappy victim of ignorance or wilful disregard 
of the simplest laws of our nature. That keen old 
critic of human follies, the poet Juvenal, in his famous 
Ninth Satire, after describing at length the evils which 
poison all enjoyment of the usual pursuits and am- 
bitions of mankind, declares that the only boon 
which we dare ask from Heaven with confident and 
uplifted face is the 
“ Mens sana in corpore sano,” 
the sound mind in a sound body, which it is the 
ject of this little work to enable you, reader, to obtain 
and preserve to a good old age. 
But this inestimable gift, like everything else that is 
really valuable in this world, can only be secured by 
a certain amount of sacrifice on our part. This brings 
us to a second half-jocose definition of hygiene which 
I have frequently given, namely, that it is the science 
which teaches people to take the ounce of prevention 
instead of the pound of cure. According to Epicurus, 
the philosopher differs from the unwise man in this— 
that whilst both seek pleasure, the former has learned 
how to deny himself certain enjoyments which will INTR OD UCTOR Y CONSIDER A TIONS. 
15 
cause him pain and vexation hereafter; whereas a 
foolish man seeks only the immediate enjoyment, re- 
gardless of future pain which may far outbalance to- 
day’s gratification. 
Now it would be useless for me to maintain that 
the ounce of prevention is always, or even generally, 
agreeable to take; and yet I do not despair of con- 
vincing every one of my readers that many portions 
of this “ounce” are so little unpleasant, and also 
that they so obviously and immediately enable us 
to escape that black, bitter dose, the oft unavailing 
“pound of cure,” that to some extent at least they 
will accept the former gladly, as by far the lesser of 
two evils, one or the other of which is absolutely 
inevitable. 
Besides, there are many hygienic rules which it is 
actually pleasanter, from the very first, to live in ac- 
cordance with than to disregard, and such, at any 
rate, I hope will be generally obeyed, if they are 
made clear enough and brief enough for every runner 
in this headlong race of our nineteenth century to 
read without pausing in his hurried career. 
No small amount of time and trouble has been 
expended by various writers upon sanitary science in 
endeavoring to frame an exact and yet comprehensive 
definition of Health. The most satisfactory with 
which I am acquainted is one founded upon the la- 
mented Bichat’s definition of Life, which he declared 16 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO EEACH IT. 
to be Organization (that is, an organized body or 
part of a body) in action. From this we describe 
Health as perfect organization in perfect action, and 
Disease, the divergence from health, as Disturbed 
organization in disturbed action. 
In former ages, both medical men and the commu- 
nity at large looked upon each separate disease as a 
separate entity, which in some mysterious way fast- 
ened upon our vitals, and if not cast out by drugs 
more potent than itself, destroyed its victims in the 
struggle for life or death which ensued between it 
and the life-force of the individual assailed. 
At present, however, physicians recognize no such 
antagonists. Diseases are no longer looked upon as 
separate existences, but are known to be only dis- 
turbances of perfect life, departures from health, 
which as a rule are gradual in their attack, and even 
more gradual in their decline; and such terms as to 
struggle against a disease, or to do battle with a mal- 
ady, have only a figurative signification, and refer to 
the causes of complaints, or to the symptoms and 
effects of an illness, such as the diarrhoea and the 
weakness which occur in typhoid fever. 
According to this view, that Disease is simply a de- 
parture from perfect health, the result of some influ- 
ence outside the body, our attention must of course 
first be directed to the more important of these ex- 
ternal agencies which in turn or simultaneously act INTR OD UCTOR V CONSIDER A T/ONS. 
17 
upon us all so as to produce disturbances of, or de- 
partures from, absolute health, and consequent reduc- 
tion of our length of life. 
Statistics show beyond all question what important 
changes towards promotion of longevity have been 
made, by even a partial obedience to the laws of 
health, during the last two hundred years. For ex- 
ample, in 1685, not a sickly year, one in twenty of 
the inhabitants of London died, whilst at present 
only one in forty dies annually, a reduction of the 
mortality to one-half. The difference, says Macau- 
lay, between London in the nineteenth and in the 
seventeenth century is as great as between London 
during ordinary years and London during the cholera. 
Mr. Edwin Chadwick, the famous British sanita- 
rian, declares the experience of sanitary authorities in 
England, where the dictates of hygiene are much more 
systematically enforced than they are in this country, 
demonstrates that in new districts or sites away from 
the situations of old cities or towns, we may, with a 
complete system of water supply and surface cleansing, 
including measures for the prevention of over-crowd- 
ing, insure a reduction of death-rates to an average 
rate of ten in every one thousand (that is to say, only 
one person out of every one hundred would die an- 
nually), and the sickness in like proportion — the 
death-rate in Philadelphia, for example, during 
healthy years, being about eighteen per thousand. 18 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
Also that in well-provided and well-regulated institu- 
tions for children from three to fifteen years of age, 
we may secure them an immunity from the common 
children’s epidemics, and so reduce the death-rates 
to the average of about three in one thousand, or 
about two-thirds the death-rates prevalent among 
children of those ages in the general population. 
It has moreover been demonstrated in England, 
that in prisons, and other such places under effective 
sanitary supervision, the death-rates have been re- 
duced, among persons from the school-ages and up- 
wards, to about three in the thousand, or to one-third 
the death-rates prevalent among people at large of the 
same ages; likewise that to the persons in such insti- 
tutions an immunity may be given against all ordinary 
epidemics, typhus fever and the eruptive diseases, 
diarrhoea and dysentery, which ravage the world 
outside their walls. 
If now such satisfactory results are possible in the 
attainment of long life and sound health by sanitary 
regulations enforced upon the ignorant and vicious 
against their will, what grand successes may we not 
look for in this country, when free and enlightened 
people voluntarily practise a wise and intelligent 
obedience to the laws of hygiene which it is the 
province of this little book to explain. CHAPTER II. 
CAUSES OF DISEASE, AND HOW TO AVOID THEM. 
MANIFESTLY, one of the first steps towards avoid- 
ing or escaping the maladies which shorten our 
lives, and inflict upon us that greatest earthly evil, 
physical pain, must be to form some acquaintance 
with the causes of disease and their modes of oper- 
ation. 
Just as the captain of an ocean steamship, in order 
to bring his charge safely into port, must carefully 
study his charts, and be prepared to avoid rocks, 
quicksands, and dangerous currents which menace 
the security of his costly vessel, so every one of us, 
if we would navigate our craft into the haven of long 
life and health, needs all the knowledge which can 
be acquired in regard to danger imminent, upon the 
right hand and the left, of our voyage in life, from 
accident and disease. 
Such knowledge of our ever watchful enemies may 
be obtained in two ways—one by venturing into their 
haunts, and testing their power upon our own bodies, 
and the other by trusting to the accounts of our 
19 20 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
neighbors, and, according to the sagacious proverb, 
making “other men’s shipwrecks our landmarks.” 
Now it is difficult to believe that there can be two 
opinions among sensible people as to the relative 
wisdom of these diverse methods of sailing our ships 
through the storms of life; and yet experience proves 
that a large majority of mankind has, in every age of 
the world, preferred to try dangerous coasts and cur- 
rents for themselves, instead of steering in the well- 
known track of comparative safety. Few among us, 
no doubt, have failed to feel and to yield to this 
seductive temptation of finding out for ourselves how 
great the danger is, and whether after all the fear of 
hearts more cowardly than our own has not exag- 
gerated its perils. How often, too, are we lured on 
to venture a trial of strength or endurance by the 
egotistic opinion that we of all men can see the evil 
consequences in time to turn aside, or, if necessary, 
draw back and avoid them. Sometimes this can in 
fact be done, and it will be accomplished with a fre- 
quency nearly in proportion to the exactness of our 
knowledge of the strength, power, and habits of the 
enemies we have to encounter, and the places where 
they are likely to be met. 
Hence the brief account of causes of disease which 
I propose to give in this chapter will, I trust, be use- 
ful to both classes of individuals — to the wise by 
pointing out to them the most approved methods of CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
21 
giving disease-producing influences a wide berth, and 
to the adventurous by teaching them how to keep a 
bright lookout for breakers ahead, if they will steer 
out of a safe course, and how best to sheer off in time 
with as little injury as possible. 
Bearing in mind the definition of health given in 
the first chapter, namely, “ perfect organization in 
perfect action,” and of disease as a departure from 
health, in other words, as “disturbed organization in 
disturbed action,” it is obvious that causes of disease 
are any of the innumerable external influences which 
act upon our bodies, so that they can disturb the nat- 
ural condition of our organs, or the balance of the 
functions which they perform. Therefore, excess or 
privation of the air we breathe, or of the water we 
drink, and the food we eat, their impurity or partial 
decomposition, as well as variations in the direction 
of superabundance or deficiency of the light, the heat, 
and the electricity which modify the nutrition of our 
bodies, may, and constantly do, all become potent 
causes of disease. 
Two of the most prolific disturbers of our perfect, 
and therefore healthy life, are heat and cold, in rela- 
tion to which it has been said that “heat is life and 
cold is death.” This proverb, however, is only true 
in regard to the former of these agents in a very lim- 
ited extent, for, as every one knows, excessive heat is 
quite as fatal to animal vitality as excessive cold. LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
These enemies of our well-being are so virulently 
and sleeplessly in action, that they deserve a separate 
study as causes of disease, and I shall therefore devote 
our next chapter to their consideration. 
Light, independent of heat, does not seem, when in 
excess, to have any ill effect upon our systems, except 
upon the organs of vision. Deficiency of this agent, 
however, exerts a marked influence in rendering hu- 
man beings, especially children, dwarfish, stunted, and 
pallid, obviously wanting in good, rich, red blood. 
The Italians have an excellent saying to the effect 
that “where light does not enter, sickness goes in;” 
and it is probable that even yet we do not fully un- 
derstand and appreciate the importance of abundance 
of light, especially to the growing child; although the 
analogy which many town-bred boys and girls present 
to the feeble, bleached-out sprouts of a potato devel- 
oping in a dark cellar, is too close and too painfully 
suggestive to have escaped general observation. The 
power of light to accomplish important steps in the 
life history of the lower animals, is admirably illus- 
trated by an experiment of Dr. Hammond’s, in which, 
by placing a tadpole in a vessel of water secluded 
from the light, he prevented for one hundred and 
twenty-five days its development into a frog. At the 
end of this time, the reptile was removed to a jar ex- 
posed to light on all sides, when the transformation 
at once commenced, and was completed in fifteen CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
23 
days. Another every-day example of the injurious 
effects of deprivation of light upon vitality, may be 
observed in any of our corn-fields in which isolated 
trees occur, the corn within the shade of the tree be- 
ing (although not wholly, yet in great measure, on 
this account) weak, small, and unprolific. 
The influence of electrical states of the atmosphere 
upon the human system is by no means definitely un- 
derstood, although there is little doubt that it is con- 
siderable in amount. In disease, and especially in 
neuralgic affections, the baleful effects of electrical 
disturbances in the atmosphere during storms is well 
marked, and many cases of mental depression, not 
amounting to insanity, are doubtless modified for 
better or for worse by electrical conditions surround- 
ing the individuals. 
The effects of impure air, impure water, and conta- 
gion, including epidemic influence and malaria, as 
causes of disease, will be made the subject of sepa- 
rate chapters; and it therefore only remains for me 
to notice in this place a few of the modifying influ- 
ences of those causes which disturb our health. 
The most general, if not the most potent, of these 
is race. In regard to the subdivisions of the Cauca- 
sian race, with which we are chiefly interested in the 
United States, it has been found that, speaking in a 
general way, the English and Welsh immigrants seem 
to be more liable to be affected with scarlet-fever, 24 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
diphtheria, croup, apoplexy, and paralysis, and enjoy 
a comparative immunity from consumption, typhoid 
and typhus fevers. Among the Irish there is a marked 
liability to consumption, and an extraordinary mor- 
tality from Bright’s disease. The Germans show a 
comparative immunity from consumption, scrofula, 
and cancer, and a decided liability to small-pox, ty- 
phoid and typhus fevers, and other febrile affections. 
The Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians exhibit a greater 
tendency to dysentery, diarrhoea, typhoid and other 
fevers, with a remarkable exemption from apoplexy, 
paralysis, cancer, Bright’s disease, and bronchitis. 
The next modifiers of disease-producing agencies 
are the temperaments, of which four are generally ac- 
cepted, viz.: sanguine, lymphatic, bilious, and ner- 
vous. Persons of a sanguine temperament are be- 
lieved to be especially liable to organic diseases of 
the heart, to aneurisms, and to the bursting of blood- 
vessels in various parts of the body, so that they 
should especially guard against articles of food and 
habits of life which promote the formation of an 
excess of blood in the system. Individuals of lym- 
phatic temperament seem particularly prone to scrof- 
ulous affections, consumption, dropsy, and skin dis- 
eases. Those of bilious temperament to diseases of 
the liver, stomach, and intestines, and those of ner- 
vous temperament to palsy, St. Vitus’s dance, epileptic 
fits, etc. CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
25 
Idiosyncrasies, or personal peculiarities in regard, 
for example, to some article of food or drink, are very 
common, and deserve careful attention from every one 
who desires to attain long life and retain good health. 
Some of them are very curious, as, for instance, the 
inability to eat shell-fish without suffering from nettle- 
rash, or the production of vomiting and diarrhoea by 
small quantities of egg in any form. As, however, 
every one must learn by experience what his own per- 
sonal idiosyncrasies are, and will soon be taught how 
severe is the punishment for violating the laws of his 
existence in trying to do as others do in these par- 
ticulars, I need not enter further into their consid- 
eration. 
A very important modifying influence is age. The 
seven ages of man, as portrayed by the great dramatist, 
seem as if they must hold a place in the study of hu- 
manity, at least as long as the Anglo-Saxon race en- 
dures ; but for our purpose it is more convenient to 
divide the life of man into youth or the period of 
increase, manhood or the period of maturity, and old 
age or the period of decay. Croup, scarlet-fever, and 
other contagious diseases, with bronchitis and pneu- 
monia, are especially fatal in the first of these periods, 
statistics showing that one-tenth of all children born 
die during the first month of existence, and that at 
the termination of the first year after birth only three- 
fourths remain alive; further, that among city-bred 26 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
children nearly one-half die before they reach the age 
of five years. In the second period, that of maturity, 
which extends from about the 20th to the 40th year, 
age modifies favorably almost all the causes of dis- 
ease, so that the chances of partial or complete es- 
cape from their injurious effects are very much in- 
creased. Just the contrary, however, holds good in 
the third period, that of decline, when the general 
decay of the powers of life renders comparatively 
slight causes operative in producing dangerous mala- 
dies. Some one portion of the human frame, like 
that of any other machine, is almost always less sub- 
stantial than the others, and gives way first, by its 
stoppage bringing about the cessation of movement, 
which we call “ life,” in all the rest. In this manner 
the bursting of some little worn-out artery in the 
brain often produces a stroke of paralysis, or an over- 
worked valve in the heart gives way and proves sud- 
denly fatal, or cancer, which may be looked upon as 
a mode of premature local death, invades some vital 
organ and slowly, painfully, and mercilessly drags 
down its victim to his grave. 
Finally, hereditary tendency, often manifested 
through long series of generations, according to a law 
which I first formulated eight years ago, as “ The 
Extinction of the Unfit,” is a most potent cause and 
modifying influence of disease. (See Phila. Medi- 
cal Ti?nes, Vol. If., p. 1.) CHAPTER III. 
HEAT AND COLD AS CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
THE agency of heat and cold in disordering our 
health is powerful and incessant enough to de- 
mand our most watchful care in order to guard our- 
selves against serious or fatal injury. Up to a certain 
point, of course, they act as antidotes to each other; 
and it is a maxim as old as the days of Hippocrates, 
that the diseases of summer are cured by the ap- 
proach of winter, and those of winter by the advent 
of summer. 
Taking up, first, the former of these influences, we 
have to bear in mind that exposure to intense heat, 
especially, but not necessarily that from the direct 
rays of the sun, is liable to produce sunstroke, which, 
as every very hot day in summer proves, is rapidly 
fatal even in our own temperate zone. The faint- 
ness, giddiness, and insensibility have been shown by 
ingenious experiments to be the immediate effect of 
heat upon the brain substance, and in order to avoid 
this enemy of health and long life, exposure to the 
sun’s rays in very hot weather, from n to 3 o’clock, 
27 28 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
should be abstained from. Wearing a wet handker- 
chief or sponge, or even a handful of green leaves, in 
the crown of the hat is a useful precaution against 
sunstroke; and when slight giddiness or weakness 
with heat about the head come on, and indicate an 
approaching attack of serious character, the patient 
should be at once removed to a cool, shady place, and 
the head and neck and chest gently rubbed with small 
pieces of ice so as to reduce the temperature to the 
natural degree of 98.4° Fahrenheit. 
Persons with delicate skins soon learn to save their 
faces and hands from being blistered in the sun by 
exercising the wisdom of the adage, “A burnt child 
dreads the fire.” 
Upon infants and young children the heated term 
of our summers is very apt to exert an unfavorable 
effect in promoting diarrhoea and cholera-infantum. 
Of course, other causes come into play and aggravate 
the evil, but there is little doubt that a week, when 
the daily temperature exceeds 950 Fahrenheit, out- 
herods Flerod as a slayer of the innocents. 
Extreme cold, even such as we occasionally ex- 
perience during the winter, is not less fatal in its 
effects, but it is more commonly a cause of death in 
proportion as we approach the polar regions. 
Cold in its minor degrees gives rise to the painful 
affections frost-bite and chilblains, the former affect- 
ing the nose, ears, and fingers, and the latter the feet. HEAT AND COLD AS CAUSES OF DEATH. 
29 
As Nature’s mechanism of keeping any portion of the 
body warm when surrounded by colder air or water, 
is by sending hot blood from the heart through it, the 
wise thing to do when compelled to stay out in severe 
cold weather is to keep in active movement as much 
as possible, and so prevent, if we can, any tendency 
to stagnation of the blood. After prolonged ex- 
posure, however, the whole mass of the blood is 
chilled below its usual temperature, and becoming, 
therefore, less efficacious as a heating power, as well 
as less energetic as a stimulant to the heart and the 
brain, exercise grows extremely difficult, and a dis- 
position to sleep almost uncontrollable. 
An admirable illustration of the saying, warmth is 
life, cold is death, which, by the by, holds good both 
as regards the whole body and individual parts as the 
fingers and toes, is given by Captain Cook, in his ac- 
count of an excursion by Dr. Solander, and nine 
others, over the hills of Terra del Fuego. 
Dr. Solander explained to his companions, before 
setting out, the ill effects of intense cold, and es- 
pecially cautioned them against giving way to the 
strong desire for sleep, with which they would prob- 
ably be affected, remarking: “Whoever sits down 
will sleep, and whoever sleeps will wake no more.” 
Notwithstanding all this, he himself was the first to 
experience this irresistible inclination to rest and 
sleep, and, in spite of his knowledge of the conse- 30 
LONG LIFE. AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
quences, he entreated his companions to allow him to 
lie down. They, however, being aware, from the in- 
formation he had given them, of the fate to which he 
would be subjected, urged him forward; but becoming 
exhausted themselves, were finally obliged to leave 
him behind with two black servants, who also had 
grown drowsy. After a little while, however, they 
returned to Dr. Solander, who was aroused, though 
with great difficulty, and carried to a fire, which some 
of the men had succeeded in kindling. Though he 
had slept but five minutes, Dr. Solander very narrowly 
escaped death, and for a considerable period after- 
wards was deprived of the use of his limbs. The two 
negro men perished. 
When only small parts of the body, such as the 
tip of the nose or the ears, have become frozen, (a 
misfortune recognizable by the spot turning of a dull 
yellowish white color,) any serious injury may often 
be prevented by thawing it very gradually, and for 
this purpose bathing the affected portion of the sys- 
tem with ice-cold water, or rubbing it with snow, is 
advisable. 
Another method by which cold acts as a disease- 
producing agent is by checking perspiration, thus pre- 
venting the carrying off of injurious worn-out materials 
of the body by that great avenue of purification, and, 
as a consequence, throwing more work upon the lungs 
and other internal organs, the office of which is HEAT AND COLD AS CAUSES OF DEATH. 
31 
largely to perform the labor which the skin is unable 
or unwilling to accomplish. 
Still another and more direct unfavorable effect of 
cold is the driving of a great part of the blood out 
of the little blood-vessels, which run everywhere just 
beneath the surface of the skin, as a mere mechanical 
result of its contracting and constricting influence. 
Of course, as this blood which is driven away from 
the surface must have some place to go to, it flows 
inwards to the warm parts of the body, which the 
external cold has not reached; as a necessary conse- 
quence filling them too full of blood, or, as it is tech- 
nically called congesting, one or more of the vital 
organs. Whichever one of these happens to be our 
“weak spot,” (and there are few of us who can boast 
of being entirely free from all imperfection of this 
kind,) is of course the least apt to recover promptly 
from the temporary congestion so produced, and 
equally, of course, the most liable to become the seat 
of a serious inflammation, of which congestion is the 
first stage. If, for example, a man’s lungs are his 
weak point, inflammation of the lungs, called also 
lung-fever and pneumonia, running on, if neglected, 
to consumption, may be the result, or should his in- 
testines be least able to resist an attack of disease, a 
more or less severe diarrhoea is often the direct con- 
sequence of exposure to cold. 
The most dangerous times for us to risk sudden 32 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
cooling of the surface of the body, are, ist. During 
sleep; 2d. When perspiring, after violent exertion or 
from other causes; and 3d. Soon after taking a 
warm bath. A majority of us, indeed, can probably 
trace most of our coughs and colds to want of suffi- 
cient care in these respects. 
It is a matter of nearly universal observation, too, 
that draughts of air are highly injurious. So also is 
the partial application of cold to portions of the body 
unaccustomed to it. Many persons will begin to 
sneeze, or become sensible of a sore throat, within a 
few minutes after being exposed to a current of cold 
air striking upon the back of the neck. Children 
and sensitive adults often take cold from the draughts 
which penetrate around the crevices of windows and 
doors, no matter how tightly these may seem to be 
fitted; even sitting too closely to the walls of a room 
may induce cold, as Pettenkofer has shown that a cur- 
rent of air, to the amount of forty-three gallons per 
hour,can pass through every square yard of an ordinary 
brick wall. The effects of cold air are much increased 
by its association with moisture, on account of the 
much greater conducting power for heat of the latter. 
Another common cause of taking cold is the laying 
aside of warm, especially of flannel, underclothing, 
heavy cloth overcoats, etc., too early in the spring, 
before the wintry weather has entirely left us. Damp 
articles of clothing, particularly wet shoes and stock- HEAT AND COLD AS CAUSES OF DEATH. 
33 
ings, are probably among the best friends that doctors 
and druggists have ever had. 
Even after one has been careless or foolhardy 
enough to run the risk of taking a severe cold in one 
of the ways mentioned above, he can often escape 
the ill effects of his rashness by removing all damp 
clothes as quickly as possible, soaking the feet for ten 
minutes in hot mustard-water, applying a large mus- 
tard plaster to his back, and covering up well with 
blankets in a warm room, so as to produce free per- 
spiration. The flow of perspiration from the skin, 
under such circumstances, is much promoted by drink- 
ing one or two cups of hot tea, for example, chamo- 
mile or boneset, and such home remedies, if thor- 
oughly and, above all, promptly applied, will often 
prevent a serious illness. CHAPTER IV. 
CONTAGION, AND HOW TO ESCAPE IT. 
CONTAGION, a name derived from the two Latin 
words, con and tango, to touch together, is the 
term applied to the material in consequence of which 
a healthy person touching a diseased one may have 
conveyed to him the disease with which the latter 
individual is affected. The word infection is applied 
to the substance or influence by which a malady is 
transmitted from one person to another, either with 
or without actual contact. The type of infectious 
diseases is small-pox, and it is also, as is well known, 
a highly contagious complaint. Scarlet-fever, measles, 
whooping-cough, mumps, etc., are likewise both con- 
tagious and infectious, and make up the class of dis- 
orders popularly known as diseases which are “catch- 
ing.” Besides the complaints already mentioned as 
undoubtedly infectious, there are several others, such 
as typhus fever, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and 
diphtheria, which are strongly suspected to be, at 
least under certain unknown circumstances, capable 
of transmission in the same way from diseased to 
34 CONTAGION, AND HO W TO ESCAPE IT. 
35 
healthy persons; and it is therefore wise to take the 
same precautions against catching them as against the 
poisons by which the first-mentioned groups are prob- 
ably disseminated. 
The importance of learning how to avoid the con- 
tagion of these diseases is shown by the fact that in 
Philadelphia, during 1877, out of a total number of 
16,004 deaths in a population of about 850,000, there 
were 155 deaths from small-pox, 379 from scarlet- 
fever, 69 from measles, 81 from whooping-cough, 542 
from typhoid fever, and 458 from diphtheria. Of 
course, these deaths represent, in each instance, a 
much greater number, probably at least ten times as 
many non-fatal cases of each disease. 
Numerous and violent are the controversies which 
have been waged, and are now carried on, in regard 
to the true nature of contagion; but without entering 
into them, I will just say, that by far the most prob- 
able doctrine is that set forth in the germ theory of 
disease, which is briefly as follows : 
This hypothesis, attributed by some to Pliny, and 
without doubt ably advocated by the celebrated Lin- 
naeus more than a century ago, professes to account 
for the symptoms of the contagious diseases by at- 
tributing them to the more or less mechanical irrita- 
tion of groups of microscopic plants developing in 
the blood, the skin, and the vital organs of affected 
persons. The period of incubation (by which is 
meant the time between exposure to small-pox, for 36 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
example, and the outbreak of the complaint) is sup- 
posed to correspond with the time required for the 
sprouting of the seeds of these minute plants within 
the body. The gradual increase in severity of the 
symptoms is attributed to the progressive growth of 
millions of tiny vegetable organisms whose period of 
greatest luxuriance marks the height of the attack, 
and the death and destruction of which correspond 
to the decline of the disease. The contagiousness 
of the communicable maladies is accounted for, as 
you see, very beautifully by the existence of the im- 
mense number of almost inconceivably small seeds 
(truly the seeds of disease) constantly produced, given 
off from the sick patient, and carried through the air 
of a room or house, either alone or attached to some 
of the innumerable epithelial scales which are all the 
time being rubbed off, as dandruff, etc., from our 
bodies. The general absence of second attacks is 
admirably explained by the hypothesis that the para- 
sitic fungus, on the first occasion, has exhausted all, 
or nearly all, of some peculiar unknown organic in- 
gredient in our systems which is absolutely requisite 
for its support, according to the very same law which 
will entail, as every farmer knows, the failure of his 
wheat if he plants it repeatedly in the same ground, 
and neglects to secure a due rotation of crops.* 
* See my Lecture on the Germ Theory of Disease, published 
by the Social Science Association of Philadelphia, in The Penn 
Monthly, November, 1878. CONTAGION, AND HOW TO ESCAPE IT. 
37 
Every individual afflicted with small-pox, scarlet- 
fever, or any other of the diseases above mentioned, 
is, according to this germ theory, to be looked upon 
as a sort of hot-bed or forcing-house, for the seeds or 
spores (as they are called) of that malady. From his 
or her body are continually given off in all directions, 
from the skin, the breath, the perspiration, and the 
other secretions, millions of spores so minute that 
twenty thousand of them, placed end to end, would 
not measure an inch in length, and a group of them 
the size of an ordinary grain of sand might contain 
fifty millions. Each one of these infinitely minute 
seeds, if it were received into a human system under 
favorable circumstances, would rapidly reproduce it- 
self, and after a few days or weeks, corresponding, as 
already mentioned, to the period of incubation, give 
rise to a new case of disease; again a new hot-bed 
for other unprotected persons. 
Now these spores, just like the seeds of larger nox- 
ious weeds which, when allowed to gain a foothold 
in our fields and gardens, propagate themselves with 
such immense rapidity, have no power to move of 
their own accord, and can only develop if they meet 
with air moisture and congenial soil suited to their 
peculiar requirements. That is to say, if the conta- 
gion of small-pox is not wafted by the air so as to 
reach any unvaccinated person before it loses its 
vitality, if, in other words, the seeds of this loathe- 38 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
some disease do not fall upon good ground, then, and 
then only, no harm is done to mankind. 
This brings me to the notice of one of the most 
common and most mischievous popular errors which 
a general acceptance of the germ theory will neces- 
sarily subvert, namely, the belief that small-pox and 
other contagious maladies often arise without pre- 
vious exposure to the seeds of disease. This doctrine, 
frequently advanced in private life as an excuse for 
neglect of proper care and caution in regard to chil- 
dren, etc., and occasionally sustained by public au- 
thorities as an apology for violation of quarantine and 
other sanitary regulations, is exceedingly pernicious. 
I firmly believe that in our own day at least every 
new case of the contagious maladies already enu- 
merated is the immediate offspring of a preceding 
case, and the direct result of exposure of an unpro- 
tected human being to the chance of having the seeds 
or spores of disease implanted in his system, an expos- 
ure which it only required sufficient knowledge, suffi- 
cient foresight, and sufficient care to avoid. 
No doubt many of my readers will feel inclined to 
say that they are personally acquainted with instances 
where diseases commonly recognized as contagious 
have arisen without any known exposure to other 
patients, sick with the same malady, from whom they 
could have caught the complaint. I admit that many 
such examples do occur, but contend that with our CONTAGION, AND HOW TO ESCAPE IT. 
39 
present means of detecting the poison of such affec- 
tions, which is invisible to the ordinary powers of the 
best microscopes, such must necessarily be the case. 
When, however, circumstances enable us to be sure 
that not even particles so minute as those I have de- 
scribed as the germs of disease can be disseminated, 
we find there occur no such outbreaks of contagious 
maladies whilst the conditions remain unaltered. 
This truth is admirably illustrated in the epidemic 
of measles which appeared in the Faroe Islands, an 
isolated group in the North Sea. For sixty-five years 
the inhabitants of these islands had been free from 
measles, when, on the ist of April, 1846, a workman 
from Copenhagen, who had arrived three days be- 
fore, fell ill with this disease. His two most intimate 
friends were next attacked, and from that time the 
malady was traced by Dr. Pannum, the Danish com- 
missioner, from hamlet to hamlet, and from island to 
island, until 6,000 out of a total population of 7,782 
had been affected by it. Age brought no safety from 
the contagion, though the disease was found to spare 
all those who in their childhood had suffered from it 
at the time of the previous epidemic more than sixty 
years before. The “shot-gun quarantines” in the 
South last year, when mercilessly enforced, always 
succeeded in keeping out Yellow Fever. 
Contagion is often very capricious. Occasion- 
ally, in a family of children, one will be very ill with 40 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
scarlet-fever, and the rest, although exposed to the 
seeds of the disease, will escape without being in- 
fected ; at other times, all the members of a house- 
hold, except those protected by previous attack, will 
take the malady in spite of ordinary precautions to 
seclude the affected child from his brothers or sisters. 
This variety of behavior is, no doubt, due to some 
constitutional peculiarity, either temporary or per- 
manent, and has its complete analogy among the 
larger plants, certain weeds or flowers growing with 
great luxuriance in particular places and soils, but 
utterly failing to establish themselves in other and 
apparently similar localities. 
The contagion of small-pox is probably the most 
virulent of any that we have ordinarily to deal with, 
and, but for the immortal discovery of vaccination by 
Dr. Jenner, would, perhaps, have continued to pre- 
vail as a terrible scourge of our race. People of the 
present day, who complain of the temporary incon- 
venience, and almost infinitesimal danger of vacci- 
nation, can only do so through ignorance of the 
horrible suffering, disgusting deformity, and appalling 
mortality which attended small-pox in former times. 
It is estimated that in England, during the eighteenth 
century, nearly one-third of all the inhabitants, ladies 
included, were pitted with small-pox, which caused 
about ten per cent, of all the deaths taking place every 
year. The mortality was so great, that one out of CONTAGION, AND HOW TO ESCAPE IT. 
41 
every four, and in some epidemics, one out of every 
three attacked, died of this disgusting malady; and 
when we remember that every one seized with it be- 
came immediately an object of danger, dread, and 
loathing to his best friends and nearest relations, and 
if he or she recovered, was generally rendered re- 
pulsive, or even disgusting for life, we can faintly 
realize what a blessing Jenner’s discovery has been 
to the world. 
The method then to avoid the contagion of small- 
pox is to be vaccinated and revaccinated, at intervals 
of about seven years, or even oftener, if the disease 
happens to be unusually prevalent. Every child 
should be vaccinated at the age of from six weeks to 
three months (or sooner, if there is small-pox in the 
neighborhood), with fresh vaccine matter direct from 
healthy calves, in order to avoid any possible con- 
tamination with the poison of human constitutional 
diseases. Such virus can now be procured in all of 
our large cities, and if obtained from responsible 
dealers is, I believe, quite reliable. The operation 
should be repeated until it “takes” perfectly, and 
is an imperative duty which every parent or guardian 
owes to his child, as well as to the community at 
large, without a day’s delay, beyond the time above 
indicated, as that suited for its performance. If each 
parent or guardian who reads these lines, whilst an un- 
vaccinated infant lives beneath his roof, will but con- 42 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
sider for a moment what a life-long sorrow it would 
be to see, day after day, that dear little innocent face 
scarred and disfigured by small-pox always, simply in 
consequence of carelessness or neglect to protect it 
from the destroyer in time, I believe we might soon 
hope to behold the last of this dreadful malady. 
Revaccination is necessary, because although in a 
majority of instances a single perfect vaccination pro- 
tects through life, in a minority of cases, this security 
becomes less and less with advancing years, and as 
yet we have no means of distinguishing these un- 
fortunate individuals of the latter class, except by 
reinserting the virus. 
As a rule the operation of vaccination is performed 
in boys upon the left forearm, just below the elbow; 
in girls upon the arm, a little below the shoulder; 
this latter difference being a concession made to 
fashion, at the risk of slight, but positive additional 
danger to the infant. In England and on the con- 
tinent, two, three or more punctures or groups of 
scratches are made, and some recent observations 
seem to indicate that a greater security is thus insured 
against small-pox. The method here in vogue of 
lightly scratching the skin, by repeated gentle touches 
of a very sharp lancet, is so nearly painless that by a 
little management the most timid child can generally 
be induced to submit to the operation without com- 
plaint. Compulsory vaccination is established by law CONTAGION, AND HOW TO ESCAPE IT. 
43 
in the British Empire, and the ordinance is strictly- 
enforced by the imposition of fine or imprisonment 
upon delinquents. Such a plan ought, by all means, 
to be adopted in this country, and as a step towards 
this desirable object, our public schools should admit 
no child who has not been thoroughly vaccinated. 
This rule would have the great additional advantage 
of rendering schools almost entirely safe from vario- 
loid as well as small-pox. 
Small-pox occurring in persons partially protected 
by a long previous vaccination, is generally rendered 
much milder, and is called varioloid or modified 
small-pox. This modification is seldom fatal and 
does not often leave unsightly scars. It is, however, 
capable of giving genuine small-pox to unprotected 
persons. 
The contagion of small-pox is extremely active, 
spreading readily throughout a house, and often to 
neighboring dwellings. It may be conveyed by the 
breath of a person affected with it before any erup- 
tion appears, and has been caught from a dead body 
twelve days after decease. It may be transmitted for 
long distances in clothing, bedding, letters, etc., un- 
less great care is taken to ventilate and disinfect the 
same. As it is often propagated by unscrupulous per- 
sons travelling in boats, cars, stages, etc., whilst sick 
with mild forms of small-pox or varioloid, I would 
advise every one to examine carefully, at the first op- 44 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
portunity, a vaccine pock upon a child’s arm five, 
six, or seven days after a successful vaccination, and 
then studiously avoid proximity to any strangers hav- 
ing similar eruptions upon their skin. In England, 
stringent laws are enforced against those who crimi- 
nally endanger the public health by thus running the 
risk of disseminating the poison of small-pox or other 
contagious diseases; and I trust that before long simi- 
lar protection to the community will be afforded by 
the legislators of our several States. Such ordinances, 
whilst involving inconvenience, or even hardship, to 
sufferers from these maladies, would be strictly in ac- 
cordance with the grand Democratic principle of se- 
curing “the greatest good for the greatest number,” 
which is so firmly established here in America. 
A certain horrible contagious disease is sometimes 
conveyed to innocent persons, especially children, by 
their lips being touched to drinking cups, gum nip- 
ples, whistles, etc., which have been contaminated 
by the mouths or hands of persons infected with it, 
so that ladies, parents and nurses cannot be too care- 
ful to guard against danger of this kind. 
As we have, unfortunately, no such safeguards as 
vaccination against the other contagious diseases, such 
as scarlet-fever, measles, etc., precautions against en- 
tering the sphere of their influence become doubly 
important, especially during epidemics of unusual 
fatality, or at times when our systems are enfeebled CONTAGION, AND HOW TO ESCAPE IT. 
45 
in any way by other maladies or unfavorable condi- 
tions. These diseases are very apt to be propagated 
among school children by the return of scholars 
recovering from measles or diphtheria, for example, 
before the poison has entirely passed off from their 
bodies, and without proper purification of their cloth- 
ing ; a pernicious practice which should also be legis- 
lated against, but which can only be fully abolished 
by the action of enlightened public opinion in regard 
to the injustice and criminality of such acts. No in- 
dividual who has suffered from measles or diphtheria 
(which may be so mild as to pass for slight sore 
throat) can safely associate with others in less than 
two weeks from the date of complete recovery, and a 
period of from four to. six weeks should elapse after 
an attack of scarlet-fever before contact is allowed 
with children who have not been protected by a pre- 
vious attack. Clothing, especially woollen fabrics, 
if not purified by thorough ventilation and disinfec- 
tion, has been known to convey scarlet-fever one, two, 
or even three years after it was impregnated with the 
contagion of this disease. 
With such knowledge of the laws of propagation 
of the infectious maladies, it is obvious that the study 
of disinfection, or the destruction of the contagious 
material, be it vegetable, animal, or mineral, becomes 
of the gravest importance. Many persons, including, 
I am sorry to say, not a few physicians, seem to think 46 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
that if they make an article of dress, a room, or a 
hospital smell badly of carbolic acid or chloride of 
lime, they have accomplished disinfection, but such 
is often by no means the case. From a series of 
very carefully conducted experiments, Dr. Baxter has 
lately concluded that no sewage or other virulent 
liquid can be regarded as surely and entirely disin- 
fected by sulphurous acid, unless enough of the gas 
from burning sulphur is absorbed by it to render it 
permanently and strongly acid to litmus paper. Also, 
that no similar virulent fluid can be considered dis- 
infected by carbolic acid unless it contains two per 
cent., or about one ounce, of the pure acid in every 
three pints of liquid. According to the same author- 
ity, aerial disinfection, as commonly practised with 
carbolic acid or chloride of lime, is useless or posi- 
tively objectionable. 
When any member of a family is attacked with 
small-pox, scarlet-fever, diphtheria, or other conta- 
gious disease, the malady may generally be prevented 
from extending by attention to the following rules, 
which I have modified somewhat from those advised 
by our local Board of Health. 
Have the patient placed in one of the upper rooms 
of the house, the furthest removed from the rest of 
the family, where the best ventilation and isolation 
are to be had. He should be under the sole charge 
of a nurse who is protected by a previous attack of CONTAGION, AND HOW TO ESCAPE IT. 
47 
the disease. The apartment should be at once cleared 
of all curtains, carpets, woollen goods, and unneces- 
sary furniture. To secure the utmost cleanliness, pro- 
vide a basin partly filled with chloride of lime or 
strong carbolic acid solution (a teaspoonful of acid 
to a half pint of water) for the patient to spit in. 
Change the clothing and bedding of the patient as 
often as needful, but never let the cast-off articles be 
carried dry through the house. A large tub contain- 
ing carbolic acid solution (four fluidounces of Cal- 
vert’s No. 4 to each gallon of water) should always 
stand in the room, for the reception of bed or body 
linen immediately after its being removed from con- 
tact with the patient. The nurse should wear in the 
chamber a loose gown and tight-fitting cap, to be 
thrown off at the door, and the hands should be 
washed, before going out, with the carbolic acid 
water. Pocket-handkerchiefs and napkins should not 
be used, but in their stead pieces of rag, which can 
be at once burned. Glasses, cups, dishes, etc., must 
be scrupulously cleaned in the carbolic acid solution, 
or in boiling water, before they are carried away from 
the room. The discharges from the bowels and kid- 
neys are to be received on their very issue from the 
body into vessels containing some disinfectant, such 
as a solution of two pounds of green vitriol (sulphate 
of iron) in a gallon of water, or the carbolic solution, 
and immediately removed. A sheet, kept moistened 48 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
with carbolic acid solution (double strength, or half 
a pint to the gallon), should be hung over the door 
outside, or beyond in the passage-way, for the purpose 
of catching any germs of the disease which might 
otherwise escape. 
Boiling is the surest way of disinfecting contami- 
nated clothing, or it may be baked in an oven 
heated to about 240° Fahrenheit. After the disease 
is over, the patient should be kept isolated for ten 
days after all the scabs fall off in small-pox, or after 
desquamation (that is, “peeling” of the skin) is 
complete in scarlet-fever; for the last week of his 
seclusion, daily baths, each containing one ounce 
of strong carbolic acid, should be given, and every 
square inch of the body must be thus carefully dis- 
infected, especially the scalp, as the disease-poison is 
apt to linger among the dandruff at the roots of the 
hair. 
To purify the apartment, wash the furniture, wood- 
work, floor, and walls (scraping off the paper) with 
the carbolic acid solution and soap. Then shut up 
tightly, and burn in it a pound of sulphur for every 
hundred cubic feet of space it contains, and allow 
the fumes to remain in the closed room for twenty- 
four hours. Lastly, open doors and windows so as 
to ventilate freely for a week, at the end of which 
time disinfection may generally be considered com- 
plete. CHAPTER V. 
CLOTHING, AND HOW TO WEAR IT. 
ONE of the principal defensive weapons which 
man employs in his struggle for existence, par- 
ticularly in the north temperate and frigid zones of 
our planet, is his clothing. Although people gener- 
ally speak of clothes from a moral and an ornamental 
point of view, ignoring to a great extent their main 
purpose, which is to preserve our health and long life, 
this latter mode of considering them ought to have 
the great pre-eminence. That such is not the case is 
very unfortunate, because forgetfulness of the chief 
end of dress, the purely hygienic one, has subjected 
mankind, and especially womankind, to the rule of 
trivial and frivolous regulations, so that the manners 
and fashions of the period frequently control to a 
great extent the hygienic fitness of clothing. 
According to theologians, clothes were instituted 
to cover our nakedness, but physiologists declare that 
their chief object is to protect us from outside in- 
fluences ; with the climate and region in which they 
are worn, they vary from thick suits of furs to rags 
49 50 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
around the loins, and the development of dress and 
the part it has taken in the history of civilization 
form no unimportant subject of research for the scien- 
tific student of mankind. 
To understand the true philosophy of dress, we 
must remember that the human body, exposed to a 
cool atmosphere, at once begins to lose heat in 
three ways: ist, by radiation; 2d, by evaporation of 
surface moisture; and 3d, by conduction, or direct 
conveyance of heat to particles of air immediately in 
contact with it. If now we cover our bodies with 
any fabric, we necessarily interfere with all three of 
these modes of cooling; but this obstruction is only 
a marked one for the few seconds or minutes required 
for the clothing itself to become heated. As soon 
as this is accomplished we begin again to cool off, 
although less rapidly than before, because radiation 
from our “artificial surface” (as the outside of our 
garments is called) can only take place as fast as heat 
is carried to it by the relatively slow process of con- 
duction through our clothes. 
The rate of conduction varies from that of a thin 
linen coat, in which it is very great, to that of a thick 
fur cloak, wherein it is very small, and upon this dif- 
ference in conducting power the relative value of 
different articles of dress depends. 
Clothes also add marvellously to our comfort by 
enabling us to change the place where the loss of heat CLOTHING, AND HOW TO WEAR IT. 
51 
into the surrounding air occurs, from our own sensi- 
tive skins to the insensible exterior of our “artificial 
surface.” In this way we avoid driving the blood 
from the outer portion of the body to vital organs, 
and so producing pneumonia, inflammation of the 
kidney, or Bright’s disease, etc. Now, the process 
of hardening one’s self, as it is popularly called, con- 
sists really, ist, in making one’s cutaneous nerves 
accustomed to bear changes to a lower temperature 
without such violent spasmodic action as sends a large 
amount of blood to the inner parts of the body; and 
2d, in rendering the vital organs so used to a rapid 
influx of blood into them that they tolerate the con- 
gestion without so much danger of serious injury. 
The operation is, therefore, exactly similar to getting 
our eyes accustomed to a strong light, or our ears to 
a loud noise, both of which are disagreeable or even 
painful at first in their effect. 
Making ourselves tender, on the other hand, is 
allowing our nerves to grow so unused to the stimu- 
lating influences of cold, and our lungs, etc., to be- 
come such strangers to the rapid influx of blood into 
them which cold produces, that when such a cause 
of disease has a chance to act upon us, not only is 
the rush of blood more violent, but its effect is more 
pernicious and serious, and congestions.or inflam- 
mations are apt to be the result. 
By careful adaptation of the thickness of our clothes 52 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
to the coldness of the weather, we can of course 
avoid, to a great extent, the necessity of becoming 
hardened to changes of external temperature, because 
we can actually prevent cold air from coming in con- 
tact with any considerable portion of our skins; but 
how far it is advisable for us to allow ourselves to 
become tender in this manner, is a debated point 
among sanitary scientists. My advice is for each to 
determine the question for himself, by trying cau- 
tiously, when in full health, how far he can bear ex- 
posure to winter’s cold without injury; but of course 
such experiments should not be undertaken by those 
in whom any dangerous hereditary tendency, as, for 
example, to consumption, exists. 
Many individuals find that in mild seasons they 
can endure going out without an overcoat up to the 
middle or end of December, until, after some un- 
usually prolonged exposure, or an exposure whilst 
otherwise out of health, they take cold, and are 
obliged to envelop themselves carefully and thickly 
for the rest of the winter. Few sanitary rules, in 
fact, require obedience more inexorably than that 
which commands us, after having once commenced 
with a certain thickness of outside winter wraps, to con- 
tinue with the same until spring returns. I have my- 
self, on one occasion, suffered a severe cold and sore 
throat from wearing a thinner neck-tie than usual on 
a winter’s day. It is probable that thousands of cases CLOTHING. AND HOW TO WEAR IT. 
53 
of consumption among females take their rise from 
the exposure of the neck and upper part of the chest 
to cold air, by the costume absurdly called “full 
dress” in fashionable society. 
But not only is the danger of laying the seeds of 
disease from passing into cold air whilst too thinly 
clad to be considered, but we must remember that to 
keep up the heat of the body without the aid of warm 
clothing in winter, requires a great expenditure of 
nervous energy, which in turn is the equivalent of a 
large amount of life-force. Some individuals seem 
to be possessed with a sort of mania for hardening 
themselves and their families, in apparent ignorance 
of the fact, that to counteract the influence of cold 
without the aid of broadcloth and furs requires this 
great waste of nervous force, which, if not so ex- 
hausted, might be applied to far higher purposes. 
Had the nervous fluid which gave activity to the 
reasoning faculties of Sir Isaac Newton’s brain, on 
that autumn day when he saw the apple fall from the 
tree, been called away from his cerebrum to energize 
the nerves of his skin in consequence of his being too 
thinly clothed, we might never have had the discovery 
of gravitation which has made his name so illustri- 
ous. Not only is it superfluous, but positively inju- 
rious, to exhaust our powers unnecessarily, when mere 
mechanical appliances, like clothing, will obviate the 
continuous expenditure of vital energy. 54 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
Practically, persons in ordinary good health will find 
it much more convenient to have all the different coats 
or dresses, intended to be worn about the same time 
of year, nearly equal in thickness, as a change to 
even a slightly thinner article of clothing is very apt 
to involve a severe cold, unless it is made exactly 
in correspondence with a rise in the thermometer. 
Leaving off warm clothing too early in the spring is 
well known to be a common cause of coughs and 
colds. 
Another way in which clothes save the wear and 
tear of our bodies is by diminishing the amount of 
heat our systems must produce by the oxidation of 
elements of food; and it is thus that, as the great Dr. 
Liebig expressed it, our clothing is merely an equiva- 
lent for a certain amount of nutriment — the more 
thickly we are clad the less urgent becomes the appe- 
tite for food, because the loss of heat by cooling, and 
consequently the amount of heat to be supplied by 
food, is diminished. Since oily food furnishes, dur- 
ing its digestion and assimilation, the largest amount 
of heat, it is an especial favorite among the inhabit- 
ants of cold climates, and the amount of fat required 
by the Esquimaux, in addition to their fur-lined gar- 
ments, to enable them to withstand the rigor of a 
Polar winter, is proverbial. 
Flannel under-clothing should be worn during the 
winter months in this climate by every one after the CLOTHING, AND HOW TO WEAR IT. 
55 
age of forty years, and is advisable for younger per- 
sons who are not in robust health. Occasionally it 
is found to irritate very delicate skins, but this disad- 
vantage may be avoided by wearing it outside of linen 
or muslin under-clothes, or by employing flannel lined 
with silk. 
As a protection against cold, for equal thicknesses 
wool is much superior to both cotton and linen. It 
has been found by direct experiment that a tin vessel 
filled with boiling water, and covered with woollen 
cloth, takes much longer to cool off than a similar 
one wrapped in cotton or linen fabric. 
In tropical regions, where clothing is required 
largely as a protection against heat, we find that tex- 
ture has little to do with its efficacy as regards direct 
rays of the sun. The main consideration being the 
color of the fabric, the best garments being white, 
then gray, yellow, pink, and blue, and black is worst 
of all. When not exposed to the rays of the sun, 
this effect of color is not marked, and the thickness 
and conducting power of the material, especially the 
former of these conditions, are those which influence 
heat. 
When we wish to secure protection against cold 
winds, leather and India-rubber prove the most useful; 
next come woollen goods, and last, a great way be- 
hind, may be reckoned cotton and linen fabrics. 
Clothing made of wool can absorb a far larger amount 56 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
of perspiration, with less danger of the wearer’s taking 
cold from its moist contact with his skin, than any 
of the other materials of dress ordinarily employed. 
One of the best popular axioms in regard to health 
urges that we should always keep the head cool and 
the feet warm. To this latter injunction I would add 
“and dry,” byway of emphasizing the importance of 
avoidingwet shoes or boots, and consequently cold feet. 
Hats and bonnets should therefore be comparatively 
light in texture, not fitting so tight as to interfere 
with the circulation through the scalp, or give rise to 
headache by pressure upon the nerves around the 
crown of the head; and in winter, if more than one 
is worn, all should be of exactly the same thickness, 
or at least identical in their power of preventing loss 
of heat. 
Boots and shoes should have broad, low heels, and be 
loose enough to avoid corns (which are almost always 
the result of trying to wear too narrow soles and too 
high heels), and yet not so loose as to give rise to excori- 
ation from friction upon projecting portions of the foot. 
Neglect of this latter precaution sometimes gives rise 
to troublesome and intractable sores. Wearing India- 
rubber shoes in rainy, or especially snowy weather, is 
probably the best method of avoiding the dangers of 
wet feet, but the practice has great disadvantages, and 
is only a choice of evils. The ill effects of rubber 
coverings for the feet may be much reduced by being CLOTHING, AND HOW TO WEAR IT. 
57 
scrupulously careful to wear them only while walking 
or using active exercise, and taking them off as soon 
as we sit down or enter the house. Water-proof boots 
and shoes have no special advantages over rubber 
over-shoes, and labor under the very great disadvan- 
tage that they are much less apt to be taken off as 
soon as the urgent necessity for their use ceases. 
The evil results from wet feet may often be dimin- 
ished, or entirely averted, by taking off the damp shoes 
and stockings, rubbing the feet dry, toasting them be- 
fore a hot fire, or hot blast of air from a furnace, and 
putting on dry, well warmed stockings and shoes as 
thick, or thicker, than those laid aside. To be effectual, 
however, this programme must be gone through with 
at once, without waiting to become rested enough, 
after fatigue, to make the additional exertion easy; 
even a delay of five minutes may be sufficient to annul 
all benefits from such a drying process, and permit 
the occurrence of congestion of some internal organ, 
which will lead to serious or fatal illness. 
Poisonous clothing, although less common than 
some sensational alarmists would represent, does 
come to market; and some years ago I had at the 
Pennsylvania Hospital a severe case of poisoning of 
a man’s neck and face from a crimson neck-handker- 
chief dyed with aniline. Gloves, stockings, drawers, 
etc., colored with aniline, red, blue, or other tints, 
should be carefully avoided by children and ladies 
with sensitive skins. CHAPTER VI. 
PURE AIR, AND HOW TO BREATHE IT. 
THE importance of a sufficient supply of pure air 
to our well-being, and even to our actual exist- 
ence, can scarcely be overestimated; and it is prob- 
able that a large majority of the diseases which cut 
off generation after generation of our race, assail 
their victims through impure, unwholesome, or 
poisoned air. Almost every one has heard of the 
celebrated Grotto del Cane, near Naples, where ema- 
nations of carbonic acid gas, from the floor of the 
cave, so poison the air that dogs, because they breathe 
a stratum of air only a few inches above the surface 
of the ground, fall insensible soon after their entrance, 
and would die in a few minutes, if not removed to a 
purer atmosphere. The valley of the Upas tree in 
Java, about which such frightful accounts are given,— 
if there is any foundation at all for this traveller’s 
story, — probably owes whatever deadly influence it 
does possess to some such evolution of carbonic acid 
in its depths which contaminates its atmosphere. 
Perhaps one of the most instructive lessons against 
58 PURE AIR, AND HOW TO BREATHE IT. 
59 
the overcrowding of human beings in a confined space 
is that furnished by the horrible sufferings of 146 
prisoners shut up, on a sultry night in August, in 
the well known Black Hole of Calcutta. The tor- 
tures endured by these poor creatures from heat, 
thirst, and gradual suffocation, were so intense, that 
at six o’clock the next morning, when the doors were 
opened, only 23 came out alive—123, or nearly six- 
sevenths of the entire number, having perished in 
agony for want of air. 
Air, I need scarcely remind my readers, is a com- 
pound of oxygen, the life-giving principle of nature, 
and nitrogen, an inert gas, apparently added merely 
to dilute the more active and stimulating ingredient. 
In pure air, the nitrogen forms by bulk nearly sev- 
enty-nine per cent., and the oxygen twenty-one per 
cent., but as ordinarily found, there are besides from 
three to six parts in the ten thousand (.03 to .06 of 
one per cent.) of carbonic acid, with traces of watery 
vapor and of ammonia. 
In ill-ventilated places inhabited by men or ani- 
mals, the proportion of oxygen may be reduced to 
twenty, or even to nineteen per cent., and the amount 
of carbonic acid increased to .1, .15, or even .2 per 
cent. Such alterations in the constitution of the air 
are not only deleterious and dangerous, if carried too 
far, but have been proved by direct experiment to be 
even in minor degrees very prejudicial to health, 60 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
causing great loss of vital force, and strongly predis- 
posing to attacks of disease. 
But how are such changes in the atmosphere pro- 
duced by overcrowding? To answer this question, it 
will be necessary to glance for a moment at the phys- 
iology of respiration, and its relations to the circu- 
lation of the blood. 
By the action of the heart, which is a hollow mus- 
cular bag, contracting in a healthy man about seventy 
times per minute, about sixteen hundred pints of 
venous blood are pumped into the fine capillary (or 
hair-like) blood-vessels of the lungs every hour. 
These sixteen hundred pints of blood, by being 
spread out in the fine net-work of delicate tubes- in 
the walls of the air-cells, get rid of nearly sixty pints 
of carbonic acid, and absorb rather more than sixty 
pints of oxygen in that space of time. Our very life 
immediately depends upon this gaining of fresh oxy- 
gen and getting rid of stale carbonic acid unceas- 
ingly, for, as is shown in hanging and drowning, let 
this process be forcibly interrupted even for a few 
minutes, and death is the result. Night and day, 
while life continues, our hearts must go on pumping 
dark purple venous blood into the lungs, to be there 
purified and changed into red arterial blood by losing 
its carbonic acid and gaining fresh oxygen, which is 
carried to every part of our bodies, conveying to them 
new and vigorous life. Night and day, too, must the PURE AIR, AND HOW TO BREATHE IT. 
61 
lungs, in their turn, pump in fresh air (about seven- 
teen times per minute in health) to furnish this neces- 
sary supply of revivifying oxygen ; and, what is almost 
equally important, they must pump out the air which 
has been partly deprived of its oxygen, and has re- 
ceived in its place the worn-out and now deleterious 
substances got rid of by venous blood, among wnich 
the carbonic acid, such as poisons the air of the Nea- 
politan grotto, is among the chief. 
Since, then, air which has been breathed has lost 
some of its life-giving power, and has, besides, be- 
come contaminated with useless and injurious refuse 
materials, it is obvious that we had better avoid tak- 
ing it again into our lungs, even were it as pleasant 
as fresh portions of the atmosphere. How much more, 
then, must every refined and cleanly person shrink 
from inhaling into the very recesses of his or her 
body air which is loaded with the foul emanations 
and worn-out refuse cast off at every breath by the 
filthy, perhaps diseased, people who push their way 
into most crowded places, and especially into the ill- 
ventilated halls, lecture-rooms, theatres, etc., of our 
large towns and cities? If it were anything else but 
air, the idea of using it thus at second-hand, after its 
ejection by dirty and unwholesome persons, would be 
horribly disgusting, but because these impurities of 
air are invisible to the naked eye, they are drawn into 
the lungs of refined gentlemen and delicate ladies 62 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
without a thought of their degraded nature and ori- 
gin, or of their poisonous power. 
The proof that carbonic acid is given off by the 
lungs and rejected in once breathed air is very sim- 
ple, and can be obtained in a few minutes by any one 
of my readers. This test only requires a small glass 
tube, eight or ten inches long, and half a pint of lime- 
water, easily made by shaking a lump of lime the size 
of a walnut in a quart or so of hydrant-water. All 
you have to do is to dip the end of the tube to the 
bottom of the bottle of lime-water, and then breathe 
out the air from your lungs for half a minute through 
the pipe, so that it will bubble up through the water. 
The clear fluid will very soon become cloudy, almost 
milky, from the formation of carbonate of lime by 
the union of the carbonic acid expired from your lungs 
with the lime which the water has dissolved. 
The existence of refuse animal matter is not so 
readily demonstrated, and yet one visit to the steer- 
age of an emigrant ship, the crowded ward of an 
almshouse, or the overflowing lodging-room of a 
police-station, will furnish powerful evidence that a 
hundred persons breathing the air of a moderately 
large room soon render it foul and unwholesome. 
Of course, exactly the impurities with which this 
hundred poison the atmosphere in half an hour, 
would be given off from the lungs of ten persons in 
five hours, or by a single individual in about two 
days’ time. PURE AIR, AND HOW TO BREATHE IT. 
63 
The principle of our experiment for showing the 
presence of carbonic acid in air as it is breathed out 
of our lungs has been very ingeniously applied to 
testing the amount of this impurity. It is called Dr. 
Angus Smith’s household test for carbonic acid, and 
is applied as follows : Procure a bottle holding io£ 
fluidounces, fill it with the air of the room you wish 
to examine, by blowing it in with a bellows or suck- 
ing it in through a glass tube pushed down to the 
bottom of the vial; pour in half an ounce of lime- 
water, and, after corking tightly, shake well for two 
or three minutes. If, after a short time, there is no 
milky appearance of the lime-water, you may know 
to a certainty that the io ounces of air in the bottle 
do not contain enough carbonic acid to form a visi- 
ble precipitate of carbonate of lime (chalk) in the 
lime-water, and this has been proved by careful ex- 
periment on a large scale to be equal to less than 
of one per cent, of carbonic acid in the sample of air 
tested; a quantity which has been agreed upon by 
some high sanitary authorities as the limit beyond 
which the accumulation of this impurity (and others, 
perhaps much more noxious, which seem to always 
accompany it when it arises from human or animal 
respiration) is injurious to health, and should not be 
permitted to occur. 
Although this carbonic acid and its vile compan- 
ions given off from the lungs of man and beast are 64 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
some of the most common impurities, there are many- 
other deleterious ingredients, both gaseous and solid, 
which woefully vitiate the atmosphere when they gain 
access to it. Among these, some of the most impor- 
tant are the effluvia from drains, sewers, and cess-pits, 
which have often proved most dangerous causes of 
disease. In one instance, out of twenty-two boys at 
a school near Clapham, England, who watched the 
opening and cleaning of a drain which had become 
choked up, twenty were siezed within three hours 
with violent vomiting, diarrhoea, prostration, and 
fever, and two of these twenty died from the effects 
of the poison they inhaled into their lungs whilst 
standing over the drain. There is little doubt, as I 
shall point out more fully in the next chapter when 
speaking of sewerage, that the effluvia with which 
sewer-gas is loaded, escaping through stationary wash- 
stands, bath-tub waste-pipes, and water-closets, is a 
fruitful source, perhaps, indeed, the great source, of 
typhoid fever, diphtheria, and scarlet-fever epidemics 
in the cities and chief towns of our country. 
Effluvia from decomposing animal matter often 
contaminate the air to such an extent as to give rise 
to pestilential disorders. The carcasses of men and 
horses upon battle-fields bring on epidemics of diar- 
rhoea or dysentery, etc., and the vapors given out 
from thickly crowded graveyards greatly increase the 
sick- and death-rates of neighborhoods in which they 
are disseminated. 65 
PURE AIR, AND HOW TO BREATHE IT. 
The emanations from manure factories, brick-fields, 
and chemical works of various kinds, are more or less 
deleterious to health, and the air of marshes or low- 
lying meadows is very apt to give rise to remittent or 
intermittent fevers, bilious fever, ague, etc. 
Dust in the air, in regard to which Prof. Tyndall 
has done such good service to humanity by pointing 
out its connection with disease, is composed of an 
infinite variety of materials, among which the micro- 
scope reveals innumerable epithelial scales from the 
skins of men and animals, hairs, fragments of wool, 
cotton, and flax fibres, pollen grains, splinters of 
wood, bark, shreds of leaves, particles of coal, soot, 
sand, earth, and many other articles too numerous or 
too disgusting to mention. Some of these irritate 
the lungs mechanically, as, for example, is the case 
with the angular fragments of anthracite or bitu- 
minous coal, which cause a peculiar form of lung- 
disease called miner’s consumption. This affection 
cuts short the days of an immense number of those 
who work in coal-dust, and after death their lungs 
are found to be filled with sharp particles of coal, 
which, being inhaled with the breath, become em- 
bedded in the substance of the lung, and there, act- 
ing as so many little splinters in the flesh, give rise 
to innumerable minute boils or abscesses by which 
the breathing apparatus is actually riddled with holes, 
and so much of it destroyed, that the poor sufferers 66 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
die for want of lung enough to properly supply their 
blood with air. 
The fine particles of steel thrown off in grinding 
saws and other tools give rise to “ saw-grinder’s con- 
sumption,” the dust from the clay in potteries to 
“ potter’s asthma,” and the fragments of wool, flax, 
etc., in cloth factories, cotton mills, and so forth, to 
bronchitis, and other lung complaints. All these 
contaminations of pure air seem to have a merely 
mechanical effect; but such impurities as phosphorus 
in match factories, lead in white-lead works, copper 
and brass in foundries, where the latter give rise to 
“brass-founder’s ague,” and especially arsenic from 
the green wall-papers, chintzes, etc., now so much in 
vogue, and which should never be used, have a chemi- 
cal and poisonous influence which it is worth a great 
deal of pains to avoid. 
Most of the victims to these various kinds of dust 
in the air are really sufferers through ignorance of 
their injurious or fatal effects; but, now that I have 
pointed out the danger, I trust none of my readers 
will allow themselves to be exposed to such delete- 
rious influences, at any rate without using every pre- 
caution which science has devised to diminish the 
evil results. 
The great remedy for impurities of air is, of course, 
ventilation, and the best method of accomplishing 
this has been for many years one of the great objects PURE AIR, AND HOW TO BREATHE IT. 
67 
of sanitarians. It is obvious, however, at the outset, 
that the air of an inhabited room cannot, even if we 
try our best, be kept as pure as the external atmos- 
phere, so that the object of ventilation must be only 
to reduce the impurities of respiration to such an ex- 
tent that breathing them into our lungs again will not 
be manifestly detrimental to health. I have already 
mentioned that six one-hundredths of one per cent, 
of carbonic acid was all that we should allow the air 
of our dwelling-houses to contain, and in order to 
keep the ratio of the carbonic acid and its associated 
animal impurities down to this limit, it has been 
found, by experiment, that it is necessary to supply 
three thousand cubic feet of perfectly pure air each 
hour for every adult man who is vitiating the atmos- 
phere of a room by breathing it. This amount of 
air would fill a chamber ten feet wide, ten feet high, 
and thirty feet long ; so that if we remember that 
every man in a crowded theatre, for example, ought 
to have three such roomfuls furnished to him during 
an ordinary three hours’ performance, we begin to 
realize what an important consideration is the due 
ventilation of halls for public assemblages, and why 
so many sensitive persons, especially ladies, feel op- 
pressed, suffer from violent headache, etc., or even 
actually faint away toward the close of a lecture or 
performance before a crowded house. In such cases, 
too, the gas-lights or other sources of illumination 68 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
(except the electric and oxy-hydrogen lights) aid very 
much in rendering the air impure, since it has been 
calculated that one gas-burner, consuming three cubic 
feet of gas, produces about as much carbonic acid as 
would the breathing apparatus of ten men in the same 
length of time. 
The difficulty of changing the air of an apartment 
often enough to maintain the standard of purity from 
respiratory contamination is very much increased by 
the necessity we are under of so arranging the flow 
of air that the inhabitants of the room shall not be 
subjected to draughts, and this desirable object can 
only be attained by having the number of cubic feet 
of space allotted to each individual comparatively 
great. It has been proved by further direct observa- 
tion, that with the best ventilating appliances, and if 
the air is properly warmed, we may change the air 
of a room containing four hundred and twenty-four 
cubic feet (a chamber of about six feet wide, seven 
feet long, and ten feet high) six times in an hour 
without creating appreciable draughts. With natural 
ventilation, however, that is, ventilation from the 
cracks of doors and windows, it is almost impossible 
to replace the air of a chamber more than three times 
in an hour without exposing the inmates to unpleasant 
currents of air; and, therefore, in order to supply the 
amount I have just declared to be requisite, without 
causing injurious draughts, persons should not con- PURE AIR, AND HO W TO BREA THE IT. 
69 
gregate in a room to a greater number than one to 
every one thousand cubic feet, and this only when 
the best natural ventilation is secured. According 
to this rule, an apartment ten feet high, ten feet wide, 
and twenty feet long, should contain two people ; 
and in a chamber twenty feet square and ten feet 
high, four persons, but no more, might be allowed to 
sit, eat, or sleep. Of course, these laws of health are 
constantly outraged by the poor and the ignorant, as 
well as the parsimonious and the foolhardy; but sooner 
or later such violations are sure to entail their own 
punishment, and there is no doubt that much of the 
dyspepsia, neuralgia, debility, premature old age, etc., 
so common among persons who spend a large portion 
of their lives in close, ill-ventilated rooms, is due to 
the deleterious impurities of second-hand air, which 
I have so earnestly sought to warn you against admit- 
ting into your systems. CHAPTER VII. 
PURE WATER, AND HOW TO OBTAIN IT. 
WATER is the second great material necessary for 
human existence, the first being air, the subject 
of our preceding chapter, since it is estimated that 
man can live without air from two to ten minutes 
only; without water for three, four, or five days; 
without sleep for seven days, and without food for 
ten or fifteen days. 
But if water is thus an absolute requisite for life, 
pure water is a no less imperative necessity for health, 
and since this fluid is especially apt to become contam- 
inated, as a result of its nearly universal solvent pow- 
ers, it behooves us to watch with exceeding care the 
sources of our supply. 
Water constitutes about three-fourths of the surface 
of the earth, and the greater part of the bodies of 
man and other animals; some vegetables, such as 
celery and cabbage, may contain as much as ninety- 
five per cent, of it. A healthy individual requires 
from three to five pints of water daily, nearly one- 
third of this quantity being contained in articles of 
70 PURE WATER, AND HOW TO OBTAIN IT. 
71 
diet, and the rest supplied to the system in the form 
of liquids. 
Rain-water being the condensed vapor which is 
constantly given off from the surface of seas, lakes, 
and rivers, and therefore the product of a natural dis- 
tillation, is the purest of all forms ordinarily met 
with, if collected as it falls in clean vessels. Practi- 
cally, if it is obtained from clean slate or galvanized 
iron roofs, and preserved in suitable cisterns, it is the 
best water for our use, but very often impurities from 
the surfaces upon which it descends, impurities from 
the pipes through which it flows (such as lead), and 
impurities of storage from foul cisterns, etc., render 
it less suitable for drinking and cooking purposes 
than properly selected well-water. 
Some hundred years ago, a curious epidemic, char- 
acterized by pain in the stomach and bowels, obsti- 
nate constipation, and, later on in the attack, symp- 
toms of palsy, broke out in the city of Amsterdam, 
for a time baffling the skill of the ablest physicians, 
until at last it was discovered to be lead-poisoning, 
due to the substitution of lead for tile roofs, from 
which the drinking-water was collected. The new- 
fashioned metallic roofs were soon abandoned, and 
the epidemic promptly disappeared. 
Rivers are probably the most usual sources of sup- 
ply for our drinking-waters, and if due care is exer- 
cised to prevent contamination of the liquid from 72 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
sewers, factories, etc., along the banks of the streams, 
this variety of water is one of the least objectionable. 
A certain amount of saline impurity, especially of 
the sulphates and chlorides of the alkaline earths, 
must be present in order to render river-water safe 
from contamination by lead pipes, if these are used 
for distributing the fluid, as they are in most of our 
larger cities and towns. The way in which these sol- 
uble salts act is not by directly preventing the water 
from dissolving the lead, but by forming with the 
metal an insoluble coating over the inner surface of 
the pipe, which mechanically precludes the water 
from having any action upon the metallic surface. 
It is on account of the very purity of rain-water from 
these saline compounds, that lead pipes or lead-lined 
cisterns should never be used for its conveyance or 
retention, and many cases of obscure and dangerous 
illness in country houses have of late years been 
traced to neglect of this precaution against the en- 
trance of a potent cause of disease into our system. 
Much might be written to advantage in regard to 
the impurities of river-water, but I am compelled, by 
want of space, to hasten on to the subject of well- 
water, the contaminations of which cause a large pro- 
portion of the acute disorders affecting inhabitants 
of the rural districts. 
When rain falls upon the surface of the ground, a 
portion of the moisture runs off into brooks, creeks, PURE WATER, AND HOW TO OBTAIN IT. 
73 
and rivers, but a much larger part soaks downwards 
through the earth, and after a few hours or days finds 
its way by the minute holes in the soil into our wells. 
In the course of its journey towards the centre of the 
earth, it dissolves, as already intimated, numerous 
mineral ingredients, which may render it unpalatable, 
or even to some degree unwholesome, although seldom 
actually noxious to health. It is far different, how- 
ever, with materials which it meets with in its way, 
derived from the animal kingdom, since these often 
change our drinking-water into slow and insidious 
poison, or into swift agents of sudden destruction. 
Two of the most fatal scourges of humanity—cholera 
and typhoid fever — are particularly apt to be trans- 
mitted from one victim to another by way of con- 
taminated well-water. 
I can probably impress this most important fact 
upon the minds of my readers more forcibly by means 
of a couple of anecdotes than in any other way; and 
if the lessons these two true stories teach, were con- 
stantly borne in mind, and acted upon throughout 
the community, thousands of valuable lives would, I 
doubt not, annually be saved. 
The famous tea-water pump in Broad Street, near 
Golden Square, London, is believed to have been the 
means of killing five hundred persons with cholera, 
in a single week, during the epidemic of 1854, and 
its agency in disseminating this fearful scourge was 74 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
detected in the following curious way: It has long 
been known that water which contains five or six 
grains of lime, or magnesia, to the gallon, is much 
the best for making tea, because this amount of the 
mineral ingredients mentioned prevents the solution 
of certain astringent principles of the leaf. Thus, 
the Broad Street pump became known, and highly 
appreciated, because it furnished water impregnated 
with exactly the right quantity of lime to make “the 
cup which cheers, but does not inebriate,” in its full 
perfection ; and when the cholera broke out in its 
neighborhood, people, who removed to other quarters 
of London, continued to send to this pump to pro- 
cure their tea-water. One old lady in particular, 
who took refuge in the distant suburb of Hampstead, 
sent her maid-servant every day three miles for a 
kettle of water, to the Broad Street pump, and this 
old lady and her maid were the only persons attacked 
with cholera in Hampstead. The attention of health 
officers was finally attracted to the pump as a dis- 
seminator of disease, and after taking away the pump- 
handle the pestilence notably decreased in the neigh- 
borhood. The water of this pump well was after- 
wards proved to have become contaminated by the 
soakage into it of discharges from the bowels of 
cholera patients using cess-pits in its vicinity, such 
discharges being now known to form the chief agents 
in propagating this terrible disease. PURE WATER, AND HOW TO OBTAIN IT. 
75 
Prof. Flint relates a remarkable instance in which 
it was possible to trace the spread of an outbreak of 
typhoid fever, which is often so fatal in the country, 
in the most conclusive manner to the poisoning of a 
well by discharges from the bowels of a patient ill 
with the disease. A young man travelling by stage- 
coach through the State of Vermont was taken ill, 
and, when he could go no further, was left at the tav- 
ern of small wayside village to be cared for, his ill- 
ness soon proving to be typhoid fever. Now, it hap- 
pened that a small brook in a shallow valley divided 
the village into two portions, each consisting of about 
half a dozen houses. In the course of a few days, 
new cases of typhoid fever made their appearance in 
that half of the village to which the tavern belonged, 
and soon every house on that side of the stream ex- 
cept 07ie was invaded, whilst on the other side of the 
brook not a case occurred. It appears that the tav- 
ern well, which was the only one which had been 
dug on that bank of the stream, furnished the water- 
supply to all the families but one belonging there. 
That one family had had a falling out with the land- 
lord of the inn, and in consequence of this quarrel 
they drank none of the water, which was rendered 
impure by the soaking into it of the specific poison 
of typhoid fever, which struck down all of their 
neighbors in that half of the town. 
Recent observations upon the propagation and 76 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
spread of diphtheria tend to show that in all those 
instances of excessive malignity, when whole families 
of children have been swept away in a few weeks, 
careful examination will reveal the cause of this un- 
usual mortality in a water-supply contaminated by 
washings or soakings from cess-pits or other recep- 
tacles for the evacuations of the bowels of more or 
less diseased human beings. Direct experiment has 
proved that in a light porous soil a well eighty feet 
deep will drain a mass of soil in the shape of an in- 
verted cone, the apex of which is at the bottom of 
the well, and the base of which has a diameter of two 
hundred feet, or more than twice the depth of the 
well. Hence, if, in the centre of a large village 
building lot one hundred and fifty feet square, is dug 
the well for supplying the mansion with water, and 
at any one of its corners, as far distant as possible, is 
sunk a more or less shallow pit to serve as a cess-pool, 
the chance of contaminating the first pit with rain- 
water washings from the second pit or cess-pool is 
very great, and the danger of infecting the whole 
family with cholera, typhoid fever (and probably 
some other maladies), should a single case of these 
diseases find access to the grounds, imminent. Of 
course, the same conclusion holds good for country 
farmhouses or dwellings, when, from motives of con- 
venience, but a short distance is interposed between 
the sides of the hole which is called the well, and PURE WATER, AND HOW TO OBTAIN IT. 
77 
furnishes the drinking-water, and the hole which is 
called a cess-pit and used as a receptacle for filthy, 
often poisonous excrement. Moreover, there are, no 
doubt, many instances where, owing to the inclina- 
tion of beds of sand or gravel, strata of rock, and so 
forth, impurities of these and other dangerous varie- 
ties may be carried by underground currents much 
further than the distances as measured on the surface 
of the earth which I have mentioned. In other 
words, a cess-pool on a hillside two hundred feet or 
more away from a well may infect the water of the 
latter, if underground currents favor such contamina- 
tion. Practically, it is beyond all question that, in 
multitudes of instances, the cess-pits feed the wells ; 
and it is equally certain that such wells feed the grave- 
yards of villages and districts where this culpable 
neglect of hygienic precautions is allowed to occur. 
In this connection, I cannot too strongly impress 
upon rny readers that filtration through the earth, suf- 
ficient to remove visible impurities, does not neces- 
sarily render water fit for use, that is to say, clear 
water is not necessarily pure water any more than 
cold air is necessarily pure air. 
Water from small creeks, ponds, mill-dams, marshes, 
etc., is very apt to be impure, not having even the 
uncertain benefit of filtration through the earth to 
strain out the germs of various diseases. Many at- 
tacks of ague, bilious fever, and typhoid fever can be 78 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
traced to drinking such water, and the eggs or young 
of sundry parasitic worms, and so forth, probably often 
gain an entrance into the stomach, and from thence 
to other parts of the system in this way. 
One of the simplest and cheapest pieces of appa- 
ratus for purifying water is Dr. Parkes’ cottage filter, 
which is thus prepared. “ Get a common earthen- 
ware flower-pot, and cover the hole with a bit of zinc 
wire gauze, or of clean washed flannel, which requires 
changing from time to time; then put into the pot 
about three inches of gravel, and above that the same 
depth of white sand washed very clean. Four inches 
of animal charcoal (covered with a thin stratum of 
coarse gravel, or with a piece of slate to keep it in 
place) constitute the last layer; and the water should 
be poured in on the top and be received from the 
hole at the bottom into a large glass bottle. The 
charcoal will, from time to time, become clogged, 
and must then be cleaned by heating over the fire in 
a shovel. The sand or gravel should also be cleaned 
or renewed from time to time.” 
A convenient test for decomposing animal matter 
in water is the development of a putrid odor by stand- 
ing twenty-four hours in a perfectly clean, well-scalded 
bottle. A pint-bottle, two-thirds full and tightly 
corked, may be used, and if any disagreeable smell 
is discoverable, the fluid should be carefully tested by 
a competent chemist before being employed for cook- PURE WATER, AND HOW TO OBI AIN IT. 
79 
ing or drinking purposes. Of course, a water may- 
be very impure, and yet yield no foul odor when thus 
examined. 
A wise precaution when travelling in unhealthy dis- 
tricts, or during the prevalence of an epidemic, is to 
drink none but boiled rain-water. To be effectual, 
the boiling should be continued briskly for half an 
hour or longer. Rain-water is preferable in many 
regions, because the hard water (containing lime) is 
but partially or not at all improved by boiling, and 
gives rise to serious diarrhoea in many of those unac- 
customed to its employment, also, probably, to cal- 
culous disorders. 
The question of how to get rid of waste and filthy 
water, constituting part of the very important subject 
of drainage, can only be briefly touched upon here. 
The sewers, which in most cities and large towns are 
supposed to carry off the superfluous liquids or “slops” 
of all kinds, frequently become imperfect; and the 
foul fluids — liquid poisons, as they have been most 
appropriately entitled — stand still in hollow places or 
soak through bad joints, and contaminate the drink- 
ing-water or the air upon which we are so utterly de- 
pendent. 
Make it a rule, therefore, neither to sleep nor eat 
in a house where the drains are not in perfect order, 
and do not trust to the absence of a bad smell as suffi- 
cient evidence that no poisonous effluvia are escaping 80 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
from sewers, or any of the connecting pipes by which 
waste water finds its outlet. Above all, reject sta- 
tionary wash-stands in bed-rooms, or bath-rooms and 
other “ modern conveniences,” adjoining sleeping or 
living rooms. Such modern conveniences are in real- 
ity conveniences for the ready entrance of typhoid 
fever, diphtheria, and other dangerous diseases into 
your dwellings, and all the ordinary forms of “ traps” 
and ventilators, no matter how well they are kept in 
order, mechanically, seemed to have proved powerless 
to prevent the admission of these terrible maladies. 
It is to be hoped that some sanitary Edison will 
soon devise effectual methods of sewerage, but until 
then, beware of the emanation from foul water in 
sewers, drains, etc., as you would of the poison of 
yellow fever or of small-pox, which, indeed, it may 
readily contain. CHAPTER VIII. 
BATHS, AND HOW TO TAKE THEM. 
IT is related of the celebrated, but eccentric, Dr. 
Abernethy, that upon one occasion a child was 
brought to him suffering from some disease of the 
skin, it is true, but in a far worse condition from 
want of cleanliness. The Doctor, seeing at once that 
this latter misfortune was the cause of the former, said 
to the boy’s mother, “ I can soon cure your son, if 
you will strictly follow my directions. Get a large 
tub, fill it every day two-thirds full of warm water, 
put the little fellow into it, and then rub him all over 
with the best Castile soap, and a coarse towel.” “ But, 
Doctor,” exclaimed the astonished woman, .“that 
would be giving my child a bath.” “ True,” replied 
the physician, “ it is open to that objection.” 
If, as I firmly believe, it is morally our duty to take 
the best possible care of the bodies with which we 
have been intrusted, the old saying, that “cleanli- 
ness is akin to godliness,” finds no higher expression 
than in the proper use of baths. 
The employment of baths goes back to the highest 
81 82 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
antiquity, and was indulged in almost to excess by 
the Greeks and Romans. So important are baths in 
warm countries, that the Jewish and oriental religions 
enjoin frequent ablutions as a necessary pait of the 
ceremonials of their creeds, thus no doubt largely con- 
tributing to the health and well-being of their devout 
disciples. 
In order to understand the value of bathing, we 
must glance for a few moments at the anatomy and 
the physiology of the skin, which is, of course, the 
portion of our bodies chiefly interested in the process. 
In the first place, we have on the entire outer surface 
of the body a layer of membrane, like thin leather, 
called the epidermis, this stratum is not supplied with 
nerves, is therefore insensible, and constitutes the 
portion which rises up when the hands are blistered 
by rowing, for example, or when a fly-blister is ap- 
plied. It is through it that pins are run in the com- 
mon school-boy’s trick of arming the fingers with their 
points. Just beneath the epidermis lies the true skin 
or corium, as it is called, a tough, strong membrane, 
richly supplied with blood-vessels and nerves. Hence 
it bleeds and feels pain at the slightest cut or punc- 
ture, since even the finest needle cannot be thrust into 
it without wounding some little artery or vein, and 
some tiny filament of nerve. Under the true skin 
again lies the subcutaneous cellular tissue, which gen- 
erally contains a good deal of fat. BATHS, AND HOW TO TAKE THEM. 
83 
The most important constituents of the skin to our 
present inquiry, however, are : ist. The sweat-glands ; 
2d. The oil-glands; and, 3d. The hair and nails 
usually spoken of as appendages to the skin. 
The sweat-glands are twisted and coiled up tubes, 
occupying the true skin and the layer of tissue be- 
neath. They open upon the outside of the epidermis 
by immense minute openings called pores, so small 
as to be rarely visible to the naked eye. It is esti- 
mated that there are on an average nearly 3,000 pores 
(each the mouth of a sweat-gland) to every square 
inch of the skin upon a human body, and that the 
total length of the hair-like tubes, forming the glands 
all over the surface of an ordinary sized man, is about 
twenty-eight miles. The effect of stopping twenty- 
eight miles of sewer-pipes, as those drainage tubes 
of our systems may be denominated, can readily be 
imagined, and has been experimentally shown upon 
dogs by the cruel and quickly fatal process of varnish- 
ing them over after cutting-off all the hair. But even 
in very filthy people, the coating of dirt, oily matter, 
from the oil-glands of the skin, saline materials from 
the perspiration, and epithelial scales from the epi- 
dermis, is never so dense as a coat of varnish, so that 
perspiration goes on through it, although much less 
efficiently than when the body is kept clean. 
When we are at rest, the flow of perspiration, though 
constant, is seldom so free that it does not evaporate 84 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
almost as rapidly as it exudes, so that the skin is only 
kept pleasantly moist; but during exercise, especially 
in warm weather, the cutaneous surface becomes 
covered with drops of fluid. The evaporation of 
liquid from the skin has an important influence in re- 
taining the body at its proper temperature of 98.4° 
Fahrenheit, and also in separating any excess of water 
which may have been taken into the stomach from 
the blood, into which fluids we drink are quickly ab- 
sorbed. Of course, when the pores of the skin are 
partly choked up, so that they cannot do their work 
properly, some of this duty of purifying and regu- 
lating the volume of the blood is thrown upon certain 
internal organs, such as the kidneys or intestines ; and 
should these happen to be weak, diseased, or already 
overtasked, serious disturbance may be quickly 
brought on throughout the whole system. 
Now, these two agencies, namely, first, the local 
irritation of the skin by dirt, worn-out epithelial 
scales, dried perspiration-, and exuded oily matter; 
and, second, the general derangement of health due 
to unwholesome blood, which is not purified as it 
should be, give rise to most of the troublesome and 
disgusting skin diseases which are not the results of 
contagion or due to animal and vegetable parasites. 
Hence, the man or woman who will take the simple 
and delightful precaution of bathing often enough to 
keep the cutaneous surface in a good condition, may BATHS, AND HOW TO TAKE THEM. 
85 
be almost sure of escaping a large class of skin dis- 
eases. * 
Having thus demonstrated, I trust, to my reader’s 
full satisfaction, the inestimable value of frequent ab- 
lution of the skin, let us now consider the varieties of 
baths. 
For purposes of cleanliness, the baths par excel- 
lence are those of warm water, this term being applied 
to the ones in which water of a temperature from 70° 
to 8o° is employed. Liquids of this degree of heat 
usually give a sensation of warmth when placed in 
contact with the human skin, and therefore avoid the 
disadvantages of the shock to our systems produced 
by a cold bath (that is, below 6o°), and the excessive 
stimulation resulting from a hot bath, i. e., one of 85° 
and upwards. Soap, or alkali in some form, is neces- 
sary to remove the fatty matter poured out by the oil- 
glands already described, and for most people there 
is nothing better than the old-fashioned white Castile. 
Many persons are apt to remain too long in a warm 
bath, and care should be taken to avoid this mis- 
take, which has a very debilitating effect if often in- 
dulged in. 
The frequency with which a bath should be re- 
peated varies somewhat with different individuals. 
* The remainder being almost equally avoidable, as will be 
pointed out in Chap. XV. 86 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
Some there are whose skins exude a large amount of 
strong-smelling materials, for whom a bath twice 
daily, in warm weather, is almost a necessity; whilst 
others, whose skins are less active as common sewers 
for the impurities of the system, need only a daily or 
tri-weekly ablution. There is no doubt that bathing, 
like all other good things, may be carried to inju- 
rious excess, and I have often seen patients seriously 
impair their health by too frequent resort to the bath- 
tub. At the same time it is equally certain that by 
far the majority err in the opposite direction, and, as 
the records of hospitals for skin diseases testify, fail 
to yield sufficient obedience to the command, “wash, 
and be clean.” A safe rule, to which there are of 
course sundry exceptions, would be to bathe the whole 
body twice a week in winter and every other day in 
summer, gradually increasing this frequency to a tri- 
weekly washing in winter and a daily one in summer, 
if experience proves that better health is secured by 
such a habit. 
It is very important to avoid being exposed to cool 
air after immersion in a warm bath, because mechani- 
cal obstructions to the outflow of perspiration from 
the pores being washed away, the amount of fluid 
poured out upon the skin, and consequently the cool- 
ing effect of evaporation from the cutaneous surface 
is greater, and the danger of becoming chilled much 
increased. The condition is accurately expressed by BATHS, AND HOW TO TAKE THEM. 
87 
the popular sa-ying that a warm bath “opens the 
pores,” although the exact mechanism by which this 
opening is accomplished is not so generally under- 
stood. Hence it follows that the best time for bath- 
ing, with those who are in robust health, yet are 
liable to take cold, is in the evening, when they can 
go to bed at once, and so avoid all exposure for some 
hours afterwards. Invalids, however, and those who' 
have delicate constitutions, will often find that they 
endure the exertion of taking a bath best about eleven 
o’clock in the morning, after digestion of the morn- 
ing meal is accomplished, and yet before they are 
tired out with the fatigues of the day. 
Hot baths, by which are meant those of a temper- 
ature of from 85° to 105° Fahrenheit, are chiefly 
used in the treatment of diseases as powerful stimu- 
lants, and scarcely require notice here. Every pa- 
rent should remember, however, that a hot bath, 
causing free perspiration, promoted by wrapping up 
warm in bed with blankets, will often save children 
and adults severe attacks of illness, if promptly re- 
sorted to after exposure to cold or wet. 
Cold baths are invaluable aids in promoting and 
preserving health, if properly used in suitable cases, 
but may become dangerous agents, causing even fatal- 
results, if employed by the wrong individuals,- at im- 
proper times, or with excessive frequency. Very 
cold plunge-baths, that is those below 50° in temper- 88 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
ature, should only be indulged in by the most robust, 
and even with them it is doubtful whether the shock 
to the system is not more injurious than the after re- 
action is beneficial. In every instance, the test for 
the advantage of a cold bath is very simple and easily 
understood, being merely the occurrence or non-oc- 
currence of this reaction or “glow” as soon as the 
skin is dried; when such a glow is felt promptly, the 
bath does good, and may be repeated at the same or 
a slightly lower temperature; but if reaction takes 
place slowly, or not at all, the person feeling chilly, 
and the lips, the skin beneath the nails, and, indeed, 
that of the external surface generally, continuing for 
ten or twenty minutes bluish instead of pink, the 
bath does harm. 
Cool (not ice-cold) sponge baths are valuable ton- 
ics, and may often be advantageously used in delicate 
states of health. The shock to the system is much 
less than with the plunge-bath, and the consequent 
reaction less intense, but the rule for judging of their 
beneficial influence is precisely the same. 
Sea-bathing is one of our best means of strength- 
ening the system, either to prevent the development 
of actual disease, or to restore the original vigor to 
a constitution recovering with difficulty from the 
effects of some debilitating malady. No doubt much 
of the supposed advantage of sea-bathing is often due 
to the sea-air, and the other influences—mental, phys- BATHS, AND HOW TO TAKE THEM. 
89 
ical, and social which belong to the various water- 
ing-places upon the coast; but this combination of 
favorable conditions is so invaluable, especially with 
children, that I have often seen a single day’s excur- 
sion to the sea-side produce a marked and obvious 
improvement in those whose general health had for 
any reason fallen below their normal standard of 
vigor. Unfortunately, many of the sea-side resorts 
are supplied with impure water, often contaminated 
with sewage from the cess-pools, which send their 
disgusting contents soaking through the loose sandy 
soil for hundreds of feet, poisoning the drinking- 
water of wells and cisterns, and spreading the germs 
of diarrhoea, typhoid fever, diphtheria, etc., to such 
an extent that, if they are not guarded against, even 
the benefits of sea-air and sea-bathing are more than 
counterbalanced (see p. 77). For the many delicate 
ladies and children who are not strong enough to 
endure the shock of cold sea-baths in the surf, bath- 
ing in warm salt water, as now supplied at the chief 
sea-side watering-places, is invaluable. 
Baths should never be taken immediately after a 
meal, nor when the body is very much exhausted by 
fatigue or excitement of any kind, nor during nor just 
before menstruation ; and they should be sparingly 
and guardedly used by pregnant women. 
Children and elderly persons ought to employ warm 
or but slightly cool baths, never below 70° Fahren- 90 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
heit. In persons of nervous temperament, and the 
subjects of valvular disease of the heart, cold baths 
should be very cautiously resorted to, but in robust 
adults of sanguine or bilious temperament, they may 
be indulged in with much greater freedom. 
As a brief appendix to this chapter upon the toilet, 
the subject of poisonous hair dyes is too important 
to be entirely omitted. Many of these, which it is 
claimed contain no mineral ingredient, depend for 
their efficiency upon some salt of lead, and as this 
deleterious metal is absorbed into the system through 
the skin, when frequently applied, as it is when em- 
ployed to color the hair, there is no doubt that it 
often gives rise to dangerous or even fatal results. 
Cases of paralysis, apparently due to this cause, have 
been reported ; and it is probable that Bright’s disease 
may occasionally owe its- origin to the long-continued 
indulgence in hair dyes and face powders containing 
lead. CHAPTER IX. 
THE HOUSE, AND HOW TO BUILD IT. 
NO treatise upon the means of attaining long life 
could be at all complete without some reference 
to that cause of so many evils — our habitations. 
Of course, some of my readers will be prevented 
by circumstances from selecting the kind of a domi- 
cile which would be most conducive to health, but 
even those whose choice is of the narrowest can avoid 
certain grave dangers originating in unwholesome 
habitations, if the vital importance of doing so is 
clearly pointed out to them. 
In our chapters upon pure air and pure water much 
has been said respecting the importance of obtaining 
these two great hygienic conditions, and, in selecting 
a house, especial care must be exercised against the 
presence of soil, situation, or construction which 
will interfere with these factors of health. In city 
houses, where river-water is supplied by means of 
iron pipes, the great danger is from foul air penetrat- 
ing into the dwelling by means of sewer-pipes, or 
91 92 
LONG LIFE, AND HO IV TO REACH IT. 
finding its way through the earth from adjacent sew- 
ers, underlying cess-pits, or from decomposing animal 
and vegetable matters in the soil, if the house is built 
upon “ made ground.” In country homesteads, how- 
ever, on the other hand, the air is generally pure, and 
the great danger is from contamination of the water- 
supply by soakage of excrementitious matter from 
cess-pits, barn-yards, etc., into cisterns or wells. 
This mode of production of typhoid fever, diarrhoea, 
diphtheria, and other fatal maladies, has only of late 
years been understood, and is even yet denied by 
many intelligent persons, including, I am sorry to 
say, some members of my own profession who ought 
to know better. But I think any one who will take 
the trouble to investigate the condition of the water- 
supply, in a few instances, where several cases of ty- 
phoid, for example, have occurred in a single family 
in the rural districts, will become promptly convinced 
that it is only too common and fatal. 
In building a house, then (or, in selecting a house 
which is already erected), choose its site so that the 
well shall be, if possible, at a higher level than the 
cess-pit, and as far from it as can be conveniently 
arranged, taking care, of course, that in avoiding 
your own cess-pit you do not dig your well so as to 
drain the offal from your neighbor’s property, and so 
fall into the very error which you seek to avoid. 
The house wells should never be sunk within a dis- THE HOUSE, AND HOW TO BUILD IT. 
93 
tance of twice its own depth from any cess-pool or 
other accumulation of filth. (See p. 76.) 
Even the smallest and poorest houses ought to have 
a cellar which is well ventilated and kept free from 
moisture as far as possible. Dampness promotes 
the growth of fungi (moulds, etc.), and, whether in 
this way or in some other, is a powerful agent in 
propagating disease. Extensive experience with 
diphtheria in a rural district leads me to confirm the 
statement that the breeding-grounds of diphtheria 
in the country are generally well recognized places, 
where it is constantly liable to break out anew, and 
the constant condition of these localities is structural 
dampness of the houses. 
In more pretentious mansions, furnaces and soil- 
pipes are two of the most dangerous enemies of health. 
The furnace should be so constructed as to have no 
communication between its warm air-chamber and 
the cellar in which it is built, all the air being sup- 
plied by a wooden box conveying it fresh from the 
outside atmosphere. Unless this is attended to, the 
heat of the furnace causes it to act as a powerful 
sucker for the impure air in the ground beneath the 
house and that in the soil for scores of feet around. 
Caution in this respect is particularly important in 
city houses, because the air in the soil, or ground air, 
as the celebrated Prof, von Pettenkofer calls it, is 
frequently very much contaminated by soakage from 94 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
old privies, leakage from gas- and sewer-pipes, as well 
as the outflow from defective sewer-mains. 
The sewer-pipes are exceedingly apt to leak at the 
joints if made from terra cotta, as is so often the 
case; and they are also liable to be broken by the 
settling of walls, sand or gravel beds, etc. Even if 
these accidents are escaped, the material of the pipe 
is by no means impervious; and, in fact, the only safe 
drain-pipes for noxious materials of this kind are 
those made of iron, securely united by leaden joints, 
and so laid as to be protected from undue pressure. 
These, too, should be regularly inspected, as rusting 
sometimes goes on with unusual rapidity. 
Cisterns require special care and watchfulness, as 
there is no doubt that a multitude of deaths are due to 
neglect of very simple rules in regard to them. In the 
first place, when used for rain-water or any very pure 
spring-water, they should never be made of lead or 
lined with this metal, because the freer the water is 
from saline impurities, the more certain it is to act 
on the lead, and, by dissolving it, become poisonous. 
The proper material is slate ; but brick or stone, lined 
with cement, or, in some cases, galvanized iron, may 
be employed. Under no circumstances should the 
overflow-pipe communicate with a drain which serves 
to convey away refuse fluid from sinks, water-closets, 
etc. The cistern should be supplied with a tightly-fit- 
ting cover to exclude dust and dirt as far as possible, THE HOUSE, AND HOW TO BUILD IT. 
95 
but this cover should be arranged so that it may readily 
be removed to allow inspection of the interior. Such 
inspection should be rigidly made at short intervals, 
as rats, mice, or other vermin seek out and penetrate 
into cisterns in search of water, and being apt to 
drown in it, often cause serious illness by the decom- 
position of their bodies in the fluid drunk by the 
household. No water intended for family use should 
be preserved in a cistern occupying the same room as 
a water-closet, nor should it be brought to the reser- 
voir from the roofs, or from a spring, in leaden pipes. 
The same caution in regard to leaden service-pipes is 
important. 
When, for any reason, water kept in cisterns of 
doubtful purity has to be used temporarily, the danger 
of its causing disease may be much diminished, as 
already suggested, by boiling every drop for half an 
hour shortly before it is drunk, and also by filtering 
through animal charcoal. (See Chap. VII., p. 78.) 
Remember, always, that if cholera, cholera-infantum, 
typhoid fever, diarrhoea, or dysentery, appear in your 
family without obvious cause, the chances are at least 
two to one that there is something wrong with the 
water supply, the milk supply, or the drainage of your 
house. 
The bedrooms of a dwelling should be large, airy, 
and ventilated with special care; those for children 
should be quite distinct from the day-nurseries, and 96 
LONG LIFE. AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
during the day ought to stand with windows and doors 
wide open from the time they are vacated in the 
morning until an hour before sunset, except in the 
coldest weather. Day-nurseries should be provided 
with plenty of light and plenty of air, well warmed 
and well moistened before it enters the apartment. 
This latter desideratum is satisfactorily accomplished 
by means of the porous evaporators now coming into 
use for placing before the register admitting heated 
air. The immediate removal of soiled linen and all 
liquid or solid excreta must be strictly enforced. No 
diapers should ever be dried in the nursery before the 
register. All these precautions are particularly im- 
portant with children, because their lungs, stomachs, 
etc., are much more susceptible to the disturbing 
causes of disease than are those of adults. 
For information in regard to most of the sanitary 
details respecting the house and its immediate neigh- 
borhood, I must refer my readers to a future volume 
of these Health Primers especially devoted to this 
subject; but there is one point in regard to the deco- 
ration of a house so gravely important, that it de- 
serves brief mention here. This is in regard to the 
paper-hanging. It has been proved by direct analy- 
sis that many of the dark-green papers now so much 
in vogue contain large quantities of arsenic, in some 
instances to the extent of twenty-nine grains to the 
square foot. This poisonous mineral, being of course THE HOUSE, AND HOW TO BUILD IT. 
97 
rubbed off little by little in fine particles, mingles 
with the air of the room, and indeed of the entire 
house, giving rise to the usual symptoms of arsenical 
poisoning, which, however, may readily escape refer- 
ence to their true cause (just as the Devonshire colic 
was for many years attributed to some unknown influ- 
ence, until it was discovered to be due to the lead 
taken up from lead-lined tanks, etc., in which the 
Devonshire farmers fermented their cider). 
The indications of health being disturbed by 
poisoning from arsenical wall-paper are obstinate 
headache, nausea, sickness at the stomach, and diar- 
rhoea ; but when the quantity of the poison is small, 
obscure nervous symptoms may for a time alone be 
present. 
Every new house or newly-plastered house should 
be allowed ample time to dry before it is occupied, 
and attacks of sickness by the million have arisen 
from ignorance of this fact. Von Pettenkofer, whom 
I have so often quoted as the greatest living sanita- 
rian, calculates that the walls of a house containing 
one hundred thousand bricks also contain ten thousand 
gallons of water when first completed, and he wisely 
insists that nearly all this fluid should evaporate before 
human beings are permitted to inhabit the dwelling. CHAPTER X. 
FOOD, AND HOW TO DIGEST IT. 
NOTHING is more important to our physical well- 
being, and consequently to the attainment of long 
life, than the two evidences of a healthy stomach, 
which the immortal dramatist has linked together in 
that oft-quoted saying of Macbeth’s, 
“ Let good digestion wait on appetite, 
And health on both.” 
The serio-comic answer to a recent English essay- 
ist’s inquiry whether, after all, this life is worth liv- 
ing? viz., “ That depends upon the liver," owes most 
of its truth to the fact that derangements of the stom- 
ach, constituting dyspepsia and its kindred evils of 
digestion, are the fruitful sources of hepatic disorder. 
If we consider the amount of ill-temper, despond- 
ency, and general unhappiness which arises from 
want of proper digestion and assimilation of our food, 
it seems obviously well worth while to put forth every 
effort, and undergo any sacrifice, for the purpose of 
avoiding indigestion, with its resulting bodily ills; and 
yet, year after year, from the cradle to the grave, we 
all go on violating the plainest and simplest laws of 
98 FOOD, AND HOW TO DIGEST IT. 
99 
health, at the temptation of cooks, caterers, and con- 
fectioners, whose share in shortening the average term 
of human life is probably nearly equal to that of the 
combined armies and navies of the world. 
Although, as I have already remarked, food comes 
after air, water, and sleep, as an indispensable condi- 
tion of human existence, this is only because a two 
weeks’ supply of nutriment can often be stored up in 
the body in the form of fat; and but for this provision 
of nature, apparently to meet the uncertainties of the 
chase in savage life, it is probable that mankind must 
have become extinct by starvation long before the 
granaries and storehouses of civilized existence were 
invented to guard against such a catastrophe. 
We might just as well look for a locomotive to run 
without plenty of wood and water, as expect a human 
body to perform its daily labor, or even to carry on 
the muscular exertion necessary to propel the blood 
through its arteries ahd veins, or inspire the proper 
amount of air into the lungs, without a due supply 
of suitable food, properly chewed, swallowed, digested, 
assimilated, and carried by the blood to nourish the 
various organs and tissues of the system, as they hourly 
wear out and are replaced in the service of the body. 
Perhaps I need scarcely more than remind my 
readers that every part of our organisms is the subject 
of continual change. The flesh of your arm to-day 
is not precisely the same flesh as yesterday; some of 
its molecules have become used up, dissolved, and 100 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
carried away by the blood, and have been cast out 
of the system through the kidneys or bowels, whilst 
their places have been supplied by new molecules 
formed in that wonderful physiological laboratory, 
the blood, from the food you have taken into your 
stomach. If, now, the stomach or the blood do not 
do their work properly, or if, doing the best they 
can, they are not supplied with suitable materials in 
the food you furnish them, the effete molecules of 
your arm are not fully replaced, and your muscles 
become flabby and dwindle away; or, on the other 
hand, if, by unusually nutritious food and the stimulus 
of exercise, a greater number of new muscle mole- 
cules are elaborated in the blood than are carried 
away by it in a worn-out condition, growth and de- 
velopment of your arm is the result. And so on with 
all the different portions of the body. 
The overpowering desire with which nature inspires 
animals in a wild state for the necessary constituents 
of their organisms, is well shown at the salt licks of 
our various States, to which deer and other animals 
resort for hundreds of miles, and in spite of all the 
dangers which beset them, because they must have 
salt in their blood. Again, any one who has watched 
the ravenous avidity with which laying hens will swal- 
low fragments of egg-shells, would wonder at their 
apparent insanity, if they did not remember that hens 
must have lime in their blood, to furnish from it the 
solid coverings of their new-laid eggs. FOOD, AND HOW TO DIGEST IT. 
101 
We know well that whole groups of diseases, such 
as scurvy, for example, are caused by the continued 
deprivation of some simple article of food : and it is 
highly probable that other common maladies are due 
to similar, but at present unrecognized, deficiencies 
of our diet in some particular chemical element, per- 
haps only needed in fractions of a grain. Again, on 
the other hand, the entrance of extremely minute 
amounts of certain substances into our food or drink, 
as, for example, lead or arsenic, will gradually under- 
mine health, and even destroy life, if long continued. 
Another very important office of food, especially 
the fatty or highly carbonized articles of our diet, is 
that of supplying the bodily heat by being slowly 
burnt up within our systems, exactly as the coal (min- 
eral carbon) burnt up in furnaces warms our dwell- 
ings, except that the process of combustion is so 
managed in us that it goes on slowly, and only a very 
little at a time, with the result of giving out no light 
and but a moderate amount of heat. 
The materials which make up our food besides 
water and saline ingredients are, ist. The nitrogenous 
(such as meat, eggs, cheese, the gluten of wheat flour, 
animal jellies, etc.) ; 2d. The fatty (such as fat of ani- 
mals, butter, olive oil, and so forth) ; and 3d. The sac- 
charine, comprising starch, sugar, and molasses in all 
their varieties (bread, potatoes, rice, etc., for example). 
The office of the first of these groups is to supply 102 
LONG LIFE. AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
the waste of muscular substance caused by pulsation 
of the heart, breathing, eating, etc., and by physical 
exercise, such as manual labor, walking, or riding. 
Fatty articles of diet are chiefly employed in the ani- 
mal economy to sustain the heat of the body by their 
gradual combustion, and the third group of saccharine 
elements contribute to the same end, although they 
accomplish this object with much less efficiency. 
Much time and trouble have been expended by 
sanitarians in the effort to determine the proper 
amount and proportions of the different articles of 
food necessary to keep an average human being in 
health. The results of these observations, arranged 
into diet tables, are very briefly somewhat as follows: 
A healthy, full-grown American, doing a moderate 
amount of work, requires daily about four and one- 
half ounces of dry nitrogenous, three ounces of fatty, 
and fifteen ounces of sugary and starchy food, besides 
an ounce of saline matter. That is to say, in order 
to retain his full strength and weight, he must eat and 
thoroughly digest every twenty-four hours rather more 
than a pound of fresh meat and eggs, about two 
pounds each of bread and potatoes, or their equiva- 
lents in other starchy and saccharine foods, with 
nearly a quarter of a pound of butter, lard, and suet. 
Under ordinary circumstances, the penalty for tak- 
ing less than this amount of food is loss of flesh and 
strength, more or less rapid in proportion to the de- 
gree in which economy of nutriment, forced or other- FOOD, AND HOW TO DIGEST IT. 
103 
wise, is practised. The penalty for eating more than 
these quantities is derangement of the stomach, liver, 
and intestines by overloading them, and a consequent 
production of dyspepsia, biliousness, diarrhoea, or 
constipation, with their innumerable attendant evils, 
which more, perhaps, than any other class of influ- 
ences, prevent the attainment of long life. 
But the conditions under which we live are con- 
stantly varying, and of necessity the amount and 
character of our aliment must be altered to compen- 
sate, as far as possible, for these modified surround- 
ings. This power to adapt himself to circumstances 
is one of the most important distinctions between 
civilized man and savages or brute beasts, and is no- 
where more distinctly exhibited than in regard to food. 
The amount of exercise taken or labor performed 
is one of the most important of these modifying con- 
ditions, an adult man in idleness needing about one- 
fourth less, and a farmer at hard labor requiring 
nearly one-fourth more, than the quantities mentioned. 
The influence of climate is also considerable; inhabi- 
tants of cold regions requiring more fatty nutriment, 
as do the Esquimaux, whilst those who reside in the 
torrid zone instinctively partake less freely of both 
fatty and nitrogenous articles of diet. As a rule, women 
need about nine-tenths of the nourishment requisite 
for men, boys of sixteen about the same as women, 
and children of ten years half the amount necessary 
for adults. Individual peculiarities, whether tempo- 104 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
rary or permanent, should be studied and conformed 
to with the utmost care. 
The quantity of food taken into the stomach at 
different meals is a matter of great moment. Speak- 
ing generally, the morning meal should comprise 
one-third of the meat and two-sevenths of the starchy 
nutriment; dinner should include the remaining two- 
thirds of the meat and three-sevenths of the starchy 
materials; and the evening repast consist of the last 
two-sevenths of the saccharine and starchy matters. 
By this plan the fatty constituents would be equally 
divided among the three meals, but this may be 
varied according to taste. In average health, the 
amount of food taken into the stomach might safely 
be left to the control of the appetite, were it not for 
the machinations of cooks, who contrive to delude 
and entrap our natural guide in this vitally important 
affair into all sorts of immoderate excesses. An ex- 
cellent rule is always to leave the table with an appe- 
tite for good wholesome food, such as roast beef, or 
bread and butter, without any of the tempting deli- 
cacies which too often betray quite as cruelly as did 
the contents of the Trojan horse in ancient story. 
Whilst there are some individuals who, at least in 
the prime of their lives, are endowed with such os- 
trich-like stomachs that they can eat immense quan- 
tities of unwholesome food with impunity, most 
adults, and nearly all children and old people, must 
either be careful of their diet or be soundly chastised FOOD, AND HOW TO DIGEST IT. 
105 
by Nature for their neglect. It is therefore very im- 
portant to discover what articles we should avoid. 
Certain varieties of food generally prove injurious, 
certain others disagreeable only when people who 
partake of them are not in perfect health, and others 
still alone cause disturbance in the systems of a few 
peculiarly constituted individuals. This last class 
must learn what Nature commands them to do with- 
out by practical experience, and these articles of diet, 
“when found, they should make a note on,” and re- 
ligiously avoid. 
The mode of cooking food is a subject of great im- 
portance, and will probably be considered at length 
in a future volume of this series. At present, I will 
merely suggest that boiled meats, etc., are most di- 
gestible, but least nutritious; roast and broiled dishes 
are well suited to good digestions; whilst the process 
of frying is so injurious, that reason and revelation 
may well unite in attributing its invention to the 
arch-enemy of mankind. 
Among the devices of cooks which are very apt to 
prove causes of disease, may be enumerated lobster 
salad, fried oysters, boiled crabs, rich pastry, boiled 
dough in the form of plum puddings, dumplings, etc., 
boiled corn beef, hard-boiled eggs, pork in most of 
its forms, cucumbers, however prepared, excessively 
sweet dishes, and rich gravies in general. People 
who are not iron-clad inside and out, and who will 
trifle with their health and life by lighting fires with 106 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
kerosene, playing with loaded fire-arms, or eating these 
so-called “ delicacies,” should at least have their wills 
made, and all their property judiciously disposed of. 
Much of our exact knowledge respecting the di- 
gestibility of various aliments, is derived from obser- 
vations upon a Canadian, named Alexis St. Martin, 
who had a hole shot through his side into his stom- 
ach, which healed at the edges without closing up 
entirely, so that the process of digestion could be 
watched in all its stages without difficulty. A few of 
the results thus obtained are as follows: Boiled rice 
was digested in one hour; whipped eggs or plain 
raw eggs were digested in one and a half hours. 
Lamb, baked potatoes, and fricasseed chicken were 
digested in from two to two and three-quarter hours; 
soft-boiled eggs, oysters, roast beef, and bread and 
butter, in about three hours; hard-boiled eggs in 
three and one-half hours; and salt beef or pork in 
four and one-quarter hours. Much depends, however, 
upon the condition of the body in various ways, as, 
for instance, in regard to exercise, curiously shown 
by Sir John Hunter’s famous experiment of feeding 
two dogs equally, and taking one out to run after a 
hare, whilst the other was allowed to lie down and 
sleep. At the end of an hour both were killed, when 
the food in the first dog’s stomach was found almost 
unaltered, but that in the second dog was nearly di- 
gested, and most of it had passed out into the bowels. 
From this experiment, we may dogmatically assert FOOD, AND HO IV TO DIGEST IT. 
107 
that active exertion is not favorable to digestion, and 
that therefore no violent exercise should be taken 
after a full meal ; and vice versa. 
The dining-room should be the warmest room in 
the house, and it should also be well ventilated; 
mental anxiety or labor, as well as bodily exertion, 
should be avoided just before, during, and for half an 
hour after a full repast. Lighter meals may be ad- 
vantageously followed by gentle exercise, such as 
walking or moderate work. Violations of these rules 
are not, of course, in every case promptly punished, 
but the mills of the goddess Hygeia, like those of 
the resit of the Olympian brotherhood, “ grind slowly, 
but they grind exceeding small,” and if in this case 
the grist is the usual one of dyspepsia, it were far 
better for the victim that he had never been born. 
With rare exceptions, people can never enjoy good 
health whilst they suffer from constipation, a vice 
much more prevalent than is generally known or be- 
lieved. Liver complaint, dyspepsia, headache, ver- 
tigo, and that tormenting disease, piles, are only some 
of the direct results of constipation, and give rise to 
an immense amount of human misery. I have no 
doubt that learning to have an evacuation of the bowels 
regularly every morning conduces far more to a man’s 
health, happiness, and success in life than a com- 
plete classical education, invaluable as that certainly 
is; and when the habit is once established, nothing, 
absolutely nothing, should be permitted to interrupt 108 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
it. Of course, we ought all to strive to overcome 
constipation by laxative articles of diet, such as bran 
bread, fruit, fresh or dried, and by suitable exercise; 
but if these fail, the employment of gentle saline pur- 
gatives, such as Congress and Friedrichshall water, 
or of rhubarb, and the use of injections, constitutes 
by far the lesser evil. 
The accessory foods, under which title are grouped 
tea, coffee, cocoa, and alcoholic stimulants, are those 
articles of diet which, whilst they furnish some small 
amount of nourishment, are chiefly valuable as econo- 
mizing the wear and tear of the body, or in exciting 
it to a temporary excess of activity in order to meet 
some unusual emergency. For a large majority of 
the human family, the first three of these accessories 
are useful, probably promoting both comfort and en- 
joyment to a marked degree ; and yet a small minority 
are certainly better off without them, as are also most 
children, and certainly all infants. No rule can be 
given for determining beforehand whether any indi- 
vidual belongs to the fortunate multitude or the un- 
fortunate handful in this respect, and cautious experi- 
ment with small quantities, gradually increased to 
moderate ones, is the only guide which can be relied 
upon. All I can advise in this and other dietetic 
investigations is, that you accept the result of one, 
two, or at most three fair trials as final and conclu- 
sive. The arguments for and against the use of alco- 
hol (brandy, whiskey, wine, ale, beer, etc.) are too FOOD, AND HOW TO DIGEST IT. 
109 
extended to be rehearsed here. Personally, I have 
no doubt that the evils of intemperance far exceed 
the benefits of a moderate use of alcohol, and I can 
fully appreciate and admire the philanthropy of that 
devout Brahmin who, it is said, recently undertook 
to convert the benighted Christian world to Buddhism 
in order to save it from the beastly vice of habitual 
intoxication. To those who will and still can take 
counsel, I would say, never swallow a drop of alcohol 
in any form except upon the written prescription of 
a reputable physician. 
Tobacco is purely a luxury (although habit may 
render it, like other poisons, a necessity, such as De 
Quincy found opium), and it has no claims to a place 
among articles of diet, since it contributes nothing 
physically to the well-being of the body. By its 
sedative and calming effect upon the mind and nerv- 
ous system generally it is no doubt sometimes useful, 
but most people are better off without it, and to a 
considerable number it proves positively and quickly 
injurious. If the principle upon which a burnt child 
dreads the fire ever becomes generally applicable to 
boys and young men who smoke one or two strong 
cigars as a first experiment, tobacco manufacture will 
be a much less lucrative occupation than it is at the 
present time. 
Complete mastication of the food is so vitally im- 
portant to health and long life, that I cannot avoid LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
110 
saying a few words in regard to the care of the teeth, 
although their proper conservation in detail will form 
the subject of a separate volume of our Health Primers. 
Unless the teeth are carefully cleaned (by brushing, 
for instance, with water and pure Castile soap) after 
each meal, they are apt to become more or less cov- 
ered, near their junction with the gum, with the yellow, 
green, or brown deposit of “ tartar,” which soon 
attacks the enamel of the tooth, and consequently 
leads to its rapid decay. 
The disgusting odor which proceeds from the fairest 
mouth if furnished with decayed teeth, the agonizing 
pain of toothache, and the facial deformity which 
ensues upon the extraction of those teeth, which all 
the wonderful skill of the dental practitioner some- 
times fails to save, are minor evils compared with the 
injury to health which results from a loss of the natu- 
ral apparatus for masticating the food. 
Care should be taken to avoid brushing the teeth 
too much, especially with detergent dentifrices, and 
thus injuring the gums or wearing away the very 
enamel which it is our object to preserve. Never 
break hard bodies with the teeth, nor use them as 
nut-crackers, scissors, pincers, monkey-wrenches, and 
other carpenter’s tools. Hot and cold liquids, espe- 
cially in quick succession, should not, as in drinking, 
be brought in contact with them ; and acid medicines, 
strong vinegar, syrups, and sweetmeats, should like- 
wise be kept away from the teeth. CHAPTER XI. 
IMPURITIES OF FOOD AND DRINK, AND HOW TO 
DETECT THEM. 
WHEN we consider that a healthy man of usual 
size takes into his stomach every year, on an 
average, about four hundred pounds of meat, five 
hundred pounds of bread, three hundred pounds of 
potatoes and vegetables, ninety pounds of butter and 
fats, and one hundred and fifty gallons of tea, coffee, 
water, or other fluids, we can soon realize how danger- 
ous the existence of impurities, or adulterations of 
even a few grains in the pound, must be-to us all, and 
how absolutely necessary to the attainment of long 
life and the enjoyment of health, is a due recognition 
and avoidance of articles of diet which contain such 
noxious ingredients. 
Be it observed, too, that whether food be thus 
contaminated through fraudulent design, or through 
ignorant carelessness, makes no atom of difference in 
its effect upon the person who eats it, since, in accord- 
ance with the inexorable laws of dietetics, Nature 
here pays no regard to the intention of an action, and 
111 LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
112 
punishes errors of diet, committed through benevo- 
lent ignorance, just as heavily (perhaps even with the 
penalty of death) as if they were the result of the 
most malicious crime. 
Many of the ingenious falsifications of foods and 
drinks can only be detected with certainty, of course, 
by a complete microscopical and chemical analy- 
sis, which, in England, and a few of our States, is 
provided for, as it should be everywhere by the ap- 
pointment of skilful chemists and microscopists under 
government authority, whose duty it is to examine 
suspected articles offered for sale in the markets and 
shops. A few of the adulterations can, however, be 
easily recognized, whilst others can be detected by 
simple and inexpensive apparatus, without any great 
technical knowledge, and these I propose in this chap- 
ter briefly to explain. 
Flour is sometimes largely adulterated with finely 
ground rice, potatoes, peas, beans, barley, and oats, 
but these impurities, which can readily be detected 
by microscopical examination, only diminish its nutri- 
tive value; a more serious adulteration is that with 
alum, which serves to whiten the bread made from it, 
and so enables dishonest bakers to sell the product of 
poor or damaged flour at a high price. On the con- 
tinent of Europe sulphate of copper (blue vitriol) is 
sometimes employed for the same purpose. The 
presence of alum in bread, flour, or baking-powder, IMPURITIES OF FOOD AND DRINK. 
113 
maybe readily detected by the deep purple color pro- 
duced on soaking it in a weak solution of extract of 
logwood, which may be purchased for a few cents at 
any drug store. In former times, whole provinces in 
Europe were ravaged by epidemics, of what is called 
ergotism, a peculiar disease, in which the fingers and 
toes drop off, caused by living upon rye flour, con- 
taining the ergot or smut of rye ; but at present this 
mode of poisoning is rarely met with. Occasionally, 
painters, plumbers, and other workers in lead, suffer 
from lead poisoning, and paper-hangers, etc., from 
arsenical poisoning, in consequence of their eating 
bread and other articles of food with fingers which 
have not been properly cleansed from metallic particles 
adhering to them. The Mosaic injunction against 
“eating with unwashed hands ” would, if universally 
carried out, obviate this danger; and, indeed, many 
of the edicts of the ancient Hebrew lawgiver have a 
scientific sanitary basis, which, considering the state 
of human civilization at the epoch when they were 
issued, nearly four thousand years ago, seems to point 
unmistakably to their origin in a wisdom from on 
high. 
Butter is rarely adulterated with injurious im- 
purities, although the purified animal fats honestly 
sold under the names of butterine, oleo-margarine, 
etc., are no doubt often mixed with the inferior grades 
of butter. These contaminations, however repulsive 114 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
and disgusting to refined palates, are not as a rule 
likely to shorten life. 
Milk, on the contrary, is very frequently the sub- 
ject of dangerous adulteration, and in view of the 
fact that it constitutes the staff of life for most of our 
children during a large part of their infancy, and at 
a time when their hold upon life is of the frailest 
character, it becomes a most important question how 
such fraud can be absolutely prevented. The true 
successors of King Herod in our day are the milk- 
men, who slay the children “ of two years old and 
under” by thousands with swill milk, adulterated 
milk, and milk loaded with the poisonous germs of 
scarlet-fever, typhoid fever, or various other diseases ; 
and, as I have elsewhere remarked, it seems to me only 
needful for the danger of this mode of propagation 
of disease to be forcibly presented, and fairly under- 
stood, to ensure that the people, through their legis- 
lators, would put an end to the abominable traffic in 
impure milk, which costs the lives of so many thou- 
sands of their beloved children annually. Swill milk, 
and milk from stall-fed cattle, which are generally 
diseased, and often consumptive, has been proved to 
be very unwholesome, and in the light of recent de- 
velopments in regard to the innoculability and com- 
municability of consumption, scrofula, and other 
tubercular diseases, should be absolutely avoided, as 
a probable cause of these terrible maladies, from which, IMPURITIES OF FOOD AND DRINK. 
115 
in some temperate climates, nearly one-third of the 
earth’s inhabitants perish. In England, numerous 
wide-spread epidemics of scarlet-fever and typhoid 
fever have been unmistakably traced to the milk sup- 
ply, which was contaminated with the germs of these 
complaints. In one instance, case after case of typhoid 
broke out among the customers of a certain milkman, 
and when at last an investigation was held, this person 
admitted that his milk cans had been “washed out ” 
with water from a certain well which was proved to 
be infected by sewage from a neighboring cess-pit 
containing typhoid-fever excrement. 
The use of milk diluted with water, however, as it 
is commonly supplied in cities, has no injurious effect 
if the “iron-tailed cow” is a healthy one, except 
that its nutritive properties are, of course, lessened. 
This sophistication can sometimes be detected by the 
lactometer, or milk hydrometer, an instrument for 
determining the specific gravity of the milk, which 
is, of course, reduced if water only is added; but art- 
ful dairymen frequently bring up the specific gravity 
to the proper standard by dissolving salt or sugar in 
the diluted milk, so that this test cannot be implicitly 
relied upon. Many infantile disorders are probably 
caused by giving children milk which has begun to 
sour a little in consequence of the growth in it of a 
minute fungus which develops very rapidly in warm 
rooms or during warm weather. This danger, as 116 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
well as the disadvantage of using an article too much 
diluted, may be avoided by employing condensed 
milk, which is a great convenience whilst travelling. 
Care should be taken always to boil the water shortly 
before it is mixed with the condensed milk, in order 
to destroy, if possible, any organic germs of disease 
which it may contain ; and when its use is continued 
for any considerable length of time, the chance of 
lead poisoning from the solder of the tin cans in 
which it is put up for market must not be overlooked. 
Such an unfortunate result would probably occur only 
in a child who was unusually susceptible to the action 
of the metal, and its first symptoms are generally 
colicky pains in the abdomen and obstinate consti- 
pation of the bowels. 
A committee of Boston physicians reported some 
years since that over a million and a half gallons of 
water were sold as milk in their city that year, nearly 
$500,000 being paid for it by the defrauded custom- 
ers. They further point out that this water was 
probably not even pure, but apt to be taken, when 
thus used to adulterate milk, from impure streams and 
barnyard wells, and hence to produce typhoid fever 
and other infectious diseases in those who drank it. 
One instance is noted where, in twenty different fam- 
ilies, thirty-four cases of typhoid fever were caused by 
drinking milk thus adulterated with water from a well 
sunk near a cess-pit. They declare the high death- IMPURITIES OF FOOD AND DRINK. 
117 
rate among city infants from cholera-infantum is 
largely attributable to poisoned and weakened milk. 
Meat of various kinds can scarcely be said to un- 
dergo adulteration, although the presence in it of 
trichina and the larva of tape-worm are fruitful sources 
of disease, which will be treated of in a subsequent 
chapter. (See Chap. XV.) The ordinary danger 
from meat, and especially from fish, is that which arises 
from commencing putrefaction, and to detect this the 
sense of smell is usually a sufficient guide. In cases 
of doubt, cut a small portion of the suspected flesh into 
small pieces, and pour over it a few ounces of hot 
water, with the vapor of which a disagreeable odor 
will rise if any be present. 
Good eggs may be recognized by putting them in 
a strong brine made with one ounce of common table 
salt to ten ounces of water. In this a sound egg 
sinks to the bottom, whilst the stale one will float at 
the top. 
7'ea is not unfrequently adulterated with the leaves 
of other plants, and with those of the true tea shrub, 
which have been dried after most of their virtues are 
extracted by infusion in water. Black tea is some- 
times colored with “black lead,” which, as it con- 
tains no lead and consists almost entirely of pure 
carbon or charcoal, is quite harmless. Green tea, 
however, often owes its glaze or bloom to a mixture 
of Prussian blue, indigo and China clay, which, if not 118 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
poisonous, is at least indigestible, and quite inappro- 
priate as an article of food. 
Coffee is chiefly adulterated with chicory, burnt 
peas or beans, acorns, saw-dust, etc. ; these frauds 
may, of course, always be avoided by purchasing the 
coffee berries unground, either roasted or in their 
green state. 
In regard to the condiments, it is sufficient for me 
to mention that Cayenne pepper has been found 
largely adulterated with the dangerous impurity of 
red lead, and vinegar is often manufactured from oil 
of vitriol, diluted freely with water, and flavored with 
a little genuine cider or wine vinegar to give it the 
proper odor. Fraudulent vinegar of this kind, if 
used for a long time, would be apt to bring on diar- 
rhoea, dysentery, and ulceration of the bowels. It 
may be detected by the absence or scarcity of the 
minute vinegar eels when examined microscopically, 
or even with a magnifying-glass, and by its giving 
an abundant white precipitate when a few drops of 
solution of barium chloride are added to a suspected 
sample. 
Occasional examples of serious or even fatal poi- 
soning from partaking of stale fish, oysters, crabs, 
etc., and of sausages which have been long on hand, 
render it advisable to reject all articles of food of this 
kind, unless we have every reason to believe they are 
fresh and in good condition. IMPURITIES OF FOOD AND DRINK. 
119 
The subject of “ Proposed Legislation on the Adul- 
teration of Food and Medicine ” is ably discussed in 
a recent monograph with this title, by my friend, 
Prof. E. R. Squibb, M.D., of Brooklyn, N. Y. ; and 
his sagacious conclusions will, I trust, soon be em- 
bodied in the laws of our various States. 
Cooking fruit in brass or copper kettles, although 
now less common than formerly, before its dangers 
were properly understood, is still sometimes practised, 
as is also the making of pickles in such metallic vessels 
for the purpose of giving them a fine green color. 
This is, of course, due to the beautiful but deadly ace- 
tate of copper, or verdigris, formed by the action of 
vinegar upon copper or brass. Preserved green peas 
have sometimes been found to owe their fine fresh 
color to a salt of copper, and should then be eaten 
with caution, or not at all. 
The acids of preserved fruits generally are liable 
to act upon the lead of the solder joining the tin cans 
in which they are put up, and thus give rise to lead 
colic in people who partake of such delicacies. CHAPTER XII. 
EXERCISE, AND HOW TO TAKE IT. 
EXERCISE, in the strict signification of the word, 
means the performance of its function by any 
and every organ of the body; as, for instance, exer- 
cise of the stomach is digestion, and exercise of the 
liver is the formation of bile. As usually employed, 
however, it signifies the action of the voluntary mus- 
cles, that is, those under the control of the will; and 
in this sense it will be used here. Since not only the 
circulation of the blood, but also the formation of its 
elements, and the destruction of these elements when 
worn out and useless, are powerfully, and, as a rule, 
favorably, influenced by this action of the voluntary 
muscles, it is obvious that without such movement 
health will almost inevitably be impaired or lost. 
The most important effect of exercise is to be seen 
in the lungs when the circulation of the blood is 
hurried much above the ordinary rate. As a conse- 
quence of this greater influx of blood to be aerated, 
or rather oxygenated, in the air-cells, the quantity of 
air inspired, and the amount of carbonic acid ex- 
haled, are both largely increased. From the experi- 
120 EXERCISE. AND HOW TO TAKE IT. 
121 
merits of some physiologists, it would appear that the 
unusual amount of carbonic acid given off from the 
lungs during exercise is really formed in the muscles 
which are actively employed, and must be speedily 
carried away from them, dissolved in the blood, to the 
air-cells of the lungs, whence it finds its exit from 
the body. If this is not accomplished with sufficient 
rapidity, the muscular substance soon becomes op- 
pressed with the poisonous carbonic acid, and so 
debilitated as to grow almost powerless, as we often 
find to be the case when workmen are compelled to 
make violent muscular exertion in a confined space 
cut off from the free access of the atmosphere. 
If either the supply of carbon to the muscles, or 
its elimination from them through the blood to the 
lungs, and from thence into the open air, is interfered 
with in any way whatever, capacity for exertion of 
the muscles in question is quickly lost. Hence, dur- 
ing exertion no clothing should be worn which inter- 
feres with the free play of the chest; a larger amount 
of carbon should be furnished in the nourishment, 
and experiment has shown that this is more efficient 
if supplied in the form of fatty than of starchy food. 
Furthermoie, since alcohol has a tendency to lessen 
the quantity of carbonic acid given off by the lungs, 
it should not be used in the shape of brandy, whiskey, 
or wine, during exercise. 
Muscular exertion very speedily increases the force 122 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
and frequency of the heart’s pulsations, and the 
amount of blood flowing through all parts of the 
body, including the heart itself, in a given time is 
much augmented. The number of beats of the heart 
may be altered from about seventy, which is the natu- 
ral rate, up to ninety, one hundred, or even one hun- 
dred and twenty to the minute. After the cessation 
of exercise, however, the beats fall below the usual 
number, and if the exertion has been very severe or 
long-continued, may descend as low as forty per 
minute, and become intermittent. 
Going up a steep hill, or even a long staircase, 
gives rise to a very severe strain upon a fatigued 
heart, and is especially apt to bring on cardiac dis- 
ease, although this is liable to result from any exces- 
sive exertion. Under such circumstances, actual rup- 
ture or bursting of the heart has been known to occur, 
the individual literally dying, in such instances, of that 
malady so rare in real life, but so terribly fatal to the 
heroes and heroines of novelists, “a broken heart.” 
Very commonly, however, palpitation, enlargement, 
or disease of the valves of the heart are brought on 
by excessive exercise, especially in ascending heights. 
On the other hand, deficiency of exercise is apt to 
lead to weakening of the heart’s action, probably 
from its dilatation, or swelling up, while its substance 
grows thinner, or from a change (which is frequently 
observed in fact) of the muscular structure into fat 
(fatty degeneration). EXERCISE, AND HOW TO TAKE IT. 
123 
A stern warning against omitting to exercise all 
the faculties (mental and physical) with which we are 
endowed is furnished by the fate of the crabs in the 
Mammoth Cave. Similar crabs outside the Cave are 
supplied with very keen eyes, at the end of movable 
stalks, which afford them a wonderful range of vision ; 
but the Cave crabs are punished for neglecting to use 
their sight by complete loss of the eyes, although the 
stalks which, generations ago, no doubt, carried the op- 
tical apparatus, still remain in position upon their heads. 
Severe muscular exertion increases the flow of blood 
in the small blood-vessels of the skin, and causes a 
profuse discharge of perspiration, which may be even 
doubled or trebled in amount. During active exer- 
cise, there is little danger of chill, but immediately 
afterwards, and also during the intervals of rest, the 
skin should be so warmly protected as to prevent the 
least feeling of coolness of the surface. For this pur- 
pose, flannel is by far the best covering. 
Moderate exercise causes the muscles employed to 
increase in size, become harder, and respond more 
readily to the commands of the will; but if the exer- 
tion is too prolonged or excessive, the opposite effect 
is produced, and they begin to soften and waste. 
This fact gives us the foundation of a simple rule for 
determining when the physical strength is overtaxed 
by any habitual labor or athletic sport. 
The circumstance that the ancient athletes, as the 
runners, gladiators, etc., in Greek or Roman games, 124 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
were called, had the name of being proverbially 
stupid, is often urged as an evidence that unusual phys- 
ical cultivation interferes with, or even prevents, high 
mental activity, probably because the nervous fluid or 
influence is partially withdrawn from the brain to the 
severely taxed muscles. There is, I have no doubt, a 
good deal of truth in this notion, especially as it is 
amply demonstrated that deficient exercise causes a 
heightened sensitiveness of the nervous system, gener- 
ally a sort of morbid excitability, and a greater suscep- 
tibility to the action of external influences of everykind. 
Inclination for food is largely increased by exercise, 
especially the disposition to eat meat, and fatty articles 
of food in general. On the other hand, deficient exer- 
cise leads to the avoidance of meat and of fats, with 
partial neglect of even starchy and saccharine diet. 
Rut, my reader may ask, what is the amount of 
exercise a healthy man should take every day, in order 
to promote and sustain the most perfect sanitary con- 
dition of his body? And this question is the more 
important, because there is no doubt that great errors 
in this respect are constantly committed by whole 
classes of persons, chiefly in the direction of defi- 
ciency of exercise. 
According to the late-Prof. Parkes, our eminent Eng- 
lish authority upon sanitary science, we may consider 
that, in the most healthy life of a vigorous man en- 
gaged in active labor in the open air, a full day’s work EXERCISE, AND HOW TO TAKE IT. 
125 
will probably be equivalent to lifting three hundred 
tons one foot high, or what is, of course, the same 
thing, equal to raising one ton to the height of three 
hundred feet. This, however, is a hard day’s work; 
and, therefore, as an approximation, we may estimate 
that the daily amount of exercise for every man in 
good health ought to be equal to half this much, that 
is, to lifting a hundred and fifty tons to the height of 
one foot. ■ It has been calculated that for an individ- 
ual weighing one hundred and fifty pounds, this 
amount of muscular exertion would be about equal 
to that put forth in walking eight and a half miles 
upon level ground. If, now, we suppose that the 
expenditure of force in going up stairs, and moving 
round the house, is equivalent to a two-and-a-half mile 
walk, this would reduce our allowance of open-air 
walking to six miles everyday, a distance which is by 
no means too great to be paced over by every vigor- 
ous man who wishes to attain long life, and enjoy 
good health up to old age. 
For females of average strength, a smaller amount 
of pedestrian exercise, amounting to three or four 
miles daily, would generally be appropriate, although 
the brilliant complexions, robust health, and peren- 
nial youth of English ladies are no doubt largely due 
to their habits of constant and, it would seem to most 
Americans, excessive out-door exertion ; many Brit- 
ish women having no hesitation in starting off for a LONG LIFE. AND HOW TO TEACH IT. 
ten-mile walk, of an afternoon, without any important 
object except the benefit of exercise. 
In the great English Universities of Oxford and 
Cambridge, it has been proved by centuries of expe- 
rience that, as a rule, the most indefatigable scholars 
make better progress in their studies, if they take two 
hours out of their fourteen or sixteen working-hours 
for constitutional exercise in rowing, walking, or 
cricket, than if they attempt to perform mental work 
continuously, without allotting a proper period to 
mere bodily exertion. 
As I have already remarked, the quantity of carbonic 
acid given off bears a nearly constant relation to the 
amount of muscular labor performed, and in this we 
have a valuable guide to the relative usefulness, as 
promoters of health, possessed by different kinds of 
exercise. If we consider that the amount of air in- 
spired, and therefore required by the body to carry 
off the carbonic acid formed, whilst lying down be 
considered as the standard, and called i, we may 
show, by direct experiment, that standing up in the 
erect position raises the quantity of inspired air to 
1.33; walking at the slow pace of one mile an hour 
nearly doubles it; walking at the rate of four miles 
an hour renders five times as much air requisite to 
carry off the carbonic acid ; and riding on horseback 
necessitates the breathing of about four times as much. 
Although I earnestly recommend an increased 
amount of out-door exercise as a most important aid EXERCISE, AND NOW TO TAKE IT. 
127 
towards the restoration and maintenance of health, 
I would caution my readers against too great or too 
sudden alteration of their habits in this respect. 
Moreover, no greater mistake, from a hygienic point 
of view, can be made than in increasing the amount 
of physical exercise, when the mind is overworked, 
without a corresponding reduction of mental labor, 
and vice versa. Very often it is only by resting the 
brain more at the same time that the muscles are ex- 
erted longer and to a greater extent, that the required 
balance of action in the system is brought about, and 
health is restored or retained. 
The amount of exercise in childhood and youth 
should be most carefully regulated, as, in many in- 
stances, ambitious children will far exceed their 
strength in the effort to avoid being outdone by older 
or more robust companions. In infancy, the almost 
incessant movements of a baby’s limbs show how 
imperative is the instinct of Nature for muscular ex- 
ercise. A baby seems to rejoice in putting in action 
every muscle of its body, and often the sole cause of 
its uneasiness appears to be disappointment over its 
inability to solve, with its arms, legs, and head, all 
at once, the problem of perpetual motion. Hence 
it is important not to restrict too mucl> the move- 
ments of infants, and care should be taken to prevent 
their clothing being too tight to allow ample freedom 
of the limbs. Even the cry of a young child is often 
useful as a means of exercising the muscles of the 128 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO TEACH IT. 
chest, and, in moderation, must not be discouraged. 
After the baby begins to walk, the amount of this 
kind of exercise which it is stimulated to indulge in 
must be guided for a year or two by the extent of 
ossification (or bony development) of the leg-bones, 
otherwise these may become bent by the weight of 
the infant, and permanently deformed. 
During childhood and youth effort should be made 
to exercise every important muscle in the body, each in 
its turn, so as to secure for all a complete and symmet- 
rical development, and consequently a robust health. 
To accomplish this the light gymnastics, with dumb- 
bells, rings, etc., for girls, and the sports of the play- 
ground, with rowing, swimming, running, leaping, and 
riding, for boys and young men, are vitally necessary. 
The mistake which sadly diminishes the benefit of 
gymnastics for girls is, that they are generally per- 
formed in a close room, or, at best, one wherein the 
windows are opened for a few minutes only; and 
statistics show that persons who sit still in the open 
air, such as apple-women, enjoy better health, as a 
class, than those who take plenty of exercise in the 
house. By some additional trouble and expense, this 
drawback could usually be avoided, as I trust will 
soon be the case in all well-conducted schools. 
Bodily exercise, as well as mental exertion, should 
be regulated with especial care in young girls about 
the epoch of puberty, since the changes of the con- 
stitution at that momentous period often render or- EXERCISE, AND HOW TO TAKE IT. 
129 
dinary rules and habits useless or even injurious. In 
cases of doubt, medical advice should always be sum- 
moned in order to avoid laying the foundation of life- 
long imperfections of development as a consequence of 
temporary overstudy or overwork. The same caution 
is applicable in regard to boys, although to a less extent. 
Where systematic gymnastics do not form part of 
the exercise indulged in, attention should be paid to 
the varieties of muscular exertion, in order that, even 
during adult life, all the different parts of the body 
should receive a share of the benefit. In leaping, 
walking, and running, the muscles of the legs and 
back are chiefly brought into play, and those of the 
arms and shoulders have but little occupation, whilst 
in rowing, boxing, and fencing much of the work is 
performed by the muscles of the upper half of the 
body. In swimming, riding, and climbing, the con- 
tractile effort is more equally distributed among all 
the chief muscles of the frame. 
In advanced life, the power, as well as the inclina7 
tion for active exertion, alike fail, and the strongest 
inducements are sometimes requisite to postpone the 
period when all exercise is omitted and the individual 
becomes completely bedridden. This unfortunate con- 
dition should be put off as long as possible, and every 
means employed to encourage the patient not to neg- 
lect the regular, even if moderate, exercise of which 
his reduced physical strength still renders him capable. CHAPTER XIII. 
SLEEP, AND HOW TO SECURE IT. 
GOD bless the man who first invented sleep,” ex- 
claims Sancho Panza, and throughout all ages 
and nations of the world has been echoed his earnest 
benediction on the author of this invaluable blessing. 
Well may a recent physiologist declare that the phy- 
sician who first discovers the true cause of sleep, and 
how to procure it at will, may count upon receiving 
the undying gratitude of mankind. 
The necessity of repose is felt by every animated 
being, and manifested not only in the general life of 
all organisms, but in the partial vitality of each of 
the senses with which animals are endowed. The 
sense of taste, for example, no matter how acute it 
may be at first, becomes, after awhile, blunted by 
continuous exercise, and its original quickness of 
perception can only be restored by a period of com- 
plete rest from being called upon to notice external 
objects which have the capacity of arousing it into 
action. So with sight, hearing, smell, touch, mus- 
cular strength, and even mental power, all cease to 
respond to outside stimulants if too continuously ex- 
cited, and only regain their susceptibility by rest. 
130 SLEEP, AND HOW TO SECURE IT. 
131 
Repose may be either partial or general; when, for 
example, an accountant, after six or eight hours’ men- 
tal exertion, leaves his books and takes a brisk walk 
of at least an hour (as he should do daily, morning 
and evening), the mind takes a partial repose, whilst 
the muscles of the legs, which have been resting 
nearly.all day, in their turn are exercised and become 
fatigued. Every human being, however, has need 
of periodical intervals of general relaxation, during 
which neither the intellectual nor the bodily powers 
are in operation, and this general repose of all the 
organs and functions of animal life is 
“Tired Nature’s sweet restorer — balmy sleep.” 
Night is the most appropriate time for sleep, be- 
cause, during the silence and calm of the nocturnal 
hours, repose best restores the lost vigor of the sys- 
tem ; those individuals who, for the sake of pleasure 
and fashion, turn night into day and day into night, 
do so to the great detriment of their present or future 
sanitary integrity. Sleep during the daytime is apt 
to leave a heaviness of the head, a bitter taste in the 
mouth, and a general feeling of discomfort which 
continues until evening approaches. Except in very 
hot countries, the after-dinner nap is an enervating 
luxury to be carefully avoided by sincere seekers after 
long life and health, until after middle life is past. 
Sleep is intended to repair the expenditure of 
power in the system consequent upon mental or bod- 
ily fatigue, and its duration should therefore be pro- 132 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
portioned to the loss of vigor actually met with during 
the preceding period of daily activity. Hence, the 
time which should be spent in slumber varies with 
each individual according to age,temperament, habits, 
or general health, and to a smaller extent with each 
day’s amount of intellectual or physical labor. 
In early infancy, the active processes of growth and 
development going on in the budding organism re- 
quire a correspondingly great amount of repair,which 
is largely contributed to by frequent slumbers, which 
occupy a majority of the twenty-four hours. The 
necessity for sleep, which is quite imperative in a 
young child, becomes gradually less and less pressing 
until after the age of two or three years is reached, 
repose during the night only is required. This ten- 
dency should by all means be encouraged, because 
the benefits of sleep during the day are more than 
counterbalanced by the disadvantages resulting from 
privation of exercise in the open air and sunshine. 
In the prime of manhood or womanhood, the proper 
period is more readily determined, and is much shorter 
than that suited to infancy. In advanced life, the 
expenditure of physical and mental power is smaller, 
and less need of prolonged repose is felt by the sys- 
tem, although in extreme old age or second child- 
hood the body often reverts to its infantile habits of 
frequent slumber. 
During convalescence from any acute maladies, also, 
patients should imitate this childish tendency to spend SLEEP, AND HOW TO SECURE IT. 
133 
much of the time in sleep, which is one of our most 
efficient aids in securing a restoration of bodily vigor 
impaired by disease. Apart from differences of age, 
we do not by any means all need the same quantity 
of sleep, and there are individual differences in this 
respect for which we cannot account. Others, how- 
ever, are easily explained, as for example, the fact 
that nervous, excitable persons need more sleep than 
robust, unimpressionable people, simply because the 
events of each day involve a greater wear and tear of 
the nervous system in the former. 
Habit, which so powerfully modifies almost all the 
bodily functions, exercises a great influence upon the 
duration of sleep. We must never forget, however, 
that although we may occasionally succeed in stifling 
for a time the complaints of the body of want of 
sleep, we do not thereby prevent that body from 
suffering the consequences of its deprivation. Those 
who from necessity (as with night-watchmen) or from 
choice remain awake through the night, learn to feel, 
it is true, as soon as the habit is well established, no 
necessity for nocturnal sleep, and yet the enfeebling 
of their forces and impoverishment of their blood 
generally goes on uninterruptedly. 
In regard to the influence of temperament, it may 
be observed that a plethoric habit of body, kept up 
by full diet, especially of animal food, predisposes to 
sleep, provided the digestive powers are in vigorous 134 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
condition. Persons of this constitution frequently 
pass nine or ten hours out of the twenty-four in slum- 
ber, and assert that they cannot be adequately refreshed 
by less. On the other hand, thin, wiry people, in 
whom the nervous temperament predominates, usually 
require comparatively little sleep, notwithstanding 
the greater activity of their nervous systems when 
they are awake, but their slumber, while it lasts, is 
very deep. Persons of lymphatic temperament, 
heavy, passionless people, who may be said to live 
very slowly, are usually great sleepers, but this rather 
because, through the dulness of the senses, they are 
less easily kept awake by external impressions of any 
kind. The amount of sleep is, as already intimated, 
greatly influenced by habit, and, contrary to what 
might be anticipated, we find that exceptionally brief 
sleepers have generally been men of the greatest men- 
tal activity. Thus, Frederick the Great, John Hunter 
(the famous English surgeon), and the first Napoleon, 
are said to have required only five hours’ sleep out of 
the twenty-four. 
Probably no one can sustain a life of vigorous exer- 
tion upon a smaller allowance than this, and, as a 
general rule, from six to eight hours of repose out of 
every twenty-four are required to keep the system in 
a state of healthful activity. Of course, as we all 
know, a few days and nights may generally be passed 
almost sleeplessly without any serious injury to the 
health, but prolonged watching, from any cause SLEEP, AND HOW TO SECURE IT. 
135 
whatever, inevitably breaks down the strength, and 
if further continued will undermine the constitution. 
The influence of custom may affect the protraction, 
as well as the abbreviation of sleep, and the com- 
plaining “voice of the sluggard,” which we have all 
been used to hearing in our childish days, drowsily 
echoes with the call of his tyrannical master — Habit. 
The state of the brain produced by an excess of sleep 
is very unfavorable to the exercise of its powers of 
perception and action. Such a condition may almost 
be described as a chronic disorder of the nerve cen- 
tres, and is often the result of natural changes in the 
direction of decay from old age. The growth of 
habit and self-indulgence may prematurely bring it on, 
and this danger, as well as the opposite one of tak- 
ing too little sleep, must carefully be guarded against. 
We must not fall into the error of supposing that 
the amount of sleep is to be measured by its duration 
alone, since its intensity is a matter of equal impor- 
tance. The light doze which is interrupted by the 
slightest sounds cannot be as renovating as the pro- 
found slumber of those whom no ordinary noise will 
awaken. It appears, moreover, that, independently 
of any abridgment of proper rest, the sudden, oft- 
repeated interruption of sleep has a special injurious 
effect upon the brain. We have not yet been able to 
determine the exact difference between sleeping and 
waking, but we do know that the change from the 
former to the latter ought to be as gradual as on the 136 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
approaches of sleep. Usually, when people are ab- 
ruptly aroused from profound slumber, the action 
of the heart becomes quickened, or otherwise dis- 
turbed, by such interruption, and there is frequently 
a painful and difficult effort, in recalling the entire 
consciousness of the waking state, with the same con- 
fused mental feelings as are produced by a sudden 
surprise of great intensity. 
The effects of a habitual deficiency of sleep are a 
sense of wretchedness and prostration, frequently ac- 
companied with great restlessness. These symptoms 
may be due either to an emotional excitement which 
keeps slumber from the eyelids, or to a voluntary effort 
to goad the intellect into continuous activity. Such 
an event is of very common occurrence in the lives 
of industrious students and business men, who, with 
a laudable desire for distinction, allow themselves less 
than the quantity of repose actually needed by their 
systems. Headache, fulness, heat, throbbing, and 
various other unpleasant sensations about the head, 
give warning that the brain is being overtasked, and 
should this warning pass unheeded, sleep, which at 
first it was difficult to resist, becomes even more dif- 
ficult to obtain — a state of general restlessness and 
feverish excitement is induced; and if, in spite of this, 
the effort be continued, serious consequences in the 
form of brain fever, apoplexy, insanity, and loss of 
mental power, from softening of the brain, partial or 
complete, are almost sure to be induced. Such an SLEEP, AND HOW TO SECURE IT. 
137 
effort may be sustained by certain individuals much 
longer than others, but it is a great mistake to suppose 
that it is not to them also very injurious. Indeed, 
being possessed with the delusion that they have con- 
stitutions “like a horse,” and can endure anything, 
they frequently prolong the exertion, until a sudden 
and complete prostration proves what a fearful, often 
irreparable injury they have been doing to their 
boasted constitutions. 
Having thus considered the subject of sleep, and 
some of its more common derangements, we come 
now to that of how to secure repose; many of the 
contributors to refreshing slumber being, however, 
already suggested in the early part of this chapter. 
For example, the fact that sleep is required to repair 
the lost brain substance and muscular tissue burned 
up, as it were, in the course of active intellectual and 
bodily exertion, leads to the obvious deduction that 
in average health the best cure for sleeplessness is duly 
regulated exercise of body and mind. So true is this 
conclusion, that, unless modified by other disturbing 
causes, the production of healthful sleep in proper 
amount is an excellent test for the quantity of both 
kinds of exercise requisite for keeping ourselves in 
the best possible condition of perfect health, and 
slight variation in the diverse directions, first of in- 
crease and then of decrease, in the amount of phys- 
ical and mental exertion, will promptly demonstrate, 138 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
by their effect in promoting or diminishing slumber, 
whether our bodies and minds are too much, or too 
little, fatigued by the course of life hitherto pursued. 
Another important condition of healthful repose is 
the avoidance of eating a full meal shortly before 
retiring for the night. 
Solomon has well said, “ The sleep of the laboring 
man is sweet, whether he eat little or much,” and it 
is true that neither emptiness nor repletion can inter- 
fere with the profound and delicious slumber which is 
gained by long-continued severe physical exertion. 
Among the simple and almost hygienic means of 
promoting sleep, I may mention that, if restlessness 
seems to be due to congestion and heat about the 
head, cold water or cold vinegar and water sponged 
over the forehead and temples will help to relieve it, 
particularly if other parts of the body are kept warm. 
The bed-chamber should be well ventilated by hav- 
ing the window open at the top, and the temperature 
of its atmosphere ought to be kept about 20° or even 
(for robust persons) 250 below that of ordinary sit- 
ting-rooms. An exception, however, is to be noted in 
regard to all children and to invalids, especially if 
suffering from diseases of the lungs and throat. Gen- 
erally, it is better to lie upon an inclined plane, or 
with the head moderately raised, but not so high as 
to produce any strain upon the muscles of the neck, 
for spasmodic or irregular action of these muscles 
appears to have a singularly disturbing effect upon SLEEP, AND HOW TO SECURE IT. 
139 
the brain. All needless pressure upon the spine 
ought to be avoided, and hence it is advisable for 
wakeful persons to lie upon an elastic mattress placed 
upon a feather bed, which equalizes pressure without 
subjecting the body to excessive warmth. 
Very delicate people often appear to be influenced 
by the direction as regards the magnetic current in 
which they lie, the most favorable effects being ob- 
served when the head is directed to the north and 
the feet to the south. Light has an unfavorable in- 
fluence in preventing sleep, and, therefore, complete 
darkness should be secured as far as possible; if, from 
any cause, lights in the bed-chamber are necessary, 
they should be feeble, and the face of a sleeper care- 
fully shaded from their rays. Whilst loud, abrupt, 
or unusual sounds of all kinds prevent slumber, it is 
a curious fact that low, monotonous noises, such as 
the hum of bees, the distant rippling or falling of 
water, and the dull voice of a heavy reader, are power- 
ful aids to repose, and may sometimes be employed 
to overcome restlessness with advantage. Remem- 
ber, there are few more potent foes to slumber than 
great anxiety, or excessive effort to procure sleep. 
While in attacks of illness the use of alcohol, opium, 
and chloral often proves of the greatest service, I can- 
not too strongly warn my readers against their use to 
secure sleep, as there is good reason to believe is too 
often done. CHAPTER XIV. 
MENTAL POWER, AND HOW TO RETAIN IT. 
AS remarked by the celebrated Dr. Maudsley, we 
physicians, who have to deal practically with the 
thoughts, feelings, and conduct of men, and are forced 
to treat mind not merely as an abstract entity con- 
cerning which we may speculate, but as a force in 
nature (just as much as is digestive power or muscu- 
lar vigor), the operations of which we must patiently 
observe and learn to develop, influence, and at times 
restrain, are compelled to recognize how entirely the 
integrity of the mental function depends upon the 
bodily organization, and to acknowledge “the essen- 
tial unity of body and mind.” 
In the present constitution of society, where the 
imbecile, the idiotic, and the weak-minded are taken 
care of through the affection or philanthropy of their 
stronger children or brethren, failure of intellectual 
power does not often in itself lead to premature death; 
and yet such incapacity does so eventuate frequently 
enough to justify the introduction of a chapter upon 
mental hygiene into the present Primer, although the 
140 MENTAL POWER, AND HOW TO RETAIN IT. 
141 
subject will be much more fully treated of in a subse- 
quent volume of the series. 
Mental hygiene has been divided in various ways 
by different authorities, but, as a whole, it includes all 
that relates to the development, exercise, and mainte- 
nance of mental activity in individuals and in com- 
munities, and it takes cognizance, therefore, of edu- 
cation, social culture, religion, and national life. 
There can be no doubt that mental activity is 
highly favorable to physical health and development, 
when systematically regulated and directed into useful 
channels; but “the irresistible logic of facts” teaches 
us that, however we may repudiate the dangerous 
quicksands of materialism, we will have the most 
success in the development and preservation of intel- 
lectual power, if we look upon it for educational and 
hygienic purposes merely, as a real force capable, like 
that residing in the muscles, of being strengthened 
by judicious exercise, temporarily exhausted by fatigue, 
and debilitated, or even utterly broken down and 
wrecked, by too prolonged or continuous exertion. 
In the training of children, therefore, to secure for 
them sound minds in sound bodies, we must be 
equally careful to make brain and muscle alike the 
recipients of ample nourishment, judicious exercise, 
and suitable repose. 
Duly regulated intellectual labor seems, as a rule, 
to conduce to longevity, and it was formerly a sort of 142 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
proverb that “ one of the rewards of philosophy is 
long life.” Homer, Pythagoras, Galen, and many 
others of the ancient philosophers, exceeded the four- 
score years allotted to man by the inspired Psalmist, 
and the intellectual giants of our own Republic in its 
early days, such as Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams, 
were alike blessed with unusual length of life. 
But brain work, to be thus beneficial, must be reg- 
ulated with the most scrupulous care, for nothing can 
be more foolish than the mistake which ministers, 
lawyers, physicians, merchants, and mechanics so 
often make, of disregarding the hygienic laws which 
they strictly obey in regard to muscular exertion, and 
acting as if their brains were quite indestructible and 
perfectly competent to continue as long, or as con- 
stantly in operation, as their own wishes or necessities 
may require. “ As a consequence of such habits,” 
says Dr. Isaac Ray, one of our highest authorities 
upon this subject, “it is not strange that every form 
of mental infirmity should have increased among us of 
late to an extent that has no parallel in former times. 
In the prime of life, in the midst of usefulness, 
men suddenly break down with their brains, to em- 
ploy a popular phrase, ‘ used up ’ by insanity, paraly- 
sis, etc., and this with a frequency which is full of 
instruction, if we would only heed the lesson. Para- 
lytic affections, which were once comparatively rare, 
and attributed in great part to hereditary predisposi- MENTAL POWER, AND HOW TO RETAIN IT. 
143 
tion or sensual indulgences, now occur in multitudes 
who have no family taint, apparently enjoy good 
health, and have from childhood been regular and 
temperate in all their physical habits. Indeed, were 
we to indicate that feature in the mental constitution 
of our times, which distinguishes it from all others, it 
would be our large proportion of cerebral affections.” 
In order to arrive at some definite conclusion as 
to the portion of each twenty-four hours which may, 
on an average, be safely spent in intellectual labor, 
it is important to determine at what time of life the 
mind of man is in its prime, and from what has 
been shown by special inquiries upon this point, it 
would appear that the period of each individual’s 
existence, extending from thirty years on the side of 
youth to forty-five on the side of age, is that in which 
the body enjoys a maximum of vigor and power of 
endurance, and it is during this same period that the 
history of studious men leads us to believe that the 
mind displays similar attributes. Hence, after the 
age of forty-five, or at any rate of fifty years, every 
brain worker should, without waiting to be warned 
by the premonitory signs of failure in the great tool 
of his trade, systematically diminish the amount of 
labor which he calls upon it to perform. 
The great question of how a man may use his brain 
without endangering its health, and consequently its 
practical efficiency, constitutes a separate problem, 144 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
however, which must be worked out for each indi- 
vidual case independently, because, although there 
are often instances where it is easy to say this or that 
person is overtaxing his powers, it is impossible to 
fix upon any general rule which would not require 
too much of some and too little of others. Endeav- 
oring to make all due allowance for this difference, 
we may say that few individuals, even in the prime of 
their mental and physical vigor, can exceed six hours 
a day of close mental application without seriously 
endangering their health, and that for most persons 
prudence would direct that not more than five or 
even four hours daily should be thus employed ex- 
cept as an occasional effort to meet special emergen- 
cies. 
Intense devotion to study for ten or twelve hours 
daily, if kept up for months, or even for weeks, has, 
as a rule, no real advantage, even if the brain should 
happen to escape permanent injury, because the 
memory and reasoning powers become so exhausted 
by fatigue that they actually assimilate fewer ideas 
than they would do if not so unjustly overtaxed. 
No more mournful example of punishment for wil- 
ful violation of the “ six hours’ law,” given above, 
can be found in recent times than that of Sir Walter 
Scott, who, while in his prime, used to declare that 
six hours daily was all he could profitably spend upon 
his wonderful literary compositions. In later years, MENTAL POWER, AND HOW TO RETAIN IT. 
145 
when, for the purpose of relieving his pecuniary em- 
barrassments, he was induced to exceed this limit, his 
brain-power became exhausted with the excessive 
labor to which it was goaded, and his towering intel- 
lect tottered to its fall. His last years were passed 
in hopeless imbecility, and he died in this condition 
at a comparatively early age. 
Business pursuits which keep the mind more or less 
upon the stretch for eight or ten hours daily, are gen- 
erally interrupted by periods of comparative leisure, 
so that the ill effects of constant mental effort are 
avoided. But few communities cannot point to in- 
stances of prominent lawyers, merchants, railway, or 
bank officers, etc., whose devotion to the important 
affairs under their charge has spurred them on to take 
home their business cares at night, (instead of locking 
them up in their offices or counting-rooms as regularly 
and securely as they do their fire-proof safes,) and in 
consequence must, after a few- years of this violation 
of Nature’s inexorable law, retire into the country or 
take a trip to Europe to remedy, if possible, a threat- 
ened softening of the brain, or attack of paralysis. 
Such an individual is sometimes carefully warned 
by mother Nature of his approaching misfortune, but 
as these cautions are by no means always vouchsafed, 
no man is secure in neglecting the rules just laid 
down until he thus receives a mild reproof for his 
transgression. The “notice to quit” mental over- 146 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
work is ordinarily served somewhat after this fashion. 
The business man who is practising the cruelty of 
over-work upon his patient, long-suffering brain, finds 
that his day’s occupation is becoming a toil rather 
than a delight, and the last hour grows to be a strain, 
only maintained by a conscious effort of the will. 
The last row of figures, or the letters at the bottom 
of the file, seem interminable, and anything out of 
the usual routine, making demands upon the higher 
faculties, is shrunk from as an arduous 'and distasteful 
task. With this soon appears an exaggerated suscep- 
tibility to every trivial annoyance, the result of that 
irritable condition which always accompanies weak- 
ness of nerve-matter. Another warning symptom is 
the failure of memory, which, beginning with a diffi- 
culty of recalling names, soon extends (if the degen- 
eracy goes on) to a provoking forgetfulness of places 
and individuals. Occasionally this failure of recol- 
lection takes the form of loss of consciousness of a 
certain event or series of events, which is as com- 
plete as though an entire leaf had been torn out from 
the book of memory. Such an intermittent failure of 
mental power should always awaken the careless sub- 
ject of it to his imminent danger, and lead him at 
once to reform his habits of intellectual intemperance. 
Among the physical symptoms of impending ex- 
haustion of brain-power, one of the most important 
is probably the inability to sleep, of which I have MENTAL POWER, AND HOW TO RETAIN IT. 
147 
already spoken. Sometimes this morbid vigilance, 
as it is called, occurs to the extent of lying awake 
throughout the nocturnal hours ; at others, a light, 
restless slumber, haunted by dreams which reproduce 
the waking anxieties, and consequently broken and 
unrefreshing, takes the place of the needful repose. 
When this condition of affairs has lasted for a month 
or six weeks, the only hope is, generally, to be found 
in a radical change of scene, habits, occupation, and 
mode of life. 
Remember that it will not do to wait for these 
cautions against overworking the brain, because, in a 
large proportion of cases, they arrive only after irrep- 
arable injury is done, or never come at all. In such 
instances the sinner against sanitary law receives his 
first warning with his punishment, in the shape of a 
stroke of apoplexy and paralysis, an outburst of in- 
sanity, or an attack of softening of the brain. 
“Living fast ” is a phrase in common use among 
many people who rarely recognize that it expresses a 
grim truth in regard to intellectual as well as physical 
life; for a man can, and often does, live through his 
physiological capital in fifty years, when, with care, 
he might have made it last to eighty or ninety. Oft- 
tirfles we can have our choice at the outset of life; 
but the day comes, it may be very soon, when we 
must decide which pathway we will follow, and then 
we should remember that all experience proves we 
cannot live both fast and long. CHAPTER XV. 
PARASITIC ENEMIES, AND HOW TO ESCAPE THEM. 
THE large and important class of diseases which 
are due to the invasion of our bodies by visible 
and easily recognized parasites, such as the trichina 
worm found in pork, only requires a very small ounce 
of prevention to be escaped completely. I can, 
therefore, I hope, secure my readers against an im- 
mense amount of suffering or ill health by supplying 
to them a few rules in regard to our means of pro- 
tection against these minute but dangerous foes of 
humanity. 
Among our parasitic enemies, the Trichina spiralis, 
or pork worm, deserves to be first mentioned, just as 
Beelzebub is always spoken of before his imps because 
of his much greater power for evil to the human 
family. In spite of all the remedies yet tried for the 
malady which it produces in man, a large proportion 
of the cases prove fatal, and even those that recover 
do so after weeks or perhaps months of suffering. 
The history of our knowledge respecting the tri- 
china worm is an excellent example of how micro- 
148 PARASITIC ENEMIES. 
149 
scopical investigation of disease has been of immense 
benefit to humanity. Previous to the investigations 
of Dr. Zenker, of Dresden, in i860, cases of trich- 
nious disease were supposed to be unusual forms of 
typhoid fever and of inflammatory rheumatism, or, 
when connected, as they sometimes were, if they oc- 
curred in whole families at once, with the eating of 
pork, were attributed to some peculiar poisonous pu- 
trefaction of the meat. The Dresden microscopist, 
however, discovered that the painful symptoms and ter- 
rible mortality of this puzzling complaint were due to 
the infection of the patients with the young trichina 
worms, which are hatched out in the intestines of unfor- 
tunate people who eat diseased pork, burrow their way 
through the muscles to all parts of the body, and, by 
the irritation they set up as so many millions of little 
moving splinters in the flesh, cause the suffering and 
death so common in this malady. Their number is 
sometimes very great, and with them, indeed, as with 
most of the parasites which infest us, nature appears 
to have done her best to compensate for their won- 
derful minuteness by rendering them terrible through 
their almost infinite number. Thus, it has been 
found that a cubic inch of pork may contain nearly 
a hundred thousand trichina, and Dr. Thudicum cal- 
culated that there were twenty-eight millions of young 
worms in the muscles of a patient he examined. 
The trichina disease comes on generally with vio- 150 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
lent vomiting and diarrhoea, followed by high fever, 
with severe pains in the limbs, back, and head. For 
some time it can scarcely be distinguished from acute 
poisoning, or sometimes from typhoid fever, but 
about the seventh or eighth day of the disease, a pe- 
culiar dropsical swelling of the eyelids and root of 
the nose appears, and indicates the true nature of the 
malady. 
The trichina worm is very hard to kill, and with- 
stands salting and smoking of the pork in which it 
exists without difficulty. All pork should, therefore, 
be carefully inspected with the microscope before it 
is exposed for sale, and, as an additional precaution, 
it should never be eaten without thorough cooking. 
Even a very minute fragment of the innermost part 
of a ham which escapes being heated nearly to the 
boiling-point of water, may convey several living tri- 
china into the stomach of a person who eats it, and 
give rise to this painful, often fatal, disease. 
Trichina worms are chiefly found in pork, but 
are also met with in the flesh of rabbits, cats, rats, 
and mice. 
The tape-worm is another parasite which not un- 
frequently inhabits the stomach of man and gives rise 
to serious, dangerous, or even fatal symptoms. It has 
a wonderful life history, which I have not space here 
to recount, and after sundry transmigrations through 
the ox, pig, or sheep enters our own bodies, generally PARASITIC ENEMIES. 
151 
in consequence of eating raw or underdone beef. Ac- 
cording to Pappenheim, the change of cooked meat 
from its red to brown color, which is due to an alter- 
ation in the blood-corpuscles by heat, takes place at 
a temperature of about 150° Fahrenheit, and below 
this degree there is no certainty that the eggs or 
young of the tape-worm or of the trichina are killed. 
Tape-worm sometimes makes its way into our systems 
by way of salad, celery, cucumbers, or other green 
vegetables eaten uncooked and without thorough pre- 
liminary washing. 
Scabies, or the itch, formerly called the “seven 
years’ itch,” because, until our microscopes revealed 
its cause in the tiny Acarus scabiei, it was so hard 
to cure, is a not uncommon parasitic complaint, and 
very easily transferred to a healthy person who hap- 
pens to touch a diseased one, especially at night. I 
once knew a case in which a whole family were in- 
fested from a monthly nurse, who had the disease in 
its usual seat between the roots of the fingers on the 
back of the hand; so that it is wise to look carefully 
for little inflamed pimples in these positions before 
shaking hands with strangers, and to give a glance at 
the fingers of nurses who have charge of children in 
whom you are interested. A single female itch- 
insect, although it is only about as big as a grain of 
writing-sand, will quickly burrow its way into the 
skin, lay its eggs, and rear a family of tens of thou- 152 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT 
sands in a few weeks, which rapidly overrun their ter- 
ritory and drive their new landlord almost to distrac- 
tion if unmolested by medical treatment. 
Probably our most common yet least dangerous 
parasites are the intestinal worms which not infre- 
quently infest children, and are also sometimes met 
with in adults. Occasionally these internal inhabi- 
tants give rise to severe nervous symptoms, but as a 
rule they are much less injurious than timid people 
imagine. Hence, the indiscriminate use of irritating 
vermifuges is to be strongly deprecated as the far 
greater evil. 
The vegetable parasites which have been proved to 
affect human beings, belong to the class of fungi or 
moulds, and give rise to Favus or scald head, Ring- 
worm, barber’s itch, etc. The seeds or spores of 
these diseases may be conveyed from the diseased to 
the healthy by putting on hats or bonnets, gloves dr 
other clothing, sitting in the same seat, using the same 
towels, brushes, combs, or razors, or even touching 
the same articles of furniture. One of my own chil- 
dren had a spot of favus break out underneath her 
chin, no doubt from being planted with a few seeds 
of the disease (invisible to the naked eye), by touch- 
ing her face to the sill of a car-window, where some 
other child affected with favus among its hair had 
rubbed the back of its head, and left a few spores of 
the fungus. Fortunately, I recognized the nature of PARASITIC ENEMIES. 
153 
the eruption, by the aid of the microscope, before it 
had time to spread, and by poisoning the parasitic 
plant with corrosive sublimate, avoided the develop- 
ment of a very troublesome and disgusting disease. 
The precautions ordinarily taken to avoid barber’s 
itch, by having an individual cup and razor, are not 
sufficient, because the seeds or spores are so minute 
that fifty or a hundred might easily be conveyed to a 
new patient by means of the strap used for sharpen- 
ing different razors, the towel placed around the neck, 
or even by the hands of the barber himself. An in- 
structive case, full of a double warning to my young 
lady readers, is that of a gentleman in New England 
who became infected with this repulsive disease about 
his lips in consequence of a “foul shave;” and, in- 
credible as it may seem, about two weeks afterwards 
a young lady, to whom he was very attentive, came to 
her physician to be cured of a well developed ring- 
worm upon her cheek ! 
Children are probably often affected with ring- 
worm of the face and hands from playing with kittens 
or puppies, in which the fungus, causing this disease, 
is quite common, and generally shows itself by de- 
stroying the hair in such a manner that bald spots 
upon the head, paws, etc., of the animals are pro- 
duced. Horses and ponies have sometimes been the 
sources of contagion in a similar way, and in fact we 
cannot be too careful to avoid contact with diseased 
animals of any kind. CHAPTER XVI. 
OLD AGE, AND HOW TO MEET IT. 
THIS little volume may be most appropriately 
brought to a close with a short consideration of 
the changes of advanced life, and the methods de- 
vised by sanitary science to render them as far as pos- 
sible more endurable. It has been a matter of sur- 
prise to thinking men in all ages of the world, that 
the approach of death should be shrunk from by old 
people almost as shudderingly as by those in youth, 
or in the prime of life. Such, however, as every-day 
experience teaches us, is not infrequently the case, 
and a large majority of mankind hold the same view 
as that entertained by the aged, but witty French- 
woman, who sent for her physician, on one occasion, 
and, in reply to her catalogue of ills, was met by the 
exclamation, “ What would you have, Madame ? I 
cannot make you young again!” “I know that, 
Doctor,” answered she. “ What I want you to do is 
to help me to grow old a ivhile longer.” 
For the purpose of aiding my elderly readers who 
are not yet tired of life, and who desire to grow old 
154 OLD AGE, AND HOW TO MEET IT. 
155 
comfortably for some years more, perhaps even to see 
what the year a.d. 1900 will do for science, art, and 
humanity, I will briefly glance at the symptoms of 
bodily decay, in the order which they are apt to make 
their onset, and in the same concise way point out 
how to diminish their interference with the powers of 
life, and their disturbances of health. 
One of the first signs of wearing out is the decay or 
falling out of the teeth, which loss leads to serious 
derangements of digestion, as a consequence of the 
necessarily imperfect mastication or chewing of food. 
The complete breaking up of our more solid articles 
of diet, and their thorough mixture with saliva, are 
indispensable preliminaries to their solution in the 
stomach and intestines, upon which our vigor largely 
depends. Hence, it is well worth while for us to 
avail ourselves, to the utmost, of the skill and inge- 
nuity displayed to such an eminent degree by practi- 
tioners of the dental specialty in medicine, which 
generally enable them to prolong for many years the 
usefulness of decayed teeth, and finally to substitute 
for them artificial molars and incisors, which perform 
their vicarious office with wonderful success. 
When, as sometimes happens, the dentist’s art fails 
to serve the required purpose, care must be taken to 
have all kinds of solid food cut or ground into very 
small pieces before it passes the lips. After it enters 
the mouth, articles of diet (whether solid, and thus 156 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
artificially prepared; soft, like boiled rice or milk 
toast, or liquid, such as soups or meat extracts) 
should not be swallowed immediately, but ought to 
be mixed with saliva by moving them round in the 
mouth for a short time, about as long as they would 
require for mastication if the teeth were in perfect 
order. See Primer on “The Mouth and the Teeth.” 
Another important change very liable to accompany 
advancing years, is the excessive deposit of fat, which, 
unfortunately, often occurs just at the time when the 
muscular powers are deteriorating a little, and the 
corpulent condition, therefore, interferes with taking 
sufficient bodily exercise to insure uninterrupted good 
health. This tendency may be diminished by atten- 
tion to diet, and its unfavorable influence is often quite 
important enough to render faithful observance of 
the rules for avoiding obesity profitable. Calcareous 
or chalky degeneration of the arteries, etc., is a com- 
mon and serious mode of decay in advanced life, due 
in part, perhaps, to errors in diet. 
The failure of muscular power directly dependent 
upon the want of complete renewal of all the muscu- 
lar fibres, which go to make up the muscles in the 
shrunken and shrivelled limbs of old age, is another 
very common milestone upon the declivity of life. 
Mournful as it is to see the former athlete shorn of 
his long boasted strength, this deprivation would have 
but little direct effect in hindering the attainment of OLD AGE, AND HOW TO MEET IT. 
157 
long life, were it confined to the muscles under the 
control of the will alone. Unfortunately, however, 
the same loss of muscular tissue, and therefore of 
muscular power, takes place in the involuntary mus- 
cles, and occurring consequently in the heart and the 
semi-voluntary muscles which inflate the lungs by ex- 
panding the chest, renders the vital functions of the 
respiration and of the circulation of the blood feeble 
and imperfectly performed. Of course, we have no 
means of examining the heart, for example, and seeing 
whether in any particular individual this waste has 
begun, but we possess, under certain limitations, a 
very sure guide to its existence in the manifestly 
greater difficulty of breathing on attempting to run, 
or climb a hill, or even a high staircase, so common 
among persons over sixty, and almost universal among 
those over seventy-five years of age. Another result 
of feebleness of action of the heart and muscular- 
coated arteries is the coldness of the hands, feet, and 
limbs, due to the slowness and imperfection of the 
circulation of the blood, which wanders lazily along 
through its vessels with a torpor in painful contrast 
to the bounding pulses of vigorous youth. This 
torpor of the vital current leads to a kind of chilli- 
ness of the extremities of aged people which no 
amount of outside wrappings will remedy, for, like 
King David of old, though covered with clothes, they 
get no heat. Artificial warmth is therefore absolutely 158 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
necessary, and in extremely cold weather, elderly 
people in whom this symptom is at all marked should 
remain in-doors, and within the influence of well- 
regulated fires. Many an otherwise long life is cut 
short at threescore, or threescore and ten, by an 
attack of bronchitis, lung-fever, or inflammation of 
the membranes of the heart, etc., from want of 
knowledge, or want of care, in regard to the neces- 
sity of this precaution. 
Still another dangerous effect of this muscular wast- 
ing (or senile atrophy, as physicians call it) charac- 
teristic of old age, is the weakening of the natural 
worm-like movements of the intestines, accomplished 
by millions of little involuntary muscles, which, during 
vigorous life, propel the food at a proper rate through 
the alimentary canal, but after the age of fifty or sixty 
lose some of their efficiency, and, as a consequence, 
permit to be set up that torpor or constipation of the 
bowels which is so common, so troublesome, and so 
injurious in advanced life. 
The management of these various failures in the 
different muscular organs of the body to do their 
proper share of work, is as simple as it is practically 
difficult for most persons to carry out. An individual 
in whom they have occurred is exactly in the con- 
dition of a wealthy man whose fortune has been 
diminished by hard times until he finds he must either 
reduce his expenses or trench upon his capital. If OLD AGE, AND HOW TO MEET IT. 
159 
elderly people, whose allowance (or income) of mus- 
cular strength has been reduced by the “ hard times” 
of threescore and ten, to one-half of its amount dur- 
ing the prime of life, can only be persuaded to live 
within the bounds of this diminished income of vital- 
ity, existence may generally be prolonged for a con- 
siderable additional period ; but if, on the contrary, 
they will persist in endeavoring to perform the feats 
of agility, of strength, of endurance, and of digestion, 
which were the pride of their youth and their prime, 
their bodily capital is trenched upon, their remain- 
ing stock of vigor, which, prudently husbanded, 
might well have lasted another twenty years, is soon 
exhausted, and speedy death is the result. 
I cannot too strongly reiterate what has been al- 
ready advised in regard to the use of laxative food, 
injections, and mild purgatives in constipation, and 
urge their special importance in avoiding torpor of 
the bowels in the aged. Congestions and secondary 
affections of the liver, blind or bleeding piles, and 
vertigo, or even apoplexy, during the act of straining 
at stool, are some of the penalties paid by old age 
for neglect of these safeguards. 
Sometimes hand in hand, sometimes preceding or 
succeeding, at some little interval, to these failures in 
the muscular tissues, are seen the evidences of dete- 
rioration of brain- and nerve-structure displayed in 
the loss of intellectual power, with changes of temper 160 
LONG LIFE, AND HOW TO REACH IT. 
and even of disposition. Such alterations are slow; 
they often commence insidiously, and develop almost 
imperceptibly, escaping the attention of the subject 
of them, for the simple reason that they affect the 
organ of perception of external impressions itself. 
Very frequently they are distinctly visible, to a close 
observer, long before the state of dotage is recogni- 
zable by the ordinary eye. 
There is no doubt that, under these circumstances, 
life and intellectual vigor would often be prolonged 
by a judicious change of occupation and of scene, 
particularly in foreign travel; and marked failure 
of memory, loss of reasoning power, or capacity 
for mental application, are the symptoms which 
should warn elderly people of the approach of intel- 
lectual decay, which, however, the means just sug- 
gested may avert, or, at least, for a long time post- 
pone. Should these danger-signals be disregarded, 
as is the case in a large majority of instances, the 
time when they can be of service is apt to pass quickly 
by, and the perchance once vigorous intellect, wrecked 
and ruined, falls into a condition of decay which 
renders long life a grievous burden, not only to the 
sufferer himself but also to the loving relatives and 
anxious friends who surround him. 
THE END.