It is with old age as it is with health. We can have it if we wish it.
Accidents alone can deprive us of either. Let us hope that the day will come when men and women will not be satisfied to die as life is but beginning, but that they will live as they should and could live, thus proving a blessing to the race.
CHAPTER XXIX.
EVOLVING INTO HEALTH.
By the time most people are twenty years old they have some kind of disease. It may be only a slight catarrh, a touch of indigestion, trouble with the eyes, defective hearing, or some other ill. Very seldom do we meet a person of this age who is perfectly well.
Most people are taught to believe that health is something mysterious which may come to them or may pa.s.s them by, but that they have little or nothing to do with it. If they are well, they are fortunate, but if they are ill they are not to blame.
Most of them go to conventional physicians when they are ill, expecting to be cured. They take medicine or injections of serums or they are operated upon. When they are through with the doctors they are no wiser than they were before.
A few have friends who tell them that they must change their mode of living if they would have health. They are interested enough to go to a healer who believes in nature. He tells them that they are well or ill according to their desserts, that they can be well at all times, if they wish, for if they live as they should health is a natural consequence.
This sounds like nonsense at first. It is different from anything else they have heard. The sufferer often makes up his mind that the healer is a fool or a faker. He remembers that when he went to the conventional physicians they sounded and thumped him and examined all his excretions.
They were very thorough and scientific. The natural healer does not generally go into so many details. He asks enough and examines enough to find the trouble and then he stops. This the patient charges against him, for he takes for granted that the healer is brief from lack of knowledge.
So he goes back to his old physician. As his trouble is due to deranged nutrition, he does not get well. He thinks over what the natural healer said, and the more he thinks about it the more reasonable it sounds, and he returns again. This time he gets instructions, and he follows them enough to get benefit, but not faithfully enough to get well. He is convinced that the conventional physicians are wrong, but still believes that the natural healer can hardly be right.
After a while he makes up his mind to get down to business and he goes to the healer for instructions and follows them. The results are surprising. The trouble he has had for years may disappear within a month or two, or it may become less and less apparent, but take considerable time before it leaves entirely.
The healer gives instructions. The most important ones are those concerning the diet. A plan is given that brings good results. The healer fails to explain that this is but one correct method of feeding, that there are other good ones. The patient is enthused over the benefits derived, he makes up his mind that he is living the only correct life, and he too often becomes a food crank, trying to force his ideas upon all about him. Here the healer is at fault, for he should explain that some method is necessary, but that there is no one and only method of feeding.
If the patient is fairly intelligent, in time he realizes that it is not so much what he eats as his manner of eating and moderation that are helpful, and that any plan in which moderation and simplicity are followed is better than the ordinary way of eating.
As the patient evolves into health and gets a broader view of the art of living, he gets a better perspective of life. He learns that under like conditions like causes always produce like effects, that the law of compensation is always operative, and we therefore get what we deserve.
He loses his fear of many things that caused him grave concern previously. He sees in sickness and death the working of natural law, not of chance.
Some patients realize that healers who work in accordance with nature are right, at the very start, but most people are not so logically constructed. It often takes from one to three years before people make up their mind to order their lives so that they can have health at their command.
In the old way, the doctor was supposed to cure, which was impossible.
In the new way, the healer educates people and then if they live their knowledge they get health.
The healer must instruct in the care of all parts of the body, weeding out bad habits and trying to instill good ones in their place.
Eating according to correct principles is the most helpful and powerful aid in regaining health. The patient finds that as the years pa.s.s his tastes change, becoming more simple and more moderate. He is well nourished on one-half to one-third of what he used to consume and consider necessary.
The following is the last half of a month"s record of food intake for a man in the thirties. Some years ago he changed his manner of living in order to regain health, in which he succeeded. Now he takes only one or two meals a day, according to his desires, not that he has any objection to three meals a day, but he finds it best to eat more seldom. He is in good physical condition, as heavy as he ought to be, and he has not had any real physical trouble for a number of years. His work is mental, but he walks considerably and swims from three to six times a week, besides taking a few set exercises.
It was taken in spring, the weather averaging cool. This is a little lighter than usual, because the record was taken during a period of exceptionally hard mental work. In cold weather heavier foods are taken.
Lunch: Nothing.
Dinner: Three slices of rye toast, very thin, celery, three slices broiled onion, dish of peas, gla.s.s of beer.
Dinner at noon: Roast lamb, dish of spinach, one and one-half dishes summer squash, lettuce and tomato salad.
Supper: Nothing.
Lunch: Dish of baked lentils, vegetable soup, lettuce.
Dinner: Two small oranges, cottage cheese.
Lunch: Piece of gingerbread, cup of cocoa, two lumps of sugar.
Dinner: Two small oranges, cottage cheese.
Lunch: Dish of stewed prunes, tablespoonful cottage cheese.
Dinner: Two eggs, two slices b.u.t.tered toast.
Lunch: Small grapefruit.
Dinner: Vegetable soup, dish of stewed turnips, dish of peas.
Lunch: Nothing.
Dinner: Half a grapefruit, three stewed figs, gla.s.s of milk.
Lunch: Dish of strawberries, large dish of rhubarb with grapefruit juice in it and cream on the side; half serving cream cheese.
Dinner: Two small baked apples.
Lunch: Small grapefruit.
Dinner: Two eggs, dish of turnips, dish of spinach, sliced tomatoes.
Lunch: One raw apple.
Dinner: Two shredded wheat biscuits, gla.s.s of milk.
Lunch: Dish of rhubarb.
Dinner: Vegetable soup, one egg, a boiled potato.