HALL'S
JOURNAL OF HEALTH.
FOR 1859.
"HEALTH IS A DUTY."— Anon.
"men consume too much pood and too little pure air; they take too much medicine and too litlle exercise." — ed.
"I labor for the good time coming, when sickness and disease, except con- genital, or from accident, will be regarded as the result of ignorance or animalism, and will degrade the individual in the estimation of the good, as much as drunken- ness now does." — Ibid.
EDITED BY
W. W. HALL, M. D.,
VOL. VI
NEW-YORK :
PUBLISHED BY THE EDITOR, AT NO. 42 IRVING PLACE,
AND BY
TRUBNER & COMPANY, NO. 60 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
1860.
INDEX TO VOL. VI.
OF
HALL'S JOURNAL OF HEALTH.
PAGE
Adulteration of Food 191
A Little Kills 44
Air Cure 198, 194
Autumna* Diseases ... 212
Amusements 232
Agriculture 254
Abuse of Medicine 274
Amenities of the Dining-Roooi.. . . 258
Analltchings.. . . . 289
Animosities, Nursing. 289
Buckwheat Cakes 7
Brain. Softening of 126
Broken Bones , 45
Bread without Yeast 149, 25, 7 3
Bull-Dogs 77
Beautiful Old Age 83
Business Reverses 101
Baths and Bathing 11!
Bottled Wrath 128
Black Bean Story • 146
Build, where to 175
Bad Plans 219
Birds of the Wood 266
Bites and Stings
Bad Breath 275
Burying Alive 228
Bostonian Complacency 290
Corn Bread 25
Consumption, 288, 290, 276, 158, 182, 29
Cellars 31
Careworn , 33
Chair, Physiological 75
Children 74, 81, 140, 288, 107
Coolings 130
Constitutions Created 146
Clergymen, Death of. 215
Corn Cobs Moral 223
Cramps 225
Cause of Disease 237
Car, R. R., Observations 241
Colds Cured., 283, 253
Custom 261
Chimney Smoking 277
PAGK
Contrast in Family Education 288
Corns Cured 219
Constipation 284
Dieting for Health 27
Disease and Crime 83
Declining, Premature 46
Depraviny, Human 61
Daughters, about our 74
Drinking and Death 117
Difference, The 147
Death and Crime 154
Drowning 176
Doctors' Habits 190
Death Rate 191
Deadly Emanations 195
Disease and Suicide . 197
Drinking Ice- Water 216
Dysentery 217
Dyspepsia, and Drunkenness 229
Dining- Room Amenities , 258
Encouragement 44
Eating, Object of 85
Emanations, Deadly 195
Eyes, Care of. 228
Eating and Drinking 280
Experience, My own 279
Flannel Wearing .• 10
Fraternization Editorial 104, 48
Fever and Ague Prevented ; . 72
Frost- Work 90
Fanaticism 132
Filth and Health 181
Food Adulteration 191
Food, Preservation of 211
Fuel 221
" Friends," Society of 231
Fun 238
Feet 265
Fire on the Hearth 287
Finger Nails 291
G-rowlers 17
G-rave of Hope 101
Hair, the Human 271, 11
IV
Index to Volume VI
PAGE
Health and Duty 64
Hotels H
Heart Disease 81
Hope, the Grave of — 101
Human Manufactory 170
Habitations Unhealthful 173
House Warming 19
Human Mortality 183
Howard the Philanthropist 216
Instinct 49
Insurance, Life 53
Inconsiderations 134
Impure Air i93
Inadvertences 196
Ice- Water Drinking. 138, 216
Innocent Amusements 232
Intemperance of Old 290, 234
Insanity. 164, 197, 243
India-Rubber Shoes 250
Impracticable Persons 272
Just About Right "... 216
Living Long 24, 84, 135, 249
Live Usefully 41
Locating for Life 45
Life Insurance 53
Liquor Drinking 118
Lunacy 164
Loose Bowels 171
Lightning Stroke 178
Life, Occupations of. 180
Life, its Philosophy 185
Medicating One's Self 18
Medicine and Science 58, 274
Moral Nutriment 69
Milk 92
Music Healthful 123, 141
Mortalities 183, 189, 215
Marriage Contract 216
Medication, the Best 241
Measles 251
Morals of Sickness 255
Nature and Revelation 47
Nutriment Moral 69
Nose-hairs, etc 209
Nine Nevers 237
Object of Eating 85
Occupations of Great Men 143
Old People, Young 144
Occupations of Life 180
Pork as Pood 8
Poverty, Disease, and Crime 35
Premature Decline 46
Physical Education 68
Poverty, Sympathize with 80
Pure Pood 120
Papered Rooms 175
Populatory Calculations 189
Preservation of Food 211
Poisonous Bites and Stings 233
Pouting 272
PAGE
Quackery Unmasked . . . . v 56
Quintuple Alliance 144
Quenching Thirst 117
Reason and Instinct 49
Religious Daily Newspaper. 88
Rat Riddance •. 187
Returning to Town 263
Rules for Winter. 282
Self- Medication 18
Softening of the Brain 26
Suicidal Women 40
Science of Medicine 58
Student, Health 73
Sorrowing Poverty 80
Sores 86
Sleeping Together. 97
Surfeits Cured 99
Spring Diseases 106, 119
Sabbath, Keeping the 112, 207, 235
Sudden Death ■ 113
Stupidity , 122
Summer Excursions 125, 263
Seasonable Hints. 144
Summer Sours . . 1^7
Summer Resorts 163
Sleeping in Church 171, 181
Sydenham's Habits 190
Suicide 197, 327
Scrofula 245
Shoes, India-Rubber 250
Sickness and its Morals 255
Sunday Dinners 259
Sunshine, Its Healthfulness 64
Smoky Chimney 277
True Temperance 50
Thankful Be 67
Temperament Differences 109
Thirst Quenched 117
Town and Country. . # 139
Tomatoes 218
Take Life Easy 257
Teachers of our Children 269
Taking Cold 283
Uses of Ice 138
Unhealthful Habitations 173
Use of Sunshine 175
Wearing Flannel 10
Warming Houses and Churches. .19, 42
Warts 71
Well and Spring Cleaning 72
Weakly Youths 81
Walk Softly 82
Well Done Ill
Why Children Die 140
Where to Build. 175
Wearing Rubber Shoes 250
World's Workers 278
Winter Rules 282
Young Old People 144
Youths, Sickly. 81
HALL'S JOURNAL OF HEALTH.
OUR LEGITIMATE SCOPE IS ALMOST BOUNDLESS : FOR "WHATEVER BEGETS PLEASURABLE
AND HARMLESS FEELINGS, PROMOTES HEALTH ; AND WHATEVER INDUCES
DISAGREEABLE SENSATIONS, ENGENDERS DISEASE.
We aim to show how Disease may be avoided, and that it is best, when sickness comes, to take no Medicine without consulting an educated Physician.
VOL. VI.] JANUARY, 1859. [No. 1.
M¥ TEAK'S GREETING.
The commencement of another year and a new volume, of- fers a fit occasion for the expression of our thanks for the kindly partiality with which our journal has been received ,by an indulgent press and .public, in that our enterprise has been a success from the beginning, having been encouragingly pro- fitable directly and indirectly, still more highly so ;. hence we feel ourself under obligation to endeavor to make it more worthy of the universal appreciation in which it has been held. To this end, we have arranged to turn over every living connected with the publishing department to II. B. Pexce, a native of our city, known to every publishing house of any age in l\ew .York, as a gentleman of enterprise, energy and business promptitude, with an integrity which must command respect and ensure success. All letters therefore which per- tain to dollars and cents, yearly subscriptions, or separate num- bers, should be addressed to " Hall's Journal of Health, JNew York." All letters pertaining to the editorial department, or for professional advice, should be directed to Dr. W. W. Hall, Kew York. And while our indefatigable publisher gathers himself up to the work of doubling our circulation for eighteen hundred and fifty-nine, as good old fifty-eight did on fifty- seven, the editor, with a right good will and a merry heart, lays off his coat and takes up his pen for the labors of another year, trusting that as to his patrons, it will add no gray hair, deepen no furrow, and bring no tear, unless they be such as
6 HalVs Journal of Health.
will in their influences on the character and heart, the better prepare them for that more blessed world, wThere tears fall not and sickness never comes; where we shall be always well, al- ways young, always good.
CIVILIZATION AND LONGEVITY".
Nations are prolific according to their degradation ; as wit- ness the teeming population of China, of India, and of interior Africa. When the Israelites had to work hard, and make brick, getting straw where they could, their numbers increased with great rapidity. The slaves of our own country have more children than their masters. From these facts it is clear, that moral degradation and severe physical labor, each largely in- crease the number of births.
But civilization presents a paradox. As social amelioration and domestic comforts have made large progress, the average term of human life has been strikingly increased^ in that one person died yearly 'out of every thirty in the last century ; while twenty-five years ago, it was found in the same great European States, England, France and Germany, that only one in thirty eight died annually. The present estimate is one out of forty.
At the same time, as civilization advances, the births de- crease. Hence, as we progress in a rational civilization, hu- man life is less doubtful, and the chances of its extension stea- dily increases. Hence with fewer births now than a hundred years ago, among the same number of persons, population is increasing in the more civilized countries, because people live longer in consequence of the social ameliorations of those countries. In the same direction looks the official announce- ment of M. Villerme, secretary of the poor law commissioners for Havre, that the average age of the rich was twelve years greater than that of the poor. The practical inference is this, that living comfortably is a means of avoiding sickness and of living long. The sooner, therefore, that we attain this end, of living in comfort, the better; while the speediest method of accomplishing it, is for all newly married persons to begin life by the practice of rigid economies, by the exercise and indul- gence of plain tastes, and entertaining a manly contempt of the
Buckwheat Cakes. 7
opinion of others as to their style of living, as long as it does not degenerate into meanness — the expenditures being largely within the earnings — giving promise of an age of abundance, of ease and elevation.
BUCKWHEAT CAKES
And molasses, make a favorite winter dish for multitudes in winter time. Why not in summer also ? We need in winter the food which contains most carbon ; that is, the heat produ- cing principle, something which will keep up the internal fires to compensate for the external cold. Meats, everything con- taining fat, are largely made of carbon, hence we instinctively eat heartily of meats iu winter, but have small appetite for them in summer. The same instinct receives greedily the buckwheat cakes in winter, and turns from them in summer, while other forms of bread materials, meal and flour, are de- sired all the year. It is because buckwheat cakes are superior to bread as to fatty matter, while the syrup and butter used with them are almost entirely of carbon. So that there is no- thing more suitable for a winter morning's breakfast than buck- wheat cakes and molasses. In New York, where almost every kitchen is under the same roof with the dining room and par- lors, the fumes arising from the baking of the cakes on the or- dinary iron instrument which requires greasing, are not very desirable ; this may be obviated by using a soap-stone griddle, which does not require to be greased to prevent the cakes from sticking. Children and delicate persons should use the finest white flour of buckwheat. The robust, who exercise or work a great deal in the open air, should use the buckwheat flour which contains all the bran, because the bran is the richest part, yielding more nutriment and strength.
If any unfortunate dyspeptic cannot tolerate them, such an one has only to let them alone, and there will be more of this luxury left to those who can eat them with pleasure and impu- nity, having had the wit to avoid eating them like a glutton. The simple fact that any given item of food " is not good for" one man, does not " set wTell" on the stomach, is no proof that
8 HalVs Journal of JlecdtK.
it is not positively benificial to others, it is simply a proof that it is not good for him. This is a practical thought of consider- able importance.
POKE AS FOOD.
" A fat hog is the very quintessence of scrofula and carbonic acid gas, and he who eats it must not expect "thereby to build up a sound physical organism. While it contributes heat, not the twentieth ^part of it is nitrogen, the base of muscle " One of our cotemporaries cordially endorses the above sentiment, as being sound practical truth, and says — (j Fat pork was never designed for human food. It is material for breath and no- thing more. See Liebig, and other organic chemists and phy- siologists. It makes no red meat or muscle. The prize lighter is not allowed to eat it. All that is not consumed by the lungs, remains to clog the body with fat."
The above is an average specimen of the twaddle which finds its way into the newspapers, and when once there, like the man with a cork leg, it never stops. It sounds racy, and for the sound, lazy editors scissor it out, never taking the trouble to analyze a single statement, or to summons up one of the hundreds of facts which have come under their own ob- servation, and prove the absurdity of the quotation.
Without any theorizing on the subject, let any man raised on a farm, go back to the home of his childhood, and deny, if he can, that any day ever passed in which some part of a pig was not placed on his father's table.
Go to Yirginia, to Tennessee, to Kentucky, the very land of hog and hominy ; or let any one go with us to our own native county of Bourbon, and we will point him to the parents and to their children, who coming to town to school, were the associates of our childhood, and if promenaded along Broad- way, the point which would attract the chief attention would be their giant size. To be specific, we will mention names of families, almost all six footers and nearing two hundred pounds. Whoever saw a Bedford or a Clay, or a Breckenridge that was a runt? Henry and Cassius M., and the peerless " Bob," for example — men as large in heart as in person — men who
Pork as Food. 9
never knew fear, and who in mental power and in natural elo- quence rank among the foremost. There are also the Garrard s, the Williams, the Spears, theScotts, and going along the old " Lime Stone Boad," we come in among the settlement of the Howards, measuring seven feet or more in their stockings ; and not far from there were the Lyles, the " Infant John," measuring six and a half, perhaps, and perhaps more, with a " heft accordin."
Look at the article again : " A fat hog is the very quint- essence of scrofula." "Where is the proof? That a fat hog is made up of carbonic acid gas, as such, is a " whopper !" The biggest pig in a poke hasn't enough of carbonic acid gas in him when dead, to kill a cat. " Not one twentieth part of a pig is nitrogen." And suppose it is'nt : not any part of pure milk, worth naming, is nitrogen, "the base of muscle," while in corn starch, tapioca, sago, arrow root, and sugar, there is not a particle, and yet they are by common consent allowed to be most excellent and healthful articles of food. It is ac- knowledged that fat pork " contributes heat, and is material for breath, nothing more." What of that? Every man and woman we ever saw, needs both " heat and breath." The sugar on our tables, the very best of Stewart's syrup, are as much the "quintessence" of "heat and breath" as "fat pork." " Fat pork is the material for breath and nothing more" — just as grass butter is ! " Fat pork makes no red meat or muscle." Where is the proof? Besides how much of the " base of mus- cle" is there in a cart load of butter. A ton of arrowroot and a barrel of sugar would'nt "make red meat" enough to make a dinner for a mouse.
The fact is we don't care what Liebig, or any other Dutch- man " says." We would'nt give a button for -the mere ipse dixit of any man. We must open our eyes and use our brains, if we have any, and be willing learners of actual whole facts, and go where they carry us. We do not believe there is a man of mind enough to have obscured the lesser lights around him, in all this land, of whom it may not be said in literal truth, that on an average, a day never passed that he did not at some one of the three daily meals eat some portion of a pig. But responds the pork eater, " That may be so, but the ill effect of pork eating has not had time to make itself felt in them, but
10 Hall's Journal of Health.
that it is now manifesting itself in the decay of the present generation." But there is such an inconclusiveness in that kind of argument, that only a dolt would use it, especially when the assumption of the fact that the present generation is in a state of decay, is made in the face of a known truth, that the average length of human life is greater now than it has been in a thousand years. Hence we come back to the senti- ment often expressed in this journal, that all the good things of this life were given us by a Loving Father, richly to enjoy, in moderation and thankfulness ; the proof of the " goodness" ot any thing being in the fact that whole communities have used it daily for generations, leaving sons stalwart in body, peerless in mind, with daughters as pure as the dew drop, and beautiful as the morning.
WEARING FLANNEL.
The very best thing that can be worn next the skin, in sum- mer as well as winter, is common woolen flannel. One color has no advantage over another, except that white is more agreeable to the sight, it is more likely to " full up" in wash- ing; but this may be almost entirely prevented, if done pro- perly. Pour boiling hot strong soapsuds on the garment in a tub, let it alone until the hand can bear the water, then pour off and add clean water, boiling hot, let this stand also as be- fore ; pour off and add more boiling clean water, and when cool enough, merely squeeze the garment with the hands — no wringing or rubbing. Stretch it immediately on a line in the hot sun, or before a hot fire, and as the water settles at the most dependant part of the garment, press it out with the hand, and be careful to stretch the fabric as soon as the water is squeezed out, aiming as much as possible to keep the flannel hot until it is dry. If woolen garments are treated literally as above, they will remain pliable and soft until worn out.
Recent scientific experiments, carefully conducted, prove the truth of the popular sentiment, that woolen flannel is the best fabric to be worn next the skin, as it absorbs more mois- ture from the body than any other material, and by so doing, keeps the body more perfectly dry. Cotton absorbs the least,
The Human Hair. 11
hence the perspiration remains more on the skin, and being damp, the heat of the body is rapidly carried off by evapora- tion and suddenly cools when exercise ceases, the ill effects of which no intelligent mind need to be reminded of. Hence it is, that the common observation of all nations leads them to give their sailors woolen flannel shirts for all seasons and for all latitudes, as the best equalizers of the heat of the body.
THE HUMAN HAIK.
Baldness is considered a great calamity by many. It is brought on in many cases by wearing the hat too constantly. or by any other means which keeps the head too warm. Ano- ther cause of baldness is, the filthy practice of keeping the hair soaked in various kinds of grease, or allowing the scalp to ^remain unwashed for weeks and months together. Instead of throwing money away for any of the thousand inert, if not hurtful " hair restoratives" which meet the eye in every paper, our readers would do well to at least try the following wash : Pour three pints of hot water on four handfuls of the stems and leaves of the garden " box," boil it for fifteen minutes in a closed vessel, then pour it in an earthen jar, and let it stand ten hours ; next strain the liquid and add three table spoons ot cologne water ; wash the head with this every morning, it is cleansing and tonic, and if the root bulbs of the hair are not destroyed (which is the case where the scalp looks smooth and shiny, and then there is no remedy,) the hair will begin to grow with vigor. If this wash fails after a few weeks perse- verance, the baldness may be considered incurable, because the structure of hair growth is destroyed, the cogs and wheels are gone, and no power can replace them, short of that which made them first.
But a more certain and more easily understood method of restoring the hair, when such a thing is possible, is to strive to secure a larger share of general' health ; keeping the scalp clean in the meanwhile, by the judicious application of a mo- derately stiff brush; and a basin of plain old-fashioned soap- suds ; for, as a general rule, baldness arises from one of three things—inattention, which brought on a decline of health
12 IlalVs Journal of Health.
dirt, or stupidity. What for example could a woman expect better than an unsightly broad path of skull along the line where the hair is parted in front, when she has kept each par- ticular hair on a constant strain at the root, at the same iden- tical spot, from earliest " teens" to thirty, instead of changing the line slightly every month or two, or giving entire rest, by having no parting at all, but to carry the hair backward for a month or two at a time, or adjust it in any Avay which a cor- rect taste and sense of appropriateness will readily suggest to a quick witted woman. In this way the delicate line of part- ing may be made to look rich and young to the confines of old age.
The judicious cultivation of the hair, that natural ornament, of which when possessed in its abundance, richness and beauty, all are pardonably proud, is most unaccountably neglected ; for we are all conscious of the tact, that if the hair is plentiful and is handled with a pure taste, it will add to the impressive- ness of any set of features.
As it is, the hair begins to fall before our girls are out of their " teens." In a room full of them, not one in a half dozen can boast of anything on the u back head" but a knot about the size of a hickory nut. If appearances are to the contrary, it will be found that it is a borrowed ornament, whose original owner is in the grave, or has parted with it for a few pennies, or glazy ribbon or gaudy handkerchief, to "raise another crop" just as rich and beautiful. The girls of Brittany and the lower Pyrenees, repair to the annual Hair Fairs in droves, where each one waits her turn for shearing, with her rich long hair combed out and hanging down to the waist. The most valued head of hair brings five dollars, and down to twenty cents, according to quantity and quality. One dollar, in fiery ribbons, violent colored calicos, and the like, is the average, bringing double these prices when taken to the Paris and Lon- don wholesale dealers. The weight of a marketable head of hair when first taken from the head is from twelve to six- teen ounces, or from three-quarters of a pound to a pound, under twelve not being " accepted," and over a pound, or sixteen ounces, especially if silken and long, bringing fabulous prices. Rare qualities have been sold at double the price of silver, weight for weight. Two hundred thou-
The Human Hair. 13
sand pounds of hair are shorn from the heads of young girls every year, to supply the demands of the Paris and London markets, and from these we derive our supplies.
The hair " growers" seem to be rather a degraded set of people, living in mud huts, in filthy community, garments so patched and worn as to scarcely hold together by their own weight. For once at least, fashion bows to profit, and the richest and most luxuriant head of black hair is accounted an incumbrance. Caps are worn by these people, so as to con- ceal the hair almost entirely. So, as far as personal appear- ance is concerned, it would seem of very little consequence whether they had any hair or not. But an important practi- cal hint may be taken from this historical fact. Caps being thus worn there is no need for combs and pins and plaits and ties, and as a consequence no hair is strained at its root, nor is it distorted by being pulled against the grain — against its natural direction.
The Manillans have the longest, blackest and most glossy hair in the world. They do not wear caps at all, but allow the hair to fall back behind in its own natural looseness. Taking these two facts together, it would seem that one con- dition for having a fine head of hair is, that it should never be on a strain, and should hang pretty much in the direction of its growth, or if diverted at all, as from over the face, it should be in a gentle curve over and behind the ears, with a loose ribbon to keep it from spreading too much at the back of the neck, the hair hanging its length down the back.
' ~ CD O
The girls of Brittany wear their hair under their caps, so as to conceal it entirely, and those of Manilla having theirs still longer, more glossy and abundant, wear no caps at all but allow it to fall loose over the shoulders. One in- structive circumstance connected with this richness of female ornament is, that in both, one condition is present ; the hair is not strained against its natural direction, nor indeed is it strained at all. But there is one other condition in the case of the Manillans, which may aid in causing that superiority in length, glossiness, and abundance — it is not braided or tied, or knotted up in any way, but floating in perfect freedom — a tho- rough ventilation is allowed. It has been found by obser- vant ladies, that when nature is aided in respect to ventilation,
14 HalVs Journal of Health.
by redding the hair very gently and freely night and morn- ing with a fine tooth comb, its richness, glossiness, silkiness? and length, are all increased, as the following incident, related by a traveller strikingly illustrates. He stated that he fell in with a man, whose bearing indicated that he was a gentle- man, one of position, .and of unusual scholastic attainments; but without these, there was a singularity about him which would have forcibly arrested the attention of the most careless observer; his hair was the longest, most abundant, the most silkenly beautiful that he had ever observed in man or woman either, and more, he seemed to bestow a large share of his at- tention upon it, and he was evidently proud of it. He spent a great part of his time, when not necessarily engaged other- wise, in combing it, exhibiting in the operation a carefulness, a delicate and gentle tenderness, amounting almost to an af- fection. At night, he bound it up, so as not to be strained or tangled in any manner. Our traveller's curiosity was excited, and he rested not, until he learned that the gentleman in ques- tion was a minister of some religious sect, and that his order was debarred every personal adornment, except that of the hair, which was allowed to be cultivated and worn to any de- sired extent. The priest gave as his opinion that the success of his cultivation depended on gently combing it a good deal in the direction in which it grew, and preventing all strain be- yond that of its own weight.
This mode of treating the hair is strikingly opposed to that prevalent among us, the practice being to begin, in almost in- fancy, to part the hair in front, and plait it, and knot it, and strain it, almost to pulling it out sideways, crossways and up- wards ; the ingenuity being taxed apparently to strain it in every direction, so it be contrary to that which it would natu- rally take ; not only so, but the meanwhile it is kept saturated with any and every kind of grease, tallow, hog's fat and rancid butter, disguised, intermixed, or partially purified, and then with a flourish of trumpets and certificates, written by knave- ry, signed by stupidity, and published abroad unblushingly to the end, that while the fabricators and falsifiers make money, our daughters' heads become mangy, the hair dropping out, the scalp becoming diseased, giving head aches, dullness, smarting eyes and a dozen other correlative symptoms. Then comes a
The Human Hair. 15
subterfuge and a degradation botli together, in order to make up for the deficiency, and some dead corpse is robbed, or some filthy Breton or Manillan is despoiled, the deception not being known until the marriage ceremony has made it too late to be remedied. Out upon it we say,' these shams of ivory, and cot- ton batting and hair of people dirty or dead. Why, most of us young men, if we marry at all, have to risk marrying parts of half-a-dozen people at once. The lessons learned by these statements are — .
1. The hair of children should never be plaited, or braided, or twisted, or knotted.
2. Nothing should ever be put on it except simple pure water, and even this not until the scalp is cleaned.
3. The hair should be kept short. It would be a valuable accomplishment, if when a woman becomes a mother, a few lessons were taken from a good barber, so that the child's hair after the third year, might be trimmed by its mother once a week, only cutting off the longest hairs, by ever so little, so as to keep it of a uniform length. This practice is proper for male and female, old and young.
4. The hair should be always combed leisurely and for some considerable time, at least every morning, and neither brush or comb ought to be allowed to pass against the direction of the hair growth.
Pomatums and hair oils, and washes of every description are wholly pernicious and essentially disgusting, because they de- tain on the hair and scalp that dust and those animal excre- tions, which otherwise would fall off or be blown away. The most perfect cleanliness of the scalp, should be sedulously la- bored for, the first step being that of pure soft water (rained or distilled,) applied by rubbing it in upon the scalp, with the " balls" of the fingers, thus avoiding wetting the whole mass of hair when long ; after it is thoroughly dried, then it should be patiently followed by a brushing in its dry state, in the di* rection of its growth. This is most assuredly the best way to give the hair all that beauty and polish of which it is suscepti- ble. It is abundantly soon to allow the hair of girls to begin to grow long, on entering their fourteenth year, nor should it be allowed to b3 parted in front sooner than two or three years later, if there be any desire to have the " parting" delicate,
16 IlalVs Journal of Health.
beautiful and rich. But all this while, there should be se- cured the same perfect cleanliness of scalp ; the same daily ven- tilation at the roots ; the same daily redding and brushing in its dry state, it being done leisurely and long; while the clip- ping should be made every fortnight, but only of those hairs which have outgrown the others, or which may have " split" at their ends. Do not "thin" the hair, only cut off the small- est length of the straggling or most lengthy ; the object being a greater uniformity as to length, preventing thereby any undue or irregular straining in handling.
As the hair of most persons tends to curl in some direction, that, direction should be noticed and cultivated, when a beau- tiful curling is desired.
As a general rule we would discourage any application to the hair, but if on some rare occasion, we desire to give greater firmness or durability to any particular adjustment of it, in curling or otherwise, a very weak solution of isinglass is the best thing that can be employed.
And if at times any " falling off" is observed, and it is de- sirable to arrest it sooner than mere cleanliness, and improved health would do it, one of the most accessible washes, is boil- ing water poured on tea leaves, which have already been used and allowed to stand twelve hours, then put in a bottle and used as a wash to the scalp, it should be of moderate strength- Another good wash is one grain of spirits of tannin, and six ounces of spirits of Castile soap, well rubbed in the head every morning, a table spoon or two at a time, until the hair ceases to fail off.
Curling tongs and papers are destructive to the hair. If any thing is used on an uncommon occasion, it should be silk, or the very softest paper as near the color of the hair as possible. The hair should not be tied at any time with a string, but loosely with a thin soft ribbon, or carried in a loose twist on the part of the neck about the line of the hair, so as to avoid all straining, especially against the direction of the hair growth. The almost universal custom of our women of draw- ing it up from behind, for the purpose of wearing it at the back of the head, or at the top, is contrary to good taste and physi- ological wisdom, the great point being to wear the hair with- out any strain upon its roots beyond its own weight, and loosely,
Growlers. . 17
so as to afford a constant, free, and thorough ventilation. h is a great mistake that water " rots" the hair ; it is accumulated dust and dirt and grease which does that. Water lightly ap- plied to these accumulations, becomes hurtful by merely soft- ening them, but if pure soft water is cleansingly applied, it is in every way beneficial.
GROWLERS.
Some people seem to be in their natural element when they are grumbling, snapping, and snarling at every body and every thing ; and, if the present does not afford them a text, they make drafts on future possibilities of ill. " Here, Brid- get, it is almost daylight, Monday morning ; to-morrow is Tuesday, and next day Wednesday, half the week gone, and no washing done yet." But every body does not feed on green persimmons. We could tell of a missionary who has been in the far West for twenty-one years. For a great part of that time he has lived among Indians, small pox, fevers, agues, and cholera, and, although not yet " fifty," looks prematurely old. For the last year or two his parishioners have paid him about a dollar a month. But does he rave and rail about the % ingratitude of republics ?" Yery far from it. He looks at the bright side of things, like a philosopher, or rather like a practical Christian. " I hardly know what it is to be under the weather, and think myself greatly blessed, even in earthly comforts. My appetite and digestion are good. I weigh about two hundred pounds. I have not had a chill in twenty years, until two months ago ; am never confined to bed, except while asleep. I have done a good deal of hard work, and can do a good deal yet, for a kind Providence has pros- pered me."
One of the best pieces of philosophy we have heard for a long time, was uttered in a song at the rehearsal of Dr. Ward's beautiful opera last season. We do not recollect the words, but the sentiment was, that this wTorld was bright or dark, as we take it ourselves — a world of sunshine to the light-hearted and the truly good, but to lower natures it was drear enough Com© to think of it, the accomplished doctor and the sturdy
18 HalVs Journal of Health.
missionary have both good health to begin with, both rich too ! the latter enjoying his wealth, in anticipation of being an H heir" to " mansions in the skies ;" the former has a present " usufruct" could spare a million, and yet have a " plenty." With good health, a line appetite, and a long purse, we rather think that most people could make this world one of flowers and smiles and sunshine. But to be old and sick and poor, and yet look upward through blinding tears of filial resigna- tion, and say and feel " it is all right," that is only the Chris- tian's feat ; it is the miracle of religion.
SELF MEDICATION.
Of any four persons met successively on the street, three will strongly inveigh against taking medicine and against the doctors, and multitudes of publications are scattered through the land every day by a class of persons as reckless and im- pudent as they are ignorant, assuming to themselves the name of " reformers," their papers being the vehicles of their trumpery, making all sorts of imaginary and impossible state- ments as to the ravages of what they call " druggery," and fighting under the popular banner of " temperance," with maudlin professions about " progress," M human ameliora- tion," " elevation of the masses," " equality," " fraternity," and all that, and last, but not least, pandering to the passions of a depraved nature, they stab secretly, and behind, and under cover of false garbs, the fundamental principles of our holy religion, and indeed of all religion, and by these means have got up such a hue and cry against physic, that even me- dical men, despicably weak-minded of course, take up the re- frain, chime in with the prejudices of a gullible community, and are getting into the way of prescribing almost no medi- cine at all, in cases where it was urgently demanded, doing violence to their own better judgment, rather than incur the hazard of censure, in case the disease should take a fatal turn. On the other hand, as among the people themselves there is a most extraordinary paradox, in that they have fallen into the habit of swallowing medicine on their own responsibility, or by the advice of any ignoramus or knave who may happen to
Self Medication. . 19
fall in with them, and this to© for ailments so trifling some- times, that simple .rest and warmth for a few hours would restore them to usual health.
Not long ago a lady near us gave a little girl a dose of castor oil for what appeared to her to be a little cold. This acted on the bowels freely, and, by weakening the system, took from it the power of throwing out the real disease on the surface, and the only child of wealthy parents died in forty-eight hours of un- developed scarlet fever.
More recently, a man felt unwell, and concluded to cure himself by mixing wTith a pint of beer a tablespoonful of salt, a raw onion, and twenty-five cents worth of quinine. Soon after taking it, vomiting set in, and he died in twenty -four hours. Fools cannot die off too soon ; but we earnestly advise all whose lives are of worth in the community in which they live that in any case where, in their own opinion, they are ill enough to require medicine, swallow not an atom by any body's advice, however simple the remedy may appear, but send at once for a respectable physician. The remedy advised may do no harm, if it does no good ; but even in that event, it may cause a loss of time in waiting for its effects which no medical skill may be able to make up for.
WASHING HOUSES.
Good wood burned in fire-places, as in glad days gone by, never to return, is the most healthful of all methods for warming rooms. But the cost of wood renders this use of it impracticable in our large cities at the North.
The next most economical plan is to burn it in stoves. The temperature and quality of the atmosphere of a room heated with wood burned in an old-fashioned ten plate stove, when the thermometer without is hugging zero, compared with the insufficient heat of a common open grate for coal, or the heavy suffocating warmth in furnace heated apartments, is perfectly delightful. The ten plate stove gives a genial warmth, while that from coal is harsh and dry, irritating to the lungs, and giving feverishness to the skin.
Twenty dollars worth of solid sapling oak or hickory wood, at
20 Hair s Journal of Health.
seven dollars a cord, will keep ^room of three hundred, square feet agreeably warm from the first of October until the first of May. An open grate will require three tons of anthracite coal for the same time at five dollars a ton ; but, for a portion of. the time, it will not keep a sitting apartment comfortably warm. Half that quantity of coal burned in a good coal stove will be amply sufficient for the same room and. time, two thousand pounds, or twenty-five bushels, being a New York ton. Coal evaporates three times as much water as wood, pound for pound, but wood has a great deal of oxygen in it ; anthracite coal has none ; hence coal consumes the oxygen of the air of a room very rapidly. Forty pounds of coal renders unfit for respiration in twelve hours forty-two thousand gallons of air, all of which, and five times as much tnore air, is car- ried up the chimney. No wonder we call it " a draught" up the chimney. Pound for pound, charcoal gives out the most heat, for it is almost pure carbon. But it takes a hundred pounds of wood to make twenty-five pounds of charcoal. Hard coal gives ninety per cent, of heat. Common charcoal gives out a hundred per cent, of heat. Hard coal, stone coal, anthracite coal — all are the same thing — gives out ninety per cent., and wood twenty -five per cent. Soft coal, bituminous coal, such as the Liverpool, Cumberland, and Pittsburgh, gives out from sixty to ninety per eent. of " carbon," which we here use as the synonyme of Lea'.,
What is called " coke" is the charcoal of coal, makes a cheerful fire, and is almost as cleanly as wood to handle.
Peat is half decayed, or rather half fossilized wood — the half-way house between wood and coal. Bituminous or soft coal is still nearer the fossil state, while anthracite coal is the real " stone" coal. The difference between anthracite or hard coal, and bituminous or soft coal is — -the latter has not been as long under the influences which convert vegetable matter into coal; whether higher heat or higher pressure, or both, is conjectural. The gas of our dwellings is obtained from soft or bituminous coal ; hence hard coal is soft coal without the gas, or the gas having been used up in some other way.
There are two kinds of anthracite coal, red ash and white ash ; the latter is used for furnaces and ranges, or cooking pur- poses, because it does not " clinker" — that is, its cinders do
Warming Houses. 21
not melt and run together, and thus clog up the furnace and destroy the draught. But for open grates the " Schuylkill peach orchard red ash" coal is best for five reasons: — 1. It kindles easier. 2. Ttt burns with a more cheerful, blaze. 3. The edges of ' each ash are smoother, while the. edges of the white ash are jagged, " saw-like," so;said by those who have examined both with a microscope. 4. It is less dusty than white ash. 5. Thirty pounds of red ash give out as much heat . as thirty-six pounds of white ash. The ash of the red is near the color of iron rust; that of the other is more like wood: ashes, whitish. . :
But coal is not always coal. Of two loads of anthracite coal standing, side by side, one will yield double, the heat given. out by the other, and yet nine persons out of ten can perceive no difference — at least they are unable to tell which is the better load. Thus it is that some dealers advertise to sell coal forlive, eight, or ten dimes less a ton than other persons^ and. the poor and the unwisely economical crowd to them, thinking they are getting " great bargains." Such coal would not be taken as a gift by honorable dealers, because they see at once it has " bone" in it— that is, they know that if a scuttle lull is burnt, a large per centage, as high as fifty, will be left in the grate in lumps of the color of a burnt bone. Wash it in, water, and it is still white, and is wholly useless. Burn fifty, pounds of Truslow's coal, and it will leave some five or six pounds of ashes and cinders, while the same amount of advertised r " cheap" coal will leave ten or twenty pounds. We have "experimented" in coal, and have a "feeling sense" of its merits. In proportion as a load of coal has broad flat pieces, and of a dull or coal-dust look,- it is " bony." If the lumps are of a smooth, shiny black., and in pieces as "broad as they are long"— that is, approaching a " square fracture"— it is the genuine article. The very offer to sell coal fifty cents or more cheaper than the ruling price is suspicious. One of three things is certain— 1. Somebody has not go.t pay for it, and never will. 2. The advertiser is " hard up." 3. Or he is selling an inferior article, and knows it. An unfortunate gen- tleman, unfortunate because he has no wife to show him how to spend his money, inquired of the Tribune not long ago, what was the best distribution he could make of a surplus of
22 HalVs Journal of Health,
some scores of thousands. One way of doing great good to the honest and struggling poor would be to purchase the best qua- lity of coal in midsummer, and sell it only to poor people, who purchase by the peck or half bushel, at cost only. This would be a true and useful benevolence — nothing of the sham, soup- kitchen order, which helps to make beggars rather than to raise them out of their beggared condition. Giving degrades the recipient. Helping encourages and elevates. The truest charity is to help the helpless to help themselves. This it is that makes men of them, instead of encouraging them into whining beggary.
From indifference or motives of convenience, or false eco- nomy, the majority will use coal stoves and furnaces. To heat houses by the latter, placed in the cellar or basement, and conveyed to all parts of the house by tin pipes, is becoming almost universal. It is ruinous to the wood work of a build- ing, ruinous to the health of the inmates, and is the fruitful cause of many house burnings, as builders do riot seem to know how to construct a house which cannot be set on fire by means of flues or heating pipes, or the persons who employ them to build are too parsimonious to expend money enough to secure perfect safety. Between the two, scarcely one furnace-heated house in a thousand is safe from fire.
It is pretty well known that furnaces fail to make our houses comfortably warm at ten degrees above zero ; hence many have both furnaces and grates. Up to this present writing, we have never heard of a furnace which is perfectly free from gas or other *odor. The very best have been complained of to us. " BartlettV furnace is said to be the nearest to giving a pure heat ever^et invented ; it is constructed on philosophical principles, the ainitself not being " burnt" by coming in con- tact with red hot iron., while the great economy of its use is undeniable.
Calvin Pepper, of Albany, 2sTew York, claims that if com- mon coal gas be directed:ink) a body of sand, it can be lighted with a match in an instant, making the sand hot enough in one minute, with two cents worth of gas, to keep a common- sized room comfortably warm in winter for eight hours, giving a flame without smoke, or odor of any kind. Time must be allowed to verify these statements.
Warming Houses. 23
Next to a wood fire, the hot water pipe system gives the most genial heat, as it does not consume the oxygen of the air to anything like the extent which must result from the air coming in contact with hot iron. The nearer the heat ema- nates from the floor the better, not only because warm air naturally ascends, but also because, when a room is heated from the ceiling, the head is kept too warm, and serious ail- ments ensue.
Ten years the price of this Journal may be saved any family which uses coal largely, by remembering that the quantity of coal is determined as accurately by measurement as by one of Fairbank's best scales. A bin or box of thirty-four and a half feet cubical, holds exactly one ton of two thousand pounds of white ash coal, such as is used in ranges, stoves, and furnaces, but it takes thirty-six cubicalfeet for one ton or two thousand pounds of red ash coal, such as New Yorkers use, for grates. It is perhaps known to few, that no coal dealer in Gotham ever, by any possibility, sells a lawful ton of coal, although he is very clear of purchasing less than a lawful ton of twenty- two hundred and forty pounds, or twenty-eight bushels, each bushel being eighty pounds. A bin which will hold an honest ton of red ash coal should measure forty feet cubical— that is the internal length, breadth and height of the bin multiplied together — thus, four feet broad, five feet long, two feet deep. A seam of coal four feet thick, spreading over an acre, yields five thousand tons, and will make steam enough to do the work of sixteen hundred men for twenty of the best years of their life.
A seam or block of coal as it is in the earth, measuring one yard each way, yields a ton. And when it is remembered that there are two hundred thousand square miles of coal fields already known in the world, and each square mile yields three million tons, it is perfectly clear that there is coal enough left in the world to keep us all warm, and supply all our other fuel necessities for a million of years, as few families use more than fifteen tons a year, although a good-sized steamship con- sumes six tons an hour. The Adriatic consumes three thou- sand tons to England and back, as much in one round trrp, as would supply a commou family for two hundred years.
24 HalVs Jowrnal of Health.
HOW. HE LIYED SO LONG.
. - ..'■ ■ > J.. ifjgfi 'lion
Esteemed Friend.
In the article on Tea and Coffee in the Journal for ISTovem^ ber, yon almost describe my i maimer of life from my youth np. As far back as memory serves, I never could eat, drink or swallow anything- with pleasure, hotter or. colder than the blood, hence whiskey, rum and brandy, were an -abomination inmy eyes.'; .-..- d ■■ itn I ■_-■■-■■' ' ;!
Gold spring water I never drank if I could 3 help it. If memory is '.correct,5, about fifty years ago;, when looking in a tumbler of water; through a microscope, I saw a shoal of small fishes ! sporting in ; the water. Thinks I to myself, if : we must swallow eels, it may be well to boil them first . From, that day cold tea and cold coffee: without milkor sugar has been my drink between, meals ; at breakfast and dinner half a pint of coffee without sugar. I never use milk in either tea or coffee. I eat of all the fruits in their season, but they must first pass through tho fire in the shape of pies, tarts or. sweet-meats Beets, carrots, and turnips, I eat in moderation ; but parsnips are my favorites. Cabbage, lettuce, celery and cucumbers, are proper food for cows. Pickles, and the smell of vinegar, my soul abhorreth. I nursed among the sick seventeen sum- mers, when the yellow fever was in New York ; the rooms were always sprinkled with vinegar. Since' then, my nose hates sour krout. .
Except in hearing,. I am not sensible of any decay during the two years just passed. I rise at seven, A. M., breakfast at eight, dine at twelve, ,M., tea at Hvey P. M. ; never eat be- tween meals ; never eat enough. I walk without a staff, sleep without rpckingj and eat beefsteaks without the help of bran - by, bitters, or Brandreth's pills. I select the saplings from the wood pile daily ; with my buck and saw I cut them in pieces, four inches long. This feeds the stove, warms the room, and drives dull care away.
Thine, with respect. .': nsuh
Geant Thoebuen-, Sene.,
Aged 85 years and 9 months. New Haven, Nov. 13, 1858.
Real Corn Bread. 25
EEAL COKN BKEAD.
•
A corn dodger is not now what it used to be. Originally it was a -corn meal dumpling. In very, early. Kentucky- times, the universal dinner, winter and spring at every farm house is the state, was a piece of middling bacon, boiled with cabbage^ turnips, greens, collards, or sprouts, cabbage sprouts, according to the season. The pot, if the family was a large one, con- tained about ten gallons, and was nearly filled with clean pure water, the middlings and the greens were put in at the proper time, . to. give them a sufficient -cooking, j Almost always ■ the cook would make with water and corn meal and a little salt, dough balls, throw thenx into, the ppV and boil, them tho- roughly with the rest. -- ;These were called dodgers, from the motion given them by, the boding water in the pot. They eat very well, and give a considerable variety to a dinner of bacon and collards.: i A dodger in modern times is corn bread baked in a roll about the size, of your band, and about, three time .as . thick, and in my judgment is not a veritable first rate dod" ger, unless when on the table it bears the impress of the cook's fingers on it, in placing.it in the oven to bake.
A pone of bread is corn bread baked in a skillet or small oven. The skillet or. oven when at the proper heat is filled with corn dough, and baked, and .when baked and turned out> is a pone of bread.
A hoe cake is not now what it used to be. I do not'believe there will ever be any more good hoe cakes bakqd.. I have an unextingnishable longing for hoe cake— -real hoe cake, such a the black woman Jinny, my mother's cook always baked. It gets its name from the mode of baking. It was originally baked upon a hoe* Arnold hoe, (a hoe was one -of our primi- tive implements of agriculture, but now almost out of use,) which had been worn bright, and the handle out, was placed upon live coals of fire^ with the eye down, and on it the cake was baked. Xow, hoe cake is baked upon a griddle, or was before : Cooking stoves came into use. Do }rou know what a griddle is ? Of course you do. It just occurs to me, may not the cooking stove militate against hoe cake? The griddle I be- lieve has been displaced by it altogether, and I now have an idea that good hoe cakes can be baked only on a hoe or on a grid-die.
26 HalV s Journal of Health.
Corn dodger, corn pone and hoe cakes are different only in the baking. The meal is prepared for each, precisely in the same way. Take as much meal as you want, some salt, and enough pure water to knead the mass. Mix it well, let it stand some 15 or 20 minutes, not longer, as this will be long enough to saturate perfectly every particle of meal, bake on the griddle for hoe cake, and in the oven or skillett for dodger and pone. The griddle or oven must be made hot enough to bake, but not to burn, but with a quick heat. The lid must be heated also before putting it on the skillet or oven, and that heat must be kept up with coals of lire placed on it, as these must be around and under the oven. The griddle must be well supplied with live coals under it. The hoe cake must be put on thin, not more than or quite as thick as your fore fin- ger ; when brown, it must be turned, and both sides baked to a rich brown color. There must be no burning— baking is the idea. Yet the baking must be done with a quick lively heat, the quicker the better. Saleratus and soda, procul o procul ! Let there be nothing but water and salt. g. w. w.
The above was written by a son of Kentucky, himself one of her best ornaments, and is authentic.
SOFTENING OF THE BRAIN
Is a disease for which there is no known remedy: its pro- gress is slow, steady, and resistless as an avalanche, and body and mind go out together. It generally comes on with a gra- dual loss of sight, while the health of the remainder of the body is usually good. The younger son of the "Iron Duke" has recently died of this disease, which is becoming of more frequent occurrence than formerly. For eight long years he had been totally blind, and had amused himself with making willow baskets. It usually attacks men who have overworked their minds. But Lord Charles was neither a student nor a roue ; but, being a man of great wealth, he lived at his ease. There were no sufficient inducements to mental and bodily activities — hence mental and physical stagnation first, then disorganization; and he died prematurely, in the midst of his millions.
Dieting for Health. 27
Multitudes think it a hard necessity to tug and toil for daily bread, or that it should require their undivided energies of body and mind in planning and contriving and laboring to maintain their position. This is not a hard, but a happy neces- sity, as these very activities are not only the preservatives of body and mind, but are productive of those utilities which hasten human .progress, develope our powers, elevate the people, and happify mankind.
DIETING FOE HEALTH
Has sent many an one to the grave, and will send many more, because it is done injudiciously or ignorantly. One man omits his dinner by a herculean effort, and thinking he has accom- plished wonders, expects wonderful results, but by the time supper is ready he feels as hungry as a dog, and eats like one, fast, furious and long. Next day he is worse, and " don't be- lieve in dieting" for the remainder of life.
Others set out to starve themselves into health, until the system is reduced so low that it has no power of resuscitation, and the man dies.
To diet wisely, does not imply a total abstinence from all food, but the taking of just enough, or of a quality adapted to me nature of the case. Loose bowels weaken very rapidly — total abstinence from all food increases the debility. In this case food should be taken, which while it tends to arrest the disease, imparts nutriment and strength to the system. In this case, rest on a bed, and eating boiled rice, after it has been parched like coffee, will cure three cases out of four of common diarrhoea in a day or two.
Others think that in order to diet effectually, it is all impor- tant to do without meat, but allow themselves the widest liberty in all else. But in many cases, in dyspeptic conditions of the system particularly, the course ought to be reversed, because meat is converted into nutriment with the expenditure of less stomach power than vegetables, while a given amount of work does three times as much good, gives three times as much nutriment and strength as vegetable food would.
These " principles" merit consideration, and are more fully stated in our new dollar book on " Health and Disease."
HalVs Journal of Health.
NOTICES &c.
The Christ Child; one of the publications of the General Protestant Episcopal S. S; Union. A Christmas book for children; illustrating by a charming little Story, the value of Heaven born charity in connection with those beautiful words of the Saviqur, u Inasmuch: as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
" Philip and Arthur" or ' Story of the Chatterton Chil- dren,' issued by the same Society; instructive to parents as well as children, giving practical lessons in narrative form, in that most difficult, apd responsible of all family duties, the rearing of our children ; teaching the young impressively, that 'beginning each day well, is to . begin life well, and secures for both, the sunshine of true enjoyment and prosperity ; while those who are forgetful of duty and are selfish,, bring upon themselves a series of disappointments and heart aches, which make of life a miserable failure.
Blackwood l» Magazine, $3 a year, has greatly added to the practical interest of its pages for some. months past, by a se- ries of popularized scientific articles on physiological subjects — Animal Heat, Respiration, Circulation, &c,,&c. , ...
For six months past we have missed from our exchange ta- ble that safe and instructive 'family monthly u The Home" of Buffalo. We hope it will come regularly hereafter.
Godey^s Ladifs Book for January may well tempt a practical man or woman to subscribe for it, if the three dollars had to be earned byfday's work. Mrs. Skimmilk says, for exampfe that ;: All those who have lived to any purpose in the world, have lived methodically." There is serious truth in that state- ment, one bv which a young man may select with great cer- tainty, a wife worth i having. 1 Had we fallen on one who kept things "in a muss," who never knew where to find a thing when wanted, we really think we should have predestrianated indefinitely, especially as we never failed to find that unme- thodical people were always dirty, without tidiness or neatness except for the briefest space. Then fhere are Dr. Wilson's heal tli items, short, wise, timely. - The reading of the " Un- expected Visitor" shows at a glance the striking difference between a helpless and a handy wife, the immeasurable dis- tance between the woman who can make circumstances serve her, and the good-for-nothing creature who is u terribly put out" unless every thing is arranged to her ljand by somebody else. Next there is " A Days Journey" by Alice B. Haven, so full of human nature, as to equally instruct, " good and bad." Wonder if " Mrs. Graves", is fhe only woman who always comes home from a visit or a shopping illnatured and cross | What a devlish quality ill nature is in any body, but in a woman, what depth of degradation !
HALL'S JOURNAL OF HEALTH.
OUR LEGITIMATE SCOPE IS ALMOST BOUNDLESS: F6R WHATEVER BEGETS PLEASURABLE
AND HARMLESS FEELINGS, PROMOTES HEALTH; AND WHATEVER INDUCES
DISAGREEABLE SENSATIONS, ENGENDERS DISEASE,
We aim to show how Disease may be avoided, and that it is best, when sickness comes, to take no Medicine without consulting' an educated Physician.
VOL. VL] FEBRUARY, 1859. [No. '2.
CONSUMPTION— ITS NEW CURE.
~Men of intelligence and reflection are falling into the habit of -requiring something more of the physician than his advice and his medicine. They have a curiosity to know what the remedy is, and how it is expected to effect a cure. Within the last few months millions of people have been made acquainted with a very hard word, with the previous existence of which they perhaps never had any knowledge. . But it is often desir- able that men of an inquiring turn of mind should extend the circle of their acquaintance, &c. " Hypophosphite" has been introduced into very many families, and received with a wel- come; the other part of the name is lime. It reads in full thus : " Hypophosphite Lime,".. and is claimed to have ability to treat successfully scrofula, consumption of the bowels, and consumption itself. The words run thus : # The cure of con- sumption in the second and third (the last, Ed.) stages, except when the existing lesion of the lungs is of itself sufficient to produce death." That is, " cures consumption in all cases where there are lungs enough left to live upon." It was re- ported, at the time of General Jackson's death, that on the examination of the body it was found that one-third of his lungs had been destroyed, and that there was conclusive evi- dence that such destruction had been occasioned twenty years before. If this be true, then it follows that a man who has two-thirds of his lungs left may live twenty years in reason- able health. Therefore, * Hypophosphite Lime" can cure 29
30 HalVs Journal of Health.
" all cases" of consumption if only one-third of the lungs are destroyed.
"Now, as the lungs of a good-sized man hold (that is, measure) two hundred and fifty cubic inches of air — or, in other words, can emit, after one full breath, about six tincupfulls of air, it in good health, it follows that if he has consumptive symp- toms, be they ever so aggravated, if he is still able to measure, to expire four pints or two quarts or half a gallon, he can " in all cases" be cured by Hypophosphite Lime, M. D., Esq. Any person, then, who is in the latter stages of consumption, must take two steps preparatory to discovering one more essential ; one is merely for " satisfaction," and the other indispensible, first pay us a fair fee, according to his ability, for finding to the fraction of an inch, before his own eyes, and to his full satisfaction, how much air his lungs measure out, which we can do in two minutes, with mathematical demonstrability, and then if he can, at one full outbreaking, emit one hun- dred and sixty-six and two-third inches of air, and Hypophos- phite Lime will cure " in all cases."
How do we know that ? " Why, all the papers say so ;" and that is conclusive enough of its truth in the estimation of a good many people. This being fixed, how will the cure be effected ? "We will now drop all round abonts, premising that oil of vitriol be poured on some burnt bones, and the ashes of seaweed be stirred in (oil of vitriol is powerful, and anything that has " sea" attached to it has great health properties in the estimation of every body,) and then allowed to settle, pour off, then pour on boiling water, stir, let settle, pour off, and dry the remnant, and we will have in the shape of the purest whitest powder a pretty good idea of the Hypophosphite of Lime and Soda. As much of this as will rest on a twenty-five cent piece, taken daily in sweetened water, one-third at a time» is the curer of consumption in its last stages, if two-thirds of the lungs are left. How ?
We know that the human bedy has bones in it. We know that healthy bones contain phosphorus. We know that in con- sumption the bones have not enough of phosphorus.
All this is plain sailing. The next step, however, brings us right jam up against a mountain of brass ; you can't look it out of countenance, for the looker gets out of countenance
Consumption — Its New Cure. 31
instead of the lookee, from being reminded of the fact how little he knows. For example, we do not know what other things besides phosphorus the system needs when in a con- sumptive condition. The most learned chemists and physiolo- gists have not been able to decide whether phosphorus exists in»the system with oxygen in it, or with none — that is, we don't know in what shape the system needs phosphorus, nor whether it is to be had outside the body in the shape in which the body will take hold of it and appropriate it to building pur- poses. Dr. Gregory, of Edinburgh, says it is absurd to sup- pose that it can exist in the body without oxygen ; but Dr. Churchill, on the ground that Dr. Gregory is entirely wrong, " deduced" that if given to the body in the shape in which it combines oxygen with itself, it would cure consumption ; and, as the Hypophosphite of Lime fulfils that condition, he advo- cates its employment.
Thus it is that the very theory that Hypophosphites are good in consumption is founded on assuming as a fact what eminent men strongly deny. t But, without wasting time in discussing mere theories, prac- tical men have put the matter to a direct test, and have re- ported that the Hypophosphites of Lime and Soda are of no curative value whatever in consumption ; that tne least that can be said of them is— they neither do good nor harm — but, if anything, they do harm by the loss of time in using them, which might have been better employed in other ways. We therefore repeat the assertion of our last number, that the best things to take in any and all cases of consumption are exercise, substantial food, and out-door air in large but due proportions, and that without these no case of consumptive disease has ever been successfully treated by any man, living or dead.
CELLAE8.
There ought to be no cellar in any family dwelling. The house should be one or two feet above ground, with a trench around it a foot deep, so that the surface of the earth imme- diately under the floor should be always kept dry to the depth of several inches, and there should be open spaces in the
32 ' IlalVs Journal of Health.
" "under-pinning," so as to allow a free circulation of air at all times.
New York lias the reputation of being about the sickliest city in the world-— that is, a larger number of persons die in it during a year, in proportion to the population, than in any other first-class city in Christendom, the mortality of which is reliably reported.
There .is reason to believe that moral causes originate a very large number of the deaths in New York city every year. But among' the physical causes is the faulty construction of dwelling-houses, and no unimportant item' is' the cellar, which is under the whole building, its floor being, on an average fourteen feet beneath the level of the street. The only door of the cellar opens into the lower hall "or passage. Through this door the servants pass many times every day for fuel and the ordinary articles of cooking, and at every opening a strong current of air rushes and passes upward, and impregnates every room of the building. That air is always close, raw and damp, and saturated with the effluvia given:out by decay- ing vegetables, bones, meats, rotten wood, and ofFall of every conceivable description; for be it remembered that- the larger Houses are .so contrived that, by a convenient arrangement, the ashes from the kitchen fire, with' all the articles "swept from a a kitchen floor, or usually thrown into a kitchen fire place^ are Jet down into the cellar into one promiscuous heap, to be cleaned out in the spring, or fall, or both. "We have seen half a dozen cart loads borne away at a single time from five- stoiy brown stone fronts. In addition, many houses are so constructed, that all the water from the kitchen, dish-water, Wash-water, soap suds, floor Washings, and the like, pass into the " sink," as it is called, which is in the cellar, which is a hole dug in the earth or sand, and covered over, to be passed off into the street drain; but, before it passes off, the earth becomes saturated, and a noisome effluvia is always rising day and night, winter and summer.
Still further, our magnificent mansions have the privy under one and the same roof with cellar, chamber, and parlor ; and that its sink should not become saturated, and that its effluvia should not arise more or less, or in some other manner make its way into the cellar, is an impossibility.
Cellars, .. • • 33
That such arrangements should prevail in, three houses out of four in an intelligent community is certainly not very cre- ditable.
Not long ago we had occasion to go into the cellar of a store on Broadway, near the Park, and,- in looking for some article, we had occasion to pass the privy of the establishment, which was immediately under the grating over which every person had to pass to enter the store. . The sights on wall, floor, seats, -&c., were' simply incredible; yet into this temple of filth gentlemanly proprietors and well-dressed clerks en- ter often daily, and ~ within the next three minutes are chatting at the breadth of half a counter with the fashion of rfew York!
In houses already built, we suggest that a hole six, eight,. or ten inches square, be cut in or near the cellar ceiling, leading at some distance' up into" the chimney, where, meeting with the hot air, a forcible draft would be made upwards and out- wards, and thus secure a constant and thorough cellar ventila- tion. Every family should, in addition, fasten up the internal cellar entrance, and let it be from without the; house through a door opening into the yard or back area, and thus make it impossible for the foul air of the cellar to find its way into the
sitting rooms and chambers of the whole household. ft
• : --■ ! _ L
■ • ■ ■ vn I .-■■■ rsii ' " CAKEWOKN"
Is a familiar expression, and conjures at once an image of a face so pale and sad as to show that its owner was utterly dis- heartened, was weary of himself, of life, and of all the. world besides. Many such are met any day in our public streets, feeding upon what is destroying them. It is moral medicine which these unfortunates require ; but unhappily the places where the " balm" for sorrow is to.be had, free of cost, is not frequented by those who most need its healing power. But calling in at one. of these moral "dispensaries" on Fifth Aveiiue, during the " crisis of '57," we gathered up some prescriptions from the " Doctor" of Divinity which we think ought to be spread broadcast over the whole country as of en- during value ; for in cases not a few we have found that it was
34: HalVs Journal of Health.
a diseased mind which was wasting the body into the grave, and no drop or drug, or pill, or bolus known to the apothecary could avail to breakup the malady of the heart. And not wishing to assume responsibilities out of our present line, we will use the identical words of the great prescriber, leaving it to the reader to compare and find out whether it be accord- ing to the law and testimony :
Trials increase with age, but the path of the just shineth more and more unto the perfect day.
Thinking over past trials, in order to rectify them, is most unavailing.
Each trial has its errand— as a bullet its billet. Receive each trial as from God.
Cultivate the habit of regarding daily vexations as trifles.
Never be troubled with triffes, and soon all trouble will ap- pear as trifling.
Daily educate your mind to turn away from trials.
We can't lessen our trials by thinking on them.
You can't mend them by brooding over them.
Your motto should be — " Look forward and go forward."
Let past troubles go, except for thanks or penitence.
Nothing so kills fretfulness as advancing in duty.
Meet a fire with a new fire ; meet one engrossing trouble by zeal in some important duty or enterprise.
Many hearts may even now be fretting about yesterday's trials, or to-morrow's engagements.
Don't dwell too much on seeking for consolation. Blessed are they which " endure."
The more disinterested, the more happy will you be. Throw more of self overboard in a storm, and the lighter will the vessel be left.
Trouble not about want of success in worldly business, or that wealth is endangered, or is departing, or is gone.
Aim to reap benefit from your trials.
All unnecessary care tends to evil.
Heaven is perfect freedom from care; Hell is complete vexation.
Examine how we have fallen into a fretful temper.
The cure of fretful care is in religion.
Reflective brooding makes our cares greater.
Poverty, Disease, and Crime. 35
To nurse our cares is to create more of them.
Trouble comes like a thunderbolt sometimes in a family ; and thus are irreligious men daily now driven over the brink of drunkenness, insanity, and suicide.
We don't know how much material wealth has been con- p umed in the late commercial disasters ; but the wear and tear of anxiety, and the shortening of life, must be computed by hundreds of millions.
When trials come without our own fault, it is wrong to brood over them and to fret.
POVERTY, DISEASE, AND CRIME,
Go together ; so do thrift, health, and good citizenship. The panacea for human sorrow is not the removal of poverty. That will not reach the root of the evil. Make a child good, and you give good assurance against idleness, beggary, and wasting disease. Teach a child to be clean, to be truthful, to hate all wrong doing, to be industrious and saving, and with a thorough education in " reading, writing, and arithmetic," you make him rich beyond the inheritance of paternal millions. Poverty is neither a curse nor a crime. Had we the peopling of a world like this, with present views of human nature and human need,*we would turn every son and daughter into the great harvest field of life without a shirt to the back or an implement to the hand. The necessity for " device" has been the material salvation of the human family. No children are so utterly worthless as those who never knew an obstacle be- tween an expressed desire and its gratification. No child is so irretrievably ruined as the one whose parent is its slave. Let every one enter the world with an income, and it would, under the present constitution of things, become, within a cen- tury, a world of idleness, gluttonny, and havoc-making dis- ease ; so that while it is true that, in one sense of the word, " the destruction of the poor is their poverty," it is, in another sense, not less demonstrable, that poverty is the material safety of the race — as witness the brightest, highest names in history, ancient or modern. Poverty has been the main sti- mulus in almost all sublime lives ; at the same time, it goads
36; . HalVs Jmmal of .Health.
men to the commission of the gravest crimes. What makes the difference ?- £Tot certainly what we call " intelligence," mere? ^; education,^ iabout -which unbalanced minds so con- stantly prate, as an infallible cure for human- woe, the certain means of human weal.
,Mere> ii '.education," imthe common acceptance of the term, makes a man a better saint; or .a bigger devilj according to the direction taken in the outset ; and that direction is the result of the- instillation, or its neglect,, from the first year qflife^ of those principles of human conduct imparted by actions as well as^vords, and which are founded in " love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance ;" for " against such there is no law," Let the reader go over all the qualities just named, and consider for a moment how not one of them is inseparable from the character of a gentle- man and an honest man; and, if all were, such, it is easy to see that this would be a world of thrift, of enjoyment, and elevation. If, therefore, the words quoted are interpreted aright, they mean that in proportion as men folfow out in their daily conduct the great principles of love, goodness, and tem- perance, however limited may be their "education," they escape human suffering for all time, as far as that may arise from causes within themselves. The surest way, therefore, to beatify the human race permanently, is not to begin at the half-way house, by endeavoring to banish poverty and exist- ing disease. We must begin at the beginning, and make men good by diligently sowing the seeds of " love," and \\ good- ness,", and "temperance," while yet in early infancy. This high, holy, and important duty, belongs to parents, and ought to be delegated to no others. But the fashion of the times — and one most widely prevalent — is to turn over this first of all duties to Sunday school teachers, many of whom are in their teens, and not a few .personally ignorant of the " great sal- vation." ,
As far as the children of professing Christians. are concerned, and as far as Sunday schools, as nowr too generally conducted practically, take the early religious instruction of children in the distinctive sentiments of their faith out of the parents' hands, and commit it to the unfledged, who themselves need to be taught, it were better, that they, as now generally con-
Poverty, Disease, and Crime. 37
ducted, and as to their tendencies in relation to the children of the church, had never been heard of.
" A thorough education," a " superior education" of all young people, is not the panacea for the world's ills ; will never free it from destitution, crime, disease, and premature death, using these terms in their general accepted sense. We must go behind the school teacher, because the child's destiny is shaped before it enters the ABC school-room ; direction is given to its goings-out, to a very great extent, before it leaves its mother's lap, and while yet it is toddling about the floor and amusing itself with its toys; and among the first things may be mentioned frankness, truthfulness, consistency, and affection. If an infant sees these in its parents, day by day, in all things, it will grow up to be like them with encou- raging certainty, paving the way for a parental influence in teachings .higher and still more important, which will form the character in such a mould as will make it safe for all time.
Father and mother are equally. bound to do all within their power in forwarding these primary educations ; but as the mother is always at home, and possesses the warmer and more entire affection and confidence of the child, a higher share of the responsibility rests on her; and as over her the clergyman who preaches to her every Sabbath has a commanding influ- ence, we come back to the two first truths. First—
The clergy of all denominations must wake up to a greater diligence in urging mothers to an imitation of Hannah of old, whose concern began before little Samuel saw the light of day, and which concern never flagged, until he was officially com- mitted to the temple. Mothers should be taught that the be- dewing influence of meditative piety should be shed on- the child's nature when" as yet it is not," and they should be urged unceasingly to follow it up day by day, until the cha- racter is fully formed. To do all this properly, mothers, amid the toils and trials and discouragements of daily life, need counsel, and sympathy, and help from the minister — given, not from the stately pulpit, but from the daily greeting and the friendly fireside call, where there is a felt confidence and a felt sympathy, the imparting and the reception of which are both happifying.
Thus acting, the clergyman of an ordinary congregation
38 HalVs Journal of Health.
would, with other necessary duties, have his time fully em- ployed. Second — to do that, others should see to it that his tem- poral wants are promptly, fully, and liberally met, and this devolves on the people of his charge. In short, the only hope of a world's permanent redemption from crime and disease is in a faithful ministry, well paid by the people, to enable them to give their whole time to the care of the flock over which they are the shepherds. And to make a beginning, let the reader lay down this page and rest not until he has done all he could to se- cure for his minister an abundant support ; nor rest here. If that minister fails of an entire consecration of himself to the faith- ful performance of what has been marked out, turn him out as unworthy of his hire, and even if in all things else he be a very Gabriel.
We may as well wake up to the fact first as last, that all modes of " reform" of human elevation will fail, which are anything short of preventives, and that efforts for the amelio- ration of the condition of mankind, to be permanently success- ful, must reach behind the college, the academy, the Sunday school, they must reach to the infant child — must go before its birth — must operate through a mother's prayers and tears, and bedewing piety. The Editor hopes that abler minds will carry out the idea, the subject having been suggested by a letter from a rich man, without family, who desires to lay out some scores of thousands of dollars in a manner which shall most certainly accomplish the highest results. lie has already spent much time and large sums of money in diffusing information which was calculated to benefit the masses, and especially the poor. Having been the architect of his own fortunes, he has not, in his social and pecuniary elevation, forgotten those who are now enduring that grinding poverty through which he once passed himself, and knowing its hardships, its tempta- tions, and its trials, he has a heart broad and full enough to do something to save others from them, and we do certainly believe that his objects will be most radically and perma- nently secured by a faithful ministry and a faithful mother- hood : " Dr. Hall :
" Dear Sir — We are advised to * take time by the forelock, P You are evidently engaged in the endeavor to instruct the masses to take disease by the forelock. Why, then, may we not endeavor to teach
Poverty, Disease, and Crime, 39
the masses how to take 'poverty' by the forelock 1 But first we must determine its cause or causes,
" William Perm said — ' If you would reform the world, you must begin the reformation with your children.' (Not mine, for I ar'nt got any !) I contend that one great cause — if not the principal cause of poverty— arises from the fact that children are taught from their infancy to be spendthrifts, fearful that the little dears will not know, when arrived at the years of maturity, how to spend money eco- nomically ! and, therefore, they are taught to spend all. they get, and as fast as they get it. I should say that children should be taught how to save money, and that to spend it is as much a sin as to lie or steal, and, if there is any spending to be done, let it be done by the parent. This is my doctrine, and 1 would pay a handsome trifle for a good essay upon this subject.
" My worthy pa used to say — ' The destruction of the poor is their poverty r Many a one has been destroyed by consumption ; but this is only the effect, and so is poverty only an effect. Let us have the cause, that the effect may be averted. If you agree with me, I should be pleased to see an article in your journal upon this subject ; but if not, we will drop the subject like a hot potato, and let it slide.
" By the way, doctor, I have had one of your ' physiological chairs' made (ten-inch seat, not eight, as you suggest), and it gives so much and so general satisfaction, that I have ordered several more made.
" Mr. Fowler took a seat, and pronounced it a capital idea.
'"Yours, "C."
Let the three points of our article remain distinctly before the reader's mind. First— That mere education, talent, genius, is not sufficient to restrain men from crime, else Lord Bacon would never have been bribed, Dr. Dodd would never have perpetrated a forgery — else Voltaire might have been a Luther, Hume a Calvin, and Apollyon a Gabriel. Dr. Murray says, with great truth : " High talent, unless early cultivated, as was that of Moses, and Milton, and Baxter, and Edwards, and "Wesley, and Robert Hall, is the most restive under moral re- straints ; is the most fearless in exposing itself to temptation ; is the most ready to lay itself on the lap of Delilah, trusting in the lock of its strength. And, alas ! like Sampson, how often is it found blind and grinding in the prison house, when , it might be wielding the highest political power, or civilising and evangelising the nations."
Second — The best time for making the imprint for eternity on an immortal nature is while it is yet in its mother's womb. It was while bearing the unborn Napoleon, that the mother scoured the country at the side of her warrior husband. It was
40 • HalVs Journal of Health.
before the birth of Samuel, who became higher than kings, that Hannah sanctified him in her heart, set him apart, and consecrated him to a religious life.
Third — It was Eli the priest who comforted Hannah in her despondency, and the priests were so amply cared for, that they could give their whole time to their duties. • •..■■■ ij |
-
SUICIDAL WOMEK
Unwise above many is the man who considers every hour lost which is not spent in reading, writing, or in study ; and not more rational is she who thinks every moment of her time lost which does not find her sewing.
¥e once heard a great man advise that a book of some kind be carried in the pocket to be used in case of any unoccupied moment. Such was his practice. He died early and fatuitous !
There are women who, after a hard day's work, will sit and sew by candle or gas light until their eyes are almost blinded, or until certain pains about the shoulders come on which are almost insupportable, and are only driven to bed by a physical incapacity to work any longer. The sleep of the overworked, like that Of those who do not work at all, is unsatisfying and unrefreshing, and both alike wake up in weariness, sadness and languor, with an inevitable result, both dying prema- turely.
Let no one work in pain or weariness. "When a man is tired he ought to lie down until he is most fully rested, when with renovated strength the work will be better done, done the sooner, done with a self-sustaining alacrity.
The time taken from seven or eight hour's sleep out of each twenty-four is time not gained, but time more than lost ; we- can cheat ourselves, we cannot cheat nature. A certain amount of food is necessary to a healthful body, and if less than that amount be furnished, decay commences the very hour. It is the same with sleep, and any one who persists in allowing him- self less than nature requires, will only hasten his arrival at the madhouse or the grave.
Make a Brick. 41
MAKE A BKIOK.
In a late New York Observed* we read " Do not conclude the Lord is not with you because things go very contrary, and he does not appear for you ; he was in the ship notwithstand- ing the storm."
In all that Scott or Dickens ever wrote, there is not found a single sentence so fraught with solid comfort, bringing conso- lation so ineffably sweet to the heart all oppressed with har- rowing trouble or torn asunder with saddest trials. Such a sentiment and such a sentence can never die, and will continue for ages to come to soothe the sorrowing children of humanity. And for that single sentence, we consider its unknowu author a greater benefactor to his kind than both the men whose names are written above. When Scott and Dickens have been once read they are laid away; we instinctively withdraw from a second perusal, because nothing new is expected ; but the lines we have quoted will give fresh comfort to every medita- tive heart at every new trial, making it feel- — "There is no sorrow that Heaven cannot cure."
In the " Presbyter" of Cincinnati, another excellent family paper, we read not long ago, — "The danger, temptation, and sin of the age, is the thoughtless has,te to secure the world that now is, forgetful of the better, wider, everlasting world to come."
Composing a sentence like either of the two we have quoted, or doing a good deed in helping the helpless, in raising the fallen, in cheering those who are striving in privation and hard toil for an honest life, is to " make-a brick" for the great build- ing which, is to pass the fiery ordeal of the general judgment, and which cannot be consumed like the " wood, and hay, and stubble," of which the scriptures have spoken.
Or, to change the simile, and bring it near a medical sense, the deeds above, and others like them, are " cordials" prepared before hand, which impart a life giving influence to those who have a right to use them in hours of trial and sickness, on a dying bed and at the judgment day !
How many of our readers have been making it a point to prepare a good supply of these " cordials" in case of emergen- cy, when something will be needed beyond the common order
42 HalVs Journal of Health,
of tilings, not the jams and jellies of the ordinary table, but the sweet-meats of the soul, of good deeds done humbly in un- selfishness I
We do not know when we were more impressed with com- miseration, than when reading of a great reformer, so called, dying at the age of almost ninety years, the hero of Lanark, of communism. The absorbing desire of his heart, the thing which waked up for an instant his expiring energies, the one all pervading longing of his soul was — to reach his childhood's home and there die ! What feeding on dry fence rails, on the veriest husks and chaff is this. Were there no sweet memo- ries of unselfish deeds done in the long pilgrimage of Robert Owen, upon which the soul could linger, while in another sense they could be accounted as " nothing !" The Christian has died before now in raptures ineffable, in a parched desert, on a rock of the sea, aye on the wheel and at the stake, lean- ing his head on the bosom of the Saviour, and breathing his life out sweetly there, panting all the while to be in heaven, in the consciousness of having endeavored, now and then at least, and O how feebly, to live for man and God, to do something to happify a brother pilgrim and help him onward to the skies.
Reader ! How many " bricks" made you for 1858 ; what of " cordials" did you prepare in that long year of blessings, the bricks and the cordials of good deeds done for your fellow man, to the end of glorifying his Maker ? How many do you pur- pose making the present year, for it may be your last on earth? and to lay on a bed of pain and weary suffering, to encounter the mortal agony, and have no cordial by your side to carry you through it all, happily, triumphantly, how dreadful !— Go this minute and do some good deed to some- body, for you may die to-morrow, and if you do not die to- morrow, u repeat the prescription" every day until you do.
WARMING CHURCHES.
Many an excellent clergyman has lost his voice, and even- tually his life, by preaching in a cold, damp, and close church ; and multitudes of people have been made invalids for months
Warming Churches, 43
and years, and have prematurely died, from sitting in churches insufficiently warmed in winter time.
The atmosphere of any building closed for six days in the week becomes unfit for respiration in summer as well as win- ter by reason of its damp, heavy closeness. It requires several days for the cold and damp to get into a closed house, and a mueh longer time for it to get out. Hence, after several days of very severe weather, it may be sultry — even uncomfortably warm in riding, walking, or any other slight effort, and no fire is deemed necessary ; on the contrary, the air of the church seems, on first entering, to be refreshingly cool, but has, nevertheless, sowed the seeds of untimely death in multi- tudes ; for, remaining still for a couple of hours, the body becomes chilled through and through, to be followed by fever, pleurisy, inflammation of the lungs, or other dangerous forms of disease.
Many country churches are heated by stoves, which, on cold days, are kept red hot, roasting those who are near, leaving the more distant ones to freeze.
These difficulties may be easily avoided by a little know- ledge and attention, which may be illustrated by stating the practice of the sextons of our city churches — or, to be more spe- cific, the practice of the sexton of the church which we attend in Fifth Avenue, Mr. Culyer, who will doubtless be surprised to find his name in print ; but as the health and lives of a thousand people are in his custody every winter's day, and as we have not in the course of years ever noticed the building too hot or too cold, his fidelity to duty, and his intelligence in this regard, merits a public notice. A thermometer is kept about five feet above the floor, about half-way between the door and the pulpit. The heat is made to reach fifty-five de- grees of Fahrenheit at the time the service is about commenc- ing. With the same heat in the furnace, it is raised to sixty by the warmth imparted from the bodies of the congregation. The fires are not built, as in country churches, on Sabbath morning, but early on Saturday morning, and are kept pushed for twenty-four hours, with a proper opening of doors and win- dows to secure a thorough airing of the whole building. If the weather is intensely cold, the fires are built early on the Friday morning preceding the Sabbath.
44 HalVs Journal of Health.
In summer time, the- doors and windows are opened at day- light to let in the cool air, and at ten are closed to keep it in. Thus, by these simple arrangements, the building is delight- fully cool in midsummer; while, on a zero day, we have the soft and balmy warmth of a southern clime:
. — __ 1 — . j
E^COITKAGEMENT.
[yilio rn n . s •■ , . . i
Some years ago a returned foreign missionary had almost settled down in the sad conclusion that for the remainder of a life yet young, he was to be but a cumberer of the ground ; but a letter just received says—" I am happy to say that my health is now unusually good ; I. am under the necessity of being constantly vigilant;, yet, with due caution, I labor hard, as hard as any of my brethren, and, what is far .better, it awakens my sincerest gratitude God has greatly blessed 'my labors. For all this, under Him, I am indebted, my dear sir, to you; and that He may make you the instrument of still more and more good, especially in helping his poor broken ministers, is my sincere desire," &c.
There is a lesson of the very highest importance in this nar- ration. This gentleman was enabled to maintain his ability for pastoral labor, hard but' successful, by means of constant, untiring vigilance. Very many attempt to test the perfection of their, cure by unnecessary exposures or extravagances ; others by the most unpardonable in difference or inattention to their health, with the result of coming back to the physician with almost expressed upbraidings for a "temporary" im- provement. The price of life to any one who has been seriously ill is eternal vigilance.
A LITTLE KILLS,
.
Pope Adrian died by a gnat. A Koman counsellor by a hair. Anacreon, the Greek poet, by a grape-seed. Charles the Sixth, by a mushroom. Stephen Girrard, by a milk-cart.
Broken Bones. 45
Jacob Ridgeway, by a dray.
General Taylor, by a bowl of berries. .
The Duke of Wellington, by a plate of venison.
Abbott Lawrence, by an injudicious change of clothing.
Rachel, the tragedienne, from want of an extra dress in the cars between New York and Boston.
Life, being hung on such little things, its preservation is a daily miracle ; and that any of us should arrive at mature age is owing to the fact that there is an eye upon us which never sleeps, the eye of a Heavenly Father, whose loving kindness is over all his works — whose " mercies are new every morn- ing, and fresh every evening."
BROKEN BONES
May be prevented in icy weather by taking steps short and slow, but fast and long in all weathers, in a direction from a mad bull.
If, by a neglect of these reasonable precautions, a bone is broken, the first thing to be done is to groan with an earnest- ness prodigious ; don't yell, for that repels the hearer, while the former attracts by sympathy. Besides, groans, like tears, bring relief. Tearless silence is the sad precursor of certain death in all great bodily ailments..
Persons have added to their injuries before now by attempt- ing to rise, and falling down again, in consequence of a limb having been broken. This may be avoided, if, on the first re- turn to consciousness, after a " collision," bursting of a boiler, and the like, a man would take the precaution, or have the presence of mind, before attempting to rise, to endeavor to move each leg and arm ; for, if he can, neither is broken, nor are any of their joints dislocated ; upon obtaining which intel- ligence there can be no rational obstacle to the most expedi- tious pedestrianism which the emergencies of the case admit of.
LOCATING FOR LIFE.
To any man about building a house or locating a farm, it may be useful to know that a difference of half a mile, or even
46 HalVs Journal of Health.
a hundred feet, may make for his family a healthy home, or a hospital. To make a safe decision, the general laws of " maiaria" and " miasm"— that is, of bad air and marsh ema- nations—should be understood ; and it is by the investigation of these, and their publication for the benefit of all, that this journal and honorable physicians are steadily endeavoring to promote human health and happiness ; yet, sorry are we to say that every now and then we hear of an unexpected defection ; the love of gold seducing some to conceal their discoveries, real, imagined, or pretended, and to make of them a barter for dollars and cents. Be withering shame and irredeemable in- famy the portion of him who, having gleaned all he can from the generous stores of his brethren, clutches with miserly grasp and hides in his own bosom the first ray of new practical truth which chanced to dawn on his eye. Such is the mean-heart- eclness of the authors of patent medicines^ one of whom is fre- quently styled in the reading matter of even religious news- papers as the " benefactor" of his race. Proh jpuclor / gen- tlemen of the religious press.
PKEMATUKE DECLINE.
Many years ago, in travelling among the blue mountains of the Old Dominion, on a visit of curiosity to her " springs," we chanced to fall in with a young clergyman just married. He unfolded to us his prospects, bright and sad — bright as to position and opportunity — sad as to the poor health, which threatened to blast them all. Since then he has risen, and made. a high mark among his fellow-men— a mark as good as it is great. A quarter of a century has passed, during wThich we have never forgotten him, and have never met him ; but to-day we received the following :
" Dear Sir-— Very highly estimating the ability and utility, the wholesome moral and religious, as well as healthful tenor of your Journal of Health, you will please mail it to me."
He has forgotten that we ever met ; but the point of observ- ance is this — the writing is in a hand so trembling, and indi- cating such bodily debility, that it struck us with amazement. Men of eighty years have written to us in a firmer, bolder,
Premature Decay, 47
younger hand ; and yet he cannot be far from either side of the line of half a century. What changes has time wrought, and how different our constitutions ! We are as merry as a cricket and as blithe as a lark of a spring morning in spite of the rubs we have had on land and sea, in city, prairie, or boundless forests of the malarial South. A knowledge and practice of the laws of life unfolds the mystery. He is young enough to electrify the Southern pulpit with his profound and burning eloquence for a quarter of a century to come. But he will never do it, nor for a decade even. Moral : — Theolo- gical students ought to spend less time in chewing Hebrew roots and poring over Greek themes— less time in handling theological polemics, and more in studying how to live long, work hard, thrive upon it, and die victorious — the battle won over sin, Satan, and a wicked race.
Let the church in general, and theological professors in par- ticular, remember that a sick soldier is bad enough — he is but a unit — but a sick leader modifies the efficiency of whole regiments. The remedy is patent — let the friends of a sound Christianity look to it.
NATTJKE AND EEYELATIOK
The God of both is one and the same. In the operations of both the same great general principles run parallel. In the vegetable world, the world of mind and the world of grace, there are the same great changes of seed time and harvest— of ebb and flow — of renewal and decay — of increment and loss — of opportunity improved or forfeited— of chances used, or for ever gone.
Every spring the vegetable world takes a new lease of life; every morning man wakes up to renewed vigor. In the human body, too, there are times which, more than any others, are adapted to the renovation of health and to the arrest of sick- ness; but, if unimproved, the vigor of manhood declines, dis- ease burrows in the system, and there is no repair. Nor is it different in the momentous world of grace. Ordinarily a man may at any time become a Christian ; but there are seasons pi extraordinary fructification, when the facilities are so largely
48 HaWs Journal of Health.
increased, that resistance, refusal to employ them, is a mad- ness, a fatuity; because, if rejected, then, the offer may be made no more. It is certainly true in the life of every man that there are critical periods, which, if rightly improved, acid many years to his age. These periods regularly recur, and, if not improved, that man never lives to see another. The fruc- tifying shower does not always fall, and the sheltered plant, which needed it so much, will die long before another comes. And just as certain is it in this time of " great awakenings," that multitudes who stand under the spiritual showers but ward them off by feelings of indifference, or shame, or greed of gold, or thirst for human applause, or love of festivity, revelry, and mirth, or the fatal indecision, which is the
"Thief of time! Year after year it steals, till all are fled, And to the mercies of a moment leaves The vast concerns of an immortal scene."
To doubt or uncler-estimate these special opportunities, because they are unusual, or transient, or may fail of perma- nent benefit to some, is to be like a simpleton gardener, who protects his plants against the shower because it falls at an un- usual season, or because it is not1 sufficient, in his estimation, to produce any other than a temporary good effect, except to a portion of them ; or like the unthinking invalid, who, racked with torture, refuses to take the soothing medicament because its good effects may soon pass away/ So also are there times more than ordinarily propitious for the securement of health and the prompt arrest of the advance of insidious disease. Youth is the time for the former, as also about the age of forty years. As to the latter, f,- prompt attention" is the uni- versal rule, given at length in our new book, " Health and Disease."
. __ ua s-s± •
'•-■■'. FRATERNIZATION.
Most strange affinities are taking place now-a-days, in the social, religious and political world, and not less in the world of literature. A missionary from the very far west writes, "I al- ways read the Journal through, also' Dr. Rice's ' Expositor' of Chicago, I cannot say as much of any other publication."
Fraternization. 49
From the banks of the turbid Missouri, a lawyer of renown assures us, that he "expects" to take Hall's Journal of Health and the New York Observer as long as he lives. A note comes from one of the first divines in modern Athens, " when- ever I receive the ' Journal' I read it through on the spot." A professional gentleman informs us, " There are two men's writings which I intend to have the very first moment of my ability, those of the Editor of the Scalpel, and Journal of Health." A Clergyman ! writes us, " The Water Cure Journal, Life Illustrated, and Hall's Journal of Health ought to be in every family in the land." Another man thinks the Indepen- dant the best family paper extant, and his wife agrees with him ! and further, that it and our Journal are indispensable to their comfort. Now if the Journal .pleases, and strikes the common sense of persons whose views so widely differ in the taking of other publications, the inference may be fairly drawn that it ought to have a circulation wider than either of them, and it would, if each of its friends would exhibit the same zeal in the promotion of what they feel to be useful and true, as the misguided advocates of error and false doctrine, show in their alacrity for the diffusion of the specious and the empty; but error is too often up and away by morning light, while laggard truth lies abed until breakfast. Gentle reader, resolve to break in upon this habit for one, by sending us the names of a dozen persons whom you love and esteem best, and thus serve truth and us too.
Extracts from Health and Disease, by De. W. W. Hall.
KEASON AND INSTINCT.
The power which sets all stars and suns in motion, ordained that it should be kept in continuance by inherent properties; we call it gravitation. That same power started the complex machinery of corporeal man, and endowed it with regulations for continuance to the full term of animal life, and we call it instinct. . ,
The irresponsible brute has no other guide to health, than that of instinct— it is in a measure absolutely despotic; and can not be readily contravened.
50 HalVs Journal of Health.
By blindly and implicitly following this instinct, the birds of the air, the fish in the sea, and four-footed beasts and creeping things live in health, propagate their kind, and die in old age, unless they perish by accident or by the warfares which they wage against one another, living, too, from age to age without any deterioration of condition or constitution ; for the whale of the sea, the lion of the desert, the fawn of the prairie, are what they were a thousand years ago ; and that they have not populated the globe is because they prey on one another, and man in every age has lifted against them an ex- terminating arm. Man has instinct in common with the low- er races of animal existence, to enable him to live in health, to resist disease ; but he has in addition a higher and a nobler guide — it is Reason. Why he should have been endowed with this additional safeguard, ft found in the fact, that the brute creation are to be used for temporary purposes, and at death their light goes out forever, but man is designed for an immor- tal existence, of which the present life is the mere threshhold. He is destined to occupy a higher sphere, and a higher still, until in the progress of ages, he passes by angelic nature ; ri- sing yet, archangels fall before him, and leaving these beneath, and behind him, the regenerated soul stands in the presence of the Deity, and basks forever in the sunshine of his glory.
Considering then, that such is his ultimate destination, it is no wonder that in his wise benevolence, the great Maker of us all should have vouchsafed to the creature man, the double safe-guard of instinct, and of a diviner reason ; that by the aid and application of both, his life might be protected, and pro- tracted too, under circumstances of the highest advantage and most extended continuance, in order to afford him the fullest opportunity of preparing himself for a destiny so exalted, and for a duration of ceaseless ages.
TRUE TEMPERANCE.
We do not mean a temperance restricted in its application to spirituous drink, but on the comprehensive scale laid down in the Holy Scriptures, in the injunction to be "Temperate in all things." While it is quite certain that those who begin in
True Temperance. 51
their teens to adhere to a rational temperance, may very safely calculate on reaching threescore years and ten, and even four- score, there is the hope which example and un controverted fact give, that even if health is lost at " forty-five," a wise tem- perance begun and continued from that age, promises the liv- ing in comfort and happiness, to double the number of years !
Lewis Cornaro, an Italian nobleman, gifted and rich, yielded to the depravities of his nature, and at the early age of forty- five, found himself a wreck in fortune, fame and health. The physicians whom he consulted, being familiar with his ex- cesses and his reckless character, fortified in their opinion, by the evident fearful inroads which disease had made on his con- stitution, considered an attempt at restoration so hopeless, that they declined bending their minds to the preparation of a proper prescription, and to save themselves, as they supposed, a use- less trouble, they informed him that he was beyond remedial means, and that the best thing he could do would be to recon- cile his mind to the inevitable event, and make for it a Christ- ian preparation,
lie at once determined that as he had but a short time to live it should be a merry one, and was about casting himself into the maelstrom of a drunken vicious life, but by some un- explained circumstance, a freak possessed him, that at one ef- fort he would cheat death and the doctors, by entering at once upon a life of the most heroic self-denial, and become in all respects a temperate man. So precise wTas he, that he weighed his food and measured his drink to the end of his life. He regained his health, regained his. possessions, resumed his title and his social position, and became a happy-hearted Christian minded gentleman. His whole nature seemed to overflow with kindness to all his race, and on the twelfth of March, fif- teen hundred and sixty-five, feeling that he was approaching the termination of his life, and reclining on his cot, the excel- lent old man exclaimed : " Full with joy and hope I resign myself to thee, most merciful God." He then disposed him- self with serenity, and closing his eyes as if about to slumber, gave a gentle sigh, and expired at the age of " ninety-eight years."
SalVs Journal of Health.
NOTICES, &c.
Phonography in five parts. By Andrew J. Graham, conductor of the Phonetic Academy, New York ; author of "Brief Longhand" A book on this subject, able, systematic, comprehensive, and clear, has long been a want, which the author has now fully met. Sent post- paid for $1 25.
" Seven Miles Around Jerusalem;" a mapj 21 by 24 inches, in book form, for $1. By James Challen & Sons, Philadelphia. A most valuable aid to every Bible student in localizing some of the most interesting incidents of New Testament history. The same house furnishes for one dollar each the most beautiful and finished steel engravings of the leading men of the '■ Christian" denomination, beginning with Alexander Campbell, who, like Saul of old, stands a head and shoulders above them all in learning, courage, and mental power.
Sargenfs School Monthly, $1 a year, Boston, we heartily com- mend to every growing family in the land. It is instructive to all.
" Blackwood" and the four reviews — Edinburgh, London Quarterly, Westminster, and North British, $10 a year, Leonard Scott & Co. — affords a large amount of valuable reading to all educated men.
Educational. — We have never yet met with a man who could in- form us where, in the city of New York, a young girl could get a thorough education in any one thing short of having a special teacher. Too many of the female boarding schools and " Institutes" are schools for sham, and smatter, and show — skimming in every thing, thorough in nothing ; the theatres, where meet the snobbery of recent wealth and the pretentiousness of those once rich, but have lost every thing but their pride, making a repulsive alliance for mutual advan- tage. But this the really rich and elevated would be very willing to submit to, if their daughters could, in these institutions, become thorough in anything, from orthography upwards. The subject of the education of our children is not understood by over one in a thou- sand ; and until it is, it would be better, at least in cities, for each church to assume the exclusive control over its own young, as to their literary and doctrinal instruction, aiming to have both radical and thorough as far as they went ; and even although that did not go beyond first principles, it would be greatly preferable to the present system, and we hope that earnest Christian people will give it their serious consideration.
Repudiation.— A writer in the Home Journal states, that an emi- nent physician in Virginia intimated to him that the " half-educated and slenderly supported country doctors find it to their interest to prolong disease." How. a man represented to be an " excellent con- versationist," a "philosopher," and " scientific observer," and about retiring from the successful practice of medicine, should make such a charge against " country physicians," who perform more hazardous personal labor, without any other reward than a love of humanity and a desire of maintaining professional honor, than any other class of men, without exception, we cannot conjecture. Such a man is neither a " Virginian" nor a " gentleman;" and, if he is an educated physi- cian, he is there by mistake, and is unworthy of professional recog- nition*
HALL'S JOURNAL OF HEALTH.
OUR LEGITIMATE SCOPE IS ALMOST BOUNDLESS : FOR WHATEVER BEGETS PLEASURABLE
AND HARMLESS FEELINGS, PROMOTES HEALTH ; AND WHATEVER INDUCES
DISAGREEABLE SENSATIONS, ENGENDERS DISEASE.
We ami to show how Disease may be avoided, and that it is best, when sickness comes, to take no Medicine without consulting an educated Physician.
VOL. VI.] MARCH, 1859. [No. 3.
LIFE INSURANCE.
We consider it unbecoming a philosopher and a christian, to have anything to do with these establishments, directly or indirectly. Faro bank dealers, lottery men and stockjobbers are tumbled over into the hands of the " adversary," to be dealt with secundem artem, without the slightest compunction, and every where there is a repugnance against the failure of a fair quid pro quo : while religious men are so horrified at any thing like "chance," that they won't " draw straws!" The gambler says " heads, I loose, tails, you win ;" the insurance company says, in effect, " I will bet you two thousand dollars, against fifty-six dollars, that you won't die in a year, provided you pay the fifty-six dollars in hand, and take our word for the payment of the two thousand, in case you should die." It seems to us that there is a slight degree of downright imperti- nence in the " transaction," with no small share of impiety in the phrase " I will insure your life for one year !" If the in- sured dies within the year, his family or friends receive two thousand dollars, for fifty -six ; there is no equity in that — no just reciprocity. Many a lottery policy will give you a chance of getting five times as much money for one-tenth of the a- mount. There ought to be a repugnance in the mind of a husband or wife, or other near relation, against reaping a be- nefit by virtue of the death of the other party : therefore, we say to every Christian man, " have faith in God," that the experience of the sweet singer of Israel will be fulfilled in 53
54: HalVs Journal of Health.
your children — " I have been young, and now I am old. yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed be^iner
CJ ' DC O
bread." Besides this, the most desponding of all the prophet- ical writers enjoins, — " leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive ; and let thy widows trust in me." To our mind these things mean something, they mean a great deal ; they mean all that they say. God fulfils his promises literally, giving " good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over." The barrel of meal decreased not, neither did the cruse of oil fail in old Elijah's day, nor will it ever, to the truly trusting, unless for higher advantages.
But the Almighty's ways are the best ways, even in a pecu- niary point of view, for they not only habituate the mind to humble trustingness, they are profitable, both as to the life that now is, and that which is to come. Let us look at the life insurance figures. They make money by it; the daily papers show that they are dividing ten and twenty per cent, annually, and these immense dividends are profits paid by the poor and the struggling, to those who are clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day ; who toil not, neither do they spin, but lounge on velvet cushions, and roll along our streets in equipages, vieing in splendor with those of princes, which they have a sort of right to do, if the daily toiler chooses to pay the piper.
Insurance companies are very clear of giving policies to any but persons in sound health ; and that the chances of life are in favor of the company, the profits at each annual report clearly show. The best insurance is a temperate, rational life, with the immense advantage, that the insured in this case, lives to enjoy his policy instead of its being done by the hus- band of his widow.
Then again, policies are frequently paid, only at the end of a law suit So common is this, that it is not an unusual thing, when a prominent person dies, and his family connec- tion is too powerful for a company to contend with, the policy is promptly paid with a flourish of trumpets in the daily pa- pers, which catches gulls, as the announcement of the drawing of the highest prize in a lottery leads multitudes to try their chii.nce, which otherwise they never would have thought of doing. '
Life Insurance. 55
There is another item, the presidency and secretaryship and brokerage of an insurance company are valuable births, each worth thousands of dollars, some of them live thousand dollars a year ; and yet, after all these salaries are paid, annual divi- dends are made, reaching to twenty per cent. — who pays all this ? Poor clergymen, from meagre salaries, eked out by painful economies ; working men, whose daily labor procures that same day's need ; loving parents and self-denying hus- bands, who seldom part with a premium without a pang. — • Shame on the whole thing !
But there are cases not a few, where honorable men have paid the premiums for many years, amounting to thousands of dollars, whenrthe company "fails ;" and being now too old to secure a fresh policy in some other office, except at a price which is simply impossible to them, they, in a year or two die, with an amount of money in the company's strong box, which would make their helpless families comfortable for years. If then, a man wants to lay up a safe treasure for his family in case of his death, we propose to him* a plan for se- curing his life, and the premiums of a life time too. As to the first we say, live in temperance, moderation, cleanliness, and then lay by a premium every year, to be put out at legal in- terest, payable quarterly, which also put out in the same way,; and in the course of twenty years, the amount on hand would be greater than the amount received from the company would be, and just double in thirty years. So if the insurer makes money, the insured can make money too, by insuring himself.
Be it remembered, that insurance companies require a man to be in good health, of regular habits, and to avoid hazardous occupations; then, for fifty-six dollars, at forty-one years of age, they will insure his life for one year for two thousand dollars ; but a man at forty-one, of such a character as the above, stands a good chance of living to seventy years, the three score and ten of scripture ; in that case, his family will receive at his death, just half what he has paid, but double that if he had insured himself.
"We say, therefore, to every christian reader, keep away from the life insurance office, whose foundation is on chance ; as is the lottery, the faro bank, and the stock board. On the other hand, have faith in God, in a regular temperate life and
56 HalVs Journal of Health.
in a true economy ; living within yonr income, and resolutely, "with an invincible determination, put the surplus at safe in- terest and collect it quarterly. Doing this from year to year is true wisdom, for it is a more profitable investment than any life insurance company dares to offer. Scarcely had we closed the last paragraph, when carriage after carriage rolled along the street, and above the clatter of wheels was heard glad sounds of women's voices, and men speaking quick and cheer- ily, for they had all brought up next door, on the occasion of a complimentary visit to an aged clergyman, who for fifty- eight years had been an active, eloquent and an efficient mi- nister in the methodist church ; and still, in his keen black eye is the fire of younger years, for Sabbath after Sabbath he fails not to preach the gospel. But one just closing his eight- ieth year needed a staff, and a handsome one they gave him ; rather heavy, however, for they had " made a deposit" within it of four hundred live dollar gold pieces, which was so un- expected to him, that he could only say that he regarded it as another evidence of the goodness of that Providence which had never failed him in his past pilgrimage, and would not fail him unto death. Had it been at all known that such a manifestation was in progress, there are multitudes in New York of all denominations, who would have considered it a pleasure and a privilege to have been allowed to participate in gladdening the aged heart of so useful and good a man as, Nathan Bangs, of Irving Place.
After all, who shall not say that the best insurance office is not in Wall street, but in Heaven, where " premiums" are paid, not in gold and silver, not in bills and checks, but in the privilege of a useful and guileless life, a life honored and honorable, for such a life has been that of the revered father whose name we have written.
QUACKEKY UNMASKED.
Is the title of a dollar book by Dr. D. King, of Boston, which is alike suggestive to medical students, practising phy- sicians, and all who think for themselves, which by the way is a very small army, but to be of that army an indispensible pre-requisite is, that a man must be the " bravest of the brave.'1
Quachery Unmasked. 57
The Doctor wields a facile pen, and no reflecting mind will fail to be amused and instructed by the perusal of the work. And when we consider how many young physicians, on the advent of " medical inhalation," wrote patronising letters to its propagators, thereby showing their ignorance of medical history, and a consciousness of their incompetency to the sci- entific application of medical science — when this is brought to mind, we doubt not that if our medical schools would make Dr. King's book one of the standard works, a very salutary influence would be the result.
Dr. King wields a trenchant blade, and his cleaver of histo- rical facts falls mercilessly on some of the isms of the day. — The closing paragraph in reference to women practising medicine, is characteristic of the whole book — " But when she enters the fetid laboratory of the anatomist, and plunges her hands into the gore of dead men, she loses all her feminine loveliness, and appears like a fallen angel, an object of univer- sal horror and disgust."
More than one-half the book is devoted to the annihilation of Homeopathy. Its founder, a Dutchman, was born over a hundred years ago, and died at a good age. Dr. King's illus- trations run about as follows : Hahneman's system was founded on two theories. The first was that " like cured like," that what causes a disease will cure it. If a man is sick at the sto- mach, give him an emetic. If another is going down hill give him a kick, and it will bring him back.
The other foundation stone of the system is, that if any me- dicine is valuable as a remedy, it becomes more powerful by division. That is, if a drop of cologne be put into a hundred drops of water, and be shaken a hundred times, it will have a hundred times more powerful effect, (will smell stronger we presume,) than it did at first ; and that it may be gone on in this way until a drop will finally impregnate lake Superior, and that if one drop of this be taken, it will produce the most tre- mendous effects on the whole human frame, which will last a month. Hahneman carried this process through two thousand vials, and on. giving a patient six or eight drops of it, he came very near killing him.
According to this, a grain of pulverized charcoal, divided into a million parts, will produce over two hundred symptoms
5S IlalVs Journal of. Health.
v\
of disease from the crown of the heel tatbe toe of the head ;
and that these symptoms will last thirty-six days. See " Jahr's
new Homeopathic '"Manual," page 565.
The one decillionth part of a grain of common chalk gives a hundred and twenty-five diseased conditions of the body.
Professor "Wharton, of London, says, — that one grain of me- dicine dissolved in a hundred drops of water, and a drop of 'that into a hundred other drops of water, until one drop of water has in it a decillionth part of the original grain, it would take a million of people a million of years, swallowing one drop a second, to take that grain of medicine ; and max the vessel which should contain it all, would be a million miles long, a million miles broad and a million miles deep. We have not given the words of Dr. King exactly, but'have given the ideas. If our infinitessimal friends think that we have not given a fair statement of the case, they must quarrel with their leaders, Hahneman, Jahr and others. If our readers clo not desire to be bothered in the fog of the multitudinous pathies and isms of the times, we advise them to the use of natural inexpensive agencies, at least in the treatment of ordinary ailments, such as colds, neuralgias, dyspepsia, constipation, sick head ache, and the like ; these agencies being a wise adaptation of food, rest, air, warmth, cleanliness and ' exercise, as uniformly and consistently set forth in our practice ! as well as in our writings.
THE SCIENCE OF MEDICINE.
A philosophical writer in the American Homeopathic Re- view of New York, utters the grand practical sentiment that 4t pathology is submitted to a sucession of forms, consistent with the different strata or ages of society." There are two important ideas suggested by this statement, which we will state in language familiar to the masses. Pathology is the science of disease, but the same disease in a day laborer is different from what it is in one whose occupation is sedentary, in a body of health for example, or in one who has a frail con- stitution. Hence a treatment which would cure a clay la- borer might kill a weakly woman. Hence the absurdity of using patent medicines, even taking the huge impossibility for granted, that one " certificate" in a thousand is fully true.
The Science of Medicine. 59
Another important inference which very many physicians will strongly object to, because it is an idea ground into them with great assiduity by the professors of medical schools, which possess hospital facilities, is that those facilities are indis- peusible to the making of an able medical practitioner. But the advantages in this direction are overrated, simply because coarse and rough people and constitutions are met with in hospitals ; but to subject those whose whole modes of life and temperament and general systems are entirely different to the same processes of cure and the same doses of medicine, is most extreme folly. The latter would die by the power of the remedies, while the former, if treated as the latter would die for want of remedies. This is an extreme statement, in order to make the contrast more striking.
There is wide complaint of the incompetency of our young doctors, and no stronger proof of this is needed than in the fact that so many soon abandon their profession for other callings ; not a few resort to dishonorable means of obtaining practice, whilst multitudes barely succeed in making both ends meet at the end of a lifetime, and even this, not seldom, is attained by painful economies.
Another reason for the incompetence of medical graduates, is their haste to get into practice, and the facility of doing it by means of two courses of lectures, embracing a period of eight months. Unless there is some remedy found for this, we had better go back to tie old plan of putting our sons in the office of a village practitioner as an apprentice for two or three years, then gradually taking the master's place in com- mon cases, going round with him from patient to patient, and be thus taught the first great essential of a successful physician, to observe closely and justly, and ask his preceptor all ques- tions freely and fearlessly. Does the young man who -walks the wards of the hospital in company with a dozen or two at the heels of his " Professor" do such a thing once a week ? — Let them answer.
Another suggestion made by the quotation is this. The same disease in different classes of society, requires a corres- ponding difference of treatment. But this is only the half of a great truth. The same disease must have a treatment modi- fied by the locality of the patient, by the country, and by the
60 HalVs Journal of Health.
generation or age. And as these are constantly changing, the treatment of the disease that goes by the same name is changed. The man who treats a bilious fever to-day, as it was treated in the last generation, or thirty-three and a third years ago, would kill half of his patients at least. An age ago, bleeding to faint- ing was considered the great cure all, as indispensible in many forms of severe disease, the man who would follow that prac- tice now, in diseases which bear the same name, would be considered demented. Some of us, not very old either, can muster up reminiscences not particularly delightful, in fact horrible, at the very mention of " salts and senna," or " calo- mel and jalap," or " cream of tartar and jalap ;" and yet, for the same diseases for which these things were considered most potent and indispensible once, not one physician in a thousand now administers them. In fact diseases come and go as do the fashions. Once " every body" had dyspepsia, then clergy- man's sore throat was the rage, and now, don't every third per- son have same form of neuralgia ?
These incontrovertible facts lead us to appreciate the depth of truth contained in an editorial of the Medical and Surgical Reporter of Philadelphia. " The profession are too much in- clined to follow a routine practice," and hence very properly discourages the publication of books which contain the modes of preparing medicines, with their doses. Such books are worse than useless, they are positively mischievous, they re- tard progress. The way for any young physician to become successful, is to study out the formulas, the doses of medicine which answer the best purpose in his own locality. We know personally, that one of the most justly eminent surgical and medical practitioners in this country, while at the zenith of his fame, gave the hydriodate of potash in three prescriptions out of four to the drug store, where we had an office for seve- ral years. At a period two years later, the hydriodate of pot- ash was seldom mentioned, simply because it had lost its adapt- ability. This gentleman prescribed from observation and not from books, hence is still a magnate among his brethren. And this brings us to the answer of a question proposed by a south- ern planter in September last, " Why is it that the medical schools now send such inferior men among us ?" The reason is simply this— the student very naturally reveres his professor
The Science of Medicine. 61
and preceptor, believes him to be none other than Sir Oracle. The professor states what he gave when he was a young man, and what marvels it performed ; the student jumps to the con- clusion that what was efficient in his preceptor's youth, must be equally so in his own hands, and he goes out from the green room, with diploma in hand, with the utmost confidence of curing all curable diseases, and of accomplishing like wonders with his preceptor, with a like weapon, when like as not, the very first essay is met with the most signal failure.
If then, the professors in our medical schools really desire to elevate the profession, and will suffer a word of exhortation from one, quite as " regular" as the very foremost of them, being an allopathic dyed in the wool, and from one of the first schools in the Union, after having taken the second collegiate degree, we will give utterance to our wisdom in the words fol- lowing, to wit — spend more time in teaching young men the principles of medicine, and how to apply them. Teach them to observe what passes before them, rather than to remember what they have read and heard as to theories. Do not lumber up their brains with formulas and endless combinations of quantities and qualities, vemembering that a single half dozen of true medical principles thoroughly understood, are of more worth in the making of a skilful practitioner, than all the me- dicines in the universe ; for we are not far from the conviction that medical science as it now is, for the most part is one half figment and the other half fudge, as to its certainties, and will continue so to be, until our medical colleges require, as a con- dition of graduation, a thorough collegiate education ; a tho- rough knoAvledge of anatomy and physiology, and of those general principles of health and disease, which are a part of established medicine ; and even then, if the mind of the can- didate does not accustom itself to a minute attention and care- ful consideration of the various phenomena presented, he cannot be a good medical scholar nor become a safe or successful physician.
IN THE BLOOD.
Dved in the wool, radical, inherent, of a piece, these are various forms of expression intended to convey one and the same idea, to wit — a part of a chip of the same block. But
G2 IldWs Journal of Health.
by the expression ain the blood," we desire here to convey a moral idea, by the aid of a medical phrase ; an idea repudi- ated by multitudes, abhorred by not a few, but true for all that, as the following narration may illustrate : A city mer- chant wanted a small boy in his store ; one aged ten years was highly recommended by a lady, who guaranteed his good con- duct, she having befriended and aided the family materially, for several years since their arrival in this country. The youth was not known to have been in a place of trust before. He proved to be diligent and attentive ; small pieces of money were .brought to the proprietor from time to time, as picked up from the floor in sweeping out, and there was an evident effort to please. Within a week of his entrance stolen property and money were found in his pocket, which at the instant before discovery, he declared contained nothing whatever, but it did contain the proprietor's pocket bopk, with money, papers, &c. Here was a systematic effort of a mere child, began from the very first day of entering the store, by an appearance of strict honesty and integrity in trifling matters, to throw the proprie- tor off his guard, to enable the child to steal from the shelves and cash box without suspicion. We personally know the facts of the case, and can account for such precociousness in crime, such adeptness in deception, such facility and aptitude for perpetrating thefts, in no other way, than that both father and mother were thieves and liars, and had never been any thing else, having been indoctrinated thus for perhaps long genera- tions preceding. We know that persons are born with the physical characteristics of their parents — born with their pa- rents' diseases. Napoleon's mental nature was impregnated from his mother before his birth, when she rode by her war- rior husband at the head of armed bands for days and weeks and months together ; while at the same time, he inherited the disease of his father, and likewise perished with it. It is noto- rious that three-fourths of the idiotic are born of parents, one or both of whom are drunken ; shadowing the state of mind of the parent, bestial, stupid, low, at the instant of conception, as the mould in which the child is cast. Some practical use may be made of these things, but not we presume, until the human mind becomes more generally, more thoroughly, more su- premely religious from principle, high, uniform, abiding. —
In the Blood. 63
What, therefore, physiology teaches of corporeal man, the Bi- ble repeats as to his moral nature, in the stern declaration that " the wicked are estranged from the womb, they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies." That it is just as natural for man to sin, as it is for the sparks to fly upward, or for a duck to take to the water the instant it breaks from the shell. Sin and crime bring destitution, disease and death. From ano- ther direction then, we come to the practical conclusion, stated in the last number, that the time for impressing the future child with greatest certainty with a high moral character, is during the months preceding its birth, just as certainly as a high state of physical health kept up during gestation, is one of the most certain means of ensuring a good constitution to the com- ing beinff.
It, therefore, seems to follow, that all modes of human re- form, in order to be successful, must be founded on truth, and that the million plans which have been spawned forth on the world, with only a butterfly life, have had their foundations laid in error, in false doctrine, and that -false doctrine has co- lored almost every system of- human amelioration which has ever been presented ; it is the doctrine of human perfectibility as opposed to human depravity., innate and total : a depravity not equally deep as to all, but a depravity of varying shades, pervading all, from the new born infant to the centennarian. Owen of Lanark, Cabot of Paris, Communism and the Phi- lanstery, all founder here; and their defeated glorifiers now crimson not to confess that their systems are ■ only adapted to the- unselfish ; which means really, that to succeed, they must have perfect men to begin with : but ask them how they will make men perfect, and they are either as dumb as the ass, or utter incoherent ravings about education and the elevation of the masses. Then, philosophers, so called, may blunder and flounder and prate as they please, but it all comes to this at last, that the very first step towards human elevation is in. hu- man abasement; each man for himself must see and feel and acknowledge that he is a poor, weak, miserable sinner, and then, in the light of the bible, look for help in the direction of Him, who is able to elevate and save all who, while looking, believe and live.
64 HalVs Journal of Health.
HEALTH IS A DUTY.
" A dying man can do nothing easy," were the last words of the immortal Franklin. A diseased man can do nothing well, are words of our own, quite as true.
If any thing should be well done, it should be the prepara- tion which is needed to fit us for the exalted condition which has just been described, and to do it well, the highest health and the longest life should be sought by all. Such a prepara- tion should be made under the most favorable of all possible conditions, and it is to no less an end, that this book has been conceived, to wit, to show the reader how health may be main- tained, and how disease may be averted to the utmost limit of human life, that by the aid of health and length of days, the most perfect preparation possible may be made for the immor- tal existence beyond, and in this light, who shall deny that Health is a duty ? Echo answers, ' Disease is a crime !'
" Health and Disease"
" HEALTH A1STD DISEASE."
This is the title of our new book, composed by urgent and repeated request. After it was prepared, the manuscript was submitted to some of the oldest and most respectable publish- ers of New York, but they all, with one exception, began to make excuse ; whereupon we became greatly encouraged, and on making another effort, sold the whole edition to Mr. Price, for about three times as much as the o^inary rates would have yielded us, and thus far he has had no occasion to repent of his bold and liberal offer, for his sagacity has been already proven in the encouraging sale and high appreciation of the book, by some of the best minds and competent judges in the city. In refusing to touch our bantling, the publishers, like all sensible men, were very polite, very courteous — in fact, quite complimentary of our genius, ability, and all that, but firmly held off, notwithstanding.
The book is useful and truthful, chaste in idea, sound in doctrine " Allopathic ; appealing constantly to the observa- tion and common sense of the reader. It never advises a dose
Health and Disease. G5
of medicine, does not recommend expensive appliances, does not ride on the hobby of starving a man to death — of denying coffee and tea and roast beef. It wars relentlessly against the patronage of uneducated physicians, of quackery and of patent medicines in all their forms; it discourages self-medi- cation, shows its tendencies and its dangers, and plainly incul- cates the practice of never taking an atom of medicine, except by the advice of a respectable physician ; but not to seek that advice until the natural agencies of air, exercise, temperance, cleanliness, rest, and warmth, have been fully employed, according to the directions given.
Furthermore, " Health and Disease" contains advice which every human being needs ; advice which needs to be put in practice every day of his existence ; advice, the lack of which is resulting daily in the early loss of health and premature death of multitudes ; advice which has, perhaps, never yet been given in any printed book for popular use ; advice which tens of thousands now living would give a large share of all they possess, had they known and practised it before their misfortunes came upon them.
"Why, then, would not the long-headed publishers of ISTew York take hold of this book, and risk on it three hundred and seventy-five dollars on the first thousand copies, retailing at one dollar? And why was *it that in the face of these hard facts we did not throw the manuscript in the fire, and vote that " every publisher in the universal world was a fool, and had no sense?"
In the first place, we knew that publishers, like politicians, never work for the people; they work for themselves; the only question which they ever busy themselves in answering is, " Will it pay ?" But to answer that with any certainty, their guide must be their experience ; and long since it became an axiom in " the trade," that books, whose aim was the solid benefit and permanent advantage of the people, were uniformly published at a loss. Now this is not the fault of the publishers, but of the people themselves ; and as publishers, like other people, have families to support, food to eat, houses to live in, children to educate, and baby shoes to buy, the laws of self-preservation, long-headedness, and rhinocerocity of hide and conscience, dictate a falling in with the tide of
6Q . IlalVs Journal of Health.
public demand, and not of public need. Flashy novels pay — - so does the yellow-covered literature. Periodicals containing splendid fashion plates of monstrosities, only worn by pimps and courtezans, and people " from the country" — that is, out- side of cities — these do well ; and quite as profitable are sen- sation weeklies, with blood and murder stories of land and sea, illustrated " in wood" by pictures of indecency, profa- nity, and blood. So do papers well pay which spread abroad by the million impossible stories of the " spirit world," the falsities of " water' cure," and the atheisms of phrenology; but when it comes to books which treat of the " uses and abuses of air," of a rational temperance, which shows how, in a timely manner, to avoid disease and to cure it when pre- sent by prudence, patience, and a wise self-denial, a conserva- tive, let-alone-ism, such books remain on the sheli' of a humane publisher to gather dust and mold, and finally to be eaten of worms.
Bat with all these things before his eyes, Mr.Price had no fear that the book would not sell. He knew that though all the fools were not dead yet, there were sensible people at magni- ficent distances, and that these would derive practical advan- tage from reading the book, and, doing so, would not fail to recommend it to others. Besides, we gathered courage from the fact that while it was in course of publication in friend Gray's mammoth establishment in Jacob street, it made con- verts among every class of operatives, whose duties required a perusal of its pages in composing, setting up, correcting, &c. We judged from this that there was persuasive eloquence in it ; that those of very moderate education could easily under- stand it, and that their personal experiences compelled a con- viction of its truth. This was enough ; for we wanted to reach the capacity of the masses, and we have succeeded.
It is a book not for the day and hour, but for the age. It will be as true and practical and necessary in the year nine- teen hundred as now, for it advises temperance, without starv- ation ; enjoyment, without satiety ; mirth, without tom-foolery ; exercise, without exhaustion ; and piety, without pretence. It aims to show that constitutions impaired and broken in early life may, by means of natural agencies, be built up again, to last to a green old age, and that by these same means the
Be Thankful. 67
ordinary ailments of dyspepti a, neuralgia, constipation, suscep- tibility to colds, chilliness, &c, can be safely, efficiently, and permanently cured.
BE THANKFUL.
Very many persons fail to enjoy what they have in the eating anxiety for what they have not, forgetting all' the while how much they are in advance of others quite as good as they are, but whose days are blackness, whose every breath is in pain, and who feed on tears and sighs.
Yalentine Perkins, of Mantua, Ohio, aged forty-five years, has every joint in his body as immovable as a solid bone, except those of two toes and two fingers. His jaws have been set and motionless for thirty years, the only aperture through which he receives food being that made by the falling out of his front teeth. His appetite is uniformly good. There was in London an old man who was called the Judge ; he was always the picture of neatness, cheerfulness, and content. His wife, poor soul, is all but bed-ridden ; he can only do half a day's work, and kind friends make up the remainder.
A correspondent writes from Virginia:
Carrsville, Va., August 27th, 1858. Dear Dr. Hall :
1 was most pleasantly surprised a few days since by a very unex pected visit from a once familiar friend and guest — your highly and deservedly popular little Journal. From the chirography of the superscription upon the envelope, which I recognized in a moment, as I would the features of an old acquaintance, I suppose I am indebted to you for the favor ; arid it is to thank you, most warmly thank you for the rich intellectual repast which it afforded me, that I venture to intrude upon you. Be sure it found no ungrateful recipient or un- appreciative reader.
Last year, through the kindness of a considerate friend, it was placed upon my pillow on each successive month. Since then, ad- verse circumstances have forced me to forego the indulgence ; but long years of suffering and dependance have taught me the lesson of self-abnegation. And now a word as to my health, of which you may possibly entertain some curiosity to be informed. Six years from the incipient attack — four and a half from my prostration upon my couch — find me yet struggling with a relentless monster ; yet as rigid and as helpless as a mass of stone, my eyes and tongue being the only members over which I have the least control. Recently my
68 HalVs Journal of Eealth.
constantly increasing debility and emaciation admonish me that I shall soon receive a summons from beyond the dark valley. An almost unmanageable constipation of the bowels, together with a dis- tressing asthmatic affection, are steadily but surely wasting away my constitution, which, until some time past, resisted disease with astonishing obstinacy. My digestive organs have lost so much <*f their energy, and have grown so torpid, that it is extremely difficult for me to effect an operation upon my bowels. An interim of two or three weeks frequently occurs between evacuations. The inability to open my jaws forces me to subsist upon such food as I can compress through a cavity made by the loss of two of my teeth, such as baked fruit, milk, boiled custards, half-cooked eggs, toasted bread, &c, &c.
W.-H. E.
!N"ot many will read these statements without a deep sym- pathy for these afflicted men, and an earnest hope that as to each one of them the sufferings of this life will bear no pro- portion to the high happiness in reserve for them in the heav- enly world — a happiness as pure as a sunbeam — as eternal as the throne of God. On the other hand, let us all turn our at- tention in upon ourselves and cultivate a deep and an abiding gratitude to the Giver of all good, in that we and ours have been born perfect in limb, and form, and feature ; our bodies without a blemish, our minds without a blot, and, further, that these things have been continued to us for the period of a life time, and that we have had given to us all things richly to enjoy by a Beneficence as ceaseless as the flow of time, and as boundless as the universe.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION.
Dr. Cox is reported to have said in a college address : " I am glad that Luther had a good digestion as well as a great soul, for the reformation would have been delayed had he been a dyspeptic." The rev. doctor has been a martyr him- self to throat ail, arising from a d}^speptic stomach ; and it has been reported to us that his wife is the only person able to keep him well, by always accompanying him and treading on his big toe under the table to remind him that he had eaten enough, and instanter the plate is obediently pushed back.
Moral Nutriment. 69
MORAL NUTRIMENT.
"Whose mind does not run far back into the past with sunny memories in reading the dear familiar lines —
" In works of labor or of skill
I would be busy, too, For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do V
Lazy people eat more than the busy, at least for awhile, because it affords them enjoyment ; it. is a standing source of gratification, until they become dyspeptic, when every meal becomes more or less a torture.
But want of occupation has its attendant moral evils as well as physical. Idlers are nervous, fretful, peevish, cross. Ill- nature becomes a second nature, and they grumble, and com- plain, and whine from morning until night, with chance inter- vals of sunshine, but ever so transient. .
One of the causes of the deep moral degradation of many sailors, is want of occupation in the interval of their " watches," especially in long voyages. We have many a time and oft been with them in the forecastle, from the full-rigged ship down through bark, and brig, and schooner, and tiny sloop, and have seen and heard all that was degrading in story and foul in act, profane and beastly, for want of occupation to lead them to higher things. The knowledge of this has led us for a long time past to preserve carefully all our religious ex- changes, our agricultural papers, and the outside half-sheet ol many weeklies, which, for safety in sentiment, purity of teach- ing, and courteousness of spirit, favorably compare with the religious press. For these a friend, whose heart is in the right place, comes regularly on the first of every month. No win- ter's frost or summer's fire by any chance keeps him away, although gray hairs are upon him, and his shadow is lengthen- ing for the grave; and going down among the shipping, he hands them to the sailors of such vessels as are just weighing anchor, for the chance that some good sentiment may strike their attention in hours of quietude, and make them think- of home, and sisters, and mother, and minister, the country church, the grave-yard close by, and of heaven; for even transient thoughts like these have a restraining, an elevating,
70 HalVs Journal of Health.
purifying power. " These are the best things that come aboard for my men; they keep them out of mischief," said Captain i of the steamship Prince Albert, as the distri- butor jumped aboard and handed him a large bundle of read- ing matter. " We don't swear half so- much when we have your papers to read," said a hardy jack tar. These two un- varnished statements are full of meaning ; and1 we trust that our city readers will give tlicm a practical turn by carefully preserving their religious papers, and other safe, transient, or loose reading matter, and send them free of charge to J. H., 283 Spring street, New York. A good religious newspaper ought not to be destroyed ; nor, as we think, ought it to be laid away, to become moulded and worm-eaten, in the calcu- lation of reading it again ; for it is hiding in the napkin — it is hoarding up, instead of putting out at interest. * We have many times copied a good article rather then mutilate the paper which contained it, thinking that if it did us- good, it would be likely to do as great a good to some others, or a dozen others. Further, those who can write well for their favorite paper, who can throw off sentiments- sparkling and pure, and short, terse, striking, and do not do it, are responsible to huma- nity and to God for the default. The making of a religious newspaper interesting, useful, influential, by reason of the sterling character of its reading matter, ought no more to be left to the editor, than the building up of an active, efficient church society, should be left wholly to the minister. Every man, woman, and child, ought to help him in all ways possi* ble ; and so ought the editor to have the sympathy, encourage- ment, and literary help of every reader who can thus contri- bute ; for, next to the minister, a well-conducted religious newspaper is an instrument for present, extensive, enduring good, and they are essential to the times, as counteracting the malign influences which are scattered with a reckless hand by anonymous writers, who can stab from behind and in the dark, or by those who, leaving foreign countries for their country's good and their own safety, boldly solicit to be made the paid contributors of our best papers; and, having left home disap- pointed and depressed, take refuge in "liberal" views in doc- trine and in drink, and pour out their infidelities and atheisms as largely as a sleepy public will allow; when at length,
Moral Nutriment. 71
having lived ftp to their principles for a year or' two, or more, their death and their nom de plume, with " real name,'5 are for the first time made public; the " report" being— " Died" of nianise potu, delirium tremen, drowned, run over by the cars at midnight, " died" by his own hands by the visitation of God! Such are not a tew of the men who, through the daily* the weekly, the monthly, and the quarterly, enter our parlors, and talk to our wives, and sons, and daughters, in gingerly infidelities — in gilded whoredoms. Men of a true humanity and a true progress ! look to it that you write to counteract these poisons, and write as splendidly ; look to it further, that your center tables be cleared of all this worse than trash, and assert and practice your right of a proper supervision of what your families are to read. There is " death in the pot," literary and" moral, as in olden time there was in the culinary — moral death in many a fascinating novel and high-sounding magazine and "popular" Weekly. Some reason was there in the declaration made to us lately by one of our sternest, most useful, and aged divines : "I allow no newspaper to be read in my family." Another, of a different profession, who was second to none in position and profess sional ability, since passed away with years and honors, said : " There is but one daily paper in New York that 1 con- sider fit to enter a family of daughters." Therefore, while one part of the community should watch the reading* of their fami- lies with a jealous care, let those who can write well, pun- gently, and powerfully, feel it their duty to do what in them lies, to ensure that the literary pdbuhtm of the people shall be unpoisoned — shall be prepared with materials that are morally pure, safe, and nutritious- — that the reading for the masses be sound, truthful, and divine.
WARTS.
Warts are removed in a fortnight if creosote is painted on them, and they are then covered with a common sticking plaster, to be renewed every third day. But as creosote is a virulent poison, it is safer to use some acid or strong alkali — say potash or hartshorn, every day, until they disappear, as
72 HalVs Journal of Health.
most of them will, under this latter treatment, if persevered in, using only the creosote in incorrigible cases. We know by personal experience that persevering friction with anything, even with the finger, is efficient in the removal of some kind of warts ; and such was Lord Bacon's observation and expe- rience, possibly the vulgar notion, that a wart is cured by stealing apiece of bacon, originated in a hair-brained or maddy headed individual, who used the thing itself instead of the advice of the man who gave it.
i
WELL AND SPRING CLEANING.
As spring is approaching, we earnestly advise all persons who use well water and spring water, to have both wells and springs thoroughly cleaned out, and then washed out in early May and also during October, as there is strong reason to be- lieve that the settlings which have accumulated, including de- cayed vegetation, impart their disease engendering qualities to the water, and thus originate some of the most dangerous forms of low or typhoid fever, at a time of the year when the weather is so cool as to preclude the idea of their arising from vegetable decomposition.. The stench of the debris at. the bottom of wells should induce all cleanly persons to expurgate them thoroughly, aside from considerations of health.
EEVER AND AGUE ANNIHILATED.
In a series of letters now in course of publication, " Trip to the Rappahannock," No. seven, in that inimitable paper, The Home Journal, the writer makes an " eminent" Virginia doc- tor say, that the avoidance of inhaling the out-door morning and evening air, is a certain means of exterminating fever and ague, called elsewhere chills and fevers. We advocated that doctrine a quarter of a century ago, and every year for five years past, in "Hall's Journal of Health." On pages 32, and 217 of vol. 5, 1858, the subject is treated, the declarations made, and the reasons given in the plainest manner possible. It seems further, that the eminent writer of the Rappahannock
Student Health. 73
letters lias been deluged with enquiries as to further particu lars, leading him to suppose that the information was a know- ledge much wanted.
-o-
.
STUDENT HEALTH.
A theological student who was about abandoning his studies in utter discouragement in consequence of declining health, arising from constipation and indigestion, was induced to fore- go his purpose until he tried what' could be done for him by a change of habits, as to eating, sleeping and study. No medi- cine was advised beyond some half-a-dozen weekly pills. But before he had taken them all he writes " my health is improv- ing, study begins to be a pleasure. I shall ever feel grateful to you for your advice and treatment, to which I attribute my change of health.
There can be no doubt that many young men who might have lived to high distinction, have lost health and life itself from want of timely and judicious advice as to their habits of life, being deterred from seeking that advice from their ina- bility to pay for it. "We believe a valuable substitute may be found in our last dollar book on " Health and Disease," in which we mainly strive to show how ordinary ailments may be cured by natural and inexpensive agencies.
BEEAD WITHOUT YEAST,
Salt, milk, salseratus, soda or any think else is made as fol- lows, according to Elsie M. Emory, of Cardington, Ohio, as communicated through that delightful family paper the Coun- try Gentleman, of Albany, New York:- — Take boiling water, let it stand until the temperature is reduced below the scalding point, then stir in flour as thick as you can well beat it with a spoon. Set it in warm water kept at a proper temperature to promote fermentation, usually three or four hours. If it should become thin after standing a while, stir in a teaspoonful or two of flour, beating it occasionally until it commences to rise. — When light, put it with the flour, mixing up with water, kneading thoroughly ; then make into loaves and put on tins to rise, keeping warm and bake as usual.
74: HalVs Journal of Health.
DISTRESS HOUSES.
M. Yiennot, of Paris, proposes to erect ornamental columns throughout New York, below Fourteenth street, at his own expense, receiving pay therefor in the exclusive privilege of using the wall of those columns for placards for twenty years, after which they revert to the city. It is sufficient to say that these columns are to be used as urinals. If any plan could be devised to keep these places as neat as a new pin, as to sight and sense, they would be productive of great, very great good. The inconvenience, the discomfort, and the positive danger which result from the want ot these facilities in a large city cannot be denied. As to the positive danger, and the daily injury, any experienced physician will give a prompt testimo- ny. For want of the conveniences referred to, violations of public decency are of daily occurrence, while the prostitution of the corners, areas and recesses of private property for these purposes is shameful, and is an opprobrium to any civilized city.
OUE DAUGHTERS.
It is stated that in a female college at Harrodsburgh, Ivy., the girls are taught to think, in the highest sense of the phrase. We hope President Peaser will establish a branch college of the same sort in New York city, there being nothing of the kind here. It seems that the u Euthalean Banner" is con- ducted by the young ladies connected with the institution. The name is puerile enough ; better burn it up. It spoils both boys and girls to write for the papers, for it will not be done without diverting attention from study. A newspaper writer ought to have passed thirty years. The newspaper has become a too important institution to be written for by children j its responsibilities are becoming daily more momentous.
HOTELS.
A new feature is inaugurated in hotel life, and greatly needed too. The proprietor of the Astor House, New York, advertises that, among other desireable things in his world-
A Physiological Chair. 75
famed hotel, " invalids will be especially attended to." If that should be so, it is the only hotel in New York in which " special attention" is not given to the special neglect of the unfortunate sick.
A PHYSIOLOGICAL CHAIR
Is made and sold by somebody — we know not who— pro- nounced by Prof. Fowler to be " the very thing" to make lazy young gentlemen and crooked-back girls sit erect ; for, if they do not, they will slide off. We consider it the happiest thought of the times, :put in practical shape, originating in the same broad platform of benevolence which led George Conch to devise how a natural shoe should be made. We never learned whether he was strikingly successful ; but we think a New York " C," has, in the devise of a true physiological chair, accomplished a more important success than the great name just mentioned essayed to do when he gave his magni- ficent mind to the solution of the shoe problem. We advise all city mothers to call at once at our office, and see the chair.
NOTICES, KEYIEWS, &c.
We have made an arrangement with Hubbard W. Swett, Book and Periodical Dealer, 128 Washington Street, Boston, to act as our Agent in that City, for the following books (our own publications) : — Health and Disease, a Book for the People ; Consumption, Bronchitis and Kindred Diseases ; and the Bound Volumes of the Journal of Health. H» B. S. will supply the trade of Boston at our Lowest Cash prices. We shall establish no agencies for the Monthly Journal, but leave the Sale open to all the Trade out of New York City, can be supplied by the following Wholesale News Agents, Ross & Tou- 8ay, 121 Nassau St., Dexter & Bro., 14 and 1G Ann St., and R. M. Dewitt, 160 and 162 Nassau St.
H. B. PRICE, Publisher,
No, 3 Everett House, New York.
The CounUy Gentleman, weekly, $2 a year, Albany, New York, is instructive to any family in the city or country, and merits as it re- ceives, a wide and generous pationage.
The Independent, New York, $2 a year, has for its special contribu- tors tor 1859, John G. Whittier, Harriet Beecher Stow, George B. Chever, Henry Ward Beecher ; great names all.
Ladies American Magazine, $2 a year, 7 Beekman Street, New York.
HalVs Journal of Health. 7(3
u Opthalmic Hospital-" New York. Fifth annual report, with an address by Mark Stephenson, M. D. Subject—" Law and Medicine contrasted." Able, scholarly, discriminating.
Moral Insanity. — Anything which Dr. Reese may choose to write on an important medical subject, commands the respectful attention of the medical profession. His " report" prepared at the request of the American Medical Association, should be preserved for reference, by every lawyer or physician of any eminence, not only here, but abroad. It is an able and standard contribution to medical jurispru- dence.
Millions of eyes have been delighted in past years by the beauti- ful engravings in " Graham's Magazine," which is now merged in
The Ladies Magazine, $2 a year, single numbers 1 Sets, Henry White, publisher, No. 7 Beekman Street, New York : we cordially wish it the success which it merits.
The Home, by Metta Victoria Fuller ; $1 50 a year. New York, and Buffalo. Is a safe companion for our wives and daughters.
Christian Revieiv, $3 a year; removed from Baltimore to New York, published by Shelden, Blakeman & Co., is one of the very best reli- gious quarterlies in AAerica. Baptist Lutheran Home Journal, $1 50 a year, published monthly at 732 Arch Street, Philadelphia.
Sixteenth Annual Report of the Young Men's Social' and Benevo- lent Society of the Presbyterian church and congregation, Fifth Avenue, corner of 19th Street, New York, organized March 22,. 1842. The average monthly attendance is two hundred ; of the 237 young men who have become members, since March 1842, only five have died ; this simple statement is one of the strongest proofs that can be given of the life insuring, and life preserving influences of that sobri- ety of character, of that steadiness and regularity of deportment which belongs to young men in cities whose tastes lead them to a con- nection with "Christian associations." Let every parent then, from the country, who sends a son to the city to try his fortune, enjoin it upon him, as a means of preserving character, health and life itself, to make it his first business, and by no means to be neglected, to con- nect himself with one of these " associations," a thousand fold better than any "company" or "club," or "band" in the government.
American Medical Gazette for February, edited by Dr. Reese, is the best number issued for variety, abili ty, and practicality. The world renowned Whitney case — for it is destined to travel through all civilized lands, and to be handed down to posterity, is fully reported. The learned editor comes ably and manfully to the defence of Dr. Horace Greene, who is by common consent, allowed to be one of the best, most honorable, and most eminent medical men at home or abroad. The incontrovertible facts declare, as does every physician in New York, who has taken proper -measures for a thorough investi- gation, that the operator had no agency whatever, directly or indirect- ly in the death of the patient, and such was our opinion from the first; the very supposition was an absurdity, under the true circumstances of the case.
Blackwood, $3, for FeVy, comes promptly and welcomely. — Fo? sale at our counter.
HALL'S JOURNAL OF HEALTH.
OUR LEGITIMATE SCOPE IS ALMOST BOUNDLESS : FOR WHATEVER BEGETS PLEASURABLE
AND HARMLESS FEELINGS, PROMOTES HEALTH ; AND WHATEVER INDUCES
DISAGREEABLE SENSATIONS, ENGENDERS DISEASE.
We aim to show how Disease may be avoided, and that it is best, when sickness comes, to take no Medicine without consulting an educated Physician.
VOL. VI.] APRIL, 1859. [No. 4.
BULL DOGS.
/When quite a child, a beautiful big dog came to our father's house, no one knew whose or whence. All the children were wonderfully taken with him; he was fed and caressed and played with, from morning till night, and we all thought we had gotten a valuable prize. Before long, however, we disco- vered a failing, a serious draw back ; there was no reliability in his mood ; for in the very midst of our gambols with him, he would sometimes turn round and snap at us so savagely, that we began to avoid him. Strangers would often exclaim " what a beautiful dog you have!" But we could not join in any commendation of him. We let visitors praise him, and we let him alone.
Later in life, we have found bull dogs everywhere, in every party, in every sect, in every profession, and in very many families.
A young man is a suitor, his dress and address mark the gentleman. He is educated, travelled, handsome. His de- meanour is unexceptionable, and he wins, the hand and trusting heart and makes them his own. But on a nearer view, after marriage, unexpected developments are made, startling prin- ciples are enunciated, the principles of the roue, of the gam- bler, of the infidel; with such an one a pure heart can never assimilate, and retires more and more within itself, while the other left more and more to itself, grows cold arid fretful ; be- comes daily more soured, and complaints, and faultfindings, 77
78 HalVs Journal of Health.
and growls, are the order of the day — that is a Domestic Bull Dog.
A strange physician arrives, he is polished in his manners, plausible in his theories, and confident in himself. Courteous in deportment, agreeable and gossipping in conversation, he wins his way among the people ; they forsake the man to whom they have been bound by ties of citizenship and near neigh- borhood for a dozen or twenty years, and the new comer is all and all. But time developes character. With a remorseless maw, he snaps at his new patrons' purses, bites out in merciless mouthfuls the substance of his patients, who just about that time find out that he is not as good as their " old doctor." But the new one got -their purse, and they got their experience by paying the — Medical Bull Dog.
A minister comes among us, we never heard of him before, but he "walks into our affections" unresistingly^ for we are carried away with his eloquence. As lavishly as corn grains to a brood of chickens, does he scatter around him the bright jewels of thought ; we feel as if we could sit and listen to him always, and he settles among us. But no sooner fixed, than some idea is proposed, which we do not like altogether, but thinking that we must have heard amiss it is passed over, and for " a spell," all moves on smoothly- as before: then another new idea is thrown out, rather more rousing than before, In fact it is disquieting ; and with the charity which many good qualities engendered, we think perhaps he did not mean what he said, had failed to express himself clearly ; but before the irritation has subsided, another shot is cast, and another and another, with shortening intervals, until not a sermon is heard without some expression is made more or less startling, enough to make us feel that it is nothing short of a desecration of the day and the place and the occasion. These things go on until by degrees the new-comer is "shied" from by the more re- flecting; they cease to wait on his ministrations, say nothing in his praise, and let him alone. ISText the newspapers take him up, they handle him gingerly ;at first, but his sentiments, and his conduct becoming more and more " liberal" in an un- gracious sense, he is, after much long suffering, in consequence of his undenied mental power and other bright qualities, re- luctantly " read out," and he settles down among the hetero-
Bull Dogs. . 79
dox and the infidel, where he belonged from the first, and thenceforward is regarded as a Clerical Bull Dog.
A daily, a weekly, a monthly, a quarterly publication is left at our doors. A close criticism discovers nothing objectionable and much to commend. It comes too, at a low price, and we conclude to give it the support of our patronage and influence. It continues good, and by degrees we begin to feel a personal interest in its prosperity ; and about this time, the rise in price to that of others of its class, is announced, we wince and bear it. Later- still, there is a latitudianarism in its editorials, not wholly agreeable ; these gradually grow more and more de- cided, to become in time as dogmatical, as impertinent, as levelling as any of its class, and we tolerate when we do not admire ; and as we can't better ourselves, we submit, to be aroused to indignation even, at sentiments uttered eYery now and then, political, social, religious, which almost determine us not to take that paper another day. But we must have a paper, it is no worse than the others, while in some things it is better, and we take it still, forgetting that an arrow poisoned with a false doctrine in politics, in domesticities, in religion? especially when barbed with ridicule, never fails to leave in young minds a venom which remains and rankles and corrupts to the utter ruin sometimes of the whole moral character. — Beware then of Editorial Bull Dogs.
The dog which came to our father's house had no doubt been kicked out of somebody .else's: we at length did the same thing, and he slunk off to find another home. He was, a peri- patetic bull dog, his prototype is found in those who go about the country lecturing professionally on this, that, or the other specified subject; but to cut the whole matter short, we will state it as our observation, that with very few exceptions, we come away from a public lecture with feelings varying from dissatisfaction to disgust, and now and then with horror ; for no later than last night, having for the reason above given, al- most wholly ceased from attending public lectures, we heard a man discoursing professedly on " Fun ;" we love a laugh, for we know it to be a better pill for the dispersion of blues, inanity and the like, than any of our compounding, hence we go willingly where a whole-souled risibility may be reasona- bly expected. The lecturer pleased us hugely at first. He hit
80 • Hairs Journal of Health.
r
off gaming, and profanity, and drunkenness to a T, closing, however, with the laudificatioh of Punc h, and Thackeray, and Dickens, making quotations from these men, as being superior to any sentiment from any pulpit in Christendom, and with a twitting of parsons and of people, "who were so pious that a smile was considered a profanity, he ceased with the growl of a Bull Dog Lecturer. The lesson of the article is — beware of new men, of strangers. Take time to " try the spirits." Of social bull dogs,' domestic bull dogs, and bull dogs medical, as also those of the press, the rostrum and the pulpit, beware !
_ .
SOEEOWING POYEETY.
That infant children should be starved to death deliberately in the great city of New York, is an almost incredible state- ment, except to the few, whose large intercourse with the world, has led them to the observation, that there is no mean- ness so unfathomable but some human wretch may be found who shall dive down and perpetrate it.
On a February day, within six squares of the palatial resi- dences of Fifth Avenue, three infants were found, so abject and idiotic in expression that all trace of humanity seemed lost. "They could not cry, and so brutish were they, that when lifted from their cradles they merely gazed about, as puppies or kit- tens ; none of them had any flesh on their bones."
Nearly two thousand children whose parents cannot take care of them, are constantly on the hands of the city ; the help- less children of crime, of poverty, of infidelity and prostitution. About two hundred of the above are to be nursed, and are distributed over the city to women who profess to have lost their own children; of these two hundred, were the three above referred to. •
We do not hold up to public reprobation the woman who engaged to take care of these three children, at the stipulated payment of one dollar a week each, the price paid for boarding
dogs in street, for most likely she was poor and ignorant
and perhaps herself at not a great remove from starvation.— Half frozen and famishing, the very best of us can't say what we would not do. Theoretical incorruptibility is the easiest of all easy things, to those who roll in wealth.
Sorrowing Poverty. 81
Ten men are elected, called governors of the almshouse. It is a position of honor and responsibility, for hundreds of thou- sands of dollars pass through their hands every year. These governors will not let a child go out to nurse until a respectable physician certifies that the woman is every way proper, to re- ceive the child ; next, a visitor is sent to the. house to see if appearances correspond, and if so the child is given out, and the matron of the alms house is required to visit each child once or twice a month. And yet, notwithstanding all this, here are three children accidentally found in the condition above named. These statements simply show the unfitness for office, somewhere.
Three-fourths of all children picked up in the streets of Kew York, die before their teens, because they are born dis- eased. In cases where most especial care was given, two- thirds died, showing this, that the children of vice are born diseased, are brought into the world with the physical mala- dies of their parents. Three-fourths of the idiotic in a Mas- sachusetts charity, were found to be of parents, one or both of whom were drunken. Physical vices therefore are not only perpetuated in the offspring, but they originate mental deform- ities. But if this is true of the degraded, it must be true of the genteely vicious. A Fifth Avenue mother, who in- dulges in opium or wines or cordials, is just as likely to have an idiotic child, as the besotted of the purlieus. The gour- mand of Fourteenth Street and Madison Square, who is al- ways " full," in skin and paunch as well as in purse, is just as likely to have a child which shall perish with marasmus or chronic diarrhoea, as the other of bad liquors at the five points.
Therefore, those who do not make good health a study and an aim, who do not practice daily the temperances and self denials which seldom fail to secure this good health, are com- mitting a crime against their unborn children, which they never can atone for.
WEAKLY YOUTHS.
W ithtn" one week, three persons have complained that their lives have been made lives of suffering, by the ignorance of parents, thus : They grew up rapidly, almost as tall at sixteen
82 HalVs Journal of JETealth,
as at mature age. The rapidity of their growth was attended with great debility, while the parents judging of the ability to work by the size, required more of them than they were able to perform, and a strain was imposed upon their constitu- tions, which made them a wreck after ; not indeed destroying- life, but leaving the body a shell, and all its functions so im- paired, as to their capabilities, that none of their work was well performed, resulting in disease of the whole system, making life a torture, and in one case we know of, there is ar never failing reprehension of parental memory.
Persons who are healthy and hearty themselves, do not know how to sympathize with a rapidly growing child, and their complaints of weariness are unheeded, blamed or scold- ed at. To all parents then, especially to farmers and me- chanics, we give the advice, when a child has grown up ra-* pidly, impose but little labor, and that,, never violent nor long, protracted ; it should be light, short, steady, not by fits and starts, never drive, always encourage, and when they go to bed at a regular, early hour, let them have all the sleep they will take, never allow them to be waked up, let nature do that, and she will do it regularly, and in due time. We know a man who almost daily execrates his father's memory, although he left him a handsome fortune, and a lady who at seventy -five, thinks- hard of her mother's severity, and want of sympathy in, this
regard.
WALK SOFTLY.
'The tiniest pebble thrown sea- ward from the beach, causes a wavelet, whose influences arc felt for unnumbered leagues- out upon old ocean's bosom. The softest whisper excites vibrations in the atmosphere . around us, which cease not this side the boundless ether ; so the act or thought of an immortal man, however insignificant, may color a lifetime,may leave influences which shall not cease, until time shall be no longer ; influences for good or ill, to millions of immortals like himself, for un- ending ages. These things being so, it would seem that every act should be a felt responsibility, and every thought a prayer.- Let us all walk softly then, or at least with, a motive and a wish for good.
Beautiful Old Age. 83
A crust of bread thrown thoughtlessly by a fellow student, made Prescott, in a measure, sightless for near half a century. An ill-timed jest has severed many a warm friendship, and planted bitterness for a lifetime, where ought to have welled up the warmest, and purest, and loveliest springs of our nature. Many a time and oft, has a frown, a harsh word, an unfeeling or contemptous gesture, crushed resolves forever, which were budding to a new and changed and better life; Header, let us all walk softly then by day and by night, at home and abroad^ inasmuch as for every step m life, we must give ac- count at the judgment.
BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE.
"What a lovely old' man he was; so simple and modest." Such is a traveller's testimony of a sage in his ninetieth year;, a man "whose greatness has: not destroyed his noble* ness of heart, but nobleness of heart has rendered still greater. " The author of " Cosmos" stands out among a million of men in his intelligence, in his age> in his striking physiognomy ;: the blue bright eye, the " massive forehead, deep, broad, over- hanging;" and the heart too, stands out, in even higher relief, than all the others, and the stranger apostrophises, " what a lovely old man!"
Religion makes a man lovely in his age ; true and deep science makes a man lovely in age ; and- so does a real great heart ; but the imperfections of our nature, all together fail to do it, too often, when there is not sound bodily health, under- lying the whole. It is good health which moulds the features in smiles, which warms up the affections, and mellows the heart with human sympathies \ on the other hand, illness cor- rugates the brow, freezes up the fountains of lovingness and despondency, and fretfulness reign supreme, unless counteract- ed by high christian principles.
With so much depending on bodily health when grav hairs come upon us, who shall not say that, next to securing a Bible piety, it should be the aim of all who are truly wise, to do what is possible by study, by observation and steady self de- nial, to maintain all the time, a high state of bodily health
84 HaW.s Journal of Health.
To grow kindly as age comes on, is to grow in likeness to, and a fit preparation for companionship with angels in the mansions where all is love ; but to grow cross and peevish and complaining, by reason of the irritating influences which a diseased and suffering body exercise over the. heart, making it a leafless tree, sapless and dry, when it should have boughs bending almost to the earth, with the delicious fruits of a loving nature,— how wide the contrast. Old age with religion and health, and old age with neither, let Cornaro and Yoltaire be the representative men ; and let every man determine within the hour, which portrait he will sit to, in what mould he shall be cast ; forgetting not, that that mould is in process of forma- tion now.
LIVING AGES.
It has been the aim of ova Journal to inculcate the idea that man should be in his fullest mental prime at sixty, and ought to live in good health an hundred years, and so would we, as a general rule, if we lived wisely, temperately, every day. We expect to be living an hundred years to come, not bodily, but in influences. This journal is influencing its steady readers from month to month, to live more or less according to its teachings, giving them increased vigor of body, and of mind, to be perpetuated in their offspring and they again to theirs. This is what we call " living for ages."
"Within a week, one of the best specimens of a whole man in New York, said of our writings, " they ought to be read, they will be read when you are gone." This single expression in the busiest hum of high noon in New York threw over our most time sunny heart, one of the most sudden and som- bre clouds in our remembrance ; not indeed a cloud of sorrow or of disapointment, but of responsibility. It came upon us like the weight of an avalanche, starting the enquiry, have I written truthfully ? invitingly? Have I, in anything, hoisted a false light, which some foundering brother long afterwards looking trustfully to, shall mislead and make a wreck of?
Then came the resolve, we will write more carefully here after, especially as our* transient readers are more than five fold what they ever were before. The next moment our
Object of Eating. 85
thoughts ran away off among our brother editors, and then all the writers and clergymen. Do they feel as fully as they ought, that every line they write, every sentiment they utter, are pebbles thrown, on the bosom. of the great sea of human life, which shall make waves of influences, that for all time, shall aid in propelling some human brother to glad successes, or to bitter disapointments, to final happiness, or to ultimate despair. Let us resolve then, one and all, as we must " live for ages," for good or for ill, that we will live to elevate • and bless humanity, by being truthful in every line we write in every sentiment we utter.
r I ~^~:
ffRTFCT OF FATTTCC
Taking food into the body is called eating, passing it from th-e body is called defecation. .
Three fourths of all our ailments occur, or are kept in con- tinuance, by preventing the daily food which is eaten, from . passing out of the body, after its substance has been extracted, by the living machinery, for the purpose of renovation and growth. A healthy laboring man will eat daily two pounds of solid food, of meat,, bread, vegetables and fruit; these two pounds, if brought together in one heap, would fill to overflow- ing the largest sized dinner plate, aud yet there are myriads- of grown-up men and women to whom the idea has never oc- curred, that if this mass is retained in the body, day by day, inevitable harm must accrue* If a man eats two pounds daily, near two pounds daily must in some way or other pass from his body, or disease and premature death is a* speedy and inevi-. table result.
The object of passing food through the body is threefold in youth; in maturity, two; for growth, sustenance,. and repair in the one, in the latter for support and repair only, that is> nutrition ; and the process by which the system .separates the nutriment from the food is called digestion ; the distribution of this digested material to the different parts of the body where needed, for the purpose of being incorporated' into bone, flesh, nerve, and tendon, is termed assimilation.
From " Health and Disease"
86 HalVs Journal of Health.
SORES.
Sometime ago, a little child had a pimple on its breast, which became a little sore, an amateur doctor advised a " sim- ple" remedy to be applied to it, which was done, neither the advice nor the remedy cost anything, except the child's life in forty-eight hours.
A gentleman had a small running sore on the top of his foot ; he was anxious to have it " cured up," we advised him to keep it running, but that was troublesome, and it was healed up, in a short time, a cold set in, and he died of consumption, at the end of a year.
The son of a merchant wanted to .reduce a swelling in the side, which began to " run ;" general remedies were proposed, with advice to let the " sore" alone. vThis did not suit his views, so he had it healed up, and died of consumption within two years.
A lady had a sore on the leg : it interfered with her walk- ing, she was impatient to have it " cured up," but was advis- ed as to the consequences, but this was disregarded.. The sore was healed up, and she died of consumption.
A lady aged seventy had a sore leg, and was extremely anxious to have it healed up. She was advised by all means to make no application to it, but merely to keep it under con- trol by general remedies. An old woman was applied to, and with various salves a wonderful " cure" was the result. Within a few weeks the lady took dinner in usual health, and died dm an hour.
A 'lady aged sixty six had a long continued violent and pain- ful cough, a "running" took place under the toe nail, she feared -mortification, and was anxious to have it healed up. She was told that it was the best thing that could have hap- pened toiler, inasmuch as it would probably cure her cough, and add years to her life, while by improving the general health the running might slowly dry up of itself, all which proved to be so, and now in her seventy-fourth year; she has better health than half our women at forty.
Oua* object in stating these facts which have occured in our own experience, within a comparatively short time, is to im- press upon the reader's mind, the signal danger of tampering with sores, ^especially such as are sometimes called " old sores,''
Heart Disease. 87
for they are the outlet to disease, and if injudiciously closed, what they would have discharged, will be thrown in upon more vital internal organs, causing apoplexy, consumption or fatal congestions, as certainly as the boiler of a locomotive will be shivered to atoms, if the fire is continued, and all escape of steam is prevented. In all cases of old sores, apply to a physician of age and experience. If that is not practicable, the safest and best plan is first, to diminish the amount of food eaten each day, one half, and keep the parts in a cleanly con- dition, by washing them' twice a day in soft, milk-warm water, until relief is given.
HEAKT DISEASE.
"When an individual is reported to have died of a "Disease of the Heart," we are in the habit of regarding it as an inevi- table event, as something which conld not have been foreseen or prevented, and it is too much the habit, when persons sud- denly fall down deadj to report the " heart" as the cause ; this silences all inquiry and investigation, and saves the trouble and inconvenience of a repulsive "postmortem." A truer report would have a tendency to save many lives. It is through a report of " disease of the heart," that many an opium eater is let off into the grave, which covers at once his folly and his crime ; the brandy drinker too, quietly slides round the corner thus, and is heard of no more ; in short this " report" of " disease of the heart," is the mantle of charity, which the politic coroner, and the sympathetic physician throw around the grave of " genteel people."
At a late scientific congress at Strasburgh, it was reported, that of sixty-six persons who had suddenly died, an immediate and faithful post mortem showed that only two persons had any heart affection whatever : one sudden death only, in thirty three, from disease of the heart. Nine out of the sixty-six died of apoplexy, one out of every seven, while forty-six, more than two out of three, died of lung affections, half of them of " congestion of the lungs," that is, the lungs were so full of blood, they could not work, there was not room for air enough to get in to support life.
88 HalVs Journal of Health.
It is then of considerable practical interest to know some of the common every day causes of this " congestion of the lungs," a disease which, the figures above being true, kills three times as many persons at short warning, as apoplexy and heart dis- ease together. Cold feet ; tight shoes ; tight clothing ; cos* tive bowels ; sitting still until chilled through and through, after having been warmed up by labor or along or hasty walk; going too suddenly from a close heated room, as a lounger or listener or speaker, while the body is weakened by continued application, or abstinence, or heated by the effort of a long address ; these are the fruitful, the very fruitful causes of sud- den death in the form of " congestion of the lungs ;" but which being falsely reported as " disease of the heart," and regarded as an inevitable event, throws people off their guard, instead of pointing them plainly to the true causes, all of which are avoidable, and very easily so, as a general rule, when the mind has been once intelligently drawn to the subject.
. i ■
A KELIGIOUS DAILY,
Conducted by scholars, christians and gentlemen, and with the tact, energy and industry which characterize the secular dailies, wTould be one of the greatest moral, social' and physiological boons of the present age. True, it is not a very easy matter to find a man who, besides being a scholar and a christian, is a practical- gentleman all the time. We do not believe there is a dozen such men within the city limits. There are a great many christian men, a great many learned men, and not a few, who are both learned and christian, but the. gentleman I where is he who is learned and christian too ! He must be hunted up with a lighted candle, and when found, it will be some man of whose quiet, retired and enjoyable existence, the great mass of citizens have never heard, because his very nature shrinks from exposure to the innumerable sources of contamination of the times. No man of reflection , can go intp a religious newsr paper office, and take up the' religious exchanges of any day, and fail to conclude that wormwood and gall are in too extent sive requisition. What a diarrhoea of sarcasm ; what a fecundity of satire ; what keeness of repartee ; what wordiness
A Religious Daily. 8 9
of reply ; a whole column at once, sometimes expended in annihilating an adversary, real or supposed. This has pro- ceeded to such an extent, that the staid and conservative of the secular press, have been forced to hold up the conduct of even fathers of the religious press, for public reprobation? which attempt to gentleman ize the delinquents, was met with fire and fury, intense!* still, and the exhibition of their malig- nity abated not a tittle !
A daily paper is a commercial necessity in our large cities, and generally our wives, and sons, and daughters get into the habit ot reading them. And what do they read _?: 1'he legal- ly constituted rulers and authorities are a standing subject of abuse, of vilification. The judiciaries are brought into con- tempt, clergymen are held up to public ridicule by namej church going people are sneered at, and the levelling principle predominates. The privacy of families is ruthlessly, on the least show of justification, dragged forth, and spread out before a million readers, while columns of police and Other reports are printed every day, in which crime is made a jest of, and the writers make themselves merry over the friost harrowing details. A girl is reported as " chopping" up- her mother, and in a diction, which makes it of little more importance than chopping up a pig for sausage meat. Especially is printed with a lucious gusto, what pertains to divorces, infidelities, assignations, rape and the like, with particularities, nothing short of disgusting ; and going further still the most abomi- nable bestialities are opened to the light of day. As to pri- vate character, all sacredness has been destroyed, and no man can wake up any morning in New York, and feel sure that he is not charged with some crime, or compromised as to some nefarious transaction, to be rectified next day, after it has been spread before a million eyes, by an anouncement in small print, in an obscure part of the paper, " we regret to have al- lowed a statement in yesterday's paper^ that our highly respect- able fellow citizen, Mr. Smith, had been taken up for horse stealing, when such was not the case."
We think that an important advance has been made towards protecting families from the vicious influences of the weekly secular press of New York, by the New York Observer, Evangelist, and others, giving all the important, reliable, se-
90 HalVs Journal of Health.
cular and commercial news, markets, price currents, &c, thus making it unnecessary for religious families, out of cities, to take any other paper than that which supplies them with reli- gious news and reading. Let us go another step forward, and have a religious daily, which will equal the very best secular paper in its shipping news, commercial, stock, and money ar^ tides, and as to the rest, filled up with the plain and un exag- gerated advertisements of honorable business men, having a corps of " correspondents" from main points abroad, who will always send facts, instead of conjectures, and in every thing, being prompt, sterling ai\d reliable.
If such a paper could be set on foot in New York city, with a semi-weekly and weekly edition at the rates, at which the secular dailies have become rich in a few years, it would be fitter cause for public illumination, bonfires and universal rejoicings, than the establishment of a dozen atlantic cables: and we believe further, that it would secure the patronage of the sterling citizens of all creeds and all parties.
But what has this to do with a Journal of Health ? It has much every way, and the connection is close enough. Such a paper would be a powerful source of moral health, militating against every grog shop, every beer saloon, every dance house, every place of assignation, public and private, for these are the places where the young are initiated into vicious practices, which ruin the health, crowd the hospitals, and perpetuate diseased constitutions.
FEOST WOEK.
Beautiful is it of a winter's morning, to look out upon the snow laden trees, the limbs and twigs bending to the ground with their crystal burden ; but there is coldness in that beauty.
Beautiful is it also to gaze upon the sculptured marble, and see its lineaments almost speaking with expression, but that beauty is more than cold, it is dead.
Beautiful is it to gaze upon the mirage of the desert, but it is deceitful ; and upon the rainbow, and the icicles of a million forms, sparkling like diamonds in the noon days' sunlight, but transient, empty, and unreal all.
Frost Work. 91
In painting and in music, there is beauty too ; but they, and ail others, are lacking in this, they want the beauty, transcending every thing else, the beauty of life and of love.
There is beauty in a splendid education, where the mind has been trained in all the accuracy of mathematics, in all the elevating elegances of poetry, and painting, and sculpture, and music. And grammar, and logic, and rhetoric may have been thoroughly mastered and reduced to the practice of an accomplished writer and a finished orator, an abstract