Part 5 (1/2)

”Laughter as a Health Promoter.--In his 'Problem of Health,' Dr. Greene says that there is not the remotest corner or little inlet of the minute blood-vessels of the human body that does not feel some wavelet from the convulsions occasioned by good hearty laughter. The life principle, or the central man, is shaken to its innermost depths, sending new tides of life and strength to the surface, thus materially tending to insure good health to the persons who indulge therein. The blood moves more rapidly and conveys a different impression to all the organs of the body, as it visits them on that particular mystic journey when the man is laughing, from what it does at other times. For this reason every good hearty laugh in which a person indulges tends to lengthen his life, conveying, as it does, new and distinct stimulus to the vital forces.”

CHAPTER X.

”While bright-eyed science watches round.”

A scientific investigation into the nature and causes of consumption proves the immediate causes, apart from hereditary, to be dampness of houses and localities. Of races, the negroes seem most liable, and the Jews the most exempt. A french scientist has found that inhalation of air containing a small amount of _hydrofluoric acid_ gas has a remarkably good effect on _consumption_. In England good results were obtained by inspiration of air mixed with _ozone_. That the disease results chiefly from inactivity of the lungs is the statement of a physician who maintains that the cure of the disease is a mechanical question. The International Tuberculosis Congress lately held at Paris admits that tuberculosis is contagious, can be transmitted from man to animals, and _vice versa_, and is the same in men, women, and cattle.

Diseased milk is the most frequent agent of transmission, and with this meat, particularly lightly cooked, as food. Predisposing causes are sedentary life, overwork, mental anxiety, insufficient nourishment, in general, anything calculated to lower the vitality. The congress has discovered no remedy, only palliatives for tuberculosis. Catarrhs, bronchitis, and other throat troubles have a tendency to develop into pleurisy or consumption when neglected.

_Typhoid fever_ never affects the atmosphere, but it does affect water, milk, ice, and meat. The eggs of a parasite from dogs, and hence more or less infecting all waters to which dogs have access, appear to have an unequaled facility of pa.s.sage to all parts of the human system.

As for _surgical operations_, in a German paper are particulars of a case in which the eye of a man was thrust out of its socket by a parasite cyst in the rear, discovered by surgical exploration and extracted. From a 5-year old boy an injured kidney was removed successfully and the patient recovered. The bridge of the nose was completely restored by using the breast-bone of a chicken and stretching the flesh of the old nose over it.

Even the part of a destroyed nerve of the arm was restored by the subst.i.tution of a part of a sound nerve from an amputated limb, so that the continuity was restored and sensation returned in 36 hours!

Prematurely-born children are kept in an artificial mother, which consists of a gla.s.s case warmed by bowls of water. A new opiate has been discovered called the sulsonal. It produces sleep in nervous people and those affected with heart disease, but not in healthy subjects. The idea that sufferers from heart disease should avoid physical exertion has been dispelled by a noted physiologist who has successfully employed regulated exercise.

Brown-Sequard has brought out his great Vital Fluid. He is reported as saying: ”I never made use of the word 'elixir,' still less of the words 'elixir of life.' These are all expressions or inventions of sensational newspapers. If quacks or ignorant men in America have killed people, as stated by the New York papers, they would have avoided committing those murders had they paid the least attention to the most elementary rules as regards the subcutaneous injection of animal substances. Injections of animal matter have no danger, as a rule, unless the substances begin to be decomposed. When this condition of things exists, no good can be obtained, and there is grave danger of inflammation, abscesses, and even death.”

”Professor Brown-Sequard is reported to have lately informed the French Academy of Sciences that, by condensing the watery vapor coming from the human lungs, he obtained a poisonous liquid capable of producing almost immediate death. The poison is an alkaloid (organic), and not a microbe or series of microbes. He injected this liquid under the skin of a rabbit and the effect was speedily mortal without convulsions. Dr.

Sequard said it was fully proved that respired air contains a volatile element far more dangerous than the carbonic acid which is one of its const.i.tuents, and that the human breath contains a highly poisonous agent. This startling fact should be borne in mind by the occupants of crowded horse-cars and ill-ventilated apartments.”

”A very curious geographical distribution of certain virtues and vices has been mooted by a scientist. Intemperance is mostly found above lat.i.tude 48, amatory aberrations south of the forty-fifth, financial extravagance in large seaports, industrial thrift, in pastoral highland regions.”

”Advance in Hygienic Clothing.--The new cellular clothing now coming into use in England is said to be a success. It is woven out of the same materials as the common weaves of cloth, being simply, as its name indicates, closely woven into cells, the network of which is covered over with a thin fluff. Its porous quality allows the slow pa.s.sing of the outside and inside air, giving time for the outside air to become of the same temperature as the body, obviating all danger of catching colds, and allowing vapors constantly exhaled by the body to pa.s.s off, thus contributing toward health and cleanliness. The common objection to cotton clothing--that it is productive of chills and colds--is removed if woven in this manner, and the invention can certainly be said to be strictly in accordance with hygienic and scientific principles.”

The annual death rate, in 1888, for the princ.i.p.al cities of the world, per 1,000 inhabitants, was: San Francisco, Cleveland, Stockholm, 17; Bristol, Dresden, 18; Chicago, Cincinnati, Edinburgh, London, Turin, 19; Berlin, Baltimore, Brussels, Buffalo, Liverpool, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, 20; Brooklyn, St. Louis, Tokyo, 21; Amsterdam, Christiana, Paris, Was.h.i.+ngton, 22; Glasgow, 23; Copenhagen, 24; Bombay, Boston, New Orleans, Pesth, Venice, Vienna, 25; Breslau, Calcutta, Manchester, New York, Prague, Rotterdam, 26; Dublin, 27; Rome, 28; Hamburg, Munich, 29; Trieste, 30; Buda Pesth, St. Petersburg, 32; Alexandria, 38; Madras, 40; and Cairo, 51.

The death rate among the poor and rich respectively varies much. In Paris the death rate per 1,000 inhabitants between 40 and 50 years in easy circ.u.mstances was 8.3 against 18.7 among the poor. In London are some districts of the wealthy cla.s.ses where the rate was 11.3 against 38 in the slums. The mean age at death among the gentry was 55 years, while among the workers it was 20-1/2 years. It was found that only 8% of the children of the upper cla.s.ses died in their first year against 19% in the general population of Liverpool and 33% in the slums of that city.

Deaths from consumption were nearly one-fourth of all deaths among the poor, and only one-eighteenth among the rich.

The above facts and figures cannot fail to set every intelligent person who reads them to thinking of this great health problem.

HAPPINESS.

CHAPTER XI.

HAPPINESS.

”The learned is happy Nature to explore, The fool is happy that he knows no more.”

Happiness is defined by Webster as an agreeable feeling or condition of the soul arising from good of any kind; the possession of those circ.u.mstances or that state of being which is attended with enjoyment; the state of being happy; felicity; blessedness: bliss; joyful satisfaction.

_Happiness_ is generic and applied to almost every kind of enjoyment except that of the animal appet.i.tes; _felicity_ is a more formal word, and is used more sparingly in the same general sense, but with elevated a.s.sociations; _blessedness_ is applied to the most refined enjoyment arising from the purest social, benevolent, and religious affections; _bliss_ denotes still more exalted delight, and is applied more appropriately to the joy antic.i.p.ated in heaven.

Happiness is only comparative, and we drink it in, in the exact ratio of our understanding to interpret the justice of the divinity within us.

The first pre-requisite is_ wisdom_, the second is like unto it, _more wisdom_, and the third sufficient understanding to know that it is wisdom.

”It is easy enough to be pleasant, When life flows by like a song, But the man worth while is one who will smile When everything goes dead wrong.