As a Matter of Course | Page 6

patient's want of nourishment.

Fortunately the process of getting back into the true food-current is not
difficult if one will adopt it The trouble is in making the bold plunge. If
anything is eaten that is afterwards deemed to have been imprudent, let
it disagree. Take the full consequences and bear them like a man, with
whatever remedies are found to lighten the painful result. Having made
sure through bitter experience that a particular food disagrees, simply
do not take it again, and think nothing about it. It does not exist for you.
A nervous resistance to any sort of indigestion prolongs the attack and
leaves, a brain-impression which not only makes the same trouble more
liable to recur, but increases the temptation to eat forbidden fruit. Of
course this is always preceded by a full persuasion that the food is not
likely to disagree with us now simply because it did before. And to
some extent, this is true. Food that will bring pain and suffering when
taken by a tired stomach, may prove entirely nourishing when the
stomach is rested and ready for it. In that case, the owner of the
stomach has learned once for all never to give his digestive apparatus
work to do when it is tired. Send a warm drink as a messenger to say
that food is coming later, give yourself a little rest, and then eat your
dinner. The fundamental laws of health in eating are very simple; their
variations for individual needs must be discovered by each for himself.
"But," it may be objected, "why make all this fuss, why take so much
thought about what I eat or what I do not eat?" The special thought is
simply to be taken at first to get into the normal habit, and as a means
of forgetting our digestion just as we forget the washing of our hands
until we are reminded by some discomfort; whereupon we wash them
and forget again. Nature will not allow us to forget. When we are not
obeying her laws, she is constantly irritating us in one way or another.
It is when we obey, and obey as a matter of course, that she shows
herself to be a tender mother, and helps us to a real companionship with
her.
Nothing is more amusing, nothing could appeal more to Mother
Nature's sense of humor, than the various devices for exercise which
give us a complicated self-consciousness rather than a natural
development of our physical powers. Certain simple exercises are most
useful, and if the weather is so inclement that they cannot be taken in
the open air, it is good to have a well-ventilated hall. Exercise with
others, too, is stimulating, and more invigorating when there is air

enough and to spare. But there is nothing that shows the subjective,
self-conscious state of this generation more than the subjective form
which exercise takes. Instead of games and play or a good vigorous
walk in the country, there are endless varieties of physical culture, most
of it good and helpful if taken as a means to an end, but almost useless
as it is taken as an end in itself; for it draws the attention to one's self
and one's own muscles in a way to make the owner serve the muscle
instead of the muscle being made to serve the owner. The more
physical exercise can be simplified and made objective, the more it
serves its end. To climb a high mountain is admirable exercise, for we
have the summit as an end, and the work of climbing is steadily
objective, while we get the delicious effect of a freer circulation and all
that it means. There might be similar exercises in gymnasiums, and
there are, indeed, many exercises where some objective achievement is
the end, and the training of a muscle follows as a matter of course.
There is the exercise-instinct; we all have it the more perfectly as we
obey it. If we have suffered from a series of disobediences, it is a
comparatively easy process to work back into obedience.
The fresh-air-instinct is abnormally developed with some of us, but
only with some. The popular fear of draughts is one cause of its loss.
The fear of a draught will cause a contraction, the contraction will
interfere with the circulation, and a cold is the natural result.
The effect of vitiated air is well known. The necessity, not only for
breathing fresh air when we are quiet, but for exercising in the open,
grows upon us as we see the result. To feel the need is to take the
remedy, as a matter of course.
The rest-instinct is most generally disobeyed, most widely needed, and
obedience to it would bring the most effective results. A