Maintaining Health | Page 2

unreasonable haste and speed are wasteful and that life is more valuable than accumulated wealth, human life could and should be a certainty. There should be no sudden deaths resulting from the popular diseases of today. In fact, pneumonia, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, cancer and various other ills that are fatal to the vast majority of the race, should and could be abolished. This may sound idealistic, but though such results are not probable in the near future, they are possible.
All civilized nations of which we have record, except the Chinese, have decayed after growing and flourishing a few centuries, usually about a thousand years or less. Many reasons are given for the decline and fall of nations. Rome especially furnishes food for much thought. However, look into the history of each known nation that has risen to prominence, glory and power, and you will find that so long as they kept in close contact with the soil they flourished. With the advance of civilization the peoples change their mode of life from simplicity to luxuriousness and complexity. Thus individuals decay and in the end there is enough individual decay to result in national degeneration. When this process has advanced far enough these people are unable to hold their own. In the severe competitition of nations the strain is too great and they perish. There is a point of refinement beyond which people can not go and survive.
From luxury nations are plunged into hardship. Then their renewed contact with the soil gradually causes their regeneration, if they have enough vitality left to rise again. Such is the history of the Italians. Many others, like the once great Egyptians, whose civilization was very far advanced and who became so dissolute that a virtuous woman was a curiosity, have been unable to recover, even after a lapse of many centuries. The degenerated nations are like diseased individuals: Some have gone so far on the road to ruin that they are doomed to die. Others can slowly regain their health by mending their ways.
Nations, like individuals, generally do better in moderate circumstances than in opulence. Nearly all can stand poverty, but only the exceptional individual or nation can bear up under riches. Nature demands of us that we exercise both body and mind.
Civilization is not inimical to health and long life. In fact, the contrary is true, for as the people advance they learn to master the forces of nature and with these forces under control they are able to lead better, healthier lives, but if they become too soft and luxurious there is decay of moral and physical fibre, and in the end the nation must fall, for its individual units are unworthy of survival in a world which requires an admixture of brain and brawn.
Civilization is favorable to long life so long as the people are moderate and live simply, but when it degenerates to sensuous softness, individual and racial deterioration ensue. Among savages the infant mortality is very great, but such ills as cancer, tuberculosis, smallpox and Bright's disease are rare. These are luxuries which are generally introduced with civilization. Close housing, too generous supply of food, too little exercise and alcohol are some of the fatal blessings which civilized man introduces among savages.
A part of the price we must pay for being civilized is the exercise of considerable self-control and self-denial, otherwise we must suffer.
The state of the individual health is not satisfactory. There is too much illness, too much suffering and too many premature deaths. It is estimated that in our country about three millions of people are ill each day, on the average. The monetary loss is tremendous and the anguish and suffering are beyond estimate.
The race is losing every year a vast army of individuals who are in their productive prime. When a part of a great city is destroyed men give careful consideration to the material loss and plan to prevent a recurrence. But that is nothing compared to the loss we suffer from the annual death of a host of experienced men and women. Destroyed business blocks can be replaced, but it is impossible to replace men and women.
We look upon this unnecessary waste of life complacently because we are used to it and consequently think that it is natural. It is neither necessary nor natural. If we would read and heed nature's writings it would cease. Then people would live until their time came to fade away peacefully and beautifully, as do the golden leaves of autumn or the blades of grass.
Many dread old age because they think of it in connection with decrepitude, helplessness and the childish querulousness popularly associated with advancing years. This is not a natural old age; it is disease. Natural old age is sweet, tolerant and cheerful. There are