A. K. Gardner

“ Health and comfort and life are disregarded as much as possible. The young child is so dressed as to expose its dimpled arms and its sweet amplitude of neck, and sent to walk, no matter how chill and blustering the weather, with its plump legs unstockinged and bare. ”

“ In the quiet and secluded angles and nooks gather the lint and dust of the whole apartment. In the corners and recesses of a hospital-ward gather the miasm and the pestilence. In the unused portions of machinery do we find the rust and tarnish, and the mildew blasts the quiet and the still parts of all Nature. ”

“ Food.—If we look at the entire population of the inhabitable globe, in the different centuries, we can, with each succeeding age, note an alimentary improvement. We see now few famines bearing wide-spread destruction in their path. The intercourse of nations, the sympathy of a recognized common humanity, the spirit of trade and commerce, the rapid communication by telegraph, and the power of applied steam, have united to prevent the possibility of a great national famine in the future. The world now feeds the world, and a dearth in one locality is supplied by the affluence of another. ”

“ Physical health and vigor, and mental strength and power, are to a great degree a matter of hereditary transmission, over which the individual has no control. Yet, taking our natures as they are, we can renovate, reinvigorate, and advance them by attentive study of and conformity to the laws upon which health and vigor are based. I propose in the present article briefly to glance at the chief physical agencies—air, exercise, clothing, food, and rest—and at some of the mental and moral influences, by the bad or good employment of which the physical stock is deteriorated or improved. ”

“ War and its martial exercises, labor and its attendant fatigues of the body, the chase and its toils, housewifery, the fabrication by hand of all the necessities of life—these healthy exercises have been done away with by excessive wealth, the fashion of indolence, and steam appliances. Work being now denounced by fashion, and delegated to servants, the women of the country have no severer toil than playing the piano and dancing, with an occasional saunter in the street on a very fine day. ”

“ Even those of later date, who lived in the small cities of former days, occupied no tightly-glazed, windowed apartments, but slept a great part of the time on the unbedewed roofs of their houses, covered only by the radiance of the gentle moon and the twinkling stars. ”

“ The necessity of breathing is recognized, and we have various formulated sayings implying that to stop breathing is to stop living. But, practically, the world is trying to see how little air can be actually used—and, with some, this is almost their only economy and next, to see how poor a quality of air can sustain their life.
One-half of the civilized race—i. e., all the women, and some men—so dress themselves that by no possibility can they take a full breath. As the lungs are never fully inflated, their capability of expansion is gradually lessened. ”

“ There is a prospect of some return to a renewal of the beneficent influences of the sun, from the sheepish followers of fashion. This fickle goddess has recently started the doctrine that, as a reaction from the tanning effects of a summer's out-of-door exposure, the winter's change adds new brilliancy and transparence to the complexion. Fashionable butterflies now seek for the most complete tanning that the summer's solstice can effect, in order to secure a corresponding reaction, and insensibly gather health and invigoration. ”

“ Contrast the myopic and weak-eyed men of the day with the eagle-eyed men of the plain and forest, whose sight needs no screening from the sunlight, by broad visor and head-apparel or dainty parasols. To their unshrinking eyes light has no perils or disagreeableness. ”

“ The long-lived generations of the past did better than worship the gsun: they lived in its light, bathed in its warmth, and had their spirits and material substance imbued with its life-giving potency. ”

“ The continual opening of new territories of immense extent, and seemingly inexhaustible richness, and most of all the frequent discovery of new grains, roots, and fruits, and the development and improvement of the old, seem to insure the world for the future against local destitution and suffering of this nature. ”

“ Exercise.—The Greeks made exercise a part of education, and the athlete, if not also a philosopher and a poet, or a tragedian and orator, was at least esteemed as highly by the community. Exercise was a part of every one's life, a business, a pleasure, and a necessity. ”

“ WHETHER the human race is degenerating, and, if so, by what causes, are questions of much speculative interest to scientific thinkers, and of much practical interest to each father and mother in the community. ”

“ We have already shown the injurious results which wealth brings, in depriving the rich of exercise, by taking away its mainspring, in substituting fashion for necessity; it exerts a far more deleterious influence when it ministers to the appetites. ”

“ More than any one thing else, the discovery of the potato has effected this end; while the introduction of Indian corn and the utilization of the animal life that roam over the immense prairies of America, in both a wild and domesticated state, add a large quota to the alimentation of the world, and have raised the physical stamina of humanity. ”

“ The tendency of daily dress throughout the world, imperfect as it is, is yet an improvement upon the past, and life is rather prolonged than curtailed by the change. The corset, allowing all the objections—and they are not entirely correct—that may be urged against its use and abuse, is yet far in advance of the steel bars, like animal cages, of former days. So far, then, as clothing is concerned, no physical degeneration can be ascribed to modern changes, but, on the contrary, the slight alteration has been for the better ”

“ The moon has been deemed almost the arbiter of man's destiny, for every thing was supposed to be attached to the mystery of its quarterings, and its coming or going was (and is) supposed to have a gravity utterly untenable upon any scientific principle; and yet to the great orb of day, of which the moon and stars are but reflections, and to which we are compelled to directly ascribe life and vigor, so little attention has been paid—perhaps from the comparative absence of mystery—that its importance has been, till lately, unrecognized by hygienic writers. ”

“ Unquestionably, the excessive use of tobacco and spirits—as some sensualists constantly continue under their influence—must have a marked effect upon the nervous energies, thereby interfering with the powers of assimilation and reproduction. It may be, as alleged, that this loss of vigor is entailed upon succeeding generations, and that to these influences may be in truth ascribed some considerable portion of the physical decadence which so characterizes the present epoch. ”

“ When a woman, in the vigor of health, while nursing her own child at the breast, becomes again pregnant, her first knowledge of and attention to this fact frequently arise from the effects of her milk upon her nursing babe. Sometimes the child grows meagre, pallid, is evidently not thriving; occasionally has spasms from apparent indigestion; at others, it is often nauseated, and ejects the curdled milk, with or without accompanying diarrhoea. The child is withdrawn from the breast, proper food is substituted, and a manifest improvement commences immediately. ”

“ Instead of sun-penetrated tents, men now live in thick-walled dwellings, through whose stony externals the solar warmth cannot strike to dry up the dank humidity, and the sparse and infrequent rays, that might perchance enter through the narrow windows, are carefully shut out by the voluminous folds of ornamental silks, lest the rich carpets be faded thereby. ”

“ Plants have their alternate periods of growth and apparent rest. Animals have their periods of activity and repose. The muscle cannot keep up its continued contraction; and the body, wearied by persistent toil or action, however light or pleasing, sooner or later demands rest, and the entire muscular system gives itself up to repose, with the exception of the continuous breathing and the persistent beating of the heart. ”

“ And the dwellers within live in darkness of vision and intellect, ignorant that they are excluding the royal visitor to whose gracious coming every avenue should be thrown wide open, to admit the king possessing a true "royal touch," potent to the cure of more ills than was ever ascribed to earthly sovereign. ”

“ The ultra-temperance partisans have a far stronger argument for the entire disuse of all stimulating beverages, upon moral rather than upon physical grounds; as it is undoubtedly the fact that the character of the diseases of the world has been more modified by the disuse of liquors, etc., than from any one other cause ”

“ The vigorous appetites are wanting, and, possibly, the debile gastric juice, arising from a lack of physical exertion and an excess of mental stimulus, may be the active cause of the general physical deterioration so markedly present throughout the civilized world. ”

“ The same state of things is seen in the wheat of the country, which, having first nearly exhausted the unfertilized soil, finishes by being itself exhausted of the nutritious phosphates and nitrogenous elements so necessary for the bone and nervous tissues of the human frame. This is very important, especially for the young, a great portion of whose alimentation comes from bread. ”

“ But while it is acknowledged that the race down to its lowest strata of humanity is improved and improving, the same statement is not true respecting the higher classes. While the average stamina is greater, theirs is unquestionably deteriorated. ”

“ If any evidence is wanted to show the imperfect nutrition of the better classes, it may be found in the frequency of dyspepsia, scrofulous diseases, and deaths from diseases of exhaustion and debility, as contrasted with the general vigor, capacity for prolonged exertion, digestion of immense dinners, excessive drinking, and general deaths from inflammations, plethora, apoplexies, congestions, gout, and the like, which were the main causes of the death of our forefathers. ”

“ There are certain enthusiasts who ascribe all the ills of flesh to certain special causes of comparative trivial importance, but their crude theories are based upon such imperfect data as necessarily to render their deductions of little value. ”

“ But the improvement in manufactures and the general adoption of machinery into the making of cloths, and especially the general use of the sewing-machine in the fabrication of garments, have made such a difference in the comparative cost of clothing, that it may be believed that never before was the world so comfortably dressed as at present ”

“ Take the men of New York to-day, and not one in five hundred can make a difference in the dimensions of the chest, from a full inspiration to a complete expiration, of five inches, measured at the nipple. ”

“ Supposing that the blood is sufficiently aerated without the use of the full capacity of the lungs, say by an increased number of respirations—are not the necessities of Nature thus adequately supplied, and consequently no injury done? ”

“ The wheat itself has suffered in its nutritious qualities by the extreme care taken in its cultivation. The canary-bird fancier, in his zeal to raise high-colored birds by interbreeding, obtains his buttercup-yellow, but at the cost of a very scanty plumage. ”

“ The stock-raiser gets his thoroughbred horse with his thin neck, small head, diminutive ears, greyhound legs, and peculiar barrel, but with them a high nervous organization and uncertain temper, that make the animal impracticable for the ordinary pursuits of life. ”

“ It is not only poets and sentimentalists that have acknowledged the importance of the moon and the stars as hygienic mental and spiritual influences upon man, but grave doctors and learned searchers after truth have been ready to add the weight of their judgment to the superficial imaginings of the common thought. ”

“ This sentence, translated into the language of the present, in New York, would be to each individual, "Earn a dollar a day and feed yourself with that alone." This would approximate to living healthily—as did our forefathers—though it is impossible for a man of ordinary means to feed himself healthily in New York, because bread is a prime necessity. ”

“ A too prolonged exertion is followed by muscular irregularities, cramps, exhaustion, and rheumatic incapacities, effects disagreeable enough, but generally of temporary duration, and with little or no permanent effect on the general constitution or on succeeding generations. ”

“ Hygienic writers have generally most astonishingly ignored the powerful effects of this luminary, the centre of life and heat, and without which vegetable life would be a nullity. Can we, therefore, doubt its energizing potency upon animal life? ”

“ With the women it is still less; probably never since extreme childhood—for romping days end early now—have they been capable of taking a full breath in the daytime, the nearest approach to it being effected, not by the expansion of the chest, but by the action of the abdominal muscles and the downward withdrawal of the diaphragm. ”

“ He says that one using tobacco freely is so permeated by its deleterious properties, that the ordinary mosquitoes, flies, and household vermin, flee from his presence, a statement so at variance with generally-recognized facts, that the entire theory of the perhaps otherwise correct writer is discredited thereby. ”