Louis Philippe McCarty

“ In my long medical career, I have rarely known an instance in which a child has not preferred fruit to animal food. I have been many times called upon to treat children for stomachic disorders induced by pressing upon them animal to the exclusion of fruit diet, and have seen the best results occur from the practice of reverting to the use of fruit in the dietary. I say it without the least prejudice, as a lesson learned from simple experience, that the most natural diet for the young, after the natural milk diet, is fruit and whole-meal bread, with milk and water for drink. ”

“ Supposing your own house, sidewalk, alley, or yard, are comparatively immaculate, it will be impossible to live without constant danger and exposure if your friend (or enemy in this sense) has an untidy house, a dirty sidewalk, and a filthy yard, in your proximity. Then how encouraging to note that health is as contagious as disease. It even spreads with greater rapidity. Health is gladly welcomed; disease is shunned like a deadly poison. All over the world past and contemporary history proves that, once started, health spreads at a rate that disease cannot follow. ”

“ Care would soon overwhelm us; the heart would corrode; the river of life would be like the lake of the Dismal Swamp; we should begin our career with a sigh, and end it with a groan; while cadaverous faces, and words to the tune of 'The Dead March in Saul,' would make up the whole interlude of our existence. ”

“ All who occupy some places seem to be attacked by chills, while the occupants of places close by are never so attacked. Health is the rule. I saw that all these people, those on the healthy and those on the sickly places, must breathe the same air, coming to them from the same hot, stagnant water and decaying vegetation, and I concluded that malaria was not in the air. ”

“ How is that possible, if we regard our capable men as miracles, when our own incapacity to understand is the only miracle when we leave the great possibilities of mind in unnumbered "thousands to die with the matter of their bodies? Charity builds a small-pox hospital and men bless it—rightly. It benefits its hundreds and its thousands. The same benevolence, operating under the force of the conserved energy of mind, discovers vaccination, and so benefits millions and tens of millions for ages after the small-pox hospital is back in the clay from which its bricks were burned. ”

“ The great obstacle to be overcome in carrying out the law of segregation consists in the fact that the Hawaiians do not appreciate and refuse to be convinced that leprosy is a communicable disease. It is with them as if devotion to a fatal sentimentality had bid defiance to every instinct of self-preservation. Marriages between leprous and non-leprous individuals are freely contracted, and the intimacies are not prevented by the fact of potent evidences of the disease. ”

“ The majority of mankind admire a well-developed physique. The minister wishes and prays to influence the masses of men. Can he reach them effectively, can he point to himself as an example, can he sway them by any reasoning or eloquence, when he himself has a husky voice, a pallid face, and a weakened figure? Indeed, the cowled, decrepit monk could lead the world in the darkness of the middle ages; but in the brightness of the nineteenth century his scepter is powerless.
Health, Happiness and Longevity seem to be all that is required for mortal man. ”

“ The more unselfish you become, the less you think of personal comfort, and the more pleasure you take in the comforts of others, the deeper and broader will the fountains of your own happiness become. There is no class of people who have equal happiness or bliss pictured upon their countenances to those who practice and teach the universal brotherhood of man without regard to race, creed, sex, caste, or color. ”

“ Who would desire more than the possession of perfect health, the realization of happiness, the achievement of ripe old age, retaining all the pleasurable attributes of Perfected Manhood, experiencing all these until called upon to surrender this present house of clay for a more advanced state, whatever that may be? ”

“ If he mends his pace in obedience to the stimulus, every step is a drop drawn from his life-blood. Idleness is not one of the faults of the present age; weariness is one of the commonest experiences. The checks that many a man draws on his physiological resources are innumerable; and, as these resources are strictly limited, like any other ordinary banking account, it is very easy to bring about a balance on the wrong side. Adequate rest is one kind of repayment to the bank, sound sleep is another, regular eating and good digestion another. ”

“ Most men who use their brains much soon learn for themselves that the sense of physical exaltation, the glow of exuberant health which comes from a body strung to its full powers by continuous and severe exercise, is not favorable to study. The exercise such men need is the exercise that rests, not that which tires. They need to wash their brains [Pg 84] with the fresh air of heaven, to bring into gentle play the muscles that have been lying idle while the head worked. Nor is it only to this class of laboring humanity that the advice to take exercise needs reservations. ”

“ You must be aware that a score of maladies are kept at bay by the regularity of the bowels. This fact cannot be too strongly impressed on mankind in general. It is very seldom indeed that you come upon a man who is well with a bad digestive apparatus; but, again, he who possesses a strong stomach and is moderate and regular in eating is almost invariably characterized with a vigorous constitution. Disease finds no place to locate upon or in him. There is no doubt the American people eat too fast, and that is why so many die so soon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A continual anxiety for life vitiates all the relishes of it, and casts a gloom over the whole face of nature, as it is impossible that we should take delight in anything that we are every moment afraid of losing. ”

“ We possess none of the attributes save in a degree only, any one of which can be intensified, brightened, or benefited by our thoughts and actions. The shortest road to happiness, after having cleansed your body, actions, and thoughts, is to "do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, to all living creatures you can, just as long as you can." ”

“ Here, then, my reader, we have the explanation why a man may live through dissipation all his life, and then die only by accident at 80 or 100 years of age. A beggar, miser, or hermit may by degrees contract the habit of filthiness, non-bathing, scantiness of food and improper clothing, with such regularity that he will outlive all his friends and relatives, and be chronicled at his death as one of the centenarians. ”

“ To see the moon over the left shoulder is as unlucky as to hold the four of clubs at cards. But the new moon seen over the right shoulder, or straight in front, portends fortune as smiling as her own bright rays. ”

“ I am not a prophet, nor the son of one, but I will venture an opinion that before the close of the next century, the position of the minister, teacher, and physician will be filled by one and the same person. The teacher then will fill the most exalted position on the earth. He will not only instruct how to navigate the air without collision, but how not to catch cold at 30,000 feet elevation in your shirt sleeves, and who and what is God. His school-house will sit upon the most elevated spot in his district, with light reflected from all four sides ”

“ The real truth seems to be that poverty, with an iron constitution and sound nerves, is most likely to produce an instance of extreme age; but the possession of the comforts and amenities of life produces by far the best average of ages. The average age of the middle classes has always surpassed that of others; but at present sanitation forces on the poor so many provisions against disease that they are saved from their former high death-rate, and brought quite near the privately better-bred and furnished class. ”

“ Brain Worry.—"After a good spell of hard work, the brain worker is often tormented by finding it difficult, all at once, to turn off the steam. His work-day thoughts will intrude themselves in spite of every effort to keep them out. Thackeray generally succeeded in exorcising the creatures he had been calling into existence, by the simple expedient of turning over the leaves of a dictionary. A great lawyer was in the habit, in similar circumstances, of plunging into a cold bath, and averred that a person never took out of cold water the same ideas that he took into it. ”

“ Happiness is like manna. It is to be "gathered in grains and enjoyed every day; it will not keep; it cannot be accumulated; nor need we go out of ourselves nor into remote places to gather it, since it is rained down from heaven at our very doors, or, rather, within them."
George Macdonald says: "A man must not choose his neighbor; he must take the neighbor that God sends him. In him, whoever he be, lies hidden or revealed a beautiful brother. Any rough-hewn semblance of humanity will at [Pg 53] length be enough to move the man to reverence and affection." ”

“ Happiness is no other than soundness and perfection of mind; (2) there are two ways of being happy—we may either diminish our wants or augment our means—either will do, the result is the same; and it is for each man to decide for himself, and do [Pg 56] that which happens to be the easiest; (3) happiness is a road-side flower growing on the highways of usefulness; (4) carry the radiance of your soul in your face; let the world have the benefit of it ”

“ There is many an ignorant overworked woman who fancies she could not keep up without her beer; she mistakes its momentary exhilaration for strength, and applies the whip instead of nourishment to her poor, exhausted frame. Any honest, intelligent physician will tell her that there is more real strength and nourishment in a slice of bread than in a quart of beer; but if she loves stimulants it would be a very useless piece of information. ”

“ Every good thing in the world has been counterfeited, and in these advanced times the work is so well done that it takes an expert to detect the true from the false. Everything is now more or less adulterated, especially the food we consume. The three great professions also of theology, law, and medicine, have been and are grossly counterfeited, especially the latter, which opens up the widest field for imposture. ”

“ Every individual should strive to see how much distress he can relieve during his short stay on this earth; how few thorns he has to place in the pathway of others, and how many drops of oil he can pour on the disturbed waters of the ocean of life.
Accidents that are preventable, caused by carelessness, laziness, and ignorance, cost more money, suffering, and life than viciousness and incendiarism, in the ratio of 3 to 1. Every man who builds a mill, manufactory, or a business block, makes his own rate of insurance. ”

“ If this race is ever to be rescued from the slough into which it is sinking, the fatal lethargy that stupefies them must be dispelled, the instinct of self-preservation must be awakened, and it must be written upon their hearts, as with the point of a diamond, that to voluntarily contaminate one's self with leprosy is a crime. ”

“ We simply do not obey its behests. The germ theory—now no longer a theory in the case of tubercular consumption—tells us that we have to do with a contagious disease. Now there is no theoretical reason why a purely contagious disease like tuberculosis cannot be exterminated. If we can prevent the spread of contagion at all, we can prevent it entirely. The enormous value of preventive measures, isolation, disinfection, and quarantine, is well illustrated in history of cholera, typhus fever, and yellow fever in the United States. ”

“ To keep yourself in health without medicine is what we intend to convey; and we assert that but little or no medicine is necessary to reach that condition. To have happiness without any money (in the present condition of society) is not what we claim, but that more happiness can be extracted from a competency than by more or less.
To live to good old age means with us 80 to 120 years, to increase with future generations, when order, regularity, sobriety, cleanliness, and love for the whole human family, shall be paramount in the political, moral, and intellectual world. ”

“ Birth, marriage, and death are the three most important events in every life. Death, being the most dreadful, comes in for the largest share. One of the best ways given us of avoiding it when mortal sickness is upon us is to allow the report to be circulated that you are already dead. The chances are strongly in favor of getting well. Especially is this so if friends begin to arrange for the funeral. A sure sign of early death is for a person to scatter the leaves of a red rose upon the ground. It is extremely hazardous to an infant's life to pare its nails before it is a year old. ”

“ We may have now a thousand Edisons, Fultons, Morses and Maurys, inert and practically useless because of force unapplied that might set them in motion to make the lives of millions, born and unborn, easier and happier. We have poets, statesmen, scientists, and inventors as unknown and unproductive as the worms which change them into productive forms of matter in country church-yards, where some Gray finds them and touches us with a sense of their loss to us without suggesting the remedy. ”

“ The whole problem of the present and future is to bring the accumulated force of suggestion from the past to bear on the given point—on the mind of the [Pg 65] living man, capable in possibility, and failing to achieve only for lack of stimulus—of force, of power—as a steam-engine is incapable without force applied from without. And as it is the last shovel of coal that sets the engine to work, so the mind, prepared for the final suggestion that is to give it its highest usefulness, will remain inert if the suggestion fails it. ”

“ Only a slight ripple can be seen on the bosom of a shallow lake during the most fearful storm, yet but a slight zephyr is needed to show the white caps upon the grand old ocean, and at the least provocation of a storm "see how she causes the continents to tremble, showing her great depth and majesty." ”

“ When a community is deeply sunk in immorality, little or no comment is made on the fact. When we come to seek into the causes of this improvement, we shall find that among the most prominent are the practical results of scientific progress and the civilizing tendencies of the age. There is no question that dirt, disease, and darkness are prevalent sources of vice and crime, and whatever influences are brought to bear against them will also press heavily against immorality. ”

“ There are thousands of people dying of consumption who haven't sense enough to know that they can throw it off. No man who is lazy can become healthy, for the best way to bring health is by physical development. I have seen thousands of young men apparently on the verge of the grave grow strong by following this daily routine: When you get up in the morning rub yourself with a rough towel until the blood is in circulation, and then take a cold bath. Never take a cold bath without getting the blood in circulation, for it is dangerous. ”

“ In commending laughter, we mean genuine laughter, not a make-believe, not the artificial or falsetto laugh of fashionable society, nor, again, the mere smile of acquiescent politeness, or the crackling of thorns under a pot, or the curl of the lips that indicates in the laughter a belief in his fancied superiority. ”