Various

“ It is the aim and object of sanitary science to deal as clearly and definitely as possible with both sources of health and disease. In the first instance, Hygiene, or the science of health, devotes attention to the surroundings amid which our lives are passed. It seeks to provide us with the necessary conditions of life in a pure condition. It would have us breathe pure air, consume pure food, avoid excess of work, strike the golden mean in recreation, and harbour and conserve the powers of old age, so as to prolong the period of life and secure a painless death. ”

“ Cruel Madge—you do not wish me to stay.’
‘What we wish is not always best, Philip.’
She looked at him with those quiet longing eyes; and he wished they had not been at that moment walking in the harvest-field, with the reaping-machine coming at full swing towards them, followed by its troop of men and women gathering up the shorn grain, binding it into sheaves and piling them into shocks for the drying wind to do its part of the work. Had they only been in the orchard, he would have given her a lover’s token that he understood and appreciated her sacrifice. ”

“ And Oscar Boyd, too! the man I dislike beyond all other men. That makes the blow still harder to bear. He must be paid the five hundred pounds, and at once. He has lost his fortune, and yet he never spoke of this. What an obligation to be under—and to him! He saved Horace’s honour—perhaps his life—but is that any reason why I should absolve Lady Dimsdale from her promise? No, no! This is a matter entirely separate from the other.—Why, here comes the man himself.’
As Sir Frederick spoke thus, Oscar Boyd issued from one of the many winding walks that intersected the grounds at Rosemount. ”

“ For a moment or two the Captain tried to look fierce, but failed miserably. Then bending{122} his white head, and laying a hand on his nephew’s shoulder, he murmured in a broken voice: ‘M—m—my boy!’
Sir Frederick Pinkerton was slowly pacing the sunny south terrace, smoking one cigarette after another in a way that with him was very unusual. He was only half satisfied with himself—only half satisfied with the way he had treated Lady Dimsdale. The instincts of a gentleman were at work within him, and those instincts whispered to him that he had acted as no true gentleman ought to act. ”

“ A broad and scientific view of life is that which regards it as being composed, in its physical aspects at least, of a series of actions or functions more or less defined in their nature. These functions, as the physiologist terms them, are discharged, each, by a special organ or series of organs; and health may therefore be viewed as the result of the harmonious working of all the organs of which the body is composed. ”

“ Even when an individual has been born into{114} the world, handicapped, so to speak, in the struggle for existence by physical infirmity and inherited disease, health-science is found to convey the cheering assurance that it is possible, even under such circumstances, to prolong life, and secure a measure of that full happiness which the possession of health can alone bestow. ”

“ The fact was that, while in Italy, Miss Hoskyns had allowed her elderly affections to become entangled with a good-looking man some years younger than herself, to whom she was now on the point of being married. The first perusal of Charley’s letter had thrown her into a violent rage; but at the end of twenty-four hours her views had become considerably modified. After all, as she argued to herself, why shouldn’t young Summers and her niece make a match of it? He came of a good family, and would incontestably be his uncle’s heir; and Captain Bowood was known to be a very rich man. ”

“ We frequently speak of persons as suffering from inherited weakness, and this inherited weakness becomes the ‘transmitted disease’ of the physician. Each individual, therefore, may be viewed as deriving his chances of health, or the reverse, from a double source—namely, from the constitution he has inherited and from the surroundings which make up the life he lives and pursues. ”

“ The water we drink, equally a necessity of life with air, is likewise liable to cause disease, when either as regards quantity or quality it is not supplied in the requisite conditions. Man is likewise in the matter of foods dependent upon his surroundings, and numerous diseases are traceable both to a lack of necessary foods and to over-indulgence in special kinds of nourishment. The diseases known to physicians as those of over-nutrition belong to the latter class; and there are likewise many ailments due to under-nutrition which also receive the attention of medical science. ”

“ Disturbances of health arise whenever the natural equilibrium maintained between the functions of the body is disturbed. For example, a broken bone being an infringement of the functions of a limb, is a disturbance of health equally with the fever which runs riot through the blood, and produces a general disturbance of the whole system. An aching tooth equally with brain disorder constitutes a disturbance of health. We may therefore define health as the perfect pleasurable or painless discharge of all the functions through which life is maintained. ”

“ In the second aspect of its teachings, this important branch of human knowledge would teach us that with an inherited constitution of healthy kind we should take every means of preserving its well-being; and when on the other hand an enfeebled and physically weak frame has fallen to our lot, the teachings of health-science are cheering in the extreme. ”

“ The one great truth which health-reformers are never weary of proclaiming, because they know it is so true, consists in the declaration that the vast majority of the diseases which affect and afflict humanity are really of preventable nature. Until this truth has been thoroughly driven home, and accepted alike by individuals and nations, no real progress in sanitary science can be expected or attained. ”

“ And if there is one consideration which more than another should be prominently kept in view, it is that which urges that the duty of acquiring information in the art of living healthily and well is an individual duty. It is only through individual effort that anything like national interest in health-science can be fostered. ”

“ Man holds in his own hands the power both of largely increasing and decreasing his chances of early death, and nowhere is this fact better exemplified than in the lessened mortality which follows even moderate attention to the laws of health; the words of Dr Farre deserve to be emblazoned in every household in respect of their pungent utterance concerning the good which mankind is able to effect by even slight attention to sanitary requirements. ‘The hygienic problem,’ says Dr Farre, ‘is how to free the English people from hereditary disease ... ”

“ In the case of an inherited tendency to mental disorders, mysterious and subtle as such tendency appears to be, it has been shown that strict attention to the education and upbringing of the child, a judicious system of education, the curbing of the passions, and the control of emotions, added to ordinary care in the selection of food and the physical necessities of life, may again insure the prolongation of life, and its freedom from one of the most terrible afflictions which can beset the human race. ”

“ Each of those deaths represents in addition a number of other cases in which the effects of preventable disease were more or less distinctly found. Such an account of a mortality, the greater part of which is unquestionably preventable, may well startle the most phlegmatic amongst us into activity in the direction of health-reform. In order that the nation at large may participate in this all-important work, it is necessary that education in health-science should find a place in the future training of the young as well as in the practice of the old. ”

“ In addition to these outward sources of health-disturbance, which constitute the disease of mankind, there are other and more subtle and internal causes which complicate the problems of human happiness. ”

“ There are people who, whilst desirous of cultivating a reputation for hospitality, regard the preparations for the entertainment of their friends as an affliction; and whilst distributing smiles of welcome to their guests, are, without malice, secretly wishing them far enough and the whole thing well over. There are others who send out invitations which they calculate will not be accepted, and who feel chagrined if they are. ”

“ The Captain winced. He was not in the habit of being lectured, and the sensation was not a pleasant one, but he felt the justice of the reproof.
‘Ah, sir, the actor’s profession is one of the noblest in the world,’ resumed Mr Brooker, changing from his Hamlet to his Mercutio voice; ‘and your nephew bids fair to become a shining ornament in it. I know of few young men who have progressed so rapidly in so short a time, and the press notices he has had are something remarkable. Here are a few of them, sir, only a few of them, which I have brought together. ”

“ Vital statistics prove beyond doubt, in the case of the consumptive individual, that if his life be passed under the guidance of health laws, if he is warmly clad, provided with sufficient nourishment, made to live in a pure atmosphere, and excess of work avoided, he may attain the age of thirty-six years without developing the disease under which he labours, and once past that period, may reasonably hope to attain old age. ”

“ Suffice it for the present to say, that science has demonstrated in a very clear fashion the possibilities of our escape from those physical terrors by attention to the conditions to which they owe their spread. ”

“ Kraal-life is very patriarchal, and the Kaffirs have strong home-instincts. They are a social race, and the sociality is abundantly visible in the manners and habits of the Kitchen Kaffir. In the ‘Kaffir house’—the outbuilding to be found in the rear of nearly all colonial villas and cottages—there is many a jovial evening spent by the ‘boys.’ When the toil of day is over—few domestic natives work after six or seven o’clock in the evening—they gather together and gossip on the events of the day. They retail all the private life of their masters and mistresses ”

“ All of course showed a great advance; but those fed on ensilage totalled up to a figure which was forty-nine pounds better than the total exhibited by those fed in the more orthodox style.
As we have on a previous occasion hinted, the principle of ensilage has, after a manner, been applied for some years to fruit by the jam-makers. In years of plenty, fruit is reduced to pulp, and can in this state, if the air is carefully excluded, be made to keep well until a time of scarcity occurs. Large quantities of apricot pulp finds its way to this country from France, and realises a good price. ”

“ Sir, I have the honour to be the manager of the travelling theatrical company of which your nephew forms a component part. I am old enough to be the young man’s father, and that may be one reason why he has chosen to confide his troubles to me. ”

“ One of the attractions of the forthcoming International Health Exhibition will be an Indian village and tea-garden with the plant actually growing—that is to say, if it can be deluded into growing in the smoky atmosphere of London. In a tea-house, the beverage will be served by natives of tea districts, who are to be brought over from India for the purpose. ”

“ There is a divine image in the future, to which the nation must aspire. The first step towards it is to improve the health of the present age; and improvement, if as persistently pursued as it is in the cultivation of inferior species, will be felt by their children and their children’s children. ”

“ A case lately occurred which is deserving of notice, if only as a caution to those good people who are always ready to assist any unfortunate who may be seized with a fit. A man acting in this way the part of good Samaritan to a woman who had fallen in an epileptic fit, was bitten by her in the hand. In three days the wrist had swollen to such an extent as to need medical advice, and a few hours afterwards the poor man died. There may, of course, have been something exceptional in his state of health, which rendered this human bite more rapidly fatal than that of a rabid dog ”

“ At Manchester, besides the London and Liverpool communications already named, there will be new wires to Birmingham, Chester, Edinburgh, Leeds, Newcastle, Bolton, Burnley, Derby, Huddersfield, Hull, Isle of Man, and Nottingham, all duplexed. At Newcastle, an evidence of the curious ramifications of trade is seen in the fact that a new wire is to be put up between that town and Cardiff. Bristol obtains new wires to London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Swansea, and Cardiff ”

“ They are not lovesick children—he and Lady Dimsdale—that they should cry for the moon, and vow there is no happiness in life because they can’t obtain it. Why should I trouble myself about their happiness? ”