Life preserver

“ To preserve the body in health is an easy matter, if the individual will only bring the same thoughtful intelligence to bear on the subject that he does on the ordinary affairs of life. The natural agencies for the preservation of health are, as previously stated, Pure Water, Sunlight, Fresh Air, Diet and Exercise. ”

“ To keep himself alive when attacked by disease, the medicine man and later the healing art were evolved. Now he insures not only against death but against the partial death involved in the loss of limbs, accident, and illness; he safeguards his person and his goods by codes and law courts; and regulates diet, regimen, mores, and social hygiene with a view to more and fuller life. All these institutions are impelled by the instinct of self-preservation, reinforced as it now is in man by the knowledge of his mortality. Man may thus be redefined as the death-shunner. ”

“ The correct doctrine is, we may not, by our utmost care and diligence, avoid the causes of an early and premature death; but he who acts according to the rules which promote health, and avoids all things which tend to endanger it, has a much better chance of living to the natural period appointed for human life than he who acts otherwise—besides, as stated in the text, making his life more agreeable. ”

“ Thus we are led to feel this greater object: that to whatever extent we, by our exertions, confer benefits on those who live, we extend the advantage to those who have to live; that one good thought leading to practical useful action from one man or woman, may go to the virtue of thousands of generations; that one breath of health wafted by our breath may, in the aggregate of life saved by it, represent in its ultimate effect all the life that now is or has been. ”

“ We realise that in exercising control over the entrance gate of life we are not only performing, consciously and deliberately, a great human duty, but carrying on rationally a beneficial process which has, more blindly and wastefully, been carried on since the beginning of the world. ”

“ To save life, and to cure disease are imperative demands which grow more urgent, more impatient each year, and which suffice to quicken the efforts of the scientist and the true physician as well as the charlatan, and shape almost every problem which is considered worthy of attack to-day. ”

“ Considered which ever way you will, to preserve the health if it be good, and if poor to regain and then preserve, should be the paramount business of life, should take precedence over all others, and be our first great concern. Come then readers one and all and let us make it our permanent business to preserve and augment our health; let us allow ourselves to do nothing that shall impair it; let us make and take time to do every thing in our power to invigorate it. ”

“ What is in sight in the way of prolonging human life? I have briefly laid down what seems to be the fundamental principles of the conservation of man and the prevention of disease. If this plan can be carried out, is there any hope to be offered to man of greater freedom from disease and a longer life? ”

“ However, we should still be able to empirically optimize our personal well-being by selecting the lifestyle components that best work for us in the context of our own particular life circumstances. Determining what works at the individual level has historically been complicated by the fact that the primary objective indicators of well-being involve disease and mortality events that generally occur decades after their environmental precipitants and leave little room for a do-over. ”

“ It is still sadder to observe how large a proportion of the failures of life may be ultimately traced to the most insignificant causes and might have been avoided without any serious effort either of intellect or will.
The success with which medicine and sanitary science have laboured to prolong life, to extirpate or diminish different forms of disease and to alleviate their consequences is abundantly proved. ”

“ If we could imagine a person who all his life had lived in a locality where the air was pure; in a house where fresh air entered day and night, and which was heated to a uniform temperature; whose food had always consisted of the most pure and nutritious material prepared in the most wholesome way, eaten slowly and in proper quantity; if bathing, sleep, rest, exercise, brain work and pleasure had each its due proportion; if he could be always guarded from contagion and accidents, we can imagine that such a person would be free from disease and that death might be long deferred. ”

“ The subject on which we are entering is of the utmost importance; for, by pointing out the manner in which life is supported and modified by the action of external powers, it discovers to us the true and only means of promoting health and longevity; for the action of these powers is generally within our own direction; and if the action of heat, food, air, and exercise, were properly regulated, we should have little to fear from the attacks of diseases. ”

“ They will teach how to get dependable health, how to remain well in spite of climatic conditions, bacteria and other factors that are given as causes of disease, and how to more than double the ordinary span of life.
Good health and long life result in better work, increased earning capacity and efficiency of body and mind, greater understanding, and more enjoyment of life. It gives time to cultivate wisdom. ”

“ And if the cycle of human life followed an ideal course, he concluded men and women after living a healthy and useful life extending over at least a century, with their usefulness and satisfaction in life at maximum during the latter portion of that period, would then give themselves up calmly and gracefully to the arms of death, as to the arms of a friend laying them down to earned and wished-for rest. Old age would have no terrors, and death no victory. ”

“ If we ask how we must live to secure the best health and longest life, the answer must be drawn from physiological knowledge; but if we ask how long the best mode of living will preserve life, the reply is, Physiology cannot teach you that. ”

“ If it were not for death, disease, and poverty, this world would be a perfectly satisfactory place of abode for man. Hitherto we have endeavored to make the best of it by studying physiology, therapeutics, and hygiene, so as to prolong life and ward off disease, as much as possible, and by trying to devise means for providing ourselves with the necessaries of life, in the greatest possible measure, by the use of our hands and our brains. ”

“ Providing safe living and working environments, developing methods to immunize populations against infectious disease, maintaining good nutritional standards, and having good prenatal care for everyone are vital endeavors-and such primary and preventive measures can mean the difference between life and death. ”

“ The insidious encroachment of the chronic diseases that sap the vitality of the individual and impair the efficiency of the race is a matter of increasing importance. The mere extension of human life is not only in itself an end to be desired, but the well digested scientific facts presented in this volume clearly show that the most direct and effective means of lengthening human life are at the same time those that make it more livable and add to its power and capacity for achievement. ”

“ We have found that man is able within limitations to control his environment so as to make it better to live in. All of the scientific facts that have been of use to man in the control of disease have been found out by men who have devoted their lives in the hope that their experiments and their sacrifices of time, energy, and sometimes life itself might make for the betterment of the human race. ”

“ A healthy human organism is one in position to liberate energy and vitality as these forces are needed in the acts that constitute life. To preserve the body in health, man breathes, sleeps, and eats. These are natural laws, and, if any one of them is violated, functional disturbances occur that must result in disease. ”

“ It is true that if followed out faithfully, the rules of hygiene will enable a man to live out his maximum natural life-span, with the maximum of well-being, and to run no risk of allowing any inherent weakness to be brought out. ”

“ These wide powers of self-support and adjustment overbalance a hundred times any little remnant defects in its machinery or gearing. Easily ninety-nine per cent of all our troubles through life are due to inevitable wear and tear, scarcity of food-fuel, of water, of rest, and external accidents—injuries and infectious diseases. ”

“ It is my object to put forward a theoretical outline of a community so circumstanced and so maintained by the exercise of its own freewill, guided by scientific knowledge, that in it the perfection of sanitary results will be approached, if not actually realised, in the co-existence of the lowest possible general mortality with the highest possible individual longevity. I shall try to show a working community in which death,—if I may apply so common and expressive a phrase on so solemn a subject,—is kept as nearly as possible in its proper or natural place in the scheme of life. ”

“ It affects not only the happiness, but also the usefulness of every life. Without it, no substantial success can be achieved. By due attention to the simple laws of health, involving fresh air, pure water, wholesome food, sensible clothing, proper exercise, rest, and sleep, nine-tenths of all the ailments that afflict mankind, and the largest amount of human misery resulting therefrom, would be prevented. ”

“ To these benefactors of our race is also due the honor of initiating and developing the widespread interest which now prevails throughout our country in the conservation of health and life. They have demonstrated that morbidity and mortality can be reduced—that human life can be prolonged by spreading and applying our present knowledge of the science of disease prevention. ”

“ If perfection of climate is sought, perfect sanitation obtained, regularity, cleanliness, uprightness, temperance, and self-control practiced, if the bodily waste is supplied with nature's fruits, grains, vegetables, and herbs, if drinking is done at nature's fountain for thirst, life will be prolonged [Pg 68] to see the light in more than one century. Finally, add to that, if self is forgotten, and only the comfort of others remembered and regarded, life may be indefinitely prolonged. ”

“ On this plane we are able to concentrate our energies on the finer ends of life, because we may reasonably expect to be no longer hampered by the ever-increasing burdens which were placed upon us by the failure to control life; while the more we succeed in our efforts to purify and strengthen life, the more magnificent become the tasks we may reasonably hope to attempt and compass. ”

“ Man, in a state of health, requires pure air as a condition of his existence; and can it be supposed that, in a state of disease, he will be able, more successfully, to resist the effects of poison on his system than when in a state of health? Will he, in a state of disease, be strengthened and improved by the loss of that, on a due supply of which, when well, the continuance of his health and strength would depend? ”

“ To aid the memory of persons inquiring about the means of preserving health, I have elsewhere endeavoured to mark clearly, that the four things, fit air, temperature, aliment, and exercise, are all that need to be secured, and the two things violence and poisons all that need to be avoided, by men of sound constitution, that they may enjoy uninterrupted health and long life;—and consequently that the causes of all other disease than the decay from age are to be looked for in errors committed in regard to these four necessaries, or in the direct influence of these two kinds of noxious agents. ”

“ If a man would be restored to physical health by getting rid of his hereditary and acquired inclinations to diseases, he must recognize that the laws of nature are the laws established for his good by the Lord, and he must diligently study the laws pertaining to health and life, and be willing to see and obey those laws as to sunlight, air, exercise, clothing, and in eating and drinking, etc., if he would be restored to health; otherwise, antipathic, allopathic, and even homoeopathic remedies will prove only palliative at best. ”

“ To impair health in obtaining any amount of earthly goods is a dear exchange, since then to preserve or regain health is to preserve, prolong or regain life itself, and to impair [140] the former is to destroy the latter and its pleasures, as well as hasten death; and since the value of life so infinitely surpasses that of all other earthly blessings, what consummate folly to trifle with health on any account. ”

“ It does not follow that we are to live at random, without ever giving a thought to our health. There is a plain middle course. Guided by our own experience, and by the experience of those that have gone before us, we arrange our plan of life so as to preserve health ”

“ We have no special panacea to preserve our mental force, physical vigor and long life. Our intensive life-saving health-giving medical research and new discoveries and the regulated and hygienic life we impose on ourselves. The rules are made by our health authorities and guided by them. They start before our progeniture, even before the meeting, marriage, or mating of our parents. The future of our race is a most important matter to our administration and to all Martians. ”