Self-care

“ An increase in this important, positive health-related exercise can have a significant effect on the enhanced quality and life span of those who practice it. It is an invigorating form of self-care that can contribute to the reduction of preventable death, disease, and disability and to the containment of health care costs. ”

“ It is the little details in the routine of his daily life that produce vigor or weakness. Errors in his care now easily cost his life; or apparently [Pg 86] they may not harm him now but will be paid for in suffering, deformities, or weakness in childhood or adulthood. The woman who has this responsibility needs special preparation in self-sacrifice, self-control, gentleness, regularity, thoroughness, and accuracy in little details. She should be in good health, free from any contagious disease. ”

“ The duty of self-preservation includes, of course, a reasonable care for health, without which the uses of life are essentially restricted and impaired. Here a just mean must be sought and adhered to. There is, on the one hand, an excessive care of the body, which, if it does not enfeeble the mind, distracts it from its true work, and makes the spiritual nature a mere slave of the material organism. ”

“ Cures, as Self-Applied.—Often young people in lodgings are in difficulty for want of some one to apply the necessary treatment in their own case. It is often, however, possible to treat oneself quite successfully by exercising care and common sense. Help should always be got if possible, but where it cannot, it may be done without. In the case of applying cold cloths to any part, when it is necessary to change these frequently, a basin of cold water may stand by the bedside so that the patient can wring out towels without getting up. ”

“ This prudent, and, we must remember, generally self-denying care of one's self, would have averted the future bodily illness or nervous depression of the nurse of the convalescent, at a time too when the latter has become painfully alive to every look and word, as well as act, of diminished attention and watchfulness; you will surely feel deep self-reproach if, from any cause, you are unable to control your own temper, and to bear with cheerful patience the petulance of hers. ”

“ It was likewise found by the same commission that of those in good health or fair physical condition, eighty-five per cent were self-supporting, while only eighteen per cent of those in poor physical condition took care of themselves. ”

“ This is the first duty of parents, and no false delicacy should keep them from the watchful care, the gentle warning, which makes self-knowledge and self-control the compass and pilot of the young as they leave the safe harbour of home. ”

“ The private interest of the individual would not be sufficiently provided for by reasonable and cool self-love alone; therefore the appetites and passions are placed within as a guard and further security, without which it would not be taken due care of. ”

“ All day long I find so much to interest me, and so many thoughts about my children fill my mind, that I hardly find time to think of my own feelings. Care is a blessing."
With what a patient, heavenly smile this is said! How much of life's true philosophy is contained in that closing sentence! Yes, care is a blessing. What countless thousands would, but for daily care, be unutterably miserable. And yet we are ever trying to throw off care; to rise into positions where we will be free from action or duty. ”

“ The mistake of all that medical talk lies in the very fact that it connects the idea of health with the idea of care. What has health to do with care? Health has to do with carelessness. In special and abnormal cases it is necessary to have care. ”

“ And probably neither nurse nor doctor does any better service, except in saving life itself, than in keeping the patient from thinking constantly of himself and his ills. For it seems of little use to have made some people physically well, if they are to carry through prolonged years the curse of constant self-attention, self-centeredness, an ingrowing ego. ”

“ The mental comfort and ease that come from the possession of such knowledge are priceless.
Everything that is worth while must be paid for in some way and the price of continued good health is some basic knowledge and self-control. ”

“ To remedy conditions of mental stress by correcting the underpay, overwork, bad ventilation, or underfeeding on account of illness or death of the wage-earner of the family, is, of course, nothing but the most admirable common sense; but to call it the mental treatment of disease is a mere juggling with words. "Take care of the body and the mind will take care of itself," is a maxim which will prove valid in actual practice nine times out of ten. ”

“ If, during your present enjoyment of mental and bodily health, you do not acquire a mastery over your temper, it will be almost impossible to do so when the effects of disease are added to the influences of nature and habit. On the other hand, from Galen down to Sir Henry Halford, there is high medical authority for the important fact that self-control acquired in health may be successfully exercised to subdue every external sign, at least, of the irritation and depression often considered inevitably attendant on many peculiar maladies. ”

“ And, how to keep out the old, but by administering the thoughts of the new life watchfully, one by one, as they are needed, and can be taken; offering them with engaging freshness, with comforting fitness, until at last the period of anxious nursing is over, the habits of the good life are set up, and the patient is able to stand on his own feet and labour for his own meat. This is no work to be undertaken wholesale. The spiritual care of a multitude diseased, even physically diseased, of sin, is no light thing. ”

“ Good workers the world needs, and, therefore, men of first-rate health the world needs. If one is to be a great worker, one must [Pg 27] have great health. It is not for me to write as would a physician, but I may be allowed to say that in caring for health, one should not become self-conscious. ”

“ But—pace the doctors and all their materialistic 198followers—I question very much whether bodily health, the mere absence of physical disease, be nearly as indispensable a condition of happiness as certain peculiarities of the mental and moral constitution. The disposition to Anxiety, for instance, which reduces many lives to a purgatory of incessant care,—about money, about the opinion of society, or about the health and well-being of children,—is certainly a worse drawback to peace and happiness than half the diseases in the Registrar-General’s list. ”

“ Being cared for is not only a condition for survival, it is also a prerequisite for human development and well-being. "All of us have urgent needs for care at various stages in our lives, as a consequence of infancy, illness, impairment or other vulnerabilities." ”

“ This has given them courage to take more exercise and get more out into the air, and consequently relieves them of many physical symptoms that had developed because they thought they were the subjects of some serious ailment and must be solicitously careful of their health. The idea of care for the health in many persons' minds seems to be to do as little as possible of external, useful work and to occupy themselves principally with their internal concerns. They stay in the house too much and in so doing disturb nearly every physical function. ”

“ If you would preserve your youthful vigour, and run successfully the course which is before you, you must neither overtax your physical or mental powers, nor neglect to take reasonable care of your health. Social intercourse, active exercise, bodily rest, and mental repose, are, each in its turn, as essential to your well-being, as they are to your personal comfort ”

“ Within the context of caring as process, Roach (1992, 1984) says that caring entails the human capacity to care, the calling forth of this ability in ourselves and others, the responsivity to something or someone that matters, and the actualizing of the power to care. Even though our human nature is to be caring, the full expression of this varies with the lived experience of being human. The process of bringing forth this capability can be nurtured through concern and respect for person as person. ”

“ Relief work must be constructive with respect to the patient and instructive with respect to the worker. You have to exercise self-control of emotion and help yourself to poise by quickly concentrating your mind on what details of the problem you are fitted to cope with. ”

“ Realizing that the paths of learning are seldom thoroughly smooth, she can resolve to use their very roughness for firmer footholds, as a means to self-control, as a fitting for the sterner hardships of self-support, of nursing the dangerously ill, alone, of meeting suffering and death in her patients with quiet courage and faith. ”

“ The profit of bodily health. A body which does not labour, either with brain or hand, is an easy prey to disease. The brain if used becomes strengthened for further use. The whole bodily frame is kept in health by wholesome work. 3. Profit to the moral nature. Labour calls for some form of self-sacrifice. It develops habits of painstaking and diligence which are helpful to a man’s moral nature. It helps the spiritual part of the man by helping the bodily, inasmuch as a strong [p. 375] and healthy body is the best instrument for a morally healthy soul. ”

“ Its interest, I need hardly urge, extends far beyond the pale of the medical profession, and no one who has reason to desire for friend or relative the kindly care or the skilful treatment required for a disordered mind, can do otherwise than wish gratefully to recognize those who, during well-nigh a century, have laboured to make this care and this treatment what they are at the present day. ”

“ These people have all led simple lives and they have worked. There is no secret about growing old gracefully. It means self-control, simple living, work for body and mind, cleanliness of body and mind, and the most important part of physical cleanliness is a clean colon. It is necessary to have a tranquil mind most of the time, for anger and worry are injurious to health. ”

“ Moreover, with our increased skill in medicine and surgery and education, the diseased and defective may often be restored to health or fitted for some form of self-support that makes them happier and of use to the community. The wastage of human life has been greatly reduced in recent years. ”

“ As a rule, we go to a physician, or to a sanitarium, or to baths—I mean those of us who are sick and desire health first of all—without any other thoughts than “I am sick. 168 To go here may do me good. I hope it will.” Instead of preparing our minds beforehand by thoughtfulness, getting ourselves into the proper mental attitude to be helped, we leave it to chance, to the surroundings, to the doctor, and thus often fail to get the benefit we might have received. We carry our business cares, our family worries, our money-getting, with us and thus defeat the end for which we go. ”

“ Habits of neatness and order, of kindness and ready help, of self-sacrifice and self-control, become lifelong in their persistence and develop a physical as well as moral conscience which makes for public health. ”

“ I don't personally care a button for the welfare of those men, since they declined to take my advice; but I am human, and as I suffer with a sick patient and rejoice when he recovers, so I cannot help suffering at the thought of the risk these four are running. ”

“ In seeking for a remedy the first thing to be considered is the care of the health, for this is the foundation of every hope of cure, and all excesses should be avoided and all irregularities guarded against. ”

“ This arrangement of Providence, designed for our happiness, has become, either through ignorance or want of self-control, the chief cause of the many diseases and sufferings which afflict those classes who have the means of seeking a variety to gratify the palate. ”

“ The very worst have some good in them, and by appealing to that good in a kindly, honest spirit we may arouse that laudable ambition of self-respect and self-help, which will do more to improve the sanitary and social condition of the needy poor than could be accomplished by extraneous help, if it did not secure the hearty sympathy and co-operation of the poor. ”

“ The diseases which would be reduced by this means, include not merely those which physicians treat, but many moral diseases which persist because they are only to be avoided by the poor through the exercise of discipline and self-restraint far beyond what is practised by the average person in classes not subject to poverty. ”

“ Now we treat their sick and ailing bodies just as we would any other class of chronic patients, with rest, comfortable surroundings, good food, baths, and fresh air, correction of bad habits, gentleness, and kindness, leaving their minds and souls practically without treatment, excepting in so far as ordinary, decent humanity and consideration may be regarded as mental remedies,—and we cure from thirty to fifty per cent, and make all but five per cent comfortable, contented, comparatively happy. ”

“ The public care little for medical titles, or for those artificial distinctions which, for the more convenient subdivision of labour, we have established amongst ourselves; they look for men who will prove useful to them in time of need—men in whom they can place confidence, whom they may admit without fear into the bosom of their families, whose feelings and behaviour are those of gentlemen, who are skilled to relieve their bodily sufferings, and to whom they may open the secrets of their hearts and turn for sympathy and advice in seasons of affliction. ”