Sickness benefit

“ Beyond a doubt, most of the long-standing beliefs, touching the remedies for this or that ailment, belong to a time when the services of a skilled physician or surgeon were not to be had for love or money, or medical aid be instantly summoned to the sick man’s bedside by telephone. This was especially true of the sparsely settled parts of the country, where every prudent housewife laid in a stock of roots and herbs against sickness in the family. ”

“ Every imagined sickness presupposes an actual: nevertheless there are imaginary causes of sickness. My alternation between health and sickness, between merry and mournful, soft and stern moods, had reached, in its rapidity and its contrasts, the maximum point; I could no longer, for want of breath, dictate a protocol, and as to the scenes of this biography I could not so much as conceive them; when on a ruddy, glowing winter evening, I sallied out and strode round through the rosy-tinted snow, and in this snow lighted on the word heureusement. ”

“ Serious sickness is such as renders a person entirely unable to work. Benefit societies have found that the average number of days of sickness per [Pg 268] year from each person under seventy years of age is ten, of which at least two are spent in bed. ”

“ Modern science teaches us that disease is not a thing, but a state. When our food is properly assimilated, the waste matter promptly excreted, and all the organs work in harmony, we are well; when any derangement of these functions occurs, we are sick. Sickness is discord, as health is concord. If we abuse or misuse any instrument, we impair its ability to produce a perfect harmony. A suffering body is simply the penalty of violated law. ”

“ In 1910 these seriously sick persons numbered more than 3,000,000. Even more significant, perhaps, is the fact that at least half of our national sickness could be prevented if knowledge and resources that we now possess were fully utilized. ”

“ In how many cases of sickness the issue depends mainly on the ministrations of parents, friends or neighbors of the helpless sufferer!
Even the members of the community at large have an influence in every case of sickness. In individual cases that influence may not appear great, yet in the mass the effect is potent. ”

“ The sooner we realize and acknowledge that sickness, far from being the arbitrary visitation of an offended God, or the test of an unwise Providence, is the result of our own error or sin, the sooner shall we enter upon the highway of health.
Disease comes to those who attract it, to those whose minds and bodies are receptive to it, and flees from those whose strong, pure, and positive thought-sphere generates healing and life-giving currents. ”

“ The acceptance of sickness as a decision of the mind, for a purpose for which it would use the body, is the basis of healing. And this is so for healing in all forms. A patient decides that this is so, and he recovers. If he decides against recovery, he will not be healed. Who is the physician? Only the mind of the patient himself. ”

“ Adequate care of the sick consists to a large extent in rendering their physical and mental surroundings as favorable as possible. Obviously, a sick person, since his strength is already depleted, needs not only to have his resistance increased in all possible ways, but also to have all his remaining strength conserved by eliminating every unnecessary tax upon it. In sickness even slight fatigue, chill, or nervous strain, insufficient ventilation, or improper feeding, may become factors of immense importance. Nothing is trivial if it affects the welfare and comfort of a patient. ”

“ As soon as symptoms of sickness appear, we thrust all our patients together, to make one another as much worse as possible, and when any one is past hope, we take credit for our humanity in stuffing him with remedies which come too late. ”

“ Should sickness come—sickness almost always occasioned by unwholesome food, want of fresh air, necessary attention, and good rest; sickness, often so enervating as to render work impossible; though not so dangerous as to procure the sufferer a bed in an hospital—what becomes of the hapless wretches then? The mind hesitates, and shrinks from dwelling on such gloomy pictures. ”

“ I will spread sickness in the world and you will cure it. Your fame will go abroad and people will send for you and pay you handsomely. This is how we’ll work together: when you hear of a person taken sick, go to his house and offer to cure him. ”

“ The fact is, the knowledge of the symptoms of disease is, to a mother, almost a sealed book. If she were better acquainted with these matters, how much more useful would she be in a sick-room, and how much more readily would she enter into the plans and views of the medical man! By her knowledge of the symptoms, and by having his advice in time, she would nip 171disease in the bud, and the fight might end in favor of life, for “sickness is just a fight between life and death.” ”

“ Why, see here, Clyde, your dodo of a superintendent talks of keeping sickness out of the schools. Doesn’t that mean keeping sickness out of the pupils? There’s just one way to do that: get every child into the best possible condition of repair—eyes, ears, nose, throat, teeth, stomach, everything, and maintain them in that state. Then disease will have a hard time breaking down the natural resistance of the system. Damaged organs in a child are like flaws in a ship’s armor-plate; a vital weakening of the defenses. And remember, the child is always battling against one besieging germ or another. ”

“ For exactly the same reason, would it not be better to teach the poor how to avoid getting sick, and by every means in our power remove the causes that induce disease among them, rather than to offer them the best care and attention without being sure that they need help, and thus teaching them to become careless about avoiding sickness? ”

“ In truth, everything that he says and does in the sick room, is to be regarded as really a medicine, and producing as real if not as manifest effects upon the state of the patient, as any of the drugs that he administers.
It will be profitable, then, to the general reader, as well as to the medical man, to examine the influences which the mind and the body exert upon each other in sickness, the use which can be made of such influences in the cure of disease, and the abuse to which they are liable from the mismanagement of those who have the care of the sick. ”

“ That an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure has passed into a proverb, and yet there is no doubt that the majority of the cases of sickness, general ill health and debility, especially with women, arise from a disregard of the simplest rules for health. ”

“ Once separate the patient from the moral and physical surroundings which have become part of her life of sickness, and you will have made a change which will be in itself beneficial and will enormously aid in the treatment which is to follow. Of course this step is not essential in such cases as are merely anæmic, feeble, and thin, owing to distinct causes, like the exhaustion of overwork, blood-losses, dyspepsia, low fevers, or nursing. There are but too many women who have broken down under such causes and failed to climb again to the level of health, despite all that could be done for them ”

“ Books that would rule disease out of the mind instead of impressing it more strongly on the belief, would abate sickness ten per cent. in a short period. Instruct your patient that he is not an involuntary subject of disease, but can resist it, and overcome it too, with mind that is superior to matter. To understand their God-given dominion over the body, would reassure and encourage the sick and impart healthy action to the body. Knowing their mental power, they would meet sickness as fearlessly as we encounter a swarm of insects that flee before us. ”

“ She should note all the symptoms of the patient, and do everything in her power to promote comfort and recovery. She should anticipate the wishes, and not cause the patient to ask for everything which is desired. So far as practicable, let the wishes be gratified. The senses of the sick often become morbidly acute, and those things which in health would pass unnoticed, in sickness are so magnified as to occasion annoyance and vexation. Sick persons are not all alike, and the peculiarities of each must be studied separately. ”

“ The fact is that there is a process of degeneration going on throughout the entire structure of the man, even to the last tissue, and the symptoms are all indicative of this; and this is more or less strictly true of all disorders. The naming and classifying of “diseases” is calculated to mystify and mislead: sickness is the proper term for describing them all; self-abuse, in the broadest sense of the word, is the cause of them; and obedience to law, the only means of prevention or cure. ”

“ It was also a prevailing opinion among the miners that many of the physicians now in the country do not understand the prevailing diseases of the country; and that many of them are the cause of more sickness and death than they are the means of saving lives. ”

“ A loss of appetite, sickness at the stomach, obstruction of the liver, jaundice and dropsy, hoarseness and a husky cough, which often ends in consumption, diabetes, redness and eruptions of the skin, a fetid breath, frequent and disgusting belchings, epilepsy, gout, and madness. This is the train of diseases produced by the use of ardent spirits, and the usual, natural, and legitimate consequences of their use. And now, I ask, can that which, of its own nature, produces these diseases, make a man feel better? ”

“ There is a growing tendency to discriminate between sickness and illness, limiting the words sick and sickness to some slight disturbance of the physical system, as nausea, and applying the words ill and illness to protracted disease and disordered health. ”

“ In sickness, respect health principally; and in health, action; for those that put their bodies to endure in health, may, in most sicknesses which are not very sharp, be cured 197only with diet and tendering. ”

“ The description of disease by clairvoyants and medical charlatans, those quacks in mind and quacks in matter, is the most prolific modern source of sickness. They are the principal manufacturers of disease and death; they form the image of disease in mortal mind by telling the patients they have it, and after that they work up the material into a certain fabric; then they go to work to destroy that fabric and unmake their manufactures, and their suffering dupes are satisfied to see them busy, and to pay for making them sick and trying to heal them. ”

“ Regularity of habits, abstemiousness, and no careless exposure will, as a rule, insure the same immunity from sickness that may be reasonably expected at home, though this result cannot always be counted upon. ”

“ Here in their hour of sickness and suffering lay those whose health and strength had given way under unrequited labour—some of them, no later than the previous day, had been urged with the lash to their accustomed tasks—and their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons were even at that hour sweating over the earth whose increase was to procure for others all the luxuries which health can enjoy, all the comforts which can alleviate sickness. ”

“ Every house has its favorite, and some of these are regarded as especially clever in curing sickness. It being a very unhealthful, low-lying district where my school was, I contracted malarial fever, and went to bed very sick. ”

“ In time of health sickness has to be guarded against. Suitable clothing and shelter must be used as protection against injurious effects of heat or cold; cleanliness must be cultivated by such means as daily baths, frequent ablutions, washing of teeth, tongue and gums; infections must be avoided; drugs or stimulants hurtful to one’s health must not be indulged in, and attention must be given to daily, regular and natural elimination and to the exclusion of poisons from the system. ”

“ Health and sickness are not really, or at least necessarily, opposed; a measure of health is the efflorescence of the body, the elasticity, courage, and joyfulness of the mind, i.e., the extent to which sickness may be endured, overcome, and made tributary to health: sickness may be a stimulus to the "great health." ”

“ At the best it is only somewhat less. Medical men are everywhere required. Sanitary arrangements, temperate habits, and medical skill may diminish the extent and alleviate the severity of sickness, but they cannot uproot it. ”

“ The causes of much of the sickness which sends patients thither may be preventable: they may be found in foul dwellings, impure water, insufficient clothing, want of proper food, alternate hunger and intemperance; but whatever may be its occasion, a remedy must be found for it. Till all that is preventable is prevented, the consequences will have to be mitigated, the fatal results averted where it is possible; and when boards of health and sanitary measures have done, there will still be sick men to heal, failing children to strengthen, weak and wasting women to restore. ”

“ Humanity is awakening to the fact that sickness, in a large percentage of cases, is an error—of body and mind. Ignorance of the injurious effects of wrong foods, drinks, habits and methods is gradually being overcome. ”

“ But a vast amount of disease is preventable, and comes from causes over which we have direct control. "It is reckoned that a hundred thousand persons die annually in England of preventable diseases"—from disobedience to the laws of health, which are God's laws, and the transgression of which, wilfully, is sin. Beyond all doubt a vast amount of sickness comes from bad living, from intemperance in eating and drinking, from breathing bad air, from inhabiting ill-constructed houses. ”