STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. lOI 



LIVING FOR HEALTH. 

 By Mrs. Alonzo Towle, Freedom, N. H. 



Phillips Brooks says : "The duty of physical health and the 

 duty of spiritual purity are not two duties, they are two parts of 

 one duty, which makes the most complete life that human beings 

 can live." We start wnth this hypothesis, the keeping or getting 

 of health is one part of our highest and most binding duty. To 

 make the body a fit temple for the spirits, indwelling is a sacred 

 obligation. For what have the leaders of men always been 

 noted? Has it been for courage? Some ignorant and uncul- 

 tured have been truly brave. Has it been for refinement ? Many 

 isolated and unknown have been most refined. Has it been for 

 morality ? Not always. One may possess all these qualities and 

 not be at the front. With other qualifications he must have 

 enormous nervous vitality. That which enables him to with- 

 stand long hours of close application, attention to details, and 

 power to resist influences and temptations. We decide then that 

 it is nervous vitality that tells. The sources of this vitality are 

 food and air transformed by bodily functions. These functions 

 being powerfully afl^ected by the mental attitude of the individual, 

 also by exercise, rest, sleep and other personal habits. That we 

 make mistakes in our food economy is no longer a vague theme 

 to be passed over thoughtlessly. One class eat too little, another 

 too much. The wear and tear of an active life requires a class 

 of food stuffs that to the brain worker would be a burden, caus- 

 ing dearth of thought and darkness of mind. Still the majority 

 eat too much and too often, beside being excessive in quantity, 

 food is often of low value or combined to be useless. 



We who advocate temperance are altogether too narrow in our 

 interpretation. It should not only mean abstinence from alco- 

 holic beverages but abstemiousness in partaking of food. There 

 is more sickness and untimely deaths from over-eating than from 

 over-drinking. One physician says : *Tt is no exaggeration to 

 state that fully 90% of all the population eat vastly more than 

 they ought. The intestinal tract is overloaded causing auto- 

 intoxication or self-drunkenness by food. The toxic matters 

 from this mass of decaying food causes nearly all the ills to 



