Sept. 1, 1882.] 



• KNOWLEDGE 



233 



this for as many seconds as yon find convenient. Do not 

 try minutes, unless you feel that you mtis( ; but if you 

 time yourself, using 10 lb. dumb-bells, you will feel no 

 absolute obligation to continue the exercise after the first 

 half-minute or so, especially in your earlier trials. 



{To be continued.) 



BOOKS ABOUT HEALTH. 



THERE is no branch of literature in our day in ■which 

 the activity is more constant than that devoted to 

 popular instruction in the art of keeping healthy. There 

 are periodicals devoted to it exclusively. Every year lialf 

 a dozen books make their appearance, mainly at this season, 

 telling us what to eat, drink, and avoid, how to live long, 

 how to escape sickness, with sub-directions telling us how 

 to chew, what time to go to bed, how many blankets we 

 should sleep under, what sized pillow we should use, what 

 time to rise, the proper temperature of our bath, how to 

 rub ourselves on getting out of it, how often we should 

 wash our feet, how much exercise we should take, and at 

 what hour we should take it, what we should wear next 

 our skin, and what kind of hat we should wear in summer. 

 In fact, most of the books on health now closely resemble 

 in minuteness of information the useful little manuals for 

 ■ mothers, regarding the care and treatment of children in 

 the nursery, with which the world has so long been familiar. 

 The adult who chooses to avail himself of them, conse- 

 quently, need never take the smallest step in the care of 

 his person without the best medical advice. There is 

 nothing, from the brushing of his teeth in the morning 

 to the blowing out of his candle at night, which he may 

 not perform under professional judgment, without looking 

 into the strictly technical books at all. 



From one point of view the abundance of this hygienic 

 literature is an excellent sign, because it shows the rapidly 

 increasing attention of the medical profession to the art 

 of prevention, whicli will probably before many years 

 greatly overshadow, if it does not supersede, the art of 

 cure, and which there is no doubt has of late outstripped 

 the art of cure in efficacy, and stands higher in the esti- 

 mation of all the older doctors. Telling people what to 

 eat, drink, and wear, and how to work and play in any 

 particular climate, is simply advising them, in Darwinian 

 phrase, to adapt themselves to their environment so as to 

 escape the remorseless law of natural selection, which 

 makes such short work of those lo%^cr animals which 

 pay no attention to hygiene, or are born with feeble 

 constitutions or the wrong colour. But then there is the 

 danger of giving people more advice about their bodies than 

 their minds can bear, and to this the literary doctors are 

 undoubtedly exposing us. They have done much good, 

 especially among th(! women, wlio fifty years ago lived in 

 violation of even the elementary rules of a healthy existence. 

 Tliey have improved people's food and clothing a good deal, 

 and liave almost ejected a revolution in popular habits — in 

 the matter of ventilation, for instance. But in the minute- 

 ness of the directions they are now giving about exercise, 

 digestion, l)athing, and the like, they are either deepening 

 the morbid streak in the human mind, or leading jirople 

 into mistaken and often injurious experimentation. Nothing, 

 for instance, is more prejudicial to health than too much 

 thought about health, and this the health literature of the 

 day undoubtedly tends to foster. In fact, that it does not 

 do more mischief among tlie men is probably due to the 

 fact that most of them arc so busy that they have no time I 

 to study their own sensations. An idle man who tried I 



to regulate his life by the rules of any popular health 

 manual, and watched the effect of his regulated food and 

 his regulated exercise, would almost certainly become 

 a hypochondriac ; and that many who start with some 

 trifling constitutional weakness do become hypochondriacs 

 in this way there is little doubt ; in fact, with regard to 

 the body, as with regard to the soul, there is much danger 

 in casuistry, and the rules of health are very apt to be the 

 casuistry of the body. A man wlio ran to a spiritual 

 director every day to find out the exact moral quality of 

 each of his acts, and its bearing on his spiritual health, 

 would soon find that there was but little spiritual health 

 left in him, and the man who is constantly a.sking himself 

 whether this or that is good for his body, and getting his 

 answer out of a guide-book, is very likely to have an 

 analogous experience. In fact, so true is this, that one of 

 tlie conditions of health may be .said to be the diversion of 

 the mind from all thoughts about disease. 



Another defect in the kind of literature of which we are 

 speaking is the too great absoluteness of its teachings. 

 There are but few health books, if any, read l>y the young. 

 ■The young are generally well, and generally indisposed to 

 intro.spection, either mental or physical. They find they 

 can eat anything at any hour, and they find that the 

 proper amount of exercise for them is the amount they like 

 to take. They are not interested in indigestion or sleep- 

 lessness, or any of the other ills for which the books 

 seek to provide. If one happens to be with a party 

 of young men in which the subject of food, or drink, or 

 clothing comes up, one finds that it is discussed wholly 

 from the standpoint of taste. They exchange views about 

 what they like and dislike, and are immensely bored by 

 observations on the hygienic quality of their tastes. Rules 

 of health, in fact, are seldom perused or called for by any- 

 body below the age of forty — at which, as the proverb 

 saj's, " every man is a fool or a physician " — that is, he is 

 either a person on whom health preaching would be wasted, 

 as it would be on a cow or a horse, or a person who has 

 through experience accumulated a body of hygienic doctrine 

 of his own which no doctor can shake. Go into any 

 company of middle-aged men, and listen to a discussion 

 of meat or clothing, and you find that the question of 

 healthfulness dominates the discussion. Each man's con- 

 tribution to it is apt to be in the main an account of his 

 own experience of what " agrees " with him ; that is, he 

 passes judgment on food, on dress, on exercise, on bathing, 

 on hours of sleep, according to his experience of his sub- 

 sequent physical sensations. It is this class, in fact, which 

 buys and reads most of the health books, because it is 

 most interested in morbid conditions of the liody. But it 

 makes the health-books, with their cx-cathtdrd tone, very 

 strange guides, when we discover that in such a company 

 as we have mentioned probably no two men's experience 

 is the same about anything. One finds unlimited cucumbers 

 most refreshing, another the smallest piece of cucumber 

 deadly poison. One. finds tea late in the evening necessary 

 to a good night's rest ; another finds tea later than five 

 o'clock in the afternoon fatal to sleep on the following 

 night One fnids a light breakfast the best preparation 

 for a good day's work, and a sure cure for rheumatism ; 

 another finds a hearty breakfast indispensable to any 

 activity, either mental or bodily, and the only safeguard 

 against dyspepsia. One cannot dine later than two p m. ; 

 another is mi.serablo if he dines before seven. One cannot 

 drink coffee ; another finds coffee essential. Early rising 

 clears one man's brain ; it makes another stupid and 

 incapa\)le all day. One finds a daily cold bath the making 

 of him ; another tried it once and nearly died of it. One 

 needs two hours' daily exercise for any effective brainwork ; 



