84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE HEALTH INSTINCT 



By De. JAMES FREDERICK ROGERS 



NEW HAVEN NORMAL SCHOOL OF GYMNASTICS 



fc ijEOPLE do not take the matter of health seriously." So wrote 

 -L Professor Bain not over thirty years ago, but in the interven- 

 ing time how things have changed ! If he were writing on the same 

 theme to-day, he would probably say that we take the matter of health 

 too seriously, or, at any rate, that some of us are on the verge of so 

 doing. We have heard of the bicycle face and the automobile counte- 

 nance, and it would not be surprising if some one should soon describe 

 for us the health-seeker's visage. It may not as yet have established 

 itself as an unmistakable type, but one can already trace signs in a 

 certain worn and anxious expression of countenance suggestive of the 

 approach of starvation, or the fearsomeness of an unseen foe. 



In days of old, men sallied boldly forth, fearing naught save the 

 fires of future punishment, and these were likely to be forgotten in the 

 business of the hour. They had too much to do, and too little to eat, 

 to be over-anxious in regard to diet or exercise. But a knight in full 

 armor, or a dozen of them, was as nothing to brave beside the hidden 

 bacterial hosts which now make a constant terror by night and day; 

 while the poison cup was rare and harmless in comparison with " auto- 

 intoxications " and the ravages of " uric acid " with which the dweller 

 in twentieth century time is threatened in the viands he must face 

 each day. 



Between the periods of these trying encounters with hidden foes 

 which strike beneath the belt, the seeker after health examines with 

 anxious eye the latest newspapers and magazines for paragraphs and 

 articles which may serve as guides to his sad progress between the ever- 

 threatening Scylla of overeating and the Charybdis of undereating; of 

 exercising too much and of exercising too little. Of leading along 

 these lines he finds no lack, but the teachers are so many and their 

 dogmas so diverse, and the results of following their advice often so 

 disappointing, that the health-seeker's troubles only thicken. Even 

 those whose consciousness has given them no trouble along lines of 

 health are not wholly exempt from the fear, or fear of the fear ; for, in 

 many households where the health idea has become rampant, the guest 

 at the board is assailed with advice as to the wholesomeness of this, the 

 hygienic qualities of that, and the proteid content of the other dish, 

 until his own stomach becomes alarmed and cries out even for the flesh 



