Read Ebook: Euthenics the science of controllable environment A plea for better living conditions as a first step toward higher human efficiency by Richards Ellen H Ellen Henrietta

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 433 lines and 35516 words, and 9 pages

It is in the study of food substances and their possibilities in relation to better sanitary conditions that the widest field is open to housekeepers, and the subject should be especially fascinating to women of education and ability. All the skill and knowledge of the best educated women should be enlisted in the cause of better food for the people. Certainly no subject, except that of pure air, can have a closer bearing on the health than right diet. Much sound teaching will be needed before bad habits of eating and drinking will be conquered.

A strong, well man whose work is muscular and carried on in the open air, as is that of the farmer and of the fisherman, will have the power to assimilate almost anything, and can maintain abundant health on the coarsest food poorly prepared, provided, only, that it is abundant and composed of the chemical constituents that the body requires.

Only a small proportion of our people, however, engage in work of this sort. The majority are compelled by occupation, age, or health to remain indoors. For them nutritious, readily digested food is a requisite. The farmer or the fisherman can digest, even thrive upon, food which would be deadly for a woman working in a factory.

In the fourth report of the Massachusetts State Board of Health , Dr. Derby, the secretary, holds that "we have good reason to believe that the many forms of dyspepsia which are so commonly met with among all classes in Massachusetts, in country quite as much as in town, are but too often the danger signal that Nature gives us to show that the food, either in its quality, or its preparation, or its variety, is unsuited to maintain the vital processes. If this warning is rejected, the result of malnutrition is frequently chronic disease of the so-called major class."

Sanitation in relation to food deals first with wholesome and clean materials--meat from animals free from disease; fruit and vegetables free from decay; milk, butter, etc., free from harmful bacteria. The dangers are the transference to the human body of encysted organisms like trichina; of the absorption of poisonous substances as toxins or ptomaines; of the lodgment of germs of disease along with dust on berries, rough peach skins, crushed-open fruits; of dirt clinging to lettuce, celery, and such vegetables as are eaten raw.

For the next class of dangers we turn to the handling of foods with unclean hands.

In countless ways disease is spread mysteriously, all due to unclean habits. It is a safe precaution to patronize only those restaurants in which the waiters are evidently trained to handle the food and vessels with care. It will pay well to take care of one's hands and learn sanitary habits when one is young; then one will do right without effort. Whatever change of ideas may come with increase of knowledge, these habits will not need to be unlearned. Without knowing the reasons for them, they have been proclaimed in civilized lands.

It should be the part of the physicians to take pains to advise, for most of our people are accessible to ideas; yet from these can come no improvement until the people are convinced that it is needed. Just as soon as the individual fully realizes that he himself is to blame for his suffering or his poverty in human energy, he will apply his intelligence to the bettering of his condition. If he can, in a short time, make as good a showing as public effort has made in the case of water supplies, he will accomplish much for the race.

Of equal importance to food, in the proper care of the human machine, comes the air we breathe.

Many of man's present physical troubles are due to the roof over his head confining the warmed, used-up air, which would escape freely if there were an opening provided. The first law of sanitation requires the quick removal of all wastes. Once-breathed air is as much a waste as once-used water, and should be allowed to escape. Sewers are built for draining away used water. Flues are just as important to serve as sewers for used air. Air is lighter than water, and out-breathed air being warmed is lighter than that at room temperature. It rises to the ceiling, where it will escape if it is allowed to do so before it cools sufficiently to fall.

The roof also keeps out sunlight, and some late investigations indicate that glass cuts off some of the most vitally important light rays. The "glame" of the Ralstonites--"air in motion with the sunlight on it"--may have a scientific basis.

It will at once be retorted, "But we cannot heat all out-of-doors."

A partial reply is: Do not try to make your house a tropical jungle. Travelers assure us that such an atmosphere is not conducive to work or to health.

All great nations have lived in a temperate climate, where physical and mental activity was possible for many hours a day. Science is more and more clearly giving reasons for the cooler temperature in certain physiological laws. The habits of life in regard to air and food are largely under individual, or at least under family control, and should be studied as personal hygiene.

The lessons being so clearly taught in the treatment of tuberculosis should be heeded in forming the general living habits of the people.

If loss of life can be lessened and working power increased by man's effort, why does he not make the effort? Why are men and women so apathetic over the prevalence of disease? Why do they not devote their energies to stamping it out? For no other reason than their disbelief in the teachings of science, coupled with a lingering superstition that, after all, it is fate, not will power, which rules the destinies of mankind.

Perhaps it is too much to expect that a sturdy plant of belief should have grown since the days of Edwin Chadwick and Benjamin Ward Richardson , less than a century ago, when there were perhaps not a dozen men and women who believed that man had any appreciable control over his own health.

It is well recognized that in severe sicknesses of many kinds the will to get well is more powerful than drugs, that something which we call nerve force acting upon the physical machine sends a vital current through the arteries, coerces the heart to renewed pumping action, and life comes again to the blanched cheek and glazing eye. This more often happens by a mental stimulus than by any medicine. In like manner the improvement of the body's shell, the home, like that of the soul's shell, the body, comes more often from an inward impulse than from outward coercion.

Certain notions which have crept into popular currency need to be corrected before the individual can free himself from bondage sufficiently to attempt constructive advance and improvement.

Only a small percentage of adults obtain the full efficiency from the human machine--the only means they have of living, working, enjoying. They permit themselves to stand and walk badly, they breathe with only a portion of their lungs, and so fail to furnish the blood stream with oxygen. They dress unhygienically. They eat wrongly. They exercise little. In short, they subject their bodies to abusive treatment which would ruin any machine. Because retribution does not instantly follow infraction of Nature's laws, they become callous and unbelieving. Economy and efficiency in human time and strength is one of the lessons to be taught the young people, so that they may not waste their patrimony.

The youth feels as rich in his fifty years to come as he does with a legacy of ,000 in the bank. The years, however, can yield only small variations from the established rate of interest. The human machine can manufacture only a limited amount of energy. It remains to utilize that quantity to the best advantage. This can be done only by having a purpose in life strong enough to resist alluring temptations to fritter away both time and strength.

One of the world's busy workers found that the distractions of urban life were breaking in upon his working time and making inroads upon his physical vitality. He recognized that work for the body and work for the mind must be balanced, and he evolved an acrostic to be followed as a rule of life, the fulfillment of which has meant prolonged years of efficient work and has kept the freshness of middle life with the advancing years. Taking the six days of the week as a unit, the acrostic is as follows:

F Food One-tenth the time E Exercise One-tenth the time A Amusement One-tenth the time S Sleep Three-tenths the time T Task Four-tenths the time

The first and last are nearly fixed quantities, the other three may vary within certain limits as to amount of time given and intensity of effort. Amusement and exercise may be taken together; exercise and sleep may be somewhat interchangeable.

The psychology of doing is clearly illustrated in the character of Fool Billy, as drawn by the author of "Priscilla of the Good Intent."

"Is there nought ye like better than idleness?" asked the blacksmith. "Think now, Billy--just ponder over it."

"Well, now," answered the other, after a silence, "there's playing--what ye might call playing at a right good game. Could ye think of some likely pastime, David?"

"Ay, could I; blowing bellows is the grandest frolic ever I came across." ...

"I doubt 'tis work, David.... I shouldn't like to be trapped into work. 'Twould scare me when I woke o' nights and thought of it."

"See ye then, Billy"--blowing the bellows gently--"is it work to make yon sparks go, blue and green and red, as fast as ever ye like to drive 'em?"

"Te-he, 'tis just a bit o' sport--I hadn't thought of it in that light." And soon he was blowing steadily.

Later, when David the smith was going to America and wished to leave his forge with the half-witted Billy, he proposed the smith's work as play.

"Te-he," laughed Billy, "am I to play wi' all your fine tools, David?"

"Ay, just that. I've taught ye the way o' them and Dan Foster's lad from Brow Farm shall come and blow the bellows for you."

"Will that be work for Dan Foster's lad, or play?"

"Hard work, Billy--grievous hard work, while you are just playing at making horseshoes, fence railings, and what not."

"And I'm to play at making horseshoes," went on Fool Billy, "while Dan Foster's lad's sweating hard at bellows-blowing."

Quite slowly but surely, the idea is dawning on the social horizon that the persistence of conditions prejudicial to human prosperity is discreditable to a civilized community, and that economics if not ethics calls for their control.

It is the new view that disease must be understood and overcome; that hospitals, dispensaries, surgical and medical treatment, nursing and preventive measures must be developed and dovetailed into a general social scheme for the elimination of preventable diseases and a very substantial reduction in the prevalence of such diseases as cannot as yet be classed as preventable.

Nature endows the vast majority of mankind with a birthright of normal physical efficiency. It is the duty of those who aspire to be known as social workers each to do his share in confirming his fellow beings in this possession.

We know now that if we do the things we ought to do, we can prevent sickness. We have reached a point where it is recognized that it is the duty of the community or state to effectually protect itself against the ignorant, the selfish, the filthy, and the diseased. We believe now that we must have proper sewage disposal, pure water, decent tenements, clean streets, good-sized playgrounds, supervision of factories, protection of child labor, and pure food.

Next after himself, man owes it to his neighbor to be well, and to avoid disease in order that he may impose no burden upon that neighbor.

HOPE

The real significance of biological evolution has not been grasped by the people in general. It is that man is a part of organic nature, subject to laws of development and growth, laws which he cannot break with impunity. It is his business to study the forces of Nature and to conquer his environment by submitting to the inevitable. Only then will man gain control of the conditions which affect his own well-being.

Sickness, we know, is the result of breaking some law of universal nature. What that law may be, investigators in scores of laboratories are endeavoring to determine. In most diseases they have been successful. Those remaining are being attacked on all sides, and it may be confidently predicted that a few years will see success assured.

Why, then, does sickness continue to be the greatest drain upon individual and national resources? Because man, through ignorance or unbelief, will not avail himself of this knowledge, or is behind the times in his method. Where wisdom means effort and discomfort, many feel it folly to be wise.

The individual may be wise as to his own needs, but powerless by himself to secure the satisfaction of them. Certain concessions to others' needs are always made in family life. The community is only a larger family group, and social consciousness must in time take into account social welfare. Moreover, a neighbor may pollute the water supply, foul the air, and adulterate the food. This is the penalty paid for living in groups. Men band together, therefore, to protect a common water supply, to suppress smoke, dust, and foul gases which render the common air unfit to breathe. The State helps the group to protect itself from bad food as it does from destruction of property.

The development of fire protection is a good example of community effort. The isolated farmhouse may have buckets of water and blankets in an accessible place with which to put out an incipient fire. Then eight or ten families build close together. The danger of one becomes the danger of all, and a fire brigade is organized that may protect all. When hundreds of families crowd together in a small space the danger becomes so much the greater that a paid department with efficient apparatus is necessary. No one complains of the infraction of individual rights. Each one is glad to pay his share of the expense.

In securing protection from other dangers, the individual and the family unit are fast relying on community regulations. In fact, in many ways the individual, when he becomes one of a crowd, must go whither the crowd goes and at the same rate of progress.

Failure to recognize that by coming into the community he has forfeited his right to unrestrained individuality causes an irritation as unreasonable as harmful.

Numbers of families living close together are served by the same grocer or market man. These families may agree upon their requirements as to quality and cleanliness and publish their rules. If they do not take interest enough to protect themselves, the community must make rules for them. If the local officials are not vigilant enough, the State may step in and compel the observance of sanitary regulations.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet