"Health is the perfect balance between our organism, with all its component parts, and the outer world.”. AMIEL'S JOURNAL. "Though the mills of God grind slowly, Yet they grind exceeding small; With exactness grinds He all." LONGFELLOW. "A sound heart is the life of the flesh.". - SOLOMON. Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty; Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood; Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo AS YOU LIKE IT, ii. 3. "Now, good digestion wait on appetite, And health on both!" MACBETH, iii. 4. VI. HEALTH. THE questions now coming into promi nence pertain chiefly to social science. While there are political and religious questions that still vex and interest society, it is plainly to be seen that the eye of the world is fixed on this matter of living; an art it is getting to be called. It has never yet seriously engaged the attention of the people; it is a new subject, and not fairly before us. The Greeks gave great heed to the individual body, and the Romans secured personal cleanliness by their vast system of baths, but neither seems to have had any conception of the public health; hence, with all their fine training and care of the body, their cities were subject to pestilence, and the average of life remained at a low point. The only successful attempt to connect hygiene with the social order was made by Moses, who interwove its requirements with those of religion. If this critical generation could be diverted for a moment from the "mistakes of Moses" to some thought of his measures that were not mistakes, it would find itself in possession of some very suggestive facts. No nation has been so exempt from contagious and hereditary disease as the Jews, or can show vital statistics so remarkable. There is no question. but that this racial vitality and toughness are due to certain hygienic rules which Moses made effective and lasting by connecting them with religion, where, indeed, they belong. But, aside from the Jews (and in how many respects are they an exceptional people), the art of health is a modern subject. It is a singular fact that when men first reflectively examined themselves they began with their moral nature, then passed to their minds, which is as far as they have reached. Strange as it seems, it is the natural order, and shadows a tremendous truth, morals first, mind next, body last. It is the eternal and fit order. Aristotle mapped out philosophy and morals in lines the world yet accepts in the main, but he did not know the difference between the nerves and the tendons. Rome had a sound system of jurisprudence before it had a physician, using only priestcraft for healing. Cicero was the greatest lawyer the world has seen, but there was not a man in Rome who could have cured him of a colic. The Greek was an expert dialectician when he was using incantations for his diseases. As late as when the Puritans were enunciating their lofty principles, it was generally held that the king's touch would cure scrofula. Governor Winthrop, of colonial days, treated "small-pox and all fevers" by ' a powder made from "live toads baked in an earthen pot in the open air." And even now, in New England, where we split hairs in theology, and can show a philosopher for every square mile, at least one half of the treatment of disease is empirical; that is, there is no ascertained relation between the remedy and the sickness; it is largely a matter of advertisement and pretense. But a new day is dawning. Legislation is crowding the quack into the background, and the Board of Health is coming to the front. The old Greeks put health so high as to deify it. Hygeia was a goddess, young and smiling and beautiful We are catching |