Civics and HealthAllen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Science
Civics and Health
Allen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Hygiene; Public health
Alcohol and tobacco really occupy but a very small share of the
interest and attention of even those men and women by whom they are
habitually used. Hygiene, on the other hand, is of constant,
uninterrupted concern. Why, therefore, should it be planned to have
alcohol and tobacco displace the broader subject of personal and public
hygiene in the attention and interest of children throughout the school
life? Beyond the text-book and schoolroom a thousand influences are at
work to teach the social evils, the waste of energy, and the
unhappiness that always accompany the excessive use--and frequently
result from a moderate use--of stimulants and narcotics. Of the many
reasons for not drinking and smoking, physiology gives those that
least interest and impress the child. The secondary effects, rather
than the immediate effects, are those that determine a child's action.
Most of the direct physiological effects are, in the majority of
instances, less serious in themselves than the effects of overeating,
of combining milk with acids, of eating irregularly, of neglecting
constipation. Were it not for the social and industrial consequences of
drunkenness and nicotinism, it is doubtful if the most lurid picture of
fatty degeneration, alcoholic consumption, hardened liver, inactive
stomach lining, would outweigh the pleasing--and deceiving--sensations
of alcoholic beverages and cigarettes.
The strong appeal to the child or man is the effect these habits have
upon his mother, his employer, his wife, his children. The vast
majority of us will avoid or stop using anything that makes us
offensive to those with whom we are most intimately associated, and to
those upon whom our professional and industrial promotion depends.
Children will profit from drill in and out of school in the science of
avoiding offense and of giving happiness, but unless the
categories--_acts that give offense_ and _acts that give
happiness_--are wide enough to include the main acts committed in the
normal relations of son, companion, employer, husband, father, and
citizen, those who set out to avoid alcohol and tobacco find themselves
ill equipped to carry the obligations of a temperate, law-abiding
citizen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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