Domestic medicine : $b or, a treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines. With an appendix, containing a dispensatory for the use of private practitionersBuchan, William
Science
Domestic medicine : $b or, a treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines. With an appendix, containing a dispensatory for the use of private practitioners
Buchan, William
Medicine, Popular -- Early works to 1800
It may seem romantic to recommend gardening to manufacturers in great
towns; but observation proves that the plan is very practicable. In the
town of Sheffield, in Yorkshire, where the great iron manufacture is
carried on, there is hardly a journeyman cutler who does not possess a
piece of ground, which he cultivates as a garden. This practice has many
salutary effects. It not only induces these people to take exercise
without doors, but also to eat many greens, roots, &c. of their own
growth, which they would never think of purchasing. There can be no
reason why manufacturers in any other town in Great Britain should not
follow the same plan. It is indeed to be regretted, that in such a place
as London a plan of this kind is not practicable; yet even there
sedentary artificers may find opportunities of taking air and exercise,
if they chuse to embrace them.
Mechanics are too much inclined to crowd into great towns. The situation
may have some advantages; but it has likewise many disadvantages. All
mechanics who live in the country have it in their power to cultivate a
piece of ground; which indeed most of them do. This not only gives them
exercise, but enables them to live more comfortably. So far at least as
my observation extends, mechanics who live in the country are far more
happy than those in great towns. They enjoy better health, live in
greater affluence, and seldom fail to rear a healthy and numerous
offspring.
In a word, exercise without doors, in one shape or another, is
absolutely necessary to health. Those who neglect it, though they may
for a while drag out life, can hardly be said to enjoy it. Weak and
effeminate, they languish for a few years, and soon drop into an
untimely grave.
THE STUDIOUS.
Intense thinking is so destructive to health, that few instances can be
produced of studious persons who are strong and healthy. Hard study
always implies a sedentary life; and when intense thinking is joined to
the want of exercise, the consequences must be bad. We have frequently
known even a few months of close application to study ruin an excellent
constitution, by inducing a train of nervous complaints which could
never be removed. Man is evidently not formed for continual thought more
than for perpetual action, and would be as soon worn out by the one as
by the other.
So great is the power of the mind over the body, that, by its influence,
the whole vital motions may be accelerated or retarded, to almost any
degree. Thus cheerfulness and mirth quicken the circulation, and promote
all the secretions; whereas sadness and profound thought never fail to
retard them. Hence it would appear, that even a degree of
thoughtlessness is necessary to health. Indeed, the perpetual thinker
seldom enjoys either health or spirits; while the person, who can hardly
be said to think at all, generally enjoys both.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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