How to be Happy Though Married: Being a Handbook to MarriageHardy, E. J. (Edward John)
General
How to be Happy Though Married: Being a Handbook to Marriage
Hardy, E. J. (Edward John)
Marriage
Not all but by far the largest part of the cure of nervous depression
rests with the patient. Change, exercise, fresh air, diet, tonics--all
these together will not cure any one who gives up and gives way.
Above all, we should try to be cheerful. A clerical friend, at a
celebrated watering-place, met a lady who seemed hovering on the brink
of the grave. Her cheeks were hollow and wan, her manner listless, her
step languid, and her brow wore the severe contraction so indicative
both of mental and physical suffering, so that she was to all observers
an object of sincere pity. Some years afterward he encountered this same
lady; but so bright, and fresh, and youthful, so full of healthful
buoyancy, and so joyous in expression, that he questioned the lady if he
had not deceived himself with regard to identity. "Is it possible,"
said he, "that I see before me Mrs. B. who presented such a doleful
appearance at the Springs several years ago?" "The very same." "And pray
tell me the secret of your cure. What means did you use to attain to
such vigour of mind and body, to such cheerfulness and rejuvenation?" "A
very simple remedy," returned she, with a beaming face; "I stopped
worrying and began to laugh; that was all."
We would call the attention of heads of families to the following
mistakes which the "Sanitary Record" lately enumerated: "It is a mistake
to labour when you are not in a fit condition to do so. To think that
the more a person eats the healthier and stronger he will become. To go
to bed at midnight and rise at daybreak, and imagine that every hour
taken from sleep is an hour gained. To imagine that if a little work or
exercise is good, violent or prolonged exercise is better. To conclude
that the smallest room in the house is large enough to sleep in. To eat
as if you only had a minute to finish the meal in, or to eat without an
appetite, or continue after it has been satisfied, merely to satisfy the
taste. To believe that children can do as much work as grown people, and
that the more hours they study the more they learn. To imagine that
whatever remedy causes one to feel immediately better (as alcoholic
stimulants) is good for the system, without regard to the after-effects.
To take off proper clothing out of season because you have become
heated. To sleep exposed to a direct draught in any season. To think
that any nostrum or patent medicine is a specific for all the diseases
flesh is heir to."
There are few things more important to health than the due adjustment of
play and work. The school at which a boy ten years of age is made to
work at his tasks for the same time as a lad of sixteen ought to be
avoided by all parents. If health is to be preserved in early youth, the
child must be treated on the same principle as a foal would be. He, or
she, must be allowed to a great extent to "run wild," and "lessons" must
be carefully graduated to the bodily powers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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