Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Science
Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)
Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Diet; Hygiene
The delicate children are perhaps more fortunate than the stronger ones,
for they learn early in life that they have limitations. If they commit
excesses the results are so disagreeable that they soon learn to be
prudent. This prudence serves as protection so long as life lasts.
The robust children on the other hand soon learn that they are strong.
They hear their parents boast about it. They get the idea that because
they are strong they will always remain so, that nothing will do them
any serious harm. By living up to this fallacy they undermine their
constitutions. Parents should teach their children about the law of
compensation as applied to health, that is, he has permanent health who
deserves it, and no one else. The children will not always heed true
teachings after they have left the parental influence, but the parents
have at least done the best they could.
The robust children have their troubles, such as chicken-pox, mumps,
fevers and measles, but these are thrown off so quickly and with so
little inconvenience that they are soon forgotten. As a rule the parents
do not realize that these diseases are due to faulty nutrition, and that
faulty nutrition is caused by improper feeding. It is generally believed
that children must have all the so-called children's diseases. Some
mothers expose their infants to all of these that may happen to be in
the neighborhood, hoping that the children will take them and be through
with them.
Every time a child is sick it is a reflection on either the intelligence
or the performance of the parents. It is natural for children to be
perfectly well, and they will remain in that happy state if they are
given the opportunity. If they are properly fed they will not take any
of the children's diseases in spite of repeated exposure. There is not a
disease germ known to medical science strong enough to establish itself
in the system of an uninjured, healthy child and do damage. The child's
health must first be impaired, through poor care, and then the so-called
disease germs will find a hospitable dwelling place. If children are
given natural food in normal quantities they are disease-proof. Feeding
them on refined sugar and white flour products, pasteurized or
sterilized milk, potatoes fried in grease pickled meats, and various
other ruined foods breaks down their resistance and then they fall an
easy prey to disease.
Some parents make the mistake of believing that they can feed their
children improperly and ward off disease by vaccinations or inoculations
of the products of disease taken from various animals. This is contrary
to reason, common sense and nature and it is impossible. Any individual
who is continually abused in any way, be he infant or adult, will
deteriorate. If the disease is not the one that has been feared, it will
be some other one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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