Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Science
Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)
Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Diet; Hygiene
Health is within the grasp of all who are not afflicted with organic
disease, and the vast majority have no organic ills. All that is
necessary is to lead natural lives and learn how to use the mind
properly. Those who are not in sympathy with the views on racial duty
can enhance their personal worth through better living without giving
the race any thought. Every individual who leads a natural life and
thinks to advantage helps to bring about better public health. The
national health is the aggregate of individual health and is improved as
the individuals evolve into better health. National or racial
improvement come through evolution, not through revolution. The
improvement is due to small contributions from many sources.
The greatest power for human uplift is knowledge. Reformers often
believe that they can improve the world by legislation. Lasting reform
comes through education. If the laws are very repressive the reaction is
both great and unpleasant.
It takes about six months to learn stenography. It requires a long
apprenticeship to become a first-class blacksmith or horseshoer. To
obtain the rudiments of a physician's art it is necessary to spend four
to six years in college. To learn a language takes an apt pupil at least
a year. A lawyer must study from two to four years to become a novice. A
businessman must work many years before he is an expert in his line. Not
one of these attainments is worth as much as good health, yet an
individual of average intelligence can obtain enough knowledge about
right living during his spare time in from two to six months to assure
him of good health, if he lives as well as he knows how. Is it worth
while? It certainly is, for it is one of the essentials of life. Health
will increase one's earning capacity and productivity and more than
double both the pleasure and the duration of life.
Disease is a very expensive luxury. Health is one of the cheapest,
though one of the rarest, things on earth. There is no royal road to
health. If there is any law of health it is this: Only those will retain
it permanently who are deserving of it.
Many prefer to live in that state of uncertainty, which may be called
tolerable health, a state in which they do not suffer, yet are not quite
well. In this condition they have their little ups and downs and
occasionally a serious illness, which too often proves fatal. Even such
people ought to acquire health knowledge, for the time may come when
they will desire to enjoy life to the fullest, which they can do only
when they have health. Those who have this knowledge are often able to
help themselves quickly and effectively when no one else can.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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