Various - The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24 28
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Various >> The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24 28
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Transcriber's Note: In preparing this ebook I have corrected a small
number of obvious typographical errors, including the two which are
mentioned in the September issue. I have not interrupted the text by
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_The_
HEALTHY
LIFE
The Independent
Health Magazine
VOLUME V
JULY-DECEMBER 1913
LONDON
GRAHAM HOUSE, TUDOR ST., E.C.
INDEX
VOLUME V.--JULY-DECEMBER 1913
Ballade of Skyfaring, A, S. Gertrude Ford, 490
Book Reviews, 532
Breathe, On Learning to, Dr J. Stenson Hooker, 630
Camping Out, C.R. Freeman, 438, 480
Care of Cupboards, Florence Daniel, 530
Castles in the Air, E.M. Cobham, 582
Cloud-capped Towers, E.M. Cobham, 626
Correspondence, 504, 533, 580, 658
Cottage Cheese, 658
Curtained Doorways, The, Edgar J. Saxon, 561
Doctor on Doctors, A, 637
Doctor's Reason for Opposing Vaccination, A, Dr J.W. Hodge, 597
Doctors and Health, 633
Fasting, A Significant Case, A. Rabagliati, M.D., 458, 492
Fear and Imagination, E.M. Cobham, 510
Food and the Source of Bodily Energy, 507
Fruit-Oils and Nuts, 659
Futurist Gardening, G.G. Desmond, 451
Health Queries, Dr H. Valentine Knaggs:--
About Sugar, 540;
Bad Case of Self-poisoning, 502;
Boils, their Cause and Cure, 498;
Canary _versus_ Jamaica Bananas, 579;
Can Malaria be Prevented? 466;
Cereal Food in the Treatment of Neuritis, 619;
Correct Blending of Foods, 655;
Concerning Cottage Cheese, 617;
Deafness, 615, 616;
Diet for Obstinate Cough, 618;
Diet for Ulcerated Throat, 575;
Dilated Heart, 653;
Difficulties in Changing to Non-Flesh Diet, 655;
Dry Throat, 653;
Eczema as a Sign of Returning Health, 613;
Excessive Perspiration, 574;
Farming and Sciatica, 575;
Faulty Food Combinations, 536;
Giddiness and Head Trouble, 468;
Going to Extremes in the Unfired Diet, 543;
Long Standing Gastric Trouble, 470;
Malt Extract, 539;
Neuritis, 538;
Onion Juice as Hair Restorer, 651;
Phosphorus and the Nerves, 577;
Refined Paraffin as a Constipation Remedy, 652;
Saccharine, 653;
Stammering, 654;
Severe Digestive Catarrh, 471;
Sciatica, 651;
Temporary "Bright's Disease" and How to Deal with it, 576;
Ulceration of the Stomach, 541;
Unfired Diet for a Child, 467;
Water Grapes, 619;
Why the Red Corpuscles are Deficient in Anaemia, 654
Health and Joy in Hand-weaving, Minnie Brown, 591
Health through Reading, Isabella Fyvie Mayo, 517
Healthy Brains, E.M. Cobham, 448, 474, 510, 546, 582
Healthy Homemaking, Florence Daniel, 495, 528
Healthy Life Abroad, D.M. Richardson, 559
Healthy Life Recipes, 462, 571, 610, 641
Hired Help, Florence Daniel, 495, 528
Holiday Aphorisms, Peter Piper, 508, 527
How Much Should We Eat? 442, 477, 513, 563, 593
Human Magnetism, 505
Imagination in Insurance, E.M. Cobham, 546
Imagination in Play, E.M. Cobham, 474
Imagination in Use, E.M. Cobham, 448
Indication, An, Editors, 437, 473, 509, 545, 581, 621
Learning to Breathe, On, Dr J. Stenson Hooker, 630
Letters of a Layman, I., 633
Lime Juice, Pure, 534
Longevity, A Remedy for, Edgar J. Saxon, 491
Mental Healing, A Scientific Basis for, J. Stenson Hooker, M.D., 456
Midsummer Madness, Edgar J. Saxon, 454
Modern Germ Mania: A Case in Point, Dr H.V. Knaggs, 638
More About Two Meals a Day, Wilfred Wellock, 487
New Race, The, S. Gertrude Ford, 601
Ode to the West Wind, Shelley, 555
Pickled Peppercorns, Peter Piper, 464, 570, 609, 660
Plain Words and Coloured Pictures, Edgar J. Saxon, 622
Play Spirit, The, D.M. Richardson, 602
Play Spirit, The: A Criticism, L.E. Hawks, 628
Quest for Beauty, The, Edgar J. Saxon, 523
Recipes, 462, 571, 610, 641
Remedy for Longevity, A, Edgar J. Saxon, 491
Remedy for Sleeplessness, 533
Salads and Salad Dressings, 462
Salt Cooked Vegetables, 506
Swan Song of September, The, S. Gertrude Ford, 523
Sea-sickness, Some Remedies, Hereward Carrington, 484
Semper Fidelis, "A.R.," 526
Sleeplessness, A Remedy, 533
Scientific Basis for Mental Healing, A, J. Stenson Hooker, M.D., 456
Scientific Basis of Vegetalism, The, Prof. H. Labbe, 549, 584
Significant Case, A, A. Rabagliati, M.D., 458, 492
Symposium on Unfired Food, A, D. Godman, 486, 648
Taste or Theory? Arnold Eiloart, B.Sc., 643
Travels in Two Colours, Edgar J. Saxon, 605
To-morrow's Flowers, G.G. Desmond, 451
Two Meals a Day, More About, Wilfred Wellock, 487
Vaccination, A Doctor's Reason for Opposing, Dr J.W. Hodge, 597
Vegetalism, The Scientific Basis of, Prof. H. Labbe, 549, 584
West Wind, Ode to, Shelley, 555
What makes a Holiday? C., 557
World's Wanderers, The, Shelley, 625
THE
HEALTHY
LIFE
The Independent
Health Magazine.
3 AMEN CORNER LONDON E.C.
VOL. V JULY
No. 24. 1913
_There will come a day when physiologists, poets, and
philosophers will all speak the same language and understand one
another._--CLAUDE BERNARD.
AN INDICATION.
Some laymen are very fond of deprecating the work of specialists,
holding that specialisation tends to narrowness, to inability to see
more than one side of a question.
It is, of course, true that the specialist tends to "go off at a
tangent" on his particular subject, and even to treat with contempt or
opposition the views of other specialists who differ from him. But all
work that is worth doing is attended by its own peculiar dangers. It
is here that the work of the non-specialist comes in. It is for him to
compare the opposing views of the specialists, to reveal one in the
light thrown by the other, to help into existence the new truth
waiting to be born of the meeting of opposites.
Specialisation spells division of labour, and apart from division of
labour certain great work can never be done. To do away with such
division, supposing an impossibility to be possible, would simply mean
reversion to the state of the primitive savage. But we have no call
to attempt the abolition of even the minutest division of labour. What
is necessary is to understand and guard against its dangers.
Specialisation _may_ lead to madness, as electricity _may_ lead to
death. But no specialist need go far astray who, once in a while, will
make an honest attempt to come to an understanding with the man whose
views are diametrically opposed to his own. For thus he will retain
elasticity of brain, and gain renewed energy for, and perhaps fresh
light on, his own problems.--[EDS.]
CAMPING OUT.
IV. THE FIVE-FOOT SAUSAGE.
The question of blankets and mattresses may be taken as settled. We
can now sleep quite comfortably, take our fresh air sleeping and
waking, and find shelter when it rains. But that same fresh air brings
appetite and we must see how that appetite is to be appeased.
Take a frying-pan. It should be of aluminium for lightness; though a
good stout iron one will help you make good girdle-cakes, if you get
it hot and drop the flour paste on it. You must find some other way of
making girdle-cakes, and if you take an iron frying pan with you,
don't say that I told you to.
Though it is obviously necessary that a frying-pan should have a
handle, I was bound to tell Gertrude that I do not find it convenient
to take handled saucepans when I go camping. I take for all boiling
purposes, including the making of tea, what is called a camp-kettle.
Most ironmongers of any standing seem to keep it, and those who have
it not in stock can show you an illustration of it in their wholesale
list. It is just like the pot in which painters carry their paint,
except that it has an ordinary saucepan lid. You should have a "nest"
of these--that is, three in diminishing sizes going one inside the
other. The big lid then fits on the outer one and the two other lids
have to be carried separately.
[Illustration: _The Five-Foot Sausage_]
You hang these camp-kettles over the fire by their bucket handles,
from the tripod or other means of getting over the fire. Sometimes the
bough of a tree high out of the reach of the flames will do. Sometimes
a stick or oar thrust into the bank or in a crevice of the wall behind
the fire is more convenient than a tripod. Again, you can do without
any hanging at all, making a little fireplace of bricks or stones and
standing the saucepans "on the hob."
It is a simple thing to tie the tops of three sticks together and make
a tripod. Then from the place where they join you dangle a piece of
string, pass it through the handle of the kettle and tie it to itself,
in a knot that can be adjusted up or down to raise or lower the kettle
from the fire. This knot is our old friend the two half-hitches. Pass
the loose end round the down cord, letting it come back under the up
cord, then round again with the same finish, and lo! the up cord makes
two half-hitches round the down cord. You can slip, them up and put
them where you like and they will hold, but you have to undo them to
take the kettle clean away from the fire. So we add to our equipment a
few pot-hooks or pieces of steel wire shaped like an S. Their use will
be obvious. If we have three of them it is quite easy to keep three
kettles going over one fire. They swing cheek by jowl when they all
want the same amount of fire, but each can be raised or lowered an
inch or several inches to let them respectively boil, simmer or just
keep warm.
These are the cooking utensils. A biscuit tin would make an oven and
Gertrude says she must have an oven. For my part I would not attempt
baking when camping out and I will say no more about ovens, except
that all the biscuit tins in the world won't beat a hole in the ground
first filled with blazing sticks and then with the things to be baked
and covered with turves till they are done.
I had great difficulty in persuading Gertrude to feed out of tin
dishes like those which we use sometimes for making shallow round
cakes or setting the toffee in. They are ever so much better than
plates, being deep enough for soup-plates and not easy to upset when
you use them on your lap. Any number of the same size will go into one
another and a dozen scarcely take up more room than one.
It was worse still when it came to a still more useful substitute, the
camp equivalent of the teacup. In the first place we abolish the
saucer, for the simple reason that we have no earthly use for it in
camp. We take tin mugs with sloping sides and wire bucket handles.
They fit into one another in the same accommodating way as the eating
dishes. Gertrude was nearly put off this device altogether by Basil's
remark that he had only seen them in use in poulterers' shops, where
they are put under hares' noses....
"Basil, you, you monster," cried Gertrude, and I had to push those tin
mugs as though I had been a traveller interested in the sale of them.
The drinking of hot tea out of these mugs is quite a beautiful art.
You hold the wire handle between finger and thumb and put the little
finger at the edge of the bottom rim. It is thus able to tilt the mug
to the exact angle which is most convenient for drinking. When
Gertrude had learnt the trick, she became perfectly enamoured of the
mugs. She sometimes brings one out at ordinary afternoon tea and
insists that the tea is ever so much better drunk thus than out of
spode.
Smaller mugs of the same shape do for egg-cups, and the egg-spoons I
take to camp are the bone ones, seldom asked for but easy to get in
most oil-and-colour shops. Dessert spoons and forks and table knives
are of the usual pattern, but the former can be had in aluminium and
therefore much lighter than Britannia metal.
The camping-out valise is by all means the rucksack. Never the
knapsack. I am almost ashamed to say this, because as far as my
knowledge goes the knapsack is now obsolete. It may be, however, that
it lingers here and there. If you see one, buy it for a museum if you
like but not for use. The bundle should be allowed to fit itself to
the back, as it does in a canvas bag. Suppose now that you fix the V
point of a pair of braces somewhere near the top of the sack and
bringing the webs over your shoulders, fix them, nicely adjusted, to
the lower corners of the sack, it will ride quite comfortably upon
your back--that is, you have made it from a plain sack into a rucksack
or back-sack. Get or make as many good large strong ones as you have
shoulders in the party to carry them. Have them made of a waterproof
canvas, green or brown, to reeve up tight with strong cord passed
through a series of eyelet-holes and, if you would be quite certain of
keeping out the rain, with a little hood to cover the reeved bag end.
The great bulk of your luggage you will generally find it best to
carry by wheeling it on a bicycle. Spread your ground-sheet on the
floor. On that lay your blankets, doubled so as to make a smaller
square, tent, mattress cover and bed suits on that, then your camping
utensils and all other paraphernalia and roll the whole up into a
sausage about five feet long, when the loose ends of the ground-sheet
have been tucked over as in a brown-paper parcel. Tie it well with
whipcord and fasten it to the top bar of your bicycle frame, leaving
freedom of course for the handles and the front wheel to move and
steer. Push the tent-poles through the lashings and start for your
camp at a comfortable four or five miles an hour. You will find it
easy to move camp at the rate of twenty miles a day and will see a
great deal of country in the course of a fortnight.
The sausage on the bicycle shown in the illustration may be taken to
contain all the gear and a little food. The rucksacks will take the
rest and each man's most precious personal belongings. There is a
small parcel tied to the handle-bar, scarcely to be seen because it is
smaller than the end of the sausage. It is a complete tent tied up in
its ground-sheet.
C.R. FREEMAN.
HOW MUCH SHOULD WE EAT: A WARNING.
_This article, by one of the pioneers of modern dietetics, is in the
nature of a challenge, and is certain to arouse discussion among all
who have studied the food question closely._--[EDS.]
When men lived on their natural food, quantities settled themselves.
When a healthy natural appetite had been sated the correct quantity of
natural food had been taken.
To-day all this is upside down, there is no natural food and only too
often no natural healthy appetite either. Thus the question of
quantity is often asked and many go wrong over it. The all-sufficient
answer to this question is: "Go back to the foods natural to the human
animal and this, as well as a countless number of other problems, will
settle themselves."
But supposing that this cannot be done, suppose, as is often the case,
that the animal fed for years on unnatural food has become so
pathological that it can no longer take or digest its natural food?
Those who take foods which are stimulants are very likely to overeat,
and when they leave off their stimulants they are equally likely to
underfeed themselves. Flesh foods are such stimulants, for it is
possible to intoxicate those quite unaccustomed to them with a large
ration of meat just as well as with a large ration of alcohol. The one
leads to the other, meat leads to alcohol, alcohol to meat. Taking any
stimulant eventually leads to a call for other stimulants.
How are we to tell when a given person is getting enough food, either
natural or partly natural? Medically speaking, there is no difficulty;
there are plenty of guides to the required knowledge, some of them of
great delicacy and extreme accuracy. The trouble generally is that
these guides are not made use of, as the cause of the disaster is not
suspected. A physiologist is not consulted till too late, perhaps till
the disorder in the machinery of life is beyond repair.
Diminishing energy and power, decreasing endurance, slowing
circulation, lessening blood colour, falling temperature, altered
blood pressure, enlarging heart and liver, are some of the most
obvious signs with which the physician is brought into contact in such
cases. But every one of these may, and very often does, pass unnoticed
for quite a long time by those who have had no scientific training.
The public are extremely ignorant on such matters because the natural
sciences have been more neglected in this country in the last fifty
years than anywhere else in Europe, and that is saying a good deal.
Hence diet quacks and all those who trade on the ignorance and
prejudices of the public are having a good time and often employ it in
writing the most appalling rubbish in reference to the important
subject of nutrition.
Being themselves ignorant and without having studied physiology, even
in its rudiments, they do not appear to consider that they should at
least abstain from teaching others till they have got something
certain for themselves.
If the public were less ignorant they would soon see through their
pretensions; but, as it is, things go from bad to worse, and it is not
too much to say that hundreds of lives have been lost down this sordid
by-path of human avarice.
On one single day a few weeks ago the writer heard of three men, two
of whom had been so seriously ill that their lives were in danger, and
one of whom had died. The certified cause of death in this case might
not have led the uninitiated to suspect chronic starvation, but those
who were behind the scenes knew that this was its real cause. A
further extraordinary fact was that two out of these three men were
members of the medical profession, whose training in physiology ought,
one would have thought, to have saved them from such errors.
The conclusion seems to be that they did not use their knowledge
because at first they had no suspicion of the real cause of their
illness. In other words, chronic starvation is insidious and, if no
accurate scientific measurements are made, its results, being
attributed to other causes, are often allowed to become serious before
they are properly treated.
These three men went wrong by following a layman quite destitute of
physiological training, who APPEARED to have produced some wonderful
results in himself and others on extraordinarily small quantities of
food.
If the above tests had been made at once by a trained hand the error
involved in such results could not have escaped detection, and none of
these men would have endangered their lives. I myself examined the
layman in question and finding him not up to standard refused to
follow him. The writer has no difficulty in recalling at least a dozen
cases similar to those above mentioned which have been under his care
in the last twelve months, and the three above mentioned were none of
them under his care at the time of their danger.
What, then, must be our conclusions in reference to these and similar
facts of which it is only possible to give a mere outline here? I
suggest that they are:--
1. Food quantities are of extreme importance.
2. These quantities were settled by physiologists many years ago, and
no good reasons have since been adduced for altering them.
3. The required quantity is approximately nine or ten grains of
proteid per day for each pound of bone and muscle in the body weight.
4. Any considerable departure from this quantity continued over months
and years leads to disaster.
5. The nature of this disaster may appear to be very various and its
real cause is thus frequently overlooked.
I will say a few words about each of these except the first, which is
already obvious. The layman above mentioned asserted that he could
live on but little more than half this quantity, but the food quantity
really required is that which will keep up normal strength, normal
circulation, normal colour, normal temperature and normal mental
power. As we have got perfectly definite standards of all these normal
conditions, serious danger can only be run into by neglecting to
measure them.
It is also possible to tell fairly accurately the quantity of food a
man is taking in a day, and then, by collecting and estimating his
excreta, the quantity also out of this food which he is utilising
completely and burning up in his body.
You would say that no danger should be possible with all these
safeguards, and yet the above case history shows that of two trained
physiologists, members of the medical profession, one died at least
twenty years before his time, and the other was in great danger and
only recovered slowly and with difficulty. Another similar case came
to the writer suffering from increasing debility and what appeared to
be some form of dyspepsia. He was quite unable to pass any of the
above-named tests as to physiological standards, and an investigation
of his excreta showed that his food was at least one-fifth or
one-sixth below its proper quantity and had probably been so for many
months past. Some of his doctors had been giving his "disease" a more
or less long list of names and yet had not noted the one essential
fact of chronic defective nutrition and its cause--underfeeding.
Naturally their treatment was of no avail, but when he had been sent
to a nursing home and had put back the 20 lbs. of weight he had lost
he came slowly back to more normal standards and is now out of danger.
In this case there was marked loss of weight, and few people, one
would think, would overlook such a sign of under nutrition. But loss
of weight is not always present in these cases, at least not at first.
Some people tend to grow stout on deficient proteid, and then the fact
that some of the essential tissues of the body (the muscles, the heart
and the blood) are being dangerously impoverished is very likely to be
overlooked. In the case last mentioned the loss of weight was put down
to the dyspepsia, whereas the real fact was that the "dyspepsia" and
loss of weight were both results of a chronic deficiency in food.
It is evident that some care about food quantities must be taken by
all those who do not live on natural foods. For physiologists there is
no difficulty in settling the question of quantity in accordance with
the signs of the physiology of a normal body. That all, even
physiologists, may run into danger if, while living on unnatural or
partly unnatural foods, or while making any change of food, they do
not consider the question of quantity with sufficient care.
That the question of nutrition should be considered in relation to
_every illness_ even though it may appear on the surface to have no
direct connection with foods or quantities. As a matter of fact, the
nature of the food and its quantity controls all the phenomena of
life. Some twenty years ago most people lived fairly close to the old
physiological quantities, now they have been cut adrift from these and
completely unsettled and are floundering out of their depth. A most
unsatisfactory, even dangerous, condition of affairs.
For the public it will now probably suffice if they insist on raising
the question of quantity whenever they suffer in any way. If they are
unable to answer the question themselves let them go to a trained
physiologist who can do so, and not to a diet quack. But muscular
strength, endurance, mental and bodily energy, skin circulation,
temperature and blood colour are all things which the public can see
for themselves and from which they should in all cases be able to get
sufficient warning to save them from the worst forms of disaster.
Some people imagine that they eat very little, when as a matter of
fact they have good healthy appetites. Others again think they are
eating a great deal, when as a matter of fact they take very little.
In both cases a physiological test of the excreta will give accurate
information. I once had a medical patient who imagined that he
produced great amounts of force and performed feats of endurance on
wonderfully small quantities of food. His excreta showed, however,
that he was merely under-estimating the food he took. A fat man may
seem to be living on very little, but fat does not require to be fed,
and his real bone and muscle weight is not large. A thin man may seem
to require a large quantity of food, but he is really very heavy in
bone and muscle, the tissues that have to be nourished. In all these
ways appearances are apt to be deceptive for those who are ignorant of
science and who do not go down to the root of the matter.
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