The Possibilities of Hygiene

How to Live; Rules for Healthful Living
by Irving Fisher, Eugene Lyman Fisk, M.D.

(Page 9 of 14)

Section IV

The Preventability of Disease and Death

Certain it is that more people would practise hygiene if they could be made to realize in some vivid way how much they needed it. Few persons, even when they read and accept the statistics on the subject, really have a picture of the imperative need of hygiene as an integral part of every human life. It is not brought home to them how widespread is illness, how numerous are preventable deaths, how many are the tendencies toward individual and racial deterioration.

The report of the Roosevelt Conservation Commission on National Vitality, indicates that annually there are in the United States over 600,000 deaths which might be prevented if existing knowledge of hygiene were properly applied; that at least half of the 3,000,000 and more sick-beds constantly kept filled in the United States are unnecessary; that the financial loss from earnings cut off by preventable disease and premature death amounts to over $1,500,000,000 annually; and that over 15 years are lost to the average life through the lack of application of knowledge which already exists but which simply has not yet been disseminated and applied.

Impairments Unsuspected

The health examinations of the Life Extension Institute have revealed unsuspected ailments in persons who considered themselves well, and to an extent which has astonished even those who have long been familiar with these subjects. Among large groups of clerks and employes of banks and commercial houses in New York City with an average age of 27 and all supposedly picked men and women, only 1 per cent. were found free of impairment or of habits of living inviting impairment. Of those with important physical impairments, 89 per cent. were, prior to the examination, unaware of impairment; 16 per cent. of the total number examined were affected with organic heart trouble, 42 per cent. with arterial changes, ranging from slight thickening to advanced arteriosclerosis, 26 per cent. with high or low blood pressure, 40 per cent. had sugar, casts, or albumin in the urine, 24 per cent. had a combination of urinary and other serious impairment, 47 per cent. had decayed teeth or infected gums, 31 per cent. had faulty vision uncorrected.

Among industrial groups, not exposed to any special occupational hazard or poisoning, the figures were as follows: With an average age of 33, none were found to be free of impairment or habits of living inviting impairment. Of those with important physical impairments, 89 per cent. were, prior to the examination, unaware of impairment; 3 per cent. of the total number examined were affected with organic heart trouble; 53 per cent. with arterial changes, ranging from slight thickening to advanced arteriosclerosis; 23 per cent. with high or low blood pressure; 45 per cent. had sugar, albumin or casts in their urine; 26 per cent. had a combination of urinary and other serious impairment; 69 per cent. had decayed teeth or infected gums; 41 per cent. had faulty vision uncorrected.

Minor Ailments

There are few persons in America to-day who reach the age of forty sound and normal in every part of the body, especially if we include among abnormalities the minor ailments. The extent to which minor ills are prevalent among those who pass for "well" people is not generally appreciated. Once we penetrate beneath conventional acquaintance we almost invariably learn of some functional trouble, such as impairment of heart, circulation, liver, kidneys, stomach; or gallstones, constipation, diarrhea; or insomnia, neurasthenia, neuritis, neuralgia, sick-headache; or tonsillitis, bronchitis, hay fever, catarrh, grippe, colds, sore throat; or rupture, enlarged glands, skin eruptions; or rheumatism, lumbago, gout, obesity; or decayed teeth, baldness, deafness, eye ailments, spinal curvature, flat foot, lameness; or sundry other "troubles."

These ailments, though regarded as "minor," should be recognized promptly and accepted as the signal that the person is moving in the wrong direction. There is no need for alarm provided this warning is heeded. Otherwise disaster is almost certain sooner or later to follow. The laws of physiology are just as inexorable as the laws of physics. There is no compromising with Nature. No man can disobey the laws of health to which he has been bred by Nature without paying for it - any more than a man can sign a check against his bank account without reducing the amount. He may not be immediately bankrupt, and until he exhausts his account he may not experience any inconvenience from his great extravagance, but Nature keeps her balances very accurately, and in the end all claims must be paid.

The Personal Equation

It is true, of course, that some persons have greater resistance than others. If we had a convenient barometer by which to measure daily the state of our vitality, we might register the effect of every unhygienic act. But it is so seldom that endurance is accurately measured that few people appreciate the enormous differences in people and the variations of the same person at different times. These differences and variations have a range of many hundred per cent. Some people can not walk upstairs or run across the street without being out of breath, while others will climb the Matterhorn without overstrain. The fact that certain people have lived to the century-mark in spite of unhygienic living is sometimes cited to prove that hygiene is ineffective. One might as well cite the fact that certain trees are not blown down in a gale or are not quickly destroyed by insect-pests to prove that gales have no tendency to blow down or insects to destroy trees.

Over-confidence

The truth is that a person who has so much vitality as to lead him to defy the laws of health and to boast that he pays no price no matter how he lives, is likely to be the very man to exhaust his account of health prematurely. There was, a few years ago, a famous American, possessed of prodigious bodily vigor. He ought to have lived a century. Unfortunately he had this "insolence of health." He was warned several times against overwork, lack of sleep, and abuse of his digestion. But he merely smiled and claimed that such warnings were for others, not for him. He met an untimely end, due as his physicians believed and as he himself acknowledged, when too late, to his abuse of the great powers with which Nature had endowed him and to the neglect of personal hygiene.

Possible Health Attainment

Conversely, an observance of the laws of hygiene affords wonderful results in producing vitality and endurance. Insurance companies are discovering that even weak and sick people, will, if they take good care of themselves, outlive those with robust constitutions who abuse them.

To those unfamiliar with the subject in its larger aspects, the possibilities seem almost beyond belief. As an example of the wonderful gains which can be secured by obeying the laws of hygiene may be cited the case of a young man who a few years ago was scarcely able to drag himself into the sun in Colorado, where he was endeavoring to rid himself of tuberculosis. He not only succeeded, but subsequently, by dint of following substantially all of the rules of hygiene here laid down, became an athlete and capable of running twenty-five miles for sheer love of sport and apparently without the overstrain experienced by "Marathon" runners. Kant and Humboldt are cases typical in different fields of achievement of many of the world's most vital men who have actually made over their constitutions from weakness to strength. Cornaro says that it was the neglect of hygienic laws which made him all but a dead man at thirty-seven, and that the thoroughgoing reform of his habits which he then effected made him a centenarian. His rules, drawn up four hundred years ago and described in his interesting work "The Temperate Life," are, so far as they are explained, almost identical with those given in this book. It is difficult to assign a limit to the good which can be accomplished by practising these rules and so minimizing the poisons which usually narrow and shorten our lives.

Immortal Animal Cells

So far as science can reveal, there seems to be no principle limiting life. There are many good and bad reasons why men die, but no underlying necessary reason why they must die. The brilliant Carrel has kept tissue cells of animals alive outside of the body for the past three years. These cells are multiplying and growing, apparently unchanged by time, to all appearances immortal so long as they are periodically washed of poison and nourished in a proper medium. If we could at intervals thoroughly wash man free of his poisons and nourish him, there seems to be no reason why he should not live indefinitely.

Copyright 1915 by Funk & Wagnalls Company
New York and London, 1916