LESSON 35 LESSONS ON HEALTH

LESSONS ON HEALTH

Ⅲ

DANGERS TO AVOID

TEMPERATE habits and moderation in everything are proofs of good sense and self-respect. If we overdo anything, we shall suffer for it. Many things, such as work, rest, food, and pure water, are very good and necessary in themselves, but our bodies are not built to stand excess, even in these, without resenting it. So we must not continue to eat till we can eat no more, or to work till we are exhausted, or to rest till we suffer from lack of exercise. The happiest life is the active busy life, and the most busy and active life only becomes possible when we treat our bodies properly, and do not overload them or interfere with their healthy working. Those who cannot restrain themselves at all times, whether in eating, or drinking, or in anger, or in playing, are at a disadvantage against those who can, and they also do themselves harm.

The greatest enemy to self-restraint and to moderation amongst young men, and young women too, is intoxicating liquor. By intoxicating liquor is meant beer or wine or whisky, or anything else which makes people drunk if they take enough of it. Every boy ought to make up his mind never to touch a drop of any kind of intoxicating liquor until he is at least twenty-five years old. Every girl ought to do the same. If they wait till then, and keep their eyes open, they will have seen so much worry and sickness and misery and expense caused by drink, that even if they do not always remain total abstainers, they will always be most careful, and temperate in its use.

Drinking is not a bit manly. It spoils people's condition, and the athlete in training must not take any intoxicating liquor or he will lose his condition very quickly. Even a little drink prevents people from thinking clearly, and leads them to do things for which they may be very sorry afterwards. Drinking, too, is very expensive in the long run, for even a shilling a day spent on it comes to over ￡18 in a year; ￡18 saved in a year will provide all sorts of comforts for a house, and will pay for a good many holidays; ￡18 saved for ten years at Savings Bank interest will buy a nice piece of land and leave enough for a cottage to be built on it. People who drink much spend more than a shilling a day, and many a hardworking man has swallowed up as much money, in treating himself and his friends at hotels, as would have paid for a comfortable home.

Drinking not only hurts people's bodies by causing many diseases, but it hurts their minds and working powers. A young fellow often begins by taking a little drink, and soon begins to take a little more. Some day he takes too much and gets drunk. Then he is a useless kind of fellow, for he talks and behaves foolishly. Often he will tell all the secrets of his business, and of his family, or of other people whom he knows. If he were suddenly called on to do something very important, he would not be able to do it; or he may quite easily do something which he would never do if he were sober, and may get into gaol, or lose his position, or other wise be a great worry and trouble to his friends and relatives. It is no excuse for anybody to plead that he was drunk when he did some unlawful thing. Even if he does not do these things, he will be very little good at his work for a day or two afterwards, until he recovers from the effects of the liquor. A very little drink taken overnight will interfere with the work of the next day.

Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, a great English statesman, said: "If I had an enchanter's wand and could destroy to-morrow the desire for strong drink in the people of England, what changes we should see! We should see our taxation reduced by millions sterling a year; we should see our gaols and workhouses empty; we should see more lives saved in twelve months than are consumed in a century of bitter savage war. We should transfigure and transform the face of the whole country." Mr. Chamberlain was not only a statesman, but a large employer of labour as well. He had many opportunities of seeing the bad effects of drinking, both in individual persons and in the community of which they are a part.

Doctors are, of course, the best of all authorities on the bad effects of drinking. Here are the opinions of two famous doctors:—

Sir Andrew Clark, the distinguished physician of Queen Victoria, says: "Alcohol is a poison; so is strychnine, so is arsenic, so is opium; it ranks with these agents. Health is always in some way or other injured by it; benefited by it—never." Strong drink, in fact, is one of the chief causes of disease. "Out of every hundred patients which I have charge of at the London Hospital," said Sir Andrew Clark, "seventy of them directly owe their ill-health to alcohol." "In 1,540 cases of gout that have come before me," says Dr. Norman Kerr, "only one was in the person of a life- abstainer from wine, and he inherited the disease from his wine-loving ancestors. To drink I have been able to trace three-fourths of all my cases of heart-disease."

Most of the crime in the world, and a great deal of the unhappiness and ill-health, are caused by intoxicating liquor. It is not really necessary to anybody, and it is not nourishing.

Millions of people in England and Australia do without it altogether, and live longer and happier lives in consequence. People who say that it is not harmful, or that it keeps the cold out, or prevents diseases, only do this through ignorance, or because it is the custom to believe these things although they are incorrect. Intoxicating liquor does no good to anyone, except now and then in cases of illness, when it is given very carefully and moderately like any other drug.

The Lord Chief Justice of England a little while ago said that "But for drink we might shut up nine out of ten of our gaols"; and Baron Huddleston declared that nineteen- twentieths of the crime that came before him was connected with drink. "On reviewing the records of soldiers' offences," said Field Marshal Lord Napier, "all practically have their origin in drunkenness. Of 18,000 men under my command in India, the total abstainers had no crimes. The temperance men had practically none. The whole body of crime was among the non-abstainers."

Anybody with sense can see from this that it is foolish to begin such an expensive and harmful and dangerous habit as drinking. No one who once begins can be sure where it will end.

No young man need ever fear that he will lose the liking or respect of those whose opinion is worth having, by being a total abstainer. When he is twenty-five or thirty, he can make up his mind what he will do about liquor for the rest of his life.

Smoking is a bad habit for boys to develop. It does not harm grown-up people if they like it, and do not smoke too much, but, until the body has finished growing, tobacco is a real poison. Anyone who has been sick after smoking will know how poisonous it can be.

Even if it does not make a boy sick, tobacco will hurt his digestion and his eyesight, and will interfere with his heart in its work of pumping clean blood to all parts of the body; also, it will prevent him from growing as tall and strong as he otherwise would be.

Athletes in training do not smoke, because it spoils their "wind" and condition. If, therefore, a strong, healthy man has to leave off smoking when he wants to get his body into the best possible condition, it is easy to see that a growing boy who has not arrived at his full strength should strictly avoid tobacco if he wishes to be a powerful, healthy man.

Smoking is not a bit manly, and should be left alone by growing youths. Those who smoke before they are eighteen or twenty years of age are not even wicked, but are only foolish little imitators of their elders, and are spoiling their own bodies and their own chances in life.

—J. S. C. ELKINGTON , M.D