How to Live by Eugene Lyman Fisk (adult books to read txt) đź“•
[Sidenote: Card-playing]
Card-playing and similar games afford wholesome mental recreation for some persons. However, they, too, are liable to be associated with late hours, and other disadvantages even when they do not degenerate into gambling. Card-playing, dancing, and many other popular forms of amusement often border on dissipation.
[Sidenote: Suicidal Amusement]
Amusements which weaken and degrade are not hygienic.
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It is therefore incumbent on the individual to contribute his share to the hygienic work of society as a whole, in particular to take an active interest in health legislation and administration. A man can not live to the best advantage in a life isolated from all social obligations, any more than could Robinson Crusoe, who was unable to launch his canoe in the ocean, after he had been at great pains to construct it, because he had no one to help him. Each man should take part in the great social hygienic struggle, if he is to reap the highest rewards in his own personal hygienic struggle. And he can do a great deal if he will be patient and persistent. If, for instance, he would always insist on suitable air conditions in public buildings, electric cars, theaters, and churches, and encourage others to do so, it would not take long to make air reform general.
In fact, it is the common public, constituting the consumer, who has it in his power to bring about most of the necessary reforms in public hygiene. When the consumer really values hygienic environment, the producer will supply it. The great improvement in recent years in drinking water was brought about through the appreciation, by the consumer, of the danger from impure water. His complaints produced the change. Hotels found it profitable to provide and advertise pure water. So also the education of the public as to the dangers of a common public drinking cup led to the invention of bubbling fountains and cheap individual cups and to the introduction of these conveniences in railway stations and other public places.
We need to concern ourselves particularly with the character of our public water supply, air supply and food supply, the number of bacteria in milk, the fitness for human consumption of the meat, fowl, fish, and shell-fish sold in the public markets, and the use of adulterants and preservatives in canned and bottled goods.
Quacks and quackery should be vigorously fought by laymen as well as physicians. Quacks live by lying and misleading advertisements. Every one should cooperate to encourage the movement by which newspapers and magazines are giving up quack and immoral advertisements and the advertisements of alcoholic beverages. Especially should we refuse to patronize the quack advertiser. When no one is deceived by him, he will cease to advertise. A more immediate method is to change from the newspaper containing such advertising to one which does not. We should also appeal to the editors to reform their advertising, as many of them are now doing.
Vaccination is now a known preventive against smallpox, typhoid fever, and other germ maladies. Its use should be advocated and the ignorant prejudice against it should be overcome.
Last but not least, the individual should cooperate in the great movement against the social evil.
As soon as an individual becomes interested in caring for his own health and for the health of his family, his interest will not cease at individual hygiene; he will wish to improve the efficiency of the public health service by increased appropriations, improved equipment and personnel; and to cooperate with the health officer.
Race hygiene or eugenics, which has been mentioned as the third and most important branch of hygiene, aims to conserve the health of future generations, through the action of those now living. Hygiene (individual and public) teaches us how to create for ourselves healthful conditions of living, but on every side we see evidences of the fact that we cannot entirely control conditions of health through hygiene only. Not all maladies by any means can be attributed to unnatural or unhygienic conditions of living. It is true that if followed out faithfully, the rules of hygiene will enable a man to live out his maximum natural life-span, with the maximum of well-being, and to run no risk of allowing any inherent weakness to be brought out. But some persons, even if they followed what is very nearly the normal code for the human being, would scarcely be able to avoid dire physical and mental fates. In short, we find that besides the hygienic factor in life which we may call environment, there is something else on which the health of the individual depends. This something else is heredity, or “the nature of the breed.” Back of all the individual can do by hygiene lies his inheritance. To change this the individual can do nothing, but the parents of the individual can affect his inheritance, and we as parents can affect the inheritance of our offspring.
First, we can carry through life uninjured the essential germ plasm which has been entrusted to our care. We should never forget that this germ plasm, which we receive and transmit, really belongs, not to us, but to the race; and that we have no right, through alcoholic or other unhygienic practises, to damage it; but that, on the contrary, we are under the most solemn obligation to keep it up to the highest level within our power. We are the trustees of the racial germ plasm that we carry.
Second, we can affect the life of our offspring by our choice in marriage. The basis of the development of desirable or undesirable tendencies or traits lies, of course, in the mating from which the individual springs. On the kind of combinations of germinal traits that are made by marriage depends whether or not undesirable traits shall reappear in the offspring. For instance, a man may inherit a defect from his father because his father married a certain type of woman. Had the father selected a different type, the children might not have inherited the father’s defect. The importance of choice in marriage results from certain laws of inheritance, which make it clear that by proper combinations of individuals certain bad traits may be entirely “bred out.”
As soon as men and women acquire the knowledge that their choices in marriage largely determine whether or not their physical and mental faults and virtues will reappear in children, they feel a sacred responsibility in that act of choosing. A little conscious knowledge of what kind of combinations of traits bring about their reappearance in offspring can not help but modify a person’s taste, and thus automatically direct the choice of a mate, which choice will still be, and rightfully, an instinctive one. Upon the wisdom with which choices in marriage are now made depends in large degree the health and efficiency of all the individuals who will constitute society in the coming generations. As the science of eugenics gathers a greater wealth of evidence and subjects it to vigorous analysis, its ability to guide the race to higher levels will become more positive and far-reaching. This can be done without surrendering the general principle of individual freedom. It will not reduce but increase the number of natural love-marriages. The errors of crude and superficial or overenthusiastic eugenists should not obscure the enormous possibilities of the science for the human race. Eugenic knowledge is, therefore, not only a personal advantage but a social necessity.
For society as a whole, a thoroughgoing eugenic program must include:
(1) The prevention of reproduction by the markedly unfit, such as the feeble-minded, by sterilization of the most unfit and by segregating the remainder in public institutions.
(2) The enactment of wise marriage laws.
(3) The development of an enlightened sentiment against improper marriages and the putting at the disposal of individuals contemplating marriage the data accumulated and principles worked out by eugenic students.
The Eugenics Record Office of Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, N. Y., is now engaged in collecting such material.
For us of the present generation, hygiene is of immediate concern; but if we are to build for future generations, hygiene must give way to, or grow into, eugenics. The accomplishment of a true eugenic program will be the crowning work of the health movement and the grandest service of science to the human race. (For further comments on this subject see “Eugenics” in Supplementary Notes.)
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES ON SPECIAL SUBJECTS SECTION INOTES ON FOOD
It will help to balance the ration and to avoid an excess of protein and also to avoid a deficiency of either fat or carbohydrate, if we take a bird’s-eye view of the various common foods in respect to the protein, fat and carbohydrate they contain. For this purpose the following table has been constructed.
Cod Fish
Lean Beef
Chicken
Veal High in Protein Shell-fish
Skim Milk
Lentils
Peas
Beans Most Fish
Most Meats
Most Fowl
Whole Egg
Cheese Moderate or Deficient in Protein Most Vegetables
Bread
Potatoes
Fruits
Sugar Peanuts
Milk
Cream Soups
Most Pies
Doughnuts Fat Meats
Yolk of Eggs
Most Nuts
Cream
Butter
The foods given in the uppermost compartment are those “very high” in protein (above 40 per cent. of their total calories, or food value, being protein). Those in the two compartments next below are merely “high” in protein (20 to 40 per cent.), while the lowest three compartments contain those “moderate or deficient” in protein (zero to 20 per cent.).
The compartment farthest to the right contains a list of those foods “very rich in fat.” The two compartments next to the left contain those “rich in fat,” and the three compartments to the extreme left contain those “poor in fat.”
With reference to carbohydrates (starch or sugar), we can say that the foods in the lower left compartment are very rich in carbohydrate. Those in the two neighboring compartments (the one beginning “shell-fish” and the one beginning “peanuts”) are moderate, and those in the remaining compartments are those poorest in carbohydrate.
Thus, practically, the nearer the name of any food is to the upper corner of this triangular table, the more protein that food contains; the nearer it is to the right hand corner, the more fat; and the nearer to the remaining corner (lower left), the more carbohydrate (starch and sugar).
An ideal proportion of the three food elements is to be had only in the middle compartment of the lowest row. But it is by no means necessary or advisable to confine one’s diet to the few foods which happen to fall in that compartment, provided foods chosen from other compartments balance each other. Thus, fruit and nuts balance each other, the one being at the left and the other at the right of the ideal compartment. In the same way, potatoes and cream balance each other, as do bread and butter. Instinctively these combinations have been chosen, especially bread and butter. This combination is, however, slightly too low in protein, and a better balance is obtained by adding a little from the compartment vertically above the ideal. In this way we obtain the familiar meat-, egg-, or cheese-sandwich, constituting of itself a fairly well-balanced meal.
In short, in order to maintain a diet correct as to protein, it is only necessary to make our main choices from the lowest row and, in case the foods so chosen are near the bottom, to supplement these by a moderate use from the row above and a still more sparing use of those
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