A Handbook of Health by Woods Hutchinson (readnow TXT) 📕

The Exaggerated Claims of Patent Medicines. The same thing must be said of the habit of dosing yourself every time you feel a pain or an ache, with some sort of medicine, whether obtained at some previous time from a doctor, or bought at a drug store. A large majority of the medicines that are most widely advertised to cure all sorts of pains and aches contain some form of narcotic—most commonly either alcohol or opium. The reason for this is that no one medicine can possibly be a cure for all sorts of diseases; and the only kind of medicine that will make almost every one who takes it feel a little bit better for the time being is a narcotic, because it has the power of deadening the nerves to pain or discomfort.

Careful analyses by boards of health and government chemists of a great number of advertised medicines have shown that three-fourths of the so-called tonics and "bitters" and "bracers" of all sorts contain alcohol—some of them in such large amounts as to be stronger and more intoxicating than whiskey. The same investigations have found that a large majority of the "colic cures," "pain relievers," nearly all the "soothing syrups" and "teething syrups," and most of the cough mixtures, cough cures, and consumption cures contain opium, often in quite dangerous amounts. The widely-advertised medicines and remedies guaranteed to cure all sorts of diseases in a very short time are almost certain to be one of two things: either out-and-out frauds, costing about four cents a bottle and selling for fifty cents or a dollar, or else dangerous poisons. All patent pain relievers are safe things to let entirely alone.

Another risk in taking medicines wholesale, especially those that are known as patent medicines, is that you never can be quite sure what you are taking, as their composition is usually kept a strict secret. It may happen to be something very good for your disease, it may be entirely useless, and it may be something very harmful. There is no one drug, or medicine, known to the medical profession, that will cure more than one or two diseases, or relieve more than four or five disturbed and uncomfortable conditions. As you not only do not know what you are taking, but are not always quite sure what is the matter with you, the chances of your getting the right remedy for your disease are not much more than one in a hundred. If it isn't the right thing, you are certainly wasting your money, and may be doing yourself a serious injury.

We should not pour drugs of which we know little into a body of which we know less. Doctors give scarcely a fourth as much medicine now as they did fifty years ago. The best cures are food, exercise, sleep, and fresh air.

The Effects of Disease. In the case of nearly all infectious diseases, the effects on the nervous system are among the last to appear, and may not occur until weeks, months, or even years after the main fever or attack of sickness. This is one of the reasons why, when they do occur, they are often hard to cure; the whole system has become saturated with the poisons before they reach the nerves at all. So it happens that the idea has grown up that nervous diseases are very hard to cure. When, however, we know that two-thirds of them are a late result of some of the preventable infectious diseases and fevers, we can realize that it is perfectly possible to prevent them, and that prevention is the best cure.

The poisons that attack the brain and nervous system may be formed in the body by disease germs or brought in from without, as are alcohol, tobacco, lead, or arsenic. Even such mild infections as measles, scarlet fever, and influenza may poison certain nerves supplying the muscles of an arm or a leg, causing temporary paralysis, or even permanent laming; or they may attack the nerve of sight or of hearing and produce blindness or deafness.

A great many of the cases of paralysis and insanity are caused by alcohol. Alcohol in excess may attack the nerves supplying the arms and legs, producing severe pain and partial paralysis. It may also, after long-continued use, affect the cells of the brain itself, producing the horrible condition known as delirium tremens—a form of acute insanity with distressing delusions, in which the patient imagines that he sees rats, snakes, and other reptiles and vermin crawling over him, or in his room. Even in those who never use it to such excess as this, or indeed in those who may never become intoxicated, the long-continued use of alcohol may produce a slow poisoning and general breaking-down of the whole nervous system, causing in time the hand to tremble, the eye to become bleared and dim, the gait weak and unsteady, the memory uncertain, and the judgment poor.

Are Nervous Diseases Increasing? The direct use of the brain and nervous system has much less to do with the production of its diseases or even its serious disturbances than is usually believed. Most of these, as we have seen, are due either to the poisons of disease or alcohol, or to the fatigue-poisons, or other poisons, produced in the stomach, the liver, the muscles, or other parts of the body. The worst results of brain-work are due to the extent to which it deprives us of proper exercise and fresh air. Good, vigorous mental activity,—hard brain work, in fact,—when you are in good condition, is, if not overdone, as healthful and almost as invigorating as physical exercise or hearty play. We often hear it said that the rush and hurry of our modern strenuous life is increasing the number of mental diseases and nervous breakdowns. But there is no evidence that the strain of civilization upon our brains and nervous systems is damaging them, or that either nervous diseases or insanity are more frequent now than they used to be one hundred or five hundred years ago. In fact, all the evidence that we have points in exactly the opposite direction; for, as we have seen, most of these brain and nerve diseases are due to infectious diseases, bad food, and bad living conditions generally, all of which the progress of modern civilization is rapidly lessening and preventing.

We are collecting our insane in modern hospitals and comfortable homes, instead of letting them wander in rags about the country, and this makes them live longer and seem more numerous. But the poorest and least highly civilized classes and races have much more insanity among them than those who live under more favorable conditions.

Fatigue as a Danger Signal. The chief use of exercise in childhood, whether of body or mind, is to make us grow; but it can do this only by being kept within limits. Within these limits it will increase the vigor of the heart, expand the lungs, clear the brain, deepen sleep, and improve the appetite. Beyond these limits it stunts the body, dulls the brain, overstrains the heart, and spoils the appetite. How are we going to tell when these limits are being reached? Nature has provided a danger signal—fatigue, or "tiredness."

Fatigue is due, not to complete exhaustion, but to poisoning of the muscle, or nerve, by its own waste substances. If the fatigue is general, or "all over," it is from these waste substances piling up in the blood faster than the lungs, skin, and kidneys can get rid of them. In other words, fatigue is a form of self-poisoning.

We can see how it is that exercise, which, up to the point of fatigue, is both healthful and improving, when carried on after we are tired, becomes just the opposite. Fatigue is nature's signal, "Enough for this time!" That is why all methods of training for building up strength and skill, both of mind and muscle, forbid exercising beyond well-marked fatigue. If you yourself stop at this point in exercising, you will find, the next time you try that particular exercise, that you can go a little further before fatigue is felt; the third time, a little further yet; and so, by degrees, you can build up both your body and brain to the fullest development of which they are capable.