• Author: A-8432
• Editor: B-7413
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume 6
• Page Number:
• Date: 8 22 1917
• Tags:
• advice

The following article is the gist of an interesting talk with A 8432, the Honor and Friendship Club’s Vice-President, in which he tells us how he has been able to keep himself in such good health, during his many years 6f confinement in this institution. The results of his careful, clean and upright living, under conditions and circumstances characteristic of institutions of this kind, and his ideas for the preservations of one’s health, not only applies to “insiders” but to the people of the outside world as well, and are well worth thinking over and adopting.

“CLEANLINESS, is, to my way of thinking, the most important factor to be considered, if one wishes to preserve and prolong one’s health. CLEAN thinking will help you a lot, morally and physically speaking. Keep your body clean, and when you have the privilege of a bath, take a bath; do not go through with it as if it was a simple matter of routine. Did you ever, after a week’s work, see the dust on a machine? Well, our bodies are the same, and the parts necessarily neglected should be cleaned, for it is an important factor in the preservation of your health. Clean your teeth at least once a day or so, because the collection of whitish like substance is an enemy to your digestive powers, and one of indigestion’s important allies. CHEW your food properly, only thorough mastication will ward off indigestion. Remember that your stomach digests your food by a method entirely different, but it has not teeth, nor the power invested in them, so if you masticate your food properly, your stomach will perform its duties without: DIZZINESS, HEADACHE, HEARTBURN, PAINS IN THE STOMACH, LAZINESS, LACK OF AMBITION, and without any of that nonsense, such as: "I don’t feel good, doctor,’’ and all such. Clean yourself and your wearing apparel regularly each week, and you will be an example that others may copy after, and profit thereby by your cleanliness. Some mornings we arise from our beds, perhaps we have had a very bad night, we feel drowsy and yes, a little “sick’’ somewhere or the other; you send for the doctor, when really the best doctor I know in such cases is this: stand beneath your window, and draw into your lungs, the sweet, fresh morning air; twenty long deep breaths are enough and plenty in most cases of this ‘‘imagined sickness.” But sometimes you have treated your stomach very rudely, and disregarded, conscious or unconscious of their meaning, every rule concerning the case of this organ; if such is the case, then call the doctor by all means; you need him. When he comes to you, answer his questions quickly, and as accurate as possible; he will give you medicine, if you need it, and knows whether or not you do, but if he gives you medicine to take, listen to his directions of taking it, and do so, for he knows his medicines and their relative powers, and a man is foolish in the extreme, if he once doubts this man, the only barrier between him and the destruction of his health, and perhaps—— During my time here I have heard many stories about the man who knows more than the doctor; one instance I will cite: the doctor left this man medicine one morning, with directions of how to take this medicine, so that it would do him the most good, this man wasn’t satified with the slow results, and he took nearly one-fifth of the entire amount at once; he thought he was putting one over on the doctor, when in reality he put a serious one over on his entire system, but he didn’t understand it that way and said that such medicine was no good; no wonder it wasn’t any good to him, he disobeyed instructions, he thought he knew more than the man who is employed here in that capacity.

"Doctor Hassell, to the best of my knowledge has always endeavored to do all in his péwer towards making our lives happy and contented, because a healthy life is contentment and all that goes with it. When your body is comfortable, your mind and yourself are comfortable too. Try to observe these careful rules that I have always lived up to during my 22 years of experience in this place, and I am sure that you will profit by them; there are plenty others, and Doctor Hassel will gladly tell you, if you display any eagerness to learn. After you have tried clean living for awhile, the higher things of life will appeal to you, and you will come to shun evil thoughts and their consequent endings. You will find no better reformer than those simple rules quoted above. They will give you an idea of the better side of life, the side one gets pure, wholesome enjoyment from, and derives pleasure and happiness, instead of this.