Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1878-08-28
Health on the Farm.

from faulty digestion, such as bowel and
liver affections consumption and dyspepsia,
are also of extremely common occurrence
in agricultural districts. Rheumatism and
chronic joint affections, the results of ex-
posure and over-work, are less numerous and
severe among farmers than in the early
history of the country, while nervous and
mental affections aN much increased in prev
alence among both men and women to
which, as regards the latter, must be added
long list of ailments peculiar to their sex,
which were almost unknown to their grand
mothers.
The popular demand in all cases of sick
ness, is for cure to be wrought by medicine.
The minds of people in general have not
been enlightened, in relation to this subject,
up to the point of demanding whether there
may not be some general means of proven
ton still less of insisting upon them. In
matters of health, as too often of religion,
the desire is to be saved from the conse-
quencs of sin, rather than from the sin itself.
For it is demonstrable fact that as the
moral disease which we call depravity is a
physical depravity, or disease, is a conse-
quence of the disregard of those physical
laws which are sometimes called the laws of
health. This fact is known by many, yet
how little does it influence them in the af-
fairs of practical life. People fall i'll from
the neglect or willfu violation of simple
and plain rules of well-being and then de-
mand to be cured by drug medication, and
whole profession of men are at their call to
attempt this impossibiity All educated
physicians know it is an impossibility, but
few of them dare to say so. Some one tells
a story of patient who had broken down
his constitution by course of improper
living, and who greeted the physician whom
he called in by saying "Now, doctor, don't
want you to begin telling me to leave off
drinking, and staying out at nights, and
eating what l like. can cure myself that
way; what l want of you is to give me
something that will make me well and let
me go on doing just as l have DONE" This
is the tone held by great part of the pub
lie towards their medical attendants, and
physician can never get good practice who
bores his patients with hygienic advice So,
as rule, the profession deals in stimulants,
and that class of drugs that will make
patient "feel better" without really doing
him any good. As witty medical professor
once said, "the duty of physician is to
amuse the patient while nature cures the
disease" for until the constitution is at
last utterly broken down the intermission OF
unhealthy practices which is made necessary
by severe sickness will allow nature to re-
store the sufferer to a tolerable state of
health,-for which the attending doctor
takes the credit.
Farmers ought to be very healthy class
of people. Pure air, pure water and whole
some food, the three essentials of health, are
within their control They are able to
clothe themselves suitably, and live in good
dwellings. They are not obliged to over.
work themselves, if they understand their
business. Why, then, is there so much sick
ness among them ? The reason is that
while they may have the above named essen
tials of health, many are without one or all
of them.
PURE AIR.
Even the blasts from the Green Noun
tains, fresh and invigorating as they are, can
ha Iur ,l ,,,;t |, i 1
of man and animals by blowing over putre-
flying animal or vegetable matter. In the
early settlement of the country this contain
ination was occasoned by the changes
wrought in turning up the virgin soil and
letting the sun in upon the land. Malarial
fevers are always engendered by this pro-
cess in all new countries, more severe in
proportion to the heat of summer. We,
here in New England, have mostly got by
this period, never having suffered very Sc
verely, on account of our temperate climate
But on the farms we have replaced the ma
laria of the new lands by the malaria of the
barnyard, the privy and the slop-puddle-to
say nothing of the dead animals left un.
buried about many of our farms.
PURE WATER.
The i'll health caused in large towns by
the infltration of surface filth into wells and
cisterns has made it necessary TO bring 9
water-supply from some distant river OF
lake In this way only are our cities KEPT
habitable for human beings. Any farm
depending upon wells for supply of watel
is exposed to precisely this danger, and it il
believed by competent observers that botl
typhoid fever and diphtheria find their mos
frequent source in well-poisoning. Conside
the immense quantities of fluid evacuation
from large herd of cattle, falling upon anc
soaked up by the often light and porou
soil of farm.yard, within short distanc
of the source of family water supply. Adj
to this all the slop-water and kitchen waite
thrown out around many of our homestead,
and sufficient cause is found for the fec
BILE health and the frequent outbreaks O
Frustrating disease in a vast number o
families Yet by proper care this caus
of sickness may and ought to be TRANSFORMS
into means of wealth for these very ma
terials that by putrefaction produce life-de
stroyng poisons will, when mixed with th
earth. become not only harmless, but tn
cause of luxurious growth to our now scar
tily MANFRED crops.
WHOLESOME FOOD.
Bread and meat constitute the staple c
our diet. We possess the raw material j
perfection and abundance, but its wholesome
ness depends upon how it is prepared. TIL
principles of cookery are hardly known b
our housewives, and the practice is very in
perfect. The great and prevailing fault
the saturation Of everything with greas
The shortened hot biscuits thckly butteret
the pastry, the cake, the doughnuts, the mes
and vegetables fried in fat, the grease-gravie
the pork-saturated beans, that form the mas
of our cookery are all concocted in direct vi,
lation Of the first principle Of food-prepari
ton, which demands that whatever change
we effect in cooking shall be to make III
food moro digestible as well as more palat
Die than in the raw state The saturatio
of any kind Of food with hot fat imposes
labor upon the stomach il separating thel
again which no human insides can long al