The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1893-05-09
HINTS ON HYGIENE.
Some Secrets of Good Health for Every
Day Use By Everybody

W. 80 ~ VI 4OON w
their digestion, and would just take
the amount of exercise necessary to
facilitate the digestion, the lives of the
greater part of the human race would
be indefinitely prolonged.
There would have to be excepted
from this sweeping assertion certain
diseases-like those of throat and lungs
that cannot always be avoided, but
which nevertheless in many cases can
be limited in their ravages by pru-
dence.
The statement as made is a truism,
and has been known to sensible persons
since the dawn of civilization and the
origin Of Commands and epicures. Some
old Persian writer placed the whole Sc
cret of health in the ability to leave off
eating before the appetite was entirely
satisfied, and the wise men of Greece
and Rome never ceased to preach sim
liar truths, both by precept and exam
pie. These things they had learned,
not from works on hygiene, which did
not abound in ancient times, nor from
family physicians, who were far from
being so plentiful as they are now, but
from simple observation.
The apostles Of a vegetable diet have
usually been fanatics, but there has al
ways been a grain of truth in their doc
trines, for it is true that the greater
part of diseases are caused, especially
among the rich, by the excessive use
of meats.
1t is only a few years since the nour
ishing qualities of milk and its hygienic
value began TO be properly appreci-
ated. Every was aware that the
young Of the human race and of the
lower animals using it as their only
diet 1ourished and grew strong alike
in bone and muscle.
1t appeared to be easily digested and
seemed to contain oil the elements that
the body seemed to heed, at least in the
early stages of its growth. Aduits-at
least those in civilized countries-de-
spised it and would have considered
themselves doomed to an early death
had they found themselves confined to
a milk regimen. The same opinion has,
fortunately, not prevailed among Ger
tain savage or semi civilized tribes Of
pastoral habits, who have maintained
a healthy existence from time immem-
orial on milk and its products.
Medical science, aided by chemistry,
has for some years past been working
a gradual change in these ancient
prejudices.
The chemists have discovered that
milk contains all the elements neces-
sary to make blood, bone and muscle.
1t adapts itself to the most difficult di-
gestion.
A man can live and enjoy perfect
health On milk and it's products alone,
for his system finds in it everything
needful-fatty matter, caseine, albu-
men, and especially phosphate of lime
for building up his bony framework.
Doctors prescribe it for patients suffer
ing from low fevers.
If a person finds himself suffering
from torpidity of the liver, or a ten
dency to indigestion let him drink milk
freely, say two or three quarts a day,
and abstain from meat, and he will
almost invariably find himself cured
speedily.
Itmay be said of diseases of the liver
and kidneys and of the dyspepsia that
they have invariably been brought on
by ignorance or disregard of the laws
hygiene, and no one need ever have
them unless he is obliged to live in the
tropics, or has by chance been so stu
ated that the choice of his diet was be
yond his control.
1t has in all ages Of the world been
difficult to make any considerable
number Of human beings observe the
laws of temperance in eating and
drinking if the means of Indulgence
were at their disposal.
It is much more difficult to infus3 a
little hygienic good into the.
average American of today than into
the luxurious Roman in the time Of
LucuIlus, and nowhere in the word Is
~self-restraint more necessary than in
Georgia, where the climate constantly
stimulates the appetite, while at the
same time certain latent qualities of
the atmosphere seem to render diges-
ton difficult.
While milk in it's perfect state is
capable of such infinite service to the
health, it has at the same time an ex,
traordinary facility in transmitting
diseases. A great part of that con-
sumed in large cities is from COWS kept