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Read Ebook: Health Lessons Book 1 by Davison Alvin
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INDEX 189
HEALTH LESSONS
CARING FOR THE HEALTH
In the late war between Japan and Russia the Japanese soldiers cared for their health so carefully that only one fourth as many died from disease as perished in battle. This shows that with care for the health the small men of Japan saved themselves from disease, and thus won a victory told around the world.
In youth is the time to begin right living. Bad habits formed in early life often cause much sorrow in later years. It is said that over one half the drunkards began drinking liquor before they were twenty years of age and most of the smokers began to use tobacco before they were twenty years old.
PRACTICAL QUESTIONS
PARTS OF THE BODY
The use of beer, wine, or tobacco may hinder the body from using food for growth, or they may poison the body so that it will never be large and strong. The body should grow about a hundred pounds in weight during the first thirteen years of life. Whether children grow little or much generally depends on the food they give their bodies.
PRACTICAL QUESTIONS
FEEDING THE BODY
The body also needs food to help it do its work and keep warm. The body has the strange power of using food eaten to make the legs and arms move and the brain to think. In doing this the body is said to burn the food.
Fats are got not only from fat meat but also from eggs, butter, milk, and many other foods. There is some mineral matter, such as potash and soda, in many of the vegetables and meats eaten, and we use much table salt to season other foods.
Water is one of the most important of the mineral foods because it helps the body use all the other foods. Most people drink too little water to enjoy the best health. The body needs more than two quarts of water every day. There is much water in our foods. More than one half of eggs, meat, and potatoes is made of water, and more than three fourths of tomatoes, green corn, onions, cabbage, and string beans is composed of water. We should drink one quart or more of water daily. It should not be used ice cold, and very little should be taken at meal time.
Water from rivers and streams running near where many people live is likely to be made impure and is sure to bring sickness and death to some of those who use it. Water from a small stream at Plymouth, Pennsylvania, running past a house occupied by a typhoid patient, gave the fever to over a thousand persons in one month. The water from a small stream at Ithaca, New York, gave the fever to over thirteen hundred people in one season, and an almost equal number caught the fever in a few weeks at Butler, Pennsylvania, by drinking water from a small creek along which some sick persons lived.
Many cities using water from rivers run it through a layer of sand and gravel to remove the tiny things that cause so much sickness and death. This makes the water very much purer, but it is not so certain to make the water safe as is boiling it. Bad water makes nearly a quarter of a million of our people sick every year and kills twenty thousand of them.
About one seventh of a pound of building food is needed daily to keep the body in repair, and a quarter of a pound of fat and a pound of starches and sugars are required to help the body do a hard day's work. A half pound of bread, beans, and meat each, a pound of potatoes, a pint of milk, and a quarter of a pound of butter and sugar each, will give a working man all the food he needs for a day.
PRACTICAL QUESTIONS
FOOD AND HEALTH
Fish is an excellent food, but it has only little more than one half as much flesh-building matter as good beef. Poultry is a healthful food, especially for the weak and sick, but it is more expensive than the other meats. Oysters are largely made of water and do not contain much to strengthen the body.
In all meat there is some waste matter. This may harm the body if we eat too much meat. It is no longer thought healthful for most persons to eat meat more than once a day. Too much meat used daily for several years is likely to cause disease.
Meat is fried by cooking it in lard or other fat in a pan. Only those who have strong bodies should eat fried meat.
The cheap cuts of meat from the neck, breast, and legs have about as much food matter in them as the more costly parts. Such meat may be made more tender by boiling than by roasting.
Radishes, onions, and cucumbers are made largely of water. Only a small amount of these should be eaten at one meal as the stomach must work hard to make use of them. Young beets, lettuce, and ripe tomatoes may be eaten by young and old. They contain useful minerals and help keep the body in a healthful condition.
Eggs are most healthful when eaten raw or soft cooked. The best way to cook them through evenly is to put them in a pan off the stove and add about a quart of boiling water for every three eggs. Cover and let them cook fifteen minutes.
Eggs should be kept in a cold room or cellar until used. They become stale in less than a week when left in a warm living room and may get a bad taste when only three or four days old.
PRACTICAL QUESTIONS
HOW PLANTS SOUR OR SPOIL FOOD
There are hundreds of different kinds of germs. Some are round like little balls and others are the shape of tiny rods. Many of them which look just alike act very different in growing. There are more than twenty different kinds that grow in our bodies and cause diphtheria, tuberculosis, and other diseases. We have measles and scarlet fever because we have gotten these disease germs from some one else in whom they were growing.
Most germs feed on dead matter instead of our living bodies and make it melt away or change into another form. An apple or a piece of meat thrown out on the ground will soon change and become like the earth on which it lies. The change, called decay, is caused by millions of germs. The farmer's best friends are certain germs which help make the ground rich, so that the crops will grow.
Mold is a plant which grows from tiny round bodies acting like seeds . These seed bodies of mold are common in all dust and often fly through the air. On this account food should be kept covered when possible and especially when one is sweeping. Some mold gives bread, cheese, and other food a bad taste, but it will not make one sick.
Moisture and warmth make germs grow rapidly. A germ in growing lengthens out a little and then divides in the middle. It does this so quickly that one germ may become two in fifteen minutes. Each of these will then divide. In this way one germ can make many million germs in a single day .
Germs will also spoil meat not kept cold. They feed on the meat and give off a poison, making it unfit to eat. The bad odor tells when the germs are at work. Every home should have a cold cellar or an ice box to keep food from spoiling.
Yeast is also called the alcohol plant because whenever it grows in a sweet substance like fruit juice it changes part of it into a biting substance called alcohol. At the same time it gives off a gas. It is this gas which forms the bubbling or frothing in beer.
The millions of yeast plants in the yeast cake bought at the store, when put into the dough for bread, grow and form gas. This pushes the bits of dough apart and makes it light. The little alcohol formed is all driven off in the baking.
The alcohol which yeast forms by growing in sweet cider is in a few weeks changed to vinegar by other germs called the vinegar plants. Sour cider may make those who use it sick and drunk because it contains alcohol. Yeast makes wine out of grape juice.
PRACTICAL QUESTIONS
MILK MAY BE A FOOD OR A POISON
A quart of milk contains more food for the body than a half pound of good beefsteak. A pint of milk will supply the body with about as much food as a pint of oysters. A bowl of milk and a half loaf of bread is a healthful supper for a boy or girl. Skim milk and buttermilk are healthful drinks which furnish much food for building bone, blood, and muscle.
The baby's bottle and nipple should be washed in cold water and then well scalded immediately after being used. The bottle, the nipple, and the milk should be kept away from flies and dust. One fly has been known to carry on its body more germs than there are leaves on a large tree.
PRACTICAL QUESTIONS
HOW THE BODY USES FOOD
No food should be swallowed until it is broken into bits nearly as small as the head of a pin. Some foods, such as cheese, bananas, and nuts, should be made even finer than this. There is nothing in the stomach to crush to pieces large lumps of food. The juices of the stomach can do their full work only when the food is well chewed in the mouth.
Too little chewing of the food while you are young may not cause many aches or pains, but if you form the habit of rapid eating it is hard to learn to eat slowly. No one who chews his food poorly can avoid sickness long or grow well and strong.
The use of the gastric juice is to help change part of the food into a more watery fluid. To do this it must be well mixed with the food. This mixing is done by the muscles in the outer wall of the stomach . They squeeze together and then loosen up in such a way as to move the food about and turn it over until every particle is wet again and again with the gastric juice.
The stomach can finish its work on soft boiled eggs, milk, roasted potatoes, and broiled lamb within two hours. With pork, veal, cabbage, and fried potatoes it must work four or five hours. When a person is sick the stomach is weak, and he should have only the food which causes the stomach the least work.
The intestine does quite as much work as the stomach. Sometimes when the stomach is sick, too much work is put off on the intestines and then they become sick and give much pain.
The villi are filled with blood tubes having thin walls. The food passes through these walls into the blood stream. Much of it then goes to the liver, but the fatty parts flow up a tube along the backbone and empty into a blood tube in the neck. From the neck and the liver the food goes with the blood to the heart which sends it to all parts of the body.
Do not form a habit of taking powders to cure headache. They are likely to hurt the heart. Take less food, eat it more slowly, and do not wash it down with drink. Stop eating before your stomach feels full.
Each meal gives the stomach about four hours of work to do. It then needs one hour of rest. This shows that the time from one meal to the next should be about five hours. Very young children and sick persons need food oftener. Boys and girls should not eat candies, cake, or other food between meals. It spoils the appetite and is likely to get the stomach out of working order.
The chewing of tobacco causes the loss of much saliva which is needed to help digest the food. Anyone who tires his jaw by chewing tobacco is not likely to chew his food well. Some of the poison in the tobacco is taken into the body through the blood vessels in the lining of the mouth. This is shown by the fact that a boy not used to tobacco becomes very sick after he has chewed a mouthful for only ten minutes.
The taste of the tobacco smoke may cause some gastric juice to run out into the stomach, but at the same time it is likely to hurt the nerves of taste so that food cannot give so much enjoyment as when the nerves are unharmed. Although smoking may at the time help digestion a little, the poison in the tobacco may afterward injure the body. This poison is especially harmful to growing bodies, and boys who are wise will refuse to smoke on all occasions.
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