ON THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF ILL-HEALTH

Evening Star, Issue 17928, 25 March 1922, Page 2

ON THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF ILL-HEALTH

We mean by the achievements of health what those who are in that condition have been able to accomplish. There is nobody quite well. We aro all more or less ill. Some of us are ill all the time. All of us aro ill sometimes. It is of the former wc want to treat. It is surprising, when you corno to consider, what has been achieved by those who have been more or less invalids all their lives. An American magazine recently gave a list of these. But, the list was by no means exhaustive, though it was in every way impressive. That will bo .evident if wo soldo!, a fevidllustrations and make additions of our own.

We may begin with Emerson. Everybody knows or ought to know almost by heart his great essay on, ‘Compensation.’ He ranges through all the grades of life and matter to show that there is nothing lost; that everything lias its price, good or bad, and the universe pledges itself to see the price paid. Action and reaction are equal. If the gatherer gathers too much, Nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner. “ A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of friends seems at the moment unpaid loss and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts.” Emerson might have offered himself ns an illustration of his theory. At twenty-throe, licensed to preach, he was threatened with consumption, and had to go south. Later, after his wife’s death, he was ordered abroad, making a !0%, slow voyage to the Mediterranean. His weakness and illness changed the current of his life, turned him from being a preacher to a handful of people to become a writer for the world. And in spite of his invalidish health he lived to 'be seventy-nine, and left an extraordinary literary product in quality and quantity to the generations that were to follow. His countryman, Roosevelt, was a puny boy too weak to go to a public school, yet his indomitable will turned him into a giant, both in mind and body. Last year the medical faculty of New York were doing honor to an ornament of their profession, Dr Stephen Smith. For his first fifty years ho was scarcely a day well—indigestion, auto-intoxica-tion. His condition necessitated the use of milk and a cereal diet. So ho was preserved from the wear and tear of a mixed diet, and proved the value of a vegetarian fare. He has now reached his century, -and testifies that for the past fctrty-fivc years he has been improving in health. “His life has been fruitful along many Since, as physician, surgeon, author, teacher, sanitarian, and philanthropist,”

When the present writer was at Battle Creek some years ago he mot there Professor Irving Fisher, a very charming man. Overwork at Yale developed' lung trouble. Ho had to give up all and go to Colorado. He remained there for over two years, and thought ho was doomed. But a happy chance led him to realise the errors of dietary, and he turned the comer on the road to health. Since this his output of effort in Yale and elsewhere has been enormous. His own ill-health convinced him of the huge wastage that results from preventable diseases. .Statistics showed that some 90 per cent, of the population are not normally'well, and that 75 per cent, of their diseases could bo. cured if they wore taken in hand in time. The result was the formation of the “Committee of One Hundred on Public Health.” It includes many of the leading doctors and public men of America, and by means of “The Life Extension Institute,” which

has be eft organised hy this committee) ft magnificent service is being rendered to the country in tho interests of the health of tho people. Some lime ago wo drew attention to the work of this Life Extension Institute, and urged tho establishment of a branch of it in this Dominion. But tho public mind and. men of leading hero are mighty slow, in movement. However, our point just now is that it was Irving Fisher’s ill-health that sot in motion these great movements of thought and health associated with his name. At the timo when the present writer was at Battle Crook Sir Horace Plunkett was there also. Ho, like Fisher, had to leave Ireland in search of health when ho was twenty-five. He found it on a ranch in Montana. There lie got his special knowledge of scientific agriculture, and this became of immense service lo him in his later work in Ireland. Perhaps no man has done, more for the agricultural and technical education of Ireland than Plunkett. 'Then we have John D. Rockefeller, who is said to have offered a million dollars for a now stomach. He has not yet got it, wc believe. But ho has made a good use of the weakness of tho old one. His delicate health lias made him sympathetic with suffering. His noble endowment of tho Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research and the millions ho has given to fight the battles against hookworm, tuberculosis, and other diseases that afflict humanity arc well known.

If wo take a look back into the more ancient history, it tells tho same tale of the achievements of ill-honlth, .There is, for instance, tho notablo name of Galen. Ho had a delicate constitution, but attention to his diet, and especially to the matter of overeating, carried, hint through to 'a ripe old ago. Ho is said to have been a tremendous worker, and for thirteen hundred years he was tho recognised authority on medical science. His name suggests that of another remarkable Italian— Cornaro. High living for years had reduced him to an invalid. Life was a weariness. But he was induced to reform, He went as many would think to the opposite extreme. He managed to got along on less than one-half of the amount of food that was supposed necessary for sustaining life, and ho lived till ho was 103, His books are still sold. Not a few have verified their truth in their own experience. Among those were Edison’s ancestors. Addison, in tho ‘ Spectator,’ wrote approvingly of Comoro's books. The great-grandfather of Edison came on one of them and adopted its teaching, and lived over a century. So did tho grandfather of the living wizard and his seven sons, and they all lived till nearly 100. Edison himself lives sparingly, sleeps only four hours, and works like a demon. Another distinguished man influenced by Cornaro was Sir Francis Bacon. Most of his life was carried on battling with illhealth. Like the others, he was interested in passing on tho lessons learned in that school. These ho gives in his ‘ History of Life and Death.’ It is a far less known book than his ‘Novum Organum,’ but if its philosophy were laid to heart even now it might effect more happiness than tho other philosophy with which his name is inseparably associated. Exercise, cheerfulness, and especially well-ordered diet—- “ these bear the greatest part in tho prolongation of life,” And with all our advances in medical science wo have not improved on Bacon’s proscription.

Carlyle’s grim wrestle with ill-health is well known. He is not exactly the apostle of light and sweetness that privations sometimes produce. But ho ia an illustration of the tremendous amount of work that can be done even under tho crippling conditions of chronic dyspepsia. Herbert Spencer fought a battle most of his life against physical disability. But with the methodical laying out of his working ability he achieved wonders. Ho found out how many hours and minutes ho could work without bad effects, and ho kept at it like clockwork; his philosophical output was enormous. Tho health story of William Cullen Bryant is described as “ unusual and notable.” There is tho same feeble constitution with an extraordinary output in law, journalism, and literature. The morning bath, exercises, plain food—brown bread, oaten cake, and large supplies of fruit —that was his fare. “I never meddle with tobacco except to quarrel with it, and find myself rather confused than exhilarated by wine.” Asked shortly before his death, which occurred when he was eighty-four, if he had reduced his allowance of morning gymnastics, he replied “Not by the width of your thumb-nail.” Another much more famous singer than Bryant—Mrs Barrett Browning—is in the game succession of ill-health and wonderful achievement. Sho was an invalid practically all her life. Her heart was broken, as she r H aid, by a great stone that fell out of heaven. But she did not whine or squeal under tho blow. In a very beautiful letter sho wrote to her future husband : When grief came upon giief I never was tempted to ask “How have I deserved this of God!” as sufferers sometimes do, I always felt that there must bo cause enough, . . . corruption enough needing purification, . , , weakness enough needing strengthening. . ' . , But in this different horn’, when joy follows joy and God make? mo happy as you say through you, I cannot repress the thought . , . How have I deserved this of Him?—l know I have not. . . . Could it bo that heart and life were divested to make room for you? If so, it was well done, dearest! They leave the ground fallow before tho wheat. # » «• Some years ago the versatile “ Claudius Clear” had an article entitled ‘That tho Best Letters are Written by the Mortally

Wounded.* What the meant was that “certain strokes of fato disable a man for much of tho active work of life. The strokes may fall on the body or semi. They leave something, but they take away much,”

1 see bat a narrow thread of escape Through the enemy country silent and safe j And it suffers ho more till it finds fcho sCft.

Ho gives a list of the greatest English letter writers-—Oowpcr, Lamb, Fitzgerald, Stevenson, Smeetbam, Davidson. Those all wore mortally wounded. To these wo might add two other names—Mrs Carlyle and Richard Jefferies. Tho former, though not perhaps stricken an body, was stricken in soul, and her letters arc. surely entitled to rank among the best in our language. Jefferies is better known through his Inimitable Nature books; but It is in some of his letters that wo got a glimpse of the grim wrestle with illhealth that ho had to wage all his life. Ho described himself onco ns fighting a fierce battle with throe giants—Poverty, Disease, and Despair. Walter Bcsn.nt, in hia biography of him, asks “Was there ever ft more miserable tale of torture?” and ho goes on 'to say; “ Picture to yourself this tall, gaunt man reduced to a skeleton, not able to use his pen for more than a few minutes at a time, his spine broken down, spitting blood, lying back on a sofa ■ , . dictating when, unable to write, resolved to make money eo as to save himself from the ‘disgrace’ of applying to the Literary Fund, full of pain by day and night, , , , bat never losing hope or heart—is there in the .whole calamitous history of authors a picture mors full of sadness and of pity than this?”

This inadequate record of the achievement's of ill-health would be like ‘ Hamlot ’ without Hamlet did we omit Robert Louis Stevenson. Ho has been called not inaptly “the patron saint of invalids”; and surely few men have experienced what his friend Henloy—who, by the way, might be added to our list of achieving invalide—calls “his bludgeoning fata.” Thus, in, a letter written from Samoa to Meredith, Stevenson tells him that for fourteen years ho has not had a day’s real health; ho had ryakoned sick and gone to bod weary. But lie had stuck to his work, “He had written in bed. and out of bed; written in hemorrhage; written in sickness, torn by coughing and when his head ewam. And so the battle went on, I was made for a contest, and the Powers have so willed that my battlefield should be this dingy, inglorious one of the bed and the physic bottle.” Somebody described William the Silent as a skeleton with a cough. It might be applied to Stevenson. And his passion for life, for activity was groat, In n letter of an earlier date to Low, ho rays : “Low, I wish to live! Life is better than art—to do things rather than imagine them. And God knows I have not lived all these years. No one knows—-no one oan know—the tedium of it.” But he foresees that this passionate, doing life is not to be for him, Very well, lie will accept the inevitable. Ho won’t whimper. Ho will try, he says, to bo for the rest of his days “ a decent invalid gentleman—that’s not a very wild ambition, is it? But it’s a far cry from being bedridden. I’m willing to take care of myself; but to keep on my feet, to move about, to mix with other men, to rido a little, to swim a little, to be wary of ray enemy but to get the better of him—that’s what I call being a decent invalid gentleman, and that, God willing, I mean to be.” And who that knows the game, gay fight ho put up against his infirmities will say that ho failed ?

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This very incomplete record of the achievements of ill-health carries its moral on its face. Wc are all more or Ices handicapped in the game of life. Wo are all running a race with shadows, and as the years mount up the shadows deepen and increase. But difficulties need, not make us despair., When the river can’t overleap the rock it creeps subtly round it, and in the end gets safely to tho sea. One might speculate what these invalids might have achieved had they all been strong and vigorous. It might have been more. It also might net. It may lie good to have a. life that never knows what it is to suffer. But tho gods do not take their best goods to that market, Tho Cross in some form or another has to be carried cither on shoulder or soul by roost of us. They are blest and the radiators of blessings who can carry it till it carries thorn; and the message and moral of all these cross-bearerfl whom wo have been considering wo may give to them who aro in the succession in the closing lines of Tennyson’s ‘ Ulysses ’ : Though much is taken, much abides; and

tho’ Wo arc not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which wo

are, wo aro; Ono equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate; but strong

in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.