HEALTH NOTES

Southland Times, Issue 20497, 28 May 1928, Page 8

HEALTH NOTES

FRESH AIR AND SUNLIGHT. PERSONAL HYGIENE. (Contributed by the Department of Health.) Sir George Newman discusses other essentials of true nurture in his Hastings popular lecture as follows:—Fresh air is almost as valuable to health as food. It is, indeed, another element in nutrition, for the living processes carried on in every cell of the body require oxygen. This reaches the body through the nose, passes to the lungs, enters the blood stream, and is thus carried, like the products of digestion, to all parts. Breathing should always be through the nose, in order that the air may be properly filterer! and warmed before reaching the lungs. The fresh incoming air conveys oxygen and expels the used-up air of the lungs. Its physical properties of coolness and movement are valuable as conducive to the increase of metabolism and stimulation of the skin and the appetite. There can be no more far-reaching or beneficial method of improving the health of the people as a whole than the wider practice of the open-air life. As Walt Whitman said in the “Song of the Open Road” : “Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air.” Every school should be an open-air school and every home an open-air home. It is the stagnant, overheated air, loaded with moisture and organic impurity which is harmful in factories, offices, homes (especially bedrooms), or schools. The means of avoiding it is effective ventilation which shall give us fresh, clean, cool, moving air, without draught. Therefore ventilation should be “cross” or “through,” which means that inlet and outlet must be opposite to each other. The temperature of the room should be about 60 degrees Fahrenheit. One of the principal advantages of the open-air life is that it affords more opportunity of gaining benefit from direct sunlight. All the rays of the sun are advantages, but lhe invisible ray beyond the violet (ultra-violet) is believed to exert special health-giving benefit. Unfortunately the ultra-violet ray is filtered out by ordinary window glass, hence its healthgiving property is only obtainable in the open air. It is now used widely in its natural form in the treatment of debility, rickets, tuberculosis of the skin, bones, and joints (heliotherapv), and artificially for some of these conditions by means of the arc lamp. Atmospheric smoke and the indoor life of English towns are without doubt depriving large portions of the ponulation from enjoying the health obtainable by sunlight and fresh air. EXERCISE AND REST. The daily exercise of the body is another primary need. Various forms of exercise tend to strengthen all the muscles (including the heart), deepen and increase the rate of respiration, produce body heart, induce the skin to perspire, secure and maintain equilibrium, and develop the motor and sensory centres of the brain. They are essential if proper benefit is to be derived from food, if the digestive organs and the alimentary canal are to be kept in good working order, if proper secretion through the kidneys, skin, and lungs is to be ensured, and if the nervous regulation of the body is to develop. George Meredith, the novelist, used to say that every man “should get into a sweat at least once a day.” It is not a bad rule. Motoring has advantages, but we must beware of becoming “all liver and no legs.” To walk to the station is better than to take a bus. It should be remembered that ordinary active forms of free exercise are wisely supplemented by more regular

and systematized forms of exercise, including games, swimming and dancing, which plays a part in the harmonious training of the body as a whole (such as the Swedish system), which lead to improvement in general physique, the correction of faulty attitudes, and the acquirement of habits of self-discipline, control, and ready response. But we must not overdo physical exercise, or allow any system to become a thraldom or fetish—or be specially violent in exercise on Saturdays and negligent of it for the remainder of the week. It is important that we should recognize that physical exercise is something vastly more than ‘‘drill and jerks.” It is one of the means by which the law of variation fulfils itself, the means by which we “exercise” and use all the functions of the body—respiration, circulation, digestion, excretion, reproduction—the means by which we train the organs of special sense, and educate the nervous regulation of the body. “Use or disuse” lies at the basis of variation in our bodies. CLEANLINESS OF BODY. Speaking generally, it may be said that most people stand in greater need of rest than of movement. “The first and second secret of Nature,” said Emerson, “are motion and rest.” Our American cousins and ourselves are getting much too restless for good health, or even mental capacity and balance. There is an excess of noise, clatter, chattering, and meaningless activities which have no value or virtue in themselves, and for children are directly harmful. Indeed, children require time, peacefulness, and rest in order to grow and ripen, and there is wisdom in Madam Montessori’s excellent injunction, “Silentio” on the walls of her House of Children at Rome. Children under 15 need ten to twelve hours in bed every night. For them also it is particularly important to secure and maintain a nice balance between the production and loss of body heat. The newborn infant is unable to effect this accommodation, and its power of heat regulation is undeveloped. The very young and the old are particularly susceptible to external conditions of atmosphere and temperature, and we have yet much to learn in the practice of warmth and its relation to hygiene. Lastly, there is cleanliness—within as well as without. In the Middle Ages people did not wash, they went dirty, and this disregard of cleanliness must be associated with their neglect of other items of our model six, which was perhaps one of the chief causes for their very unhealthy and shortened lives. The skin of the body cannot perform its most important functions unless it be clean; but the teeth, lungs, stomach, bowels, and blood must also be kept clean, if we are to be unconscious (as we ought to be) of their existence. A clogged machine does not work well. (To be concluded in another article.)