Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 August 1896 — THE FAMILY DOCTOR. [ARTICLE]

THE FAMILY DOCTOR.

Hot Watitb foe Colds.- -Hr. Georg* R. Shepbe.J, Hartford, Connecticut, says, in respect to the use of hot water as a remedial agent in the treatment of inflammation cf the mucous membrane, ■ I have used hot water as a gargle for the past six or eight years. In acute pharyngitis and tonsilitis, and in coryza, or cold in the head, if properly used in commencement of the attack, it constitutes one of our most effective remedies, being frequently promptly curative. To be of service it should be used in considerable quantity ( a half pint or a pint at a time), and just as hot as the throat will tolerate. I have seen many cases of acute disease thus aborted, and ism commend the method with great confidence.” '-He Health of Child hits. —There are very few newspapers now-adays that are orinted on the department plan, that cm not have a “sanitarv” column. With the growing complexity of our civilization, disease has become more complex. Instead of being carried off in the old fashioned way by a fever which runs its course with the regularity of clock-work, people die of high-pressure nervous diseases with new names. They drop down so suddenly that the sole remaining dutv of the physician is to explain how it happened and how it might have been prevented. And so medicine, while it is a curative art, is coming to be more and more a preventative science. We have much health literature; essays on “the little health of women;” columns of advice from the doctor, telling the overworked business man which way lies madness. In the midst of all this there would seem to be nothing of more importance than the health of the children, and yet, when the perils of the nursery are past, scarcely enough attention has been bestowed upon growing children. Probably no one has ever given more valuable information on this subject than the noted physician Edmund A, Parker, who died some five /ears since. His luminous definition of, health, “that it is not merely freedom from bodily pain, it is the capacity of receiving pleasure fvcqu all surrounding things, l and from .-the employment of all our faculties,” denotes the mind of the, master. Wrijingof children, he lays great emphasis On the necessity of frequent feeding. In the period of growth, he says, the utmost limit between meals during the day should be four hours. The compaction of all school works into the hours from nine to one is far more for the convenience of the teachers than for the good of the children, and often postpones the times for food. After school life commences children do not generally get deliberate meals often enough. The food should mostly get into the blood during the period of exertion and during growth; a breakfast and then a gormandizing of education is more than a breach of physical etiquette. He enumerates, after a rapid analysis of bodily wants, the kinds of food that best supply those wants. “Nitrogen is the most important of the physical basis of life. "Therefore, eat the foods that most contain it, as the muscles of animals, fish, milk, the albumen of eggs and the gluten of grains. Let a boy from 13 to 18 eat meat morning and noon, and for the rest oat meal, rice, milk and cheese. He puts the amount of meat at from ten to twelve ounces, uncooked, and at a pound for a boy of 18. An ounce to a year, from five years on to twenty-one, is his general rule for meat-eating. He emphasizes the value of oat meal; one and a quarter pound of it being equal in nitrogen and fat to one pound of uncooked meat. Indian corn is even richer in these constituents. For bodily work and for animal beat the starch and sugar group are needed. Beginning with youth, he would give eight hours to sleep, four to meals, and the rest to exercise. Of tho lather he says half the time may be given to mental and moral and half to bodily' exercise. A refreshing freedom from materialism pervades liis writings. Otherwise he would scarcely suggest regular hours for mental and moral exercise. The manual on the “Personal Care of Health,” from which these extracts are condensed, might well be a text book. And not the least valuable of its statements is this concluding one: “It cannot be sufficiently known that yonng women ought to be physically trained as carefully as young men. They will neve* have the same stretch, nor is it meant that it should be so, but they ought to have strong, firm muscles and well developed chests and backs. These things can never come without bodily labor; and I do not think that five or six hours daily real exercise is not one minute too much even for them.” —Deg Moines Register.