Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1874 — Does Sickness Pay? [ARTICLE]

Does Sickness Pay?

Any sane person would, of course, say “no.” Then,a large .proportion of our neighbors must be insane, if we may judge by their actions; for they do the very things that induce disease day after day. and year after year, groaning over various aches and pains, giving a week or a month now and then tp the tedious necessities of sickness, and paying heavy doctors’ bills every year. All this, as a matter of course, is mainly the result of ignorance. I mean ignorance in respect to the bodies we‘inhabit, and the laws of our Maker with regard to their growth and health.: Many persons, who are learned enough in ancient languages and in general information about all sorts of things outside themselves, have no sort of knowledge as to living so as to be comfortable f rom day to day, getting the best use of their powers, and escaping disease and premature decay and death. Whole families of “ cultivated” people live daily in such a way as to ruin their health, and so destroy the power of using and-enjoying the culture they have acquired. Then they employ a doctor to cure them, but go on tearing down what they are paying him heavily for trying to build up. Does it pay? My late neighbor, forjinstance: she is a woman of uncommon ability as a housekeeper. 'She scorns the idea of stopping to rest, and,is proud of her ability to do more and harder, work than any of her neighbors. She ridicules those w T ho refuse to eat anything that tastes good for. the reason that it is injurious to their health. Nothing ever hurts her, according to her own story. But this woman has severe fits of sickness every year, and the list of her .ailments is truly astonishing. Last'ye&r she paid over one hundred dollars to her doctors —money that she worked hard to earn -when well enough to do so.. Last month she still laughed at the idea of taking care of her health, but she was then under the doctor’s care, and was sending away to procure expensive medicines. It was .a little five-year-old girl who set me upon this train of thought to-day. She said of a former playmate: “ Huldah used to be always eating candy or sugar and bread. How much candy she used toeat!" y “ And she is a poor, sick child,” I answered. “ Yes, she always had the tooth-ache, or the stomach-ache, or something.” We all remembered how much and how helplessly she used to cry sometimes, how pale she usually looked, how small she remained, while some of her playmates, more wisely fed and clothed and lodged, <vcnt on outgrowing her. Little five-year-old declared it didn’t pay to eat candy, which only tasted good in the mouth for a few minutes, and then suffer so much to pay for it. Yet she is not such an unchildish child as to refuse the next stick of candy,offered her. However, she will bring it to mamma, if she does as aly ays heretofore, and accept it in half-inch lengths at her meals, dividing with others When it is dealt out to her. And, though you may laugh, I really believe that a child fed so moderately upon such concentrated sweets gets more enjoyment out of them than one ■who eats twenty times.ns much in quantity.^" —~ It pays a good dead better to take a little rest, and to try a little fasting, perhaps, when the body begins to complain fit weariness and discomfort (did you ever notice that tfie word disease is simply dis-ease, or not-eaxe?), than to stagger on with foolish bravado, and have to lie by in pain and weakness for weeks and months when these follies have piled up high enough to bring about the crash. It pays in dollars am!cents to avoid doctors’ bills by avoiding sickness. Our little family cannot boast of robust constitutions, or of the most healthy habits in all respects—if we should wish to do such foolish boasting —but we often rejoice that we are able to escape severe illnesses and that we have found no necessity for a doctor’s care or doctor’s bills for several years past, and that no medicines, beyond care in the adjustment of our diet, exercise, rest, clothing, and cleanliness, ever seem needed or get used by us. Some sickness we must expect until sanitary conditions are allowed to each —until we are all wise enough to see the inter-dependence of each and all. Then we can work together and clear up this present “ vale of tears" so that it may be a very pleasant and comfortable home for us while we wear our robes of flesh—and for 6ueli glorious consummation I hope I work no less cheerfully because “it may be,” as you say, “millions and millions of years hence.”— Faith Rochester, in American AaricuLturint. t - j —A bushel of wheat weighing sixty pounds contains 500,000 kernels. '