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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
OUR HEALTH.
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
THE ‘KITCHEN KAFFIR.’
TWO DAYS IN A LIFETIME.
THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS.
OCCASIONAL NOTES.
THE CHURCHYARD BY THE SEA.
No. 8.—Vol. I.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1884.
OUR HEALTH.
BY DR ANDREW WILSON, HEALTH-LECTURER.
I. HEALTH AND ITS GENERAL CONDITIONS.
A broad and scientific view of life is that whichregards it as being composed, in its physicalaspects at least, of a series of actions or functionsmore or less defined in their nature. Thesefunctions, as the physiologist terms them, aredischarged, each, by a special organ or series oforgans; and health may therefore be viewed asthe result of the harmonious working of all theorgans of which the body is composed.
Disturbances of health arise whenever thenatural equilibrium maintained between the functionsof the body is disturbed. For example, abroken bone being an infringement of the functionsof a limb, is a disturbance of health equallywith the fever which runs riot through the blood,and produces a general disturbance of the wholesystem. An aching tooth equally with braindisorder constitutes a disturbance of health. Wemay therefore define health as the perfect pleasurableor painless discharge of all the functionsthrough which life is maintained.
Doubtless this bodily equilibrium of which wehave spoken is subject to many and varied causesof disturbance. Life is after all a highly complexseries of actions, involving equally complicatedconditions for their due performance. Like allother living beings, man is dependent upon hissurroundings for the necessities of life. Thesesurroundings, whilst ministering to his wants,may under certain circumstances become sourcesof disease. Thus we are dependent, like all otheranimal forms, upon a supply of pure air, andthis condition of our lives may through impuritiesprove a source of serious disease. The water wedrink, equally a necessity of life with air, islikewise liable to cause disease, when either asregards quantity or quality it is not supplied inthe requisite conditions. Man is likewise in thematter of foods dependent upon his surroundings,and numerous diseases are traceable both to alack of necessary foods and to over-indulgencein special kinds of nourishment. The diseasesknown to physicians as those of over-nutritionbelong to the latter class; and there are likewisemany