FRESH AIR IS FREE.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 181, 7 April 1915, Page 7

FRESH AIR IS FREE.

I ITS VALUE TO HEALTH. (BY ELBERT HUBBARD.) An eminent physician and surgeon of Minnesota—a man of world-wide fame—has recently said: "More women patients, three to one, are sent to hospitals than men. This comes, in i large degree, from the fact that wo--1 men live indoors and breathe a dnstladen, second-hand atmosphere which 'depletes their vitality.'' All ife is a fight between opposing ; forces of life and the forces of dissr- | lution. Happily, there are millions of germs in every human body that are lighting for health, and when these health-germs are in the ascendant we are well. But whenever the malevolent germs, or germs of disease, outnumber the germs of health, we decline, grow weary, tired, get sick and die. The thing is to preserve resiliency—and resiliency is resisting power. Dr. Weir Mitchell, one of the most eminent physicians in the world, once said: "What we call diseases are only symptoms of conditions. Allow the ■ man's vitality to be reduced to a certain point and he is ripe for any of these weaknesses which we call disease." Disease is an endeavour on the part of the malevolent germs to force the man into bankruptcy. They have appointed themselves receivers and are foreclosing on the 1 claim. f

Man is an air-breathing animal. He begins to breathe the moment he is born, and when he ceases to breathe for four minutes he is dead; the spirit takes its flight and the body returns to the elements from which it was formed. The integrity of the body is maintained only so long as the blood .is oxygenated through the breath. The air we exhale is laden with carbonicacid gas —a virulent poison. Air, out of doors, in motion, is in a state of purification. Only running water is pure. Air inside of a house is pretty nearly static. In the enclosed walls the air is caught and held and we breathe' it over and over. Well does Set on Thompson say that half of our disease:-; are in our heads and half in our housed. No man ever successfully made love when he had a cold in the head. AlVo no man ever devised a great business' scheme when he had asthma. Adenoids, enlarged tonsils, defective hearing, myopia, often come from bad sanitary conditions that weaken tin' individual, until the germs of disc to •vet him in their despotic clutch. Appendicitis fololws ■■ faulty circulation, imperfect elimination, mpaction. Then comes congestion, nilammation. and a condition is ripe where the surgeon's knife is a necessity in order ; - save the life of the patient. The air is the life. We can go without drinking water for six days. We can go without eating for forty days. But we cannot go without breathing for four minutes. To be strong well, happy and efficient we must be hygienic in oi its. Only healthy people are lovely and lovable. It is only within recent times that we have recognised the necessity of fresh, and the moral is: Fse it.