Factors Of Health

The first factor of health is food. Nature-peoples are, as a rule, poorly fed. Their meals are irregular, generally poor in quality, and of ten insufficient in quantity. The roots, berries, and other foods which nature furnishes, are usually poor in nutritive qualities. Hence the savage is habitually underfed, since the system is starved even though large quantities of coarse food be taken. This simply means that the digestive organs are burdened with material which does not nourish, and causes a distension of the abdomen, as may be witnessed almost anywhere among the poorer classes of China, India, Turkey, Rumania, Russia, and some parts of Austria-Hungary, not to speak of countries in which savagery still prevails. When a good meal can be had, as after a successful hunt, the savage eats voraciously and without proper mastication; hence digestion is interfered with in a different way. The system is in a chronic state of starvation, and no proper vitality can be built up. This is true even in civilized countries among the poorer classes whose food supply is deficient in quality and quantity.

The second factor is housing; that is, anything that is necessary for protection against the inclemencies of nature. Little clothing may be needed in the tropics owing to the heat, but protection is necessary against the numerous disease-carrying insects. The Eskimo is well provided in regard to clothing, but his igloo or snow-hut compels him to live in vitiated air a great part of his life, similar to the overcrowding in the tenements of large cities.

The third factor is salubrity of climate. Where endemic diseases exist, the good effects of food and housing are often nullified. A region may be fertile and produce all kinds of food, the climate may be mild, but endemic diseases, e.g., malaria and hookworm, will keep vitality at a low ebb.

The fourth factor is heredity. With the inheritance of a good constitution a man may often be able to overcome the adverse conditions of the other factors, although he is likely to keep merely alive and refuse to succumb. With low hereditary vitality, a man is always handicapped, even though the other three factors be favorable. This is proved by the fact that life insurance companies will refuse policies to people in whose families certain diseases have occurred. When the other three factors are unfavorable, heredity is likely to be very poor.

The question concerning the relative importance of these factors is not decided, and is, perhaps, of more academic than practical interest. Biology is apt to lay stress on heredity, geography on environment, including food, climate, and housing. These two factors have been on the whole the chief agencies in developing man. Heredity has been the variable factor—shifting, plastic, progressive, or retrogressive; environment has been the constant factor—persistent, continuous, omnipresent, immutable. Man is always under the influence of his environment; it never sleeps. Yet all the influences of environment will not explain the difference between the Greeks of today and those of antiquity. The human factor surely claims attention, even though it be only a variable influence over against the immutable one of nature. The French had to give up digging the Panama Canal, because malaria and other tropical diseases killed about one-quarter of their employees every year. When the Americans went there in 1905, the Canal Zone was still the area of pest-ridden seaports, jungles, and marshes which it had been from time immemorial. Yet we have built the Canal by reducing the death rate to that of the healthiest cities in the United States. The variable human factor has triumphed over the immutable one of nature. It is in vain, then, to deny the efficacy of either factor. Each plays its role in the making of human history. But each enters into the problem of health, since that depends on both heredity and environment.

Suppose that environment be granted all that its advocates claim! Wherein does its influence ultimately consist? A valley may abound in the most varied and nourishing foods and in perennial sunshine; it will yet be uninhabitable for human beings if its soil sends forth all kinds of poisonous germs. A country may be bleak and cold, still people will live there if they are able to provide the minimum of food. The geographical factor resolves itself ultimately into one of health; and this has been the most important factor in man's rise above the state of nature.

The effects of vitality on civilization are both numerous and significant. Whatever the causes may be, low vitality means either low or erratic mentality. We are concerned here only with the former; the latter will be considered in the chapter on Health and Originality. Low vitality always means inability to adjust oneself to one's environment, or to control it. Even adjustment to unfavorable conditions implies, however, low mentality; the animal and the savage are ruled by their environment, civilized man controls it. Why this difference?

Animals have perfected certain instincts which are, as a rule, sufficient guides to their actions, and keep them, when in a normal condition, in fair health. They act with almost automatic precision, and thus save the animal a vast amount of useless expenditure of energy in mere trials to do something in a new way. But just because the reactions of animals are fixed, progress is barred and further development practically impossible. The honey bee is a good illustration in this respect. It has perfected the division of labor and everything is provided for the welfare of the hive. The arrangements for a communal life excite our admiration owing to their efficiency. Yet, there is no progress, because the various impulses which form the series of which each instinct consists are so fixed in their order that the bee cannot act differently without disaster. In other words, the bee has become a sort of living machine to do a certain kind of work; it functions without choice, hence there is very little power of adaptation or chance for variation. This is strikingly proved by the facts that the workers stultify themselves to feed the queen and the drones; that they rear hundreds of males instead of a dozen or two—ample for the function they are to perform—and that they have repeated the same actions without any material changes since time immemorial. They are slaves to their instincts, subject to the food which a comparatively small environment provides, and progress is barred. It is similar with higher animals, although the instincts are a little more elastic, giving a slightly larger sphere for choice and individual satisfaction. With this greater elasticity of the instincts was given the possibility of mind, and in proportion as we advance in the animal scale, mind becomes more prominent, until we come to man with his very much larger mentality. Just when and where this transition took place, is an unsolved problem, and may always remain so. Suffice it to say, that under unusually favorable circumstances the transition was made, and mind became for the first time an important item in evolution. For man, being equipped with but few and comparatively inefficient natural weapons, had to depend on the development of his mind if he was to live. This was the more necessary, since the gain he had made was dearly bought—it cost him the inerrancy of his instincts. Being no longer compelled to react in certain prescribed ways, he had to think, plan, and scheme. But that required relatively greater vitality or a surplus of energy, since the loss of the inerrancy of his instincts had deprived him of the more economical and frictionless expenditure of energy. Thinking in its early stages involves more or less useless expenditure, since it must proceed by the wasteful method of trial and error; this is the case even today, a good illustration being furnished by a new medicine, salvarsan, also called "606" by its inventor because the previous 605 experiments had failed to yield the desired results. High vitality could not be developed, however, in the tropics where endemic diseases were constantly counteracting the favorable factors of an ample food supply and mild climate. Hence only one course was left open—migration northward into more salubrious regions. In these migrations, only those who had the relatively highest vitality could engage. They were, like the pioneers of later times, the strongest and most active and most intelligent. This was the first and most primitive method of controlling nature—by migration—a method which animals share in to a certain extent. These migrations opened up new possibilities to man. He had to meet new situations in the way of enemies, adapt himself to new conditions of food, cross mountains and rivers, and in a hundred different ways develop new aptitudes. Every successful attempt opened up new vistas before him, and every new contact with nature or other men suggested new developments. In proportion as he proceeded into higher latitudes, his vitality rose, and he was thus better able to meet the demands involved in getting a living under the less prodigal climate of the temperate zone. He increased his control over nature, and became through increasing civilization less dependent on his immediate environment. The peoples who were unable or unwilling to migrate north, continued to live, but were hardly able to develop, and have remained in a stage of savagery or barbarism until today. And they are still almost entirely dependent on nature for all necessaries of life.

Along with this control of nature through the development of the intellect went a liberation of himself from the thraldom of instincts which still survive in him, e.g., for food and sex. These are practically inerrant in animals living in the state of nature, and are thus contributory to individual and social welfare. When, with the origin of man, mind assumed a more prominent part in evolution, it was at first primarily an abundance of feeling and imagination, controlled but little by reasoning; hence the numerous and often revolting orgies engaged in by savage and barbarous peoples. Occasional abundance of food, due to success in war or in the chase, always led to extraordinary exhibitions of excesses in both of these instincts, and were frequently continued even in higher civilizations, e.g., among Phoenicians and in India, when the food supply was regular. The poor nutrition of the savage produces an unstable mentality which inclines to extremes of excitement and joy, or of depression and melancholy. With an increasingly regular and better food supply, the physical organism becomes more stable and more capable of self-control, and at least the worst irregularities in the satisfaction of these instincts disappear. This statement is borne out by the fact that modern medicine looks upon too pronounced irregularities along these lines as due to malnutrition, if not disease. A brief consideration of morality will bring further corroboration of this reasoning.

As his intelligence increased, man soon recognized the injurious effects of excesses both upon himself, and upon those surrounding him. He formed, consequently, a crude code of ethics, put chiefly in the form of prohibitions, and enforced conformance to them by various punishments. But there were always those who could not be prevented by any kind of penalty—even the most severe—from acting contrary to ethical demands. Were they unwilling or unable to obey? The punishment meted out to them clearly shows the attitude of older civilizations in regarding them unwilling and therefore responsible; the modern attitude on the part of the enlightened just as plainly indicates that their shortcomings are considered due to physical defects.

"At the end of the best part of a life spent among prisoners, a prison surgeon declares himself to be mainly impressed with their extreme deficiency or perversion of moral feeling, the strength of the evil propensities of their nature, and their utter impracticability; neither kindness nor severity availing to prevent them from devising and doing wrong day by day, although their conduct brought upon them further privations. Their evil propensities are veritable instincts of their defective nature, acting, like instincts, in spite of reason, and producing, when not gratified, a restlessness which becomes at times uncontrollable. Hence occur the so-called breakings out' of prisoners, when, without apparent cause, they fall into paroxysms of excitement, tear their clothing and bedding, assault the officers, and altogether behave for a time like furious madmen."

The criminal is not necessarily endowed with bad qualities, but he lacks the coordinating power of a well-functioning brain. The defect may be due to some specific malformation, disease, or to malnutrition. Poor functioning in the case of the two former is so evident to any observer, that it need not be discussed. Concerning malnutrition, a few words are needed. The brain grows at a much smaller ratio than the other organs; this seems to indicate that the vegetative functions demand an increasingly larger share of the nutrition furnished. The organism must, first of all, live; whether its life is to be well-directed and efficient, is a secondary consideration. This is well illustrated by the fact that idiots, if protected against adversities, may live to middle age; and that after the stage of active thinking and reasoning is passed in the case of some old people, the vegetative functions continue sometimes for a number of years. Hence the inference would seem justified, that the brain receives only such nutrition as is not absolutely needed for the maintenance of life. In other words, where general vitality is low, the brain is likely to suffer first and most; and the cortex is likely to suffer most severely, since both the sensory and motor centers are needed for the mere maintenance of life. The power of coordination must, consequently, be small in persons of low vitality. And it is this particular ability which the immoral classes lack. They are unable to coordinate their actions to each other, hence the more or less pronounced impulsiveness of their behavior; they generally react on the stimuli of a particular organ, rather than on the demands of the system as a whole, i.e., they are under the sway of an organ which demands and receives more attention than it would receive in a well-balanced healthy organism; e.g., in the drunkard and dyspeptic, the stomach; in the nymphomaniac, the sexual appetite. These people lack, consequently, the power of coordination, and act in a self-centered manner. And from that condition to selfish action, there is only one step. In the case of those suffering from malnutrition with its consequent low vitality, it is either a special organ that is at fault, or a general lack of vigor on the part of all organs, making impossible a proper nourishment of the brain; hence a general lack of coordination, or hasty reaction on some external stimulus, due to the small inhibitory powers of the brain. For the unity of the organism not only suggests that the improper functioning of one organ affects all others, but also the special part of the brain with which it is in sympathy. "The internal organs are plainly not the agents of their special functions only, but, by reason of the intimate consent or sympathy of functions, they are essential constituents of our mutual life."

Summing up, then, we may say, that the moral element is an essential part of a complete and sound character, and is based on a sound body; it is the ability to coordinate one's actions to each other, and to those of other people.

When this ability is of a high order, we have sociality. For sociality demands not only that the individual should correlate his actions to those of other people, but that he should do so in a vigorous and efficient manner. Negative morality is still too frequent, and is the only possible thing for people of low vitality, as was shown above. Positive morality or sociality is possible only to those who, owing to large surplus energy, are able to coördinate in a comprehensive manner, accurately and quickly; and who have sufficient energy to infuse enthusiasm into others, and make them cooperate. A moral man may suggest new plans of action; the social man alone can unite the many in cooperation by virtue of his energy, which enables him to plan, scheme, and work for those whose vitality requires them to confine themselves to the most necessary activities. It is the vocation of these men to procure more goods than needed for immediate consumption, to provide some leisure for at least a small portion of the community, and eventually for all.


Source: http://www.healthguidance.org/authors/666/Rudolph-M.-Binder