Part 4

Then, again, whiskey and all kinds of intoxicating liquors in excess are just so much poison to the brain. I need not say much about this, you all know it; and we all know what dreadful things happen when a man poisons his brain and makes it mad, and like a wild beast with drink; he may murder his wife, or his child, and when he comes to himself he knows nothing of how he did it, only the terrible thing is certain, that he _did_ do it, and that he may be hanged for doing something when he was mad, and which he never dreamt of doing when in his senses: but then he knows that he made himself mad, and he must take all the wretched and tremendous consequences.

From the brains we go to the _lungs_,--you know where they are,--they are what the butchers call the _lichts_; here they are, they are the bellows that keep the fire of life going; for you must know that a clever German philosopher has made out that we are all really burning,--that our bodies are warmed by a sort of burning or combustion, as it is called,--and fed by breath and food, as a fire is fed with coals and air.

Now the great thing for the lungs is plenty of fresh air, and plenty of room to play in. About seventy thousand people die every year in Britain from that disease of the lungs called consumption,--that is, nearly half the number of people in the city of Edinburgh; and it is certain that more than the half of these deaths could be prevented if the lungs had fair play. So you should always try to get your houses well ventilated, that means to let the air be often changed, and free from impure mixtures; and you should avoid crowding many into one room, and be careful to keep everything clean, and put away all filth; for filth is not only disgusting to the eye and the nose, but is dangerous to the health. I have seen a great deal of cholera, and been surrounded by dying people, who were beyond any help from doctors, and I have always found that where the air was bad, the rooms ill ventilated, cleanliness neglected, and drunkenness prevailed, there this terrible scourge, which God sends upon us, was most terrible, most rapidly and widely destructive. Believe this, and go home and consider well what I now say, for you may be sure it is true.

Now we come to the _heart_. You all know where it is. It is the most wonderful little pump in the world. There is no steam-engine half so clever at its work, or so strong. There it is in every one of us, beat, beating,--all day and all night, year after year, never stopping, like a watch ticking; only it never needs to be wound up,--God winds it up once for all. It depends for its health on the state of the rest of the body, especially the brains and lungs. But all violent passions, all irregularities of living, damage it. Exposure to cold when drunk, falling asleep, as many poor wretches do, in stairs all night,--this often brings on disease of the heart; and you know it is not only dangerous to have anything the matter with the heart, it is the commonest of all causes of sudden death. It gives no warning; you drop down dead in a moment. So we may say of the bodily as well as of the moral organ, "Keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life."

We now come to the _stomach_. You all know, I dare say, where it lies! It speaks for itself. Our friends in England are very respectful to their stomachs. They make a great deal of them, and we make too little. If an Englishman is ill, all the trouble is in his stomach; if an Irishman is ill, it is in his heart, and he's "kilt entirely"; and if a Scotsman, it is in his "heed." Now, I wish I saw Scots men and women as nice and particular about their stomachs, or rather about what they put into them, as their friends in England. Indeed, so much does your genuine John Bull depend on his stomach, and its satisfaction, that we may put in his mouth the stout old lines of Prior:--

"The plainest man alive may tell ye The seat of empire is the Belly: From hence are sent out those supplies, Which make us either stout or wise; The strength of every other member Is founded on your Belly-timber; The qualms or raptures of your blood Rise in proportion to your food, Your stomach makes your fabric roll, Just as the bias rules the bowl: That great Achilles might employ The strength designed to ruin Troy, He dined on lions' marrow, spread On toasts of ammunition bread; But by his mother sent away, Amongst the Thracian girls to play, Effeminate he sat and quiet; Strange product of a cheese-cake diet. Observe the various operations, Of food and drink in several nations. Was ever Tartar fierce or cruel, Upon the strength of water-gruel? But who shall stand his rage and force, If first he rides, then eats his horse! Salads and eggs, and lighter fare, Turn the Italian spark's guitar; And if I take Dan Congreve right, Pudding and beef make Britons fight."

Good cooking is the beauty of a dinner. It really does a man as much good again if he eats his food with a relish, and with a little attention, it is as easy to cook well as ill. And let me tell the wives, that your husbands would like you all the better, and be less likely to go off to the public-house, if their bit of meat or their drop of broth were well cooked. Laboring men should eat well. They should, if possible, have meat--_butcher-meat_--ever day. Good broth is a capital dish. But, above all, keep whiskey out of your stomachs; it really plays the very devil when it gets in. It makes the brain mad, it burns the coats of the stomach; it turns the liver into a lump of rottenness; it softens and kills the heart; it makes a man an idiot and a brute. If you really need anything stronger than good meat, take a pot of wholesome porter or ale; but I believe you are better without even that. You will be all the better able to afford good meat, and plenty of it.

With regard to your _bowels_,--a very important part of your interior,--I am not going to say much, except that neglect of them brings on many diseases; and laboring men are very apt to neglect them. Many years ago, an odd old man, at Green-cock, left at his death a number of sealed packets to his friends, and on opening them they found a Bible, £50, and a box of pills, and the words, "Fear God, and keep your bowels open." It was good advice, though it might have been rather more decorously worded. If you were a doctor, you would be astonished how many violent diseases of the mind, as well as of the body, are produced by irregularity of the bowels. Many years ago, an old minister, near Linlithgow, was wakened out of his sleep to go to see a great lady in the neighborhood who was thought dying, and whose mind was in dreadful despair, and who wished to see him immediately. The old man, rubbing his eyes, and pushing up his Kilmarnock nightcap, said, "And when were her leddyship's booels opened?" And finding, after some inquiry, that they were greatly in arrears, "I thocht sae. Rax me ower that pill-box on the chimney-piece, and gie my compliments to Leddy Margret, and tell her to tak thae twa pills, and I'll be ower by and by mysel'." They did as he bade them. They did their duty, and the pills did theirs, and her leddyship was relieved, and she was able at breakfast-time to profit by the Christian advice of the good old man, which she could not have done when her nerves were all wrong. The old Greeks, who were always seeking after wisdom, and didn't always find it, showed their knowledge and sense in calling depression of mind Melancholy, which means black bile. Leddy Margret's liver, I have no doubt, had been distilling this perilous stuff.

My dear friends, there is one thing I have forgot to mention, and that is about keeping common-stairs clean; you know they are often abominably filthy, and they aggravate fever, and many of your worst and most deadly diseases; for you may keep your own houses never so clean and tidy, but if the common-stair is not kept clean too, all its foul air comes into your rooms, and into your lungs, and poisons you. So let all in the stair resolve to keep it clean, and well aired.

But I must stop now. I fear I have wearied you. You see I had nothing new to tell you. The great thing in regulating and benefiting human life, is not to find out new things, but to make the best of the old things,--to live according to Nature, and the will of Nature's God,--that great Being who bids us call him our Father, and who is at this very moment regarding each one of us with far more than any earthly father's compassion and kindness, and who would make us all happy if we would but do his bidding, and take his road. He has given us minds by which we may observe the laws he has ordained in our bodies, and which are as regular and as certain in their effects, and as discoverable by us as the motions of the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens; and we shall not only benefit ourselves and live longer and work better and be happier, by knowing and obeying these laws, from love to ourselves, but we shall please him, we shall glorify him, and make him our _Friend_,--only think of that! and get his blessing, by taking care of our health, from love to him, and a regard to his will, in giving us these bodies of ours to serve him with, and which he has, with his own almighty hands, so fearfully and wonderfully made.

I hope you will pardon my plainness in speaking to you. I am quite in earnest, and I have a deep regard, I may say a real affection, for you; for I know you well. I spent many of my early years as a doctor in going about among you. I have attended you long ago when ill; I have delivered your wives, and been in your houses when death was busy with you and yours, and I have seen your fortitude, energy, and honest, hearty, generous kindness to each other; your readiness to help your neighbors with anything you have, and to share your last sixpence and your last loaf with them. I wish I saw half as much real neighborliness and sympathy among what are called your betters. If a poor man falls down in a fit on the street, who is it that takes him up and carries him home, and gives him what he needs? it is not the man with a fine coat and gloves on,--it is the poor, dirty-coated, hard-handed, warm-hearted laboring man.

Keep a good hold of all these homely and sturdy virtues, and add to them temperance and diligence, cleanliness and thrift, good knowledge, and, above all, the love and the fear of God, and you will not only be happy yourselves, but you will make this great and wonderful country of ours which rests upon you still more wonderful and great.

SERMON V.

MEDICAL ODDS AND ENDS.

My dear friends,--We are going to ring in now, and end our course. I will be sorry and glad, and you will be the same. We are this about everything. It is the proportion that settles it. I am, upon the whole, as we say, sorry, and I dare say on the whole you are not glad. I dislike parting with anything or anybody I like, for it is ten to one if we meet again.

My text is, "_That His way may he known upon earth; His saving health to all nations._" You will find it in that perfect little Psalm, the 67th. But before taking it up, I will, as my dear father used to say,--you all remember him, his keen eye and voice; his white hair, and his grave, earnest, penetrating look; and you should remember and possess his Canongate Sermon to you,--"The Bible, what it is, what it does, and what it deserves,"--well, he used to say, let us _recapitulate_ a little. It is a long and rather kittle word, but it is the only one that we have. He made it longer, but not less alive, by turning it into "a few recapitulatory remarks." What ground then have we travelled over? _First_, our duties to and about the Doctor; to call him in time, to trust him, to obey him, to be grateful to, and to pay him with our money and our hearts and our good word, if we have all these; if we have not the first, with twice as much of the others. _Second_, the Doctor's duties to us. He should be able and willing to cure us. That is what he is there for. He should be sincere, attentive, and tender to us, keeping his time and our secrets. We must tell him all we know about our ailments and their causes, and he must tell us all that is good for us to know, and no more. _Third_, your duties to your children; to the wee Willie Winkies and the little wifies that come toddlin' hame. It is your duty to _mind_ them. It is a capital Scotch use of this word: they are to be in your mind; you are to exercise your understanding about them; to give them simple food; to keep goodies and trash, and raw pears and whiskey, away from their tender mouths and stomachs; to give them that never-ending meal of good air, night and day, which is truly food and fire to them and you; to _be_ good before as well as to them, to speak and require the truth in love,--that is a wonderful expression, isn't it?--the truth in love; that, if acted on by us all, would bring the millennium next week; to be plain and homely with them, never _spaining_ their minds from you. You are all sorry, you mothers, when you have to spain their mouths; it is a dreadful business that to both parties; but there is a spaining of the affections still more dreadful, and that need never be, no, never, neither in this world nor in that which is to come. Dr. Waugh, of London, used to say to bereaved mothers, Rachels weeping for their children, and refusing to be comforted, for that simplest of all reasons, because they were not, after giving them God's words of comfort, clapping them on the shoulders, and fixing his mild deep eyes on them (those who remember those eyes well know what they could mean), "My woman, your bairn is where it will have two fathers, but never but one mother."

You should also, when the time comes, explain to your children what about their own health and the ways of the world they ought to know, and for the want of the timely knowledge of which many a life and character has been lost. Show them, moreover, the value you put upon health, by caring for your own.

Do your best to get your sons well married, and soon. By "well married," I mean that they should pair off old-fashionedly, for love, and marry what deserves to be loved, as well as what is lovely. I confess I think falling in love is the best way to begin; but then the moment you fall, you should get up and look about you, and see how the land lies, and whether it is as goodly as it looks. I don't like walking into love, or being carried into love; or, above all, being sold or selling yourself into it, which, after all, is not it. And by "soon," I mean as soon as they are keeping themselves; for a wife, such a wife as alone I mean, is cheaper to a young man than no wife, and is his best companion.

Then for your duties to yourselves. See that you make yourself do what is _immediately_ just to your body, feed it when it is really hungry; let it sleep when it, not its master, desires sleep; make it happy, poor hard-working fellow! and give it a gambol when it wants it and deserves it, and as long as it can execute it. Dancing is just the music of the feet, and the gladness of the young legs, and is well called the poetry of motion. It is like all other natural pleasures, given to be used, and to be not abused, either by yourself or by those who don't like it, and don't enjoy your doing it,--shabby dogs these, beware of them! And if this be done, it is a good and a grace, as well as pleasure, and satisfies some good end of our being, and in its own way glorifies our Maker. Did you ever see anything in this world more beautiful than the lambs running races and dancing round the big stone of the field; and does not your heart get young when you hear,--

"Here we go by Jingo ring, Jingo ring, Jingo ring; Here we go by Jingo ring, About the merry ma tanzie."

This is just a dance in honor of poor old pagan Jingo; measured movements arising from and giving happiness. We have no right to keep ourselves or others from natural pleasures; and we are all too apt to interfere with and judge harshly the pleasures of others; hence we who are stiff and given to other pleasures, and who, now that we are old, know the many wickednesses of the world, are too apt to put the vices of the jaded, empty old heart, like a dark and ghastly fire burnt out, into the feet and the eyes, and the heart and the head of the young. I remember a story of a good old Antiburgher minister. It was in the days when dancing was held to be a great sin, and to be dealt with by the session. Jessie, a comely, and good, and blithe young woman, a great favorite of the minister's, had been guilty of dancing at a friend's wedding. She was summoned before the session to be "dealt with,"--the grim old fellows sternly concentrating their eyes upon her, as she stood trembling in her striped short-gown, and her pretty bare feet. The Doctor, who was one of divinity, and a deep thinker, greatly pitying her and himself, said, "Jessie, my woman, were ye dancin'?"

"Yes," sobbed Jessie.

"Ye maun e'en promise never to dance again, Jessie."

"I wull, sir; I wull promise," with a courtesy.

"Now, what were ye thinking o', Jessie, when ye were dancin'? tell us truly," said an old elder, who had been a poacher in youth.

"Nae ill, sir," sobbed out the dear little woman.

"Then, Jessie, my woman, aye dance," cried the delighted Doctor.

And so say I, to the extent, that so long as our young girls think "nae ill," they may dance their own and their feet's fills; and so on with all the round of the sunshine and flowers God has thrown on and along the path of his children.

_Lastly_, your duty to your own bodies: to preserve them; to make, or rather let--for they are made so to go--their wheels go sweetly; to keep the _girs_ firm round the old barrel; neither to over nor under work our bodies, and to listen to their teaching and their requests, their cries of pain and sorrow; and to keep them as well as your souls unspotted from the world. If you want to know a good book on Physiology, or the Laws of Health and of Life, get Dr. Combe's _Physiology_; and let all you mothers get his delightful _Management of Infancy_. You will love him for his motherly words. You will almost think he might have worn petticoats,--for tenderness he might; but in mind and will and eye he was every inch a man. It is now long since he wrote, but I have seen nothing so good since; he is so intelligent, so reverent, so full of the solemnity, the sacredness, the beauty, and joy of life, and its work; so full of sympathy for suffering, himself not ignorant of such evil,--for the latter half of his life was a daily, hourly struggle with death, fighting the destroyer from within with the weapons of life, his brain and his conscience. It is very little physiology that you require, so that it is physiology, and is suitable for your need. I can't say I like our common people, or indeed, what we call our ladies and gentlemen, poking curiously into all the ins and outs of our bodies as a general accomplishment, and something to talk of. No, I don't like it. I would rather they chose some other _ology_. But let them get enough to give them awe and love, light and help, guidance and foresight.

These, with good sense and good senses, humility, and a thought of a hereafter in this world as well as in the next, will make us as able to doctor ourselves--especially to act in the _preventive service_, which is your main region of power for good--as in this mortal world we have any reason to expect. And let us keep our hearts young, and they will keep our legs and our arms the same. For we know now that hearts are kept going by having strong, pure, lively blood; if bad blood goes into the heart, it gets angry, and shows this by beating at our breasts, and frightening us; and sometimes it dies of sheer anger and disgust, if its blood is poor or poisoned, thin and white. "He may dee, but he'll never grow auld," said a canty old wife of her old minister, whose cheek was ruddy like an apple.

_Run for the Doctor_; don't saunter to him, or go in, by the by, as an old elder of my father's did, when his house was on fire. He was a perfect Nathanael, and lived more in the next world than in this, as you will soon see. One winter night he slipped gently into his neighbor's cottage, and found James Somerville reading aloud by the blaze of the licht coal; he leant over the chair, and waited till James closed the book, when he said, "By the by, I am thinkin' ma hoose is on fire!" and out he and they all ran, in time to see the auld biggin' fall in with a glorious blaze. So it is too often when that earthly house of ours--our cottage, our tabernacle--is getting on fire. One moment your finger would put out what in an hour all the waters of Clyde would be too late for. If the Doctor is needed, the sooner the better. If he is not, he can tell you so, and you can rejoice that he had a needless journey, and pay him all the more thankfully. So run early and at once. How many deaths--how many lives of suffering and incapacity--may be spared by being in time! by being a day or two sooner. With children this is especially the case, and with workingmen in the full prime of life. A mustard plaster, a leech, a pill, fifteen drops of Ipecacuanha wine, a bran poultice, a hint, or a stitch in time, may do all and at once, when a red-hot iron, a basinful of blood, all the wisdom of our art, and all the energy of the Doctor, all your tenderness and care, are in vain. Many a child's life is saved by an emetic at night, who would be lost in twelve hours. So send in time; it is just to your child or the patient, and to yourself; it is just to your Doctor; for I assure you we Doctors are often sorry, and angry enough, when we find we are too late. It affronts us, and our powers, besides affronting life and all its meanings, and Him who gives it. And we really _enjoy_ curing; it is like running and winning a race,--like hunting and finding and killing our game. And then remember to go to the Doctor early in the day, as well as in the disease. I always like my patients to send and say that they would like the Doctor "to call before he goes out!" This is like an Irish message, you will say; but there is "sinse" in it. Fancy a Doctor being sent for, just as he is in bed, to see some one, and on going he finds they had been thinking of sending in the morning, and that he has to run neck and neck with death, with the odds all against him.

I now wind up with some other odds and ends. I give you them as an old wife would empty her pockets,--such wallets they used to be!--in no regular order; here a bit of string, now a bit of gingerbread, now an "aiple," now a bunch of keys, now an old almanac, now three _bawbees_ and a bad shilling, a "wheen" buttons all marrowless, a thimble, a bit of black sugar, and maybe at the very bottom a "goold guinea."

_Shoes._--It is amazing the misery the people of civilization endure in and from their shoes. Nobody is ever, as they should be, comfortable at once in them; they hope in the long-run and after much agony, and when they are nearly done, to make them fit, especially if they can get them once well wet, so that the mighty knob of the big toe may adjust himself and be at ease. For my part, if I were rich, I would advertise for a clean, wholesome man, whose foot was exactly my size, and I would make him wear my shoes till I could put them on, and not know I was in them.[1] Why is all this? Why do you see every man's and woman's feet so out of shape? Why are there corns, with their miseries and maledictions? Why the virulence and unreachableness of those that are "soft"? Why do our nails grow in, and sometimes have to be torn violently off?