Newspapers / The Carolina Union Farmer … / June 13, 1912, edition 1 / Page 6
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Page Six THE CAROLINA UNION PARMER Health on the Farm From Wallace’s Farmer. The farmer and his family are worth more to the community and to the world than the farm live stock and the crops. The health of the farmer and his family is worth more than the health of the farm, the live stock and the crops. If the farmer does not have health—and by this we mean not that negative condition which can get along without a doc tor, but that degree of health that will enable him to enjoy farming— the farm itself will become unheal thy, unthrifty. The great essentials of health are plenty of pure food of sufficient va riety and well cooked, plenty of pure air, plenty of pure water, and plenty of exercise. The farmer has them all, as no other man has, or at least can and should have them. On many farms there is a lack of variety in the food, sometimes a woe ful lack; but it os largely the fault of the farmer and his family them selves. He can have cured meat dur ing the summer, and if he will only learn to cure it properly, it will be better than any he can buy out of the shops. He can have good milk, buttermilk, cream, poultry, and eggs of a quality for which the, city man will pay ten cents a dozen extra the year round. He can have fruits and berries and vegetables, if he has only been endowed with sufficient grace to lay out a garden, put a fence around it, and work it himself in stead of leaving it to his wife and children. It is enough for the wife to gather the vegetables, prepare and cook them. She has no business to raise them unless she prefers to do so. Any farmer can have good water, provided he will dig a well or wall up a spring, and see that it cannot become polluted by either human or animal wastes. Any farmer can have pure air, if ne will simply let it in at night. He has enough of it, iu all conscience, in the daytime. It is his family that is more apt to suf fer from lack of it, especially the wo men folks. As to exercise, he has enough of that, if he will only take it wisely. The women folks usually have plenty of exercise indoors, but often not enough of the outdoors. Why, then, do so many farmers and farmers’ families lack in health? Ihis body of ours is the most won derful creation on the earth. David is rot supposed to have known much ^bout anatomy, or physiology, or the circulation of the blood, or the ner vous system, or hygiene or microbes; but he said long centuries ago that it was “fearfully and wonderfully made.” The more we know of It, the more strongly do we echo his sentiment. This body is continually chang ing. It is not the same body that it was last year, nor last month, nor yesterday. There is an intake and an outgo; and the relation of the intake and the outgo has much to do with health. There is not much danger of farmers eating too much. That’s the sin of the city man. If he is well- to-do, and takes life easy, he eats himself to death. Solomon was wise when he put gluttony and intemper ance in the same category. The far mer, with his outdoor life and abun dance of exercise, can be a heavy eater, if he is wise in his eating. He can eat an amount of fat meat that would send the city man to the hos pital, because the farmer needs the calories of energy that the meat fur nishes for his work. The main thing is to have it well cooked; and while the best farm cooking is the best on earth, the worst farm cooking is— well, we don’t like to say much about it. So much for the intake. It is just as necessary to look after the outgo as the intake. One of the first and most important things is cleanliness of the skin. Varnish a man, and he will be dead in a short time, because the pores of his skin have been closed. They are simply one part of the innumerable sewers on the system to carry off the dead matter. Farmers and their wives complain that they do not have a bath-room with hot and cold water. This is particularly true on tenant farms. While this is a comfort, it is not an absolute necessity for cleanli ness. You can keep clean, even if you do not have a bath-room. We boys at college used to rig up a show er bath that was a marvel of simplic ity. We had one tin bucket with holes punched in the bottom. Then we had another bucket that we could upset into the bucket with the holes in it. We stood under it and had a fine shower bath. You don’t need even that. All you really need is a couple of stiff brushes, about three inches long and an inch wide, some good soap, a rough towel, some hot water, and some cold, and a private room. Use one brush dry as a curry comb. Use the other with the soap and warm water. Wash this off with tepid or' warm water. Then rinse with cold water, and rub with a coarse towel until your skin is in a glow. Try this at least twice a week, and if you don’t feel better for it, you need not renew for Wallaces’ Farmer next year. We heard a story the other day of a doctor who was called to see a farmer, an old man. He was astonished at the wonderful healthi ness and flexibility of skin. On in quiry, he found that the farmer had used a stiff horse brush on himself nearly all his life. If the skin is neglected, the kid neys will have to work overtime, and the result may be some of the vari ous kidney troubles that are vex ing the present generation. These troubles are not all due to lack of keeping the skin clean or the pores open, but they are in part. In city people, at least, most of the rest of them are due to impure food. The farmer is not compelled to eat im pure food; the city man can not al ways help himself. Another important thing is to keep our old friends, the bowels, open, and that without taking medicine. Much of the ill-health of the farmer, and of other people, too, is due sim ply to neglect. It is all-important to train children to regularity in this matter. Irregularity is an invitation to disease. You can no more have a healthy child with its bowels stop ped, than you can have a good Are if the chimney is full of soot. It is not easy to break the bowels of a bad habit, but it can be done. Eat coarse, food, such as oatmeal, graham bread, and, above all things, apples. There is something in the malic acid of the apple that stimu lates the bowels in a most wonderful way. Farmers can have apples at least eight months in the year, espe cially if they own their farms. Drink ing plenty of water between meals, at night, and early in the morning, will also help. When the habit is once formed, it is easy to maintain. Hence the necessity for making this part of the training of children. If the farmer wants to be healthy —not merely such health as will ex cuse him from the necessity of call ing the doctor, but vigorous, abound ing health that will enable him to make a joy out of his work—he wil have to quit working twelve hours a day. Some farmers work fourteen. I^ow, the human system was not built :or that amount of work. We do not believe there is any people on the face of the earth that can work twelve hours a day at any work without suffering for it. More than that: they will do more work in ten lours a day than they will in twelve; and in certain lines they will do more work in eight hours a day than they will in ten. The eight-hour day is not possible for the farmer. His work is not usually of such a nature as to make it necessary; but the farmer should get onto a ten-hour day, if for no other reason than to maintain efficiency in his work. It is possible to work twelve hours a day, Avorking in a sort of half-heart ed way, and longing for sundown; but it is not possible to work hard twelve hours a day and maintain the health. When on the farm, we never found it necessary to work longer than ten hours, and the work, got along quite as well as on the farm of our neighbor who worked twelve. Farmers are in the habit of buying patent medicines for every real or fancied ailment. When a boy we read this sentence in the old English Reader, we believe it was: “Those who for every trifling infirmity take medicine to repair their health, do they rather impair it,” ’and we have never forgotten it. In the first place, most of these patent medicines are frauds, and the man who expects to get up steam by taking them will be grievously dis appointed. Even if these patent med icines contained no poisons or pain- deadening or stimulating or intoxi cating ingredients, they would be shot-gun remedies at best. In the next place, most of them are the formers of drug habits. The farm er does not need them; and the wider berth he gives them, and the quicker he fires out of his home pe riodicals containing advertisements of them, the better it will be for him and for his family. Now that these medicines have been shown up in their true character, and their in gredients published, there is no ex cuse for ignorance about them. The human body was built to run a hundred years, if we may judge from the ratio that exists in other animals between the years it requires to attain maturity and the year of life. When we get to living hearthily, wisely and sanely, and teach our children to live so, we will approxi- [Thursday, June 13, 1912. mate to this length of life, especially on the farm. To do this, however, the farmer will have to work less hours. He will have to avoid unwise exposure. Unfortunately, the farm necessitates men taking chances which the town man does not need to. He is liable to gbt wet and chill ed; has to stand extreme cold and extreme heat; and the only way to meet these difficulties without harm is to keep himself in such physical condition that he will be able to stand these extremes. Otherwise, he is liable to suffer from colds, catarrh, consumption, or rheumatism. If he gets typhoid fever, it is usually be cause he has neglected to provide a pure water supply. Our readers may say: That’s all theory. Before discussing whether it is all theory or part theory, whether it is part experience or all experience, we simply ask: Isn’t it reasonable? If it is reasonable, try it as soon as possible. We have no fear of the results. It is needless to say that the less alcohol in any form that the farmer takes into his system, the less energy of his system will have to be used to get rid of it, and the clearer will be his brain, for alcohol is a racial poison. A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. . Before him I may think aloud.—Emerson. What a handsome lot of people there would be if we all looked like our pictures. W.AXTED—Reliable young man to work on grain and stock farms. W. M. Watkins, Saxe, Va. Take a Thirty-day Course in our sample rooms, and enter the cotton business. High salaried posi tions. Write for endorsements. Carolina Cotton Schools. Dept., U. F. 31 East Fourth street, Charlotte, N. C. Fop Sale! Some very fine pure bred York shire Pigs now ready ship. THE HOG FOR THE FARMER D. R. COX, Route 2, Galax, Va. BoiliriQ SpririQS HiQlr JSctiool OPENS, TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 1912 A splendid preparatory school, able corps of teachers, l^ge, comfort able. brick building, pure spring water and suitable grounds for athletic sports. Expenses reduced to actual cost. Supplies for the table suppli^ by the surrounding farmers. Y M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. Prayer Meeting, and Church and Sunday School every Sunday. Splendid literary societies, for boys and girls. Music and Art d partments. Catalogue on request. (July25) W. J. FRANCIS, Principal, Shelby, N. C., Route 3. OUR RIANOS By their own virtues make friends among musical people. They are wonderful pianos and not too high in price. We have established an enviable reputation for handling good pianos at honest prices with all except our competitors and we can hardly expect to convince them. There’s a reason. Buy your piano where you will be fully protected. Darnell & Thomas, Raleigh, N. C. I
The Carolina Union Farmer (Charlotte, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
June 13, 1912, edition 1
6
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