Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/88

68 What an abuse of natural beauty to say that a rose, the smile of God, can produce suffering! The joy of its presence, its beauty, and purity should uplift the thought, and destroy any possible fever. It is profane to fancy that the sweetness of clover and the breath of new-mown hay may cause glandular inflammation, sneezing, and nasal pangs.

If a random thought, calling itself Dyspepsia, had tried to tyrannize over our forefathers, it would have been

routed by their independence and industry. Then people had less time for selfishness, coddling, and sickly after-dinner talk. The exact amount of food the stomach could digest was not discussed à la Cutter, or referred to sanitary laws. A man's belief in those days was not so severe upon the gastric juices. Beaumont's Medical Experiments did not govern the digestion.

Damp atmosphere and freezing snow empurpled the plump cheeks of our ancestors; but they never indulged

in the refinement of inflamed bronchial tubes, because they were as ignorant as Adam, before he ate the fruit of false knowledge, of the existence of such things as tubes and troches, lungs and lozenges.

“Where ignorance is bliss, 't is folly to be wise,” says the English poet; and there is truth in his sentiments

The action of mortal mind on the body was not so injurious before inquisitive modern Eves took up the study of medical works, and unmanly Adams attributed their own downfall, and the fate of their offspring, to the weakness of their wives.

The primitive custom of taking no thought about food, left the stomach and bowels free to act in obedience to