„,„,„_______________- - 7 • ?' _,),>. ' _-.7z-------,-----,------,--- ___----=T:___T-----=----_,,-----ii--a:5-_,----- ____---- ___-_,---- (J. ___,---_-_ -----7.- ________.--- , ______ ___- 0 7, , _ - ___ -_ \ , ---77- _--- __--- A - ...4(6- k-- ,--------- / - ,...--"" JUNE, 1891. • 41111110N 1111111ifim /.114////116g L ptiaLt3qE4. 4017110 41.00 YE% GOOD HEALTH, { BATTLE CREEK, MICH. VOL. 26, NO. 6. CONTENTS. June, 1891. GENERAL ARTICLES • • 161-17i International Health Studies : 26. Mexico (Illustrated), by FELIX L. Oswar,n, M. D.— Life at the Original Water-Cure (Concluded)— Medical Specialism — A Teetotal Samson—The Song of the Vegetarian (Poetry)—The Origin of Soap — Hints to Stammerers — Pork Infection — Hunger and Susceptibility to Infection. HOME GYMNASIUM . 172-175 Health, Grace, and Beauty : Sixth Paper (Illustrated)— Exercise and Education— Dr. Seaver on Smoking. DRESS 176, 177 Woman's Dress. SOCIAL PURITY . 178, 179 The Prodigal Daughter, by KATE C. BUSHNELL, M. D.—A Woman's Rescue of Lost Women. DETECTIVE BUREAU . 18o, 181 A Prince of Charlatans — The Brinkerhoff System — Jayne's Ague Mixture — Ayer's Ague Cure — Kreyder's Ague Pills — Rhode's Fever and Ague Cure, or Antidote to Malaria. EDITORIAL 182-185 Coffee an Excitant — Longevity in Prussia — Dangers in Drink — Marvelous Activity — Flesh- Eating and General Paralysis'— Condiments and Bright's Disease — Abstemiousness —An- thrax in America — Shall we use Rocking-Chairs ? — Sick Eggs — The Nature of Manna. A DOCTOR'S CHAT WITH HIS PATIENTS 186-189 The Influence of Alcohol upon Digestion — Proper Diet for Weak Kidneys — For Burns — The Pneumonia Microbe — For Chapped Hands— Unacquainted with the Bath— An Epidemic Among Flies — Disinfection of the Hands— A Physiological Experiment — Boracic Acid for Chronic Constipation — Sulphur as a Germicide — Administration of Oxygen by the Stomach — Ingrowing Toenail —A new Nasal Treatment — For Shingles — New Cure for Obesity — Disinfection of Spittoons and Cuspidors — ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENCE : Pierce's Golden Medical Discovery — Redness of the Nose — Heart Disease — Falling of the Hair — Reduc- tion of Weight — Sudden Stoppage of the Breath — Pain under Shoulder Blade, in Shoulder, Cord of Neck, etc.— Eczema. SCIENCE IN THE HOUSEHOLD • 19o, 191 The Leguminous Seeds, by E. E. K.— The Keeping of Milk — To Clean Chamois Skin —'1'o Clean an Eggbeater — Lemon Sirup. LITERARY NOTICES 192 A Marvel of' Completeness, is the RESPONSIBLE TWENTIETH CANVASSERS THOUSAND just of Either Sex Wanted, to from whom a liberal the Press. HOME HAND-BOOK. salary will be paid. THE Home Hand-Book tells in plain, every-day lan- vQ6t evIcTedia or guage, how to preserve health, and if lost, how to regain it. It is by far, the most important medical work @ome6tie \Merle for domestic use that has yet appeared, and is rapidly mak- ing its way into the homes of the United States. It is written in the light of the most recent scientific investiga- an6 Rational recitment tion, by a physician of large experience and acknowledged ability, and contains the most approved methods for the treatment of more than 600 diseases. It contains nearly By J. H. KELLOGG, M. D. 1700 Pages, over 500 Engravings, about 30 Full- Page Colored Plates, and an Elegant Paper Manikin. Address, GOOD HEALTH PUBLISHING COMPANY, Battle Creek, Mich. • _ r,' =1- - •t•-• •'• , L.. , -•••••'' - • I I . • ' - 7 • -7 A NUMBER 6. 13)virLE e4oc.1/11([11(0- JUNE, 1891. INTERNATIONAL HEALTH STUDIES. BY FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D. Author of "Physical Education ; " "The Bible of Nature," Etc. 2U.— Mexico. THE Asiatic emigrants who reached our continent isthmus of Tehuantepec. Natural selection has not at least a thousand years before the arrival of Colum- been idle in those thirteen hundred years. Whatever bus, seem to have planted their first successful colony may have been the customs of the original immi- in Southern Mexico. The oldest historical records of grants, the present sanitary habits of their descend- the Aztecs fail to account for the origin of the temple- ants must be accepted as representing the experience palaces of Uxmal and Palenque ; and the canine sub- of a long series of generations. That experience has missiveness of the Yucatan Indians appears to imply taught them many valuable lessons in the art of coun- that they have been under the influence of an organ- teracting the climatic dangers of the tropics. If the ized despotism for a long series of centuries. Prof. virus of malaria can really be communicated by the Y. L. Stephens, in the report of his archmological re- bite of mosquitoes, the repetition of that process must searches, describes a scene in a village near Uxmal, have a protective tendency, like vaccination ; for the where the Mayas attended and applauded a sort of Mexican Indios use neither mosquito bars nor the passion-play, dramatizing their subjection by the all- night-hoods of the Bengal peasants, but their immu- conquering Spaniards. One by one the victims of nity from climatic fevers may have a good deal to do Spanish cruelty mount the stage, recounting the in- with their frugal diet. They are not vegetarians in dignities suffered at the hands of their inhuman task- the extreme sense of the word, for they flavor their masters ; a conspiracy is formed, leaders are chosen, brown beans with bacon fat, and the poorest pelon and the day and hour appointed for a general upris- keeps hens for the sake of their eggs; but their staff ing, when suddenly a bearded Spaniard enters the of life is the prolific banana. hall. He takes in the situation at a glance, bangs off " Como estan los platanales en szi pays, compaa're 1" a pistol, and the assembly scatters with shrieks of —" How is the banana crop getting along in your abject terror. And that memorial of national dis- neighborhood, friend ? " is almost the first question if grace was written and performed by native artists. a Mexican Indian meets a countryman from a differ- The Yucatan Mayas must surely be as different in ent part of the coast. The Musa paradisiaca is said to their ethnological affinities, from the fierce Caribs and have borne its first fruits in Eden,--probably in the the defiant Seminoles, as the aboriginal Hindoos were happy lubberland of the Phaeaces, where freedom from from their Turcoman invaders. toil was considered the supreme blessing of life, for no Some of the Toltec chronicles date back to the other plant repays a little toil with a larger amount of sixth century of our chronological era, when refugees palatable manfood. Ripe bananas answer exactly the from some unknown region of the far Northwest set- definition of the natural food of our species : " Vege- a- tled the valley of Anahuac and the uplands near the table substances that can be relished without artificial 162 GENERAL ARTICLES. bananas, with an egg or two, and a few maize pancakes, will make a sufficient meal for a hard-working man ; but a much larger number can now and then be eaten with impunity, and dyspeptics _o who cannot digest raw apples, have no such difficulty with bananas. fi The Creoles of the British West In- dies celebrate their holidays with ba- nana fritters and banana puddings, but the Spaniards eschew such attempts to add perfume to the violet." " It spoils the flavor of the ripe fruit," said a Cuban planter of my acquaintance ; " I would as soon think of eating fried oranges or cooked grapes." The Mexican Indios are of the same opinion, and pluck their bananas as they ripen in succession, on the bunches dangling by scores from the rafters of their little log cabins. If the maize crop fails in one of the two yearly har- vest seasons, they get along for a while with bananas and eggs alone, but even then need an urgent invitation before they will affront their Hindoo stomachs with flesh food. About fish they are somewhat less scrupulous, and in stress of circumstances eke out a dinner with a slice of roasted iguana (a sort of large tree lizard), a viand said to partake of the taste both of fish and fowl. Pork, they use only in the fluid form (bacon- THE ROLDAU BRIDGE DIAREET, MEXICO. grease), and sell their old milch cows to the city butchers, so that the aggre- preparation," and of that substance a banana orchard gate meat rations of a large Indian family may fall of half an acre will produce enough to support a short of twenty pounds a year. Pulque (fermented family of six persons the year round. Two hundred aloe sap), they taste only on their occasional visits to and fifty bananas have been counted on a single the cities of the central plateau, and reap the reward bunch, and Humboldt estimates that a piece of land of their abstemiousness in an almost absolute immu- producing one thousand pounds of potatoes, will nity from climatic fevers, and in their faculty of sur- yield forty thousand pounds of bananas, and sup- viving desperate wounds. In the military hospital of port twenty-five times as many persons as the same Medellin, near Vera Cruz, our wounded aborigines area planted in wheat. And the process of culture is were rarely more than a month on the sick list, even so simple. No weeding and manuring, no ploughing if their injuries involved the amputation of a limb, in the glare of the sun, nothing but the removal of or hemorrhage that seemed to have left them almost the shoots sprouting up from the stem of the parent exsanguis. Surgeon Weilander, of the Maximilian plant, and their insertion into holes bored in the volunteers, told me that he had once been called to loose soil by means of a pointed stick.