Health E-Book

John Brown

• Herausgeber: Science & Technology Publishing
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 114

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Health: Five Lay Sermons to Working-People by Charles Kingsley is a compelling collection of addresses originally delivered to working-class audiences in the 19th century. In these five sermons, Kingsley, a renowned clergyman, social reformer, and author, passionately advocates for the importance of health, cleanliness, and moral responsibility among the laboring classes. Drawing on his deep Christian faith and progressive social views, Kingsley addresses the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of his listeners, emphasizing that good health is not only a personal blessing but also a social duty. Throughout the book, Kingsley discusses the dangers of neglecting personal hygiene, the value of fresh air, exercise, and wholesome food, and the impact of unhealthy living conditions on both individuals and society. He urges his audience to take practical steps toward improving their health, while also calling on employers, lawmakers, and the broader community to support reforms that would lead to better living and working environments. Kingsley’s sermons are marked by their direct, accessible language and their heartfelt concern for the welfare of ordinary people. Health: Five Lay Sermons to Working-People remains a significant historical document, reflecting the social and medical challenges of Victorian England while offering timeless advice on the importance of health and well-being. It is a testament to Kingsley’s enduring belief in the power of education, self-improvement, and collective action to uplift individuals and transform society.

Leseprobe

Health John Brown M.D.

HEALTH: FIVE LAY SERMONS TO WORKING-PEOPLE.

BY

JOHN BROWN, M.D.

He is not far from every one of us. For in Him we live and move not less than in Him we have our being.

"Out of darkness comes the hand Reaching through nature,—moulding man."

HEALTH: FIVE LAY SERMONS TO WORKING-PEOPLE.

BY

JOHN BROWN, M.D.

BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,

Late Ticknor and Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 1877.

Affectionately inscribed to the memory of theRev. James Trench, the heart and soul of the Canongate Mission, who, while he preached a pure and a fervent gospel to its heathens, taught them also and therefore to respect and save their health, and was the Originator and Keeper of their Library and Penny Bank, as well as their Minister.

PREFACE.

THREE of these sermons were written for, and (shall I say?) preached some years ago, in one of the earliest missionary stations in Edinburgh, established by Broughton Place Congregation, and presided over at that time by the Reverend James Trench; one of the best human beings it was ever my privilege to know. He is dead; dying in and of his work,—from typhus fever caught at the bedside of one of his poor members—but he lives in the hearts of many a widow and fatherless child; and lives also, I doubt not, in the immediate vision of Him to do whose will was his meat and his drink. Given ten thousand such men, how would the crooked places be made straight, and the rough places plain, the wildernesses of city wickedness, the solitary places of sin and despair, of pain and shame, be made glad! This is what is to regenerate mankind; this is the leaven that some day is to leaven the lump.

The other two sermons were never preached, except in print; but they were composed in the same key. I say this not in defence, but in explanation. I have tried to speak to working men and women from my lay pulpit, in the same words, with the same voice, with the same thoughts I was in the habit of using when doctoring them. This is the reason of their plain speaking. There is no other way of reaching these sturdy and weather and work-beaten understandings; there is nothing fine about them outside, though they are often as white in the skin under their clothes as a duchess, and their hearts as soft and tender as Jonathan's, or as Rachel's, or our own Grizel Baillie's; but you must speak out to them, and must not be mealy-mouthed if you wish to reach their minds and affections and wills. I wish the gentlefolks could hear and could use a little more of this outspokenness; and, as old Porson said, condescend to call a spade a spade, and not a horticultural implement; five letters instead of twenty-two, and more to the purpose.

You see, my dear working friends, I am great upon sparing your strength and taking things cannily. "All very well," say you; "it is easy speaking, and saying, Take it easy; but if the pat's on the fire it maun bile." It must, but you needn't poke up the fire forever, and you may now and then set the kettle on the hob, and let it sing, instead of leaving it to burn its bottom out.

I had a friend who injured himself by overwork. One day I asked the servant if any person had called, and was told that some one had. "Who was it?" "O, it's the little gentleman that aye rins when he walks!" So I wish this age would walk more and "rin" less. A man can walk farther and longer than he can run, and it is poor saving to get out of breath. A man who lives to be seventy, and has ten children and (say) five-and-twenty grandchildren, is of more worth to the state than three men who die at thirty, it is to be hoped unmarried. However slow a coach seventy may have been, and however energetic and go-ahead the three thirties, I back the tortoise against the hares in the long run.

I am constantly seeing men who suffer, and indeed die, from living too fast; from true though not consciously immoral dissipation or scattering of their lives. Many a man is bankrupt in constitution at forty-five, and either takes out a cessio of himself to the grave, or goes on paying ten per cent for his stock-in-trade; he spends his capital instead of merely spending what he makes, or better still, laying up a purse for the days of darkness and old age. A queer man, forty years ago,—Mr. Slate, or, as he was called, Sclate, who was too clever and not clever enough, and had not wisdom to use his wit, always scheming, full of "go," but never getting on,—was stopped by his friend, Sir Walter Scott,—that wonderful friend of us all, to whom we owe Jeanie Deans and Rob Roy, Meg Merrilies and Dandie Dinmont, Jinglin' Geordie, Cuddie Headrigg, and the immortal Baillie,—one day in Princess Street. "How are ye getting on, Sclate?" "Oo, just the auld thing, Sir Walter; ma pennies a' gang on tippenny eerands." And so it is with our nervous power, with our vital capital, with the pence of life; many of them go on "tippenny eerands." We are forever getting our bills renewed, till down comes the poor and damaged concern with dropsy or consumption, blazing fever, madness, or palsy. There is a Western Banking system in living, in using our bodily organs, as well as in paper-money. But I am running off into another sermon.

Health of mind and body, next to a good conscience, is the best blessing our Maker can give us, and to no one is it more immediately valuable than to the laboring man and his wife and children; and indeed a good conscience is just moral health, the wholeness of the sense and the organ of duty; for let us never forget that there is a religion of the body, as well as, and greatly helpful of, the religion of the soul. We are to glorify God in our souls and in our bodies, for the best of all reasons, because they are his, and to remember that at last we must give account, not only of our thoughts and spiritual desires and acts, but all the deeds done in our body. A husband who, in the morning before going to his work, would cut his right hand off sooner than injure the wife of his bosom, strangles her that same night when mad with drink; that is a deed done in his body, and truly by his body, for his judgment is gone; and for that he must give an account when his name is called; his judgment was gone; but then, as the child of a drunken murderer said to me, "A' but, sir, wha goned it?" I am not a teetotaler. I am against teetotalism as a doctrine of universal application; I think we are meant to use these things as not abusing them,—this is one of the disciplines of life; but I not the less am sure that drunkenness ruins men's bodies,—it is not for me to speak of souls,—is a greater cause of disease and misery, poverty, crime, and death among the laboring men and women of our towns, than consumption, fever, cholera, and all their tribe, with thieving and profligacy and improvidence thrown into the bargain: these slay their thousands; this its tens of thousands. Do you ever think of the full meaning of "he's the waur o' drink?" How much the waur?—and then "dead drunk,"—"mortal." Can there be anything more awfully significant than these expressions you hear from children in the streets?

You will see in the woodcut a good illustration of the circulation of the blood: both that through our lungs, by which we breathe and burn, and that through the whole body, by which we live and build. That hand grasps the heart, the central depot, with its valves opening out and in, and, by its contraction and relaxation, makes the living fluid circulate everywhere, carrying in strength, life, and supply to all, and carrying off waste and harm. None of you will be the worse of thinking of that hand as His who makes, supports, moves, and governs all things,—that hand which, while it wheels the rolling worlds, gathers the lambs with his arm, carries them in his bosom, and gently leads those that are with young, and which was once nailed for "our advantage on the bitter cross."

J. B.

23 Rutland Street, December 16, 1861.

CONTENTS.

Page Preface 7 SERMON I. The Doctor: our Duties to him 15 II. The Doctor: his Duties to you 29 III. Children, and how to guide them 41 IV. Health 56 V. Medical Odds and Ends 71

HEALTH.

SERMON I.

THE DOCTOR: OUR DUTIES TO HIM.

EVERYBODY knows the Doctor; a very important person he is to us all. What could we do without him? He brings us into this world, and tries to keep us as long in it as he can, and as long as our bodies can hold together; and he is with us at that strange and last hour which will come to us all, when we must leave this world and go into the next.

When we are well, we perhaps think little about the Doctor, or we have our small joke at him and his drugs; but let anything go wrong with our body, that wonderful tabernacle in which our soul dwells, let any of its wheels go wrong, then off we fly to him. If the mother thinks her husband or her child dying, how she runs to him, and urges him with her tears! how she watches his face, and follows his searching eye, as he examines the dear sufferer; how she wonders what he thinks,—what would she give to know what he knows! how she wearies for his visit! how a cheerful word from him makes her heart leap with joy, and gives her spirit and strength to watch over the bed of distress! Her whole soul goes out to him in unspeakable gratitude when he brings back to her from the power of the grave her husband or darling child. The Doctor knows many of our secrets, of our sorrows, which no one else knows,—some of our sins, perhaps, which the great God alone else knows; how many cares and secrets, how many lives, he carries in his heart and in his hands! So you see he is a very important person the Doctor, and we should do our best to make the most of him, and to do our duty to him and to ourselves.

A thinking man feels often painfully what a serious thing it is to be a doctor, to have the charge of the lives of his fellow-mortals, to stand, as it were, between them and death and eternity and the judgment-seat, and to fight hand to hand with Death. One of the best men and greatest physicians that ever lived, Dr. Sydenham, says, in reference to this, and it would be well if all doctors, young and old, would consider his words:—

"It becomes every man who purposes to give himself to the care of others, seriously to consider the four following things: First, That he must one day give an account to the Supreme Judge of all the lives intrusted to his care. Secondly, That all his skill and knowledge and energy, as they have been given him by God, so they should be exercised for his glory and the good of mankind, and not for mere gain or ambition. Thirdly, and not more beautifully than truly, Let him reflect that he has undertaken the care of no mean creature, for, in order that we may estimate the value, the greatness of the human race, the only begotten Son of God became himself a man, and thus ennobled it with his divine dignity, and, far more than this, died to redeem it; and Fourthly, That the Doctor, being himself a mortal man, should be diligent and tender in relieving his suffering patients, inasmuch as he himself must one day be a like sufferer."

I shall never forget a proof I myself got twenty years ago, how serious a thing it is to be a doctor, and how terribly in earnest people are when they want him. It was when cholera first came here in 1832. I was in England at Chatham, which you all know is a great place for ships and sailors. This fell disease comes on generally in the night; as the Bible says, "it walks in darkness," and many a morning was I roused at two o'clock to go and see its sudden victims, for then is its hour and power. One morning a sailor came to say I must go three miles down the river to a village where it had broken out with great fury. Off I set. We rowed in silence down the dark river, passing the huge hulks, and hearing the restless convicts turning in their