A Guide to Health

The Human Body

The world is compounded of the five elements,--earth, water, air, fire, and ether. So too is our body. It is a sort of miniature world. Hence the body stands in need of all the elements in due proportion,--pure earth, pure water, pure fire or sunlight, pure air, and open space. When any one of these falls short of its due proportion, illness is caused in the body.

The body is made up of skin and bone, as well as flesh and blood. The bones constitute the frame-work of the body; but for them we could not stand erect and move about. They protect the softer parts of the body. Thus the skull gives protection to the brain, while the ribs protect the heart and the lungs. Doctors have counted 238 bones in the human body. The outside of the bones is hard, but the inside is soft and hollow. Where there is a joint between two bones, there is a coating of marrow, which may be regarded as a soft bone. The teeth, too, are to be counted among the bones.

When we feel the flesh at some points, we find it to be tough and elastic. This part of the flesh is known as the muscle. It is the muscles that enable us to fold and unfold our arms, to move our jaws, and to close our eyes. It is by means of the muscles, again, that our organs of perception do their work.

It is beyond the province of this book to give a detailed account of the structure of the body; nor has the present writer enough knowledge to give such an account. We will, therefore, content ourselves with just as much information as is essential for our present purpose.

The most important portion of the body is the stomach. If the stomach ceases to work even for a single moment, the whole body would collapse. The work of the stomach is to digest the food, and so to provide nourishment to the body. Its relation to the body is the same as that of the steam engine to the Railway train. The gastric juice which is produced in the stomach helps the assimilation of nutritious elements in the food, the refuse being sent out by way of the intestines in the form of urine and fæces. On the left side of the abdominal cavity is the spleen, while to the right of the stomach is the liver, whose function is the purification of the blood and the secretion of the bile, which is so useful for digestion.

In the hollow space enclosed by the ribs are situated the heart and the lungs. The heart is between the two lungs, but more to the left than the right. There are on the whole 24 bones in the chest; the action of the heart can be felt between the fifth and the sixth rib. The lungs are connected with the windpipe. The air which we inhale is taken into the lungs through the windpipe, and the blood is purified by it. It is of the utmost importance to breathe through the nose, instead of through the mouth.

On the circulation of the blood depend all activities of the body. It is the blood that provides nourishment to the body. It extracts the nutritious elements out of the food, and ejects the refuse through the intestines, and so keeps the body warm. The blood is incessantly circulating all over the body, along the veins and the arteries. The beatings of the pulse are due to the circulation of the blood. The pulse of a normal adult man beats some 75 times a minute. The pulses of children beat faster, while those of old men are slower.

The chief agency for keeping the blood pure is the air. When the blood returns to the lungs after one complete round over the body, it is impure and contains poisonous elements. The oxygen of the air which we inhale purifies this blood and is assimilated into it, while the nitrogen absorbs the poisonous matter and is breathed out. This process goes on incessantly. As the air has a very important function to perform in the body, we shall devote a separate chapter to a detailed consideration of the same.

Air

Of the three things that are indispensable for the subsistence of man,--namely, air, water, and food--the first is the most important. Hence it is that God has created it in such large quantities as to make it available to all of us for nothing. Modern civilisation, however, has rendered even fresh air somewhat costly, for, in order to breathe fresh air, we have to go out of towns, and this means expense. The residents of Bombay, for instance, distinctly improve in health in the air of Matheran or, still better, of the Malabar Hills; but they cannot go to these places without money. Hence, in these days, it would be hardly true to say that we get fresh air gratis, as we used to in the old days.

But, whether fresh air is available gratis or not, it is undeniable that we cannot get on without it. We have already seen that the blood circulates over the body, returns to the lungs, and after being purified, starts on its round again. We breathe out the impure air, and take in oxygen from the outside, which purifies the blood. This process of inspiration and expiration goes on for ever, and on it depends man's life. When drowned in water we die, because, then we are unable to let out the impure air in the body and take in pure air from outside. The divers go down into the water in what is known as a diving bell, and they take in fresh air through a tube which leads to the top. Hence it is that they are able to remain under water for a long time.

It has been ascertained by experiments that no man can live without air for as long as five minutes. We often hear of the death of little children, when they are held so close to the bosom by ignorant mothers as to make it impossible for them to breathe.

We should all be as much against the breathing of impure air as we are against the drinking of dirty water and the eating of dirty food; but the air we breathe is, as a rule, far more impure than the water we drink or the food we eat. We are all worshippers of concrete objects; those things that can be seen and felt are regarded by us as of far greater importance than those which are invisible and intangible. Since air belongs to this latter class of objects, we fail to realise the evil wrought by the impure air that we breathe. We would think twice before eating the leavings of another man's food, or drinking out of a cup polluted by another man's lips. Even those who have not the least sense of shame or repugnance would never eat another man's vomit, or drink the water which has been spat out by him; even those who are dying of hunger and thirst would refuse to do it. But, alas, how few of us realise that the air we inhale is so often the impure and poisonous air which has been exhaled by others, and which is surely no less objectionable than a man's vomit! How strange that men should sit and sleep together for hours in closed rooms, and go on inhaling the deadly air exhaled by themselves and their companions! How fortunate for man that air should be so light and diffusive, and capable of penetrating the smallest holes! Even when the doors and windows are closed, there is generally some little space between the walls and the roof, through which some air from outside manages to get in, so that the inmates of the room have not to breathe exclusively poisoned air. The air that we exhale mixes with the air outside, and is rendered pure again by an automatic process that is always going on in Nature.

Now we are able to understand why so many men and women should be weak and diseased. There can be absolutely no doubt that impure air is the root-cause of disease in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred. It follows that the best way of avoiding disease is to live and work in the open air. No doctor can compete with fresh air in this matter. Consumption is caused by the decay of the lungs, due to the inhaling of impure air, just as a steam engine which is filled with bad coal gets out of order. Hence doctors say that the easiest and the most effective treatment for a consumptive patient is to keep him in fresh air for all the 24 hours of the day.

It is, of course, essential to know how we can keep the air pure. In fact, every child should be taught the value of fresh air, as soon as it is able to understand anything. If my readers would take the trouble to learn the simple facts about the air and would put their knowledge into practice, while teaching their children also to do the same. I shall feel immensely gratified.