The aristocracy of health : a study of physical culture, our favorite poisons, and a national and international league for the advancement of physical culture / by Mary Foote Henderson.

  • Henderson, Mary F. (Mary Foote), 1842-1931.
Date:
1904-
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The aristocracy of health : a study of physical culture, our favorite poisons, and a national and international league for the advancement of physical culture / by Mary Foote Henderson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    The Aristocracy of Health r THE liunian race is ill. The human race is anaemic; and the world, which is a paradise but by man converted into a hospital, is seen and judged through the eyes of the invalid. Dear reader, how many of your personal acquaint- ances are absolutely sound of health at fifty, at forty, at thirty ? Three, tAVO, — one ? j\lind you, do not place the standard of health too low, — not below that of a flock of birds, for exan^ple, each of which is equally whole physically and equally beautiful. The birds of the air and fishes of the sea, the deer of the forest and lilies of the field, represent life of their kind in the fulness of its glory, but not so — man. A soundjiian_i^--aJiealth. aristocrat, a model for a Greek'^ulptor of old—is rare to see. Indeed, the violation of hygienic laws has been so general and long-prevailing that human degeneracy has come to be accepted as the appointed lot of humanity. Human life is but an apology, a makeshift, a compromise. The decadent condition of human life is such that some kind of a poison habit is supposed to be neces- sary in order to live presentably and contentedly. And from a physiological point of view, what mongrel heredity ! Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke of