Some people expect health, as others expect riches, to fall into their lap. Either because they do not know, or do not care, they prefer to leave their health to look after itself. They call it trusting to Nature. And when they see other people studying the best way to be strong and well, they call them cranks and faddists.

There is a vast difference, however, between the faddist and the genuine health-seeker. The individual who thinks the world is going to be saved by eating brown bread or any other article of diet, regardless of the fact that what agrees with one may upset another, is nothing short of a nuisance. The man who strives to exercise his common sense, and to find out what suits him, either from his own experience or from the advice of those in a position to give him useful information, is worthy of all respect.

It is all very well to talk of leaving things to Nature, but does Nature always do her work in the best possible way?

Leave a garden to Nature for a year, and you will have a clear answer to that question. It will be overgrown with weeds. Leave a tract of country to Nature, and it becomes a wilderness. Leave your health to Nature, and it will be nothing short of a miracle if she does not make a mess of it.

Talk to any elderly man, who has succeeded in keeping himself fit and strong, and almost certainly you will find that he has well-defined ideas on the maintenance of health. He has found out what agrees with him and what does not. Sometimes he appears to be careless as to what he eats, taking things that would disagree with many other persons. Yet he is only taking them because he has discovered that they suit his constitution. Moreover, you will notice, if you watch him closely, that he is extremely particular as to the way in which he eats that food and all his other food as well. A man is either a physician or a fool at forty, it is said. The worst of it is that by the time most of us have reached that age we have managed to inflict more harm than can be undone.

Nowadays nearly everything is taught in the schools, including perhaps a few subjects that might well be spared. When the teaching of health is made compulsory, we shall make rapid strides in regard to national physique. The medical inspection of schools was one of the greatest advances ever made. And when in addition every child is instructed in the elementary rules of health, the country will be spared a vast amount of time and money, such as is expended at present in looking after the feeble and diseased. We do not expect a boy or girl to learn any other subject on its own account or of its own freewill, and we have no right to expect them to learn the secrets of health. They must be taught them just as they are taught to read and write. Above all, they must have it impressed upon them that health is largely a matter of care and study.

The reason why some people are stronger than others is, in the great majority of cases, because they have taken care of themselves, rather than because they have inherited more robust frames and greater staying powers. There are some, it is true, who have to struggle against ill-health from their earliest childhood. All through life, it may be, they have to contend against their own infirmities.

Yet not uncommonly it has turned out that those who have been handicapped from the start have in the long run passed their more robust comrades. It is not always the healthy baby that develops into the hardiest member of the family. The puny little one has been known to have the best of it in regard to health by the time it has grown up.

And when this happens it is simply a reward for taking care. Parents are bound to pay more attention to a weakly child, while the robust ones are often left to take their chance, and as they grow up into boyhood and manhood, the delicate one has still to exercise care and look after his health, if only for his own comfort. He knows, even in his schooldays, that if he eats too much pastry or sweets, or neglects to change his clothes if he gets a wetting, he will have to suffer for it. All this time his hardy brother is running all sorts of risks, and playing ducks and drakes with his digestion and his constitution in general.

When they are approaching middle age, the strong one has developed into a gouty, dyspeptic individual, who does not know what it is to feel well for a single week at a time. And the weakly one may be better and stronger than he has ever been in his life before.

He has never been able to do anything by leaps and bounds, but he has plodded steadily on, exercising care and common sense, and looking after his health in every possible way. It is another example of the hare and the tortoise.

Two men were crossing a ship’s gangway, which had a rail at one side but was unprotected on the other. The first was a frail, nervous man, while his friend who followed him was a strong, lusty fellow. The delicate one took care to keep a firm grip on the rail. He reached the ship’s side in safety. The second man disdained to avail himself of its aid, and walked up the gangway with his hands in his pockets, paying no heed to his steps. Suddenly he lost his balance and fell into the water.

He scrambled out and cursed his bad luck. “He was the most unfortunate beggar that ever lived,” he said. He completely lost sight of the fact that it was his own carelessness which had brought about the mishap.

And it is a common occurrence to hear people, who have been running all sorts of unnecessary risks, complaining of their bad fortune when illness overtakes them. They get wet through and sit in their damp clothes, and are very much aggrieved when they take a chill. Or they gorge themselves with pastry or sweetmeats, and consider themselves martyrs when they suffer from a bilious attack.

There is one penalty ever before us, that which must be paid by all who transgress the laws of health. I say penalty, not punishment. A boy who has purloined a plum cake and eaten inordinately of it may obtain his mother’s forgiveness, but the chances are that he will be penalised by having to endure a bout of stomach-ache.

In all this I have no wish to imply that those who disregard the laws of health do so from self-indulgence. On the contrary, the great majority of breakdowns occur in those who have overtaxed their strength whilst toiling to support their wives and families, or to minister to the welfare or comfort of those around them, or to labour in some way or other on behalf of humanity.

In a Midland town two young parsons worked side by side. One of them was a genial sort of fellow, who seemed to have plenty of time for everything, work and play alike. When his labours were over for the day, people enjoyed having him in for a bit of supper and a chat.

On bright days, Mondays particularly, he would mount his bicycle or shoulder his golf clubs, and set off to have a good time of it. His doings were a puzzle to his confrÈre, who never had a minute to spare, and rushed at his work, sermon-making, visiting, and meetings alike, with feverish anxiety. Even his meals were hurried through in the same manner, for those, like recreation, he regarded as an interference with his duties.

When his daily work came to an end, he would proceed to make up for lost time by reading or writing till long after midnight, with the result that such sleep as he got when he went to bed was simply the broken sleep of brain exhaustion.

Little wonder that he always looked strained and anxious, and that when he went into the pulpit on Sundays he failed to get into touch with his hearers. With all his unceasing efforts, he could not but realise that his friend had a vastly greater hold on the people than he was ever able to acquire. Then he would conclude that it must be due to some fault in himself, and would begin to look for it in the wrong place, viz. in his own soul. It must be some black place in his own heart, he thought, which was hindering his work.

Now when a man indulges in too much introspection he is very liable to develop a morbid conscience, and see evil in himself that is purely imaginary. Hypochondriacs of any sort are a nuisance both to themselves and other people, but none more so than the spiritual hypochondriac. The consequence of these heart-searchings was that he would increase his efforts, and try to squeeze more work into the day.

He was sitting at breakfast one day scanning the morning paper, when a head-line attracted his notice, “Death of the Rev. X. Y.” The paragraph described how X. Y., whom the young parson had always taken as his model for energy and unremitting toil, had had to relinquish his duties owing to a nervous breakdown, brought on by overwork and the lack of holidays or recreation of any sort.

The young man’s eyes dilated with horror as he went on reading and realised the unmistakable fact that X. Y. had brought about his own death. The thought that such a fate might one day be his own sent a shudder through him, especially when it dawned upon him that he had been doing his work on precisely the same lines as those which had culminated in this tragedy.

It is not often that a man is so fortunate as to have such an object-lesson as this. More frequently he is allowed to persist in ways which lead, if not to a disaster like the one referred to, at any rate to a breakdown, which puts a stop to his career of usefulness.

No matter how lofty may be the motives, Nature takes no account of them. She is a jealous mistress, and insists on having her due share of attention, allowing of no excuses. The mother who neglects her own needs through attending to the wants of her children will suffer equally with the silly girl who starves herself in order to keep her figure slim.

If a man stands out in the driving rain, he is equally susceptible to cold, whether he stood there in order to watch a football match or to take part in an evangelistic meeting. It is as injurious to sit in a draught in a church as in a music-hall. A stuffy atmosphere is no less detrimental to health whether we encounter it whilst visiting a sick friend or in spending the time in a gambling den.

Two of the worst cases of breakdown which I ever heard of occurred respectively in the case of a working man, who had starved himself in the necessaries of life in order to bring up three orphan nephews and nieces, and in that of a young professional man, who sat up every night for weeks, after doing his work by day, to nurse his wife through a dangerous illness.

There are hundreds of people drifting towards a breakdown, not because of their circumstances or the nature of their avocation, but because of the way in which they choose to live and do their work. Health is a matter that lies in our own hands to a far greater extent than is usually supposed. All who wish to fulfil their mission in life to the best of their ability, and maintain their power of work as long as possible, must keep one eye on their work and the other on their health. Whilst doing their duty to others, they must not fail to do justice to themselves.

I once saw two men playing golf, both of whom were men of fame. One was a writer of repute, the other an orator whose name is known far and wide. They played round with an abandon and zest that was refreshing to witness. But what impressed me most was a remark made by one of them when they came in.

“My friend and I were anxious to get a game to-day,” he said, “because we are the principal speakers at two mass meetings to-night, and the people are expecting something special, so we must be prepared to let them have it.”

That was why, instead of immersing themselves in studious solitude, rehearsing their speeches, they spent the time in playing a game like a couple of schoolboys out for a holiday, with a good tea and a rest to follow. It is a dozen years since that happened, but those two men, who are among the hardest public workers of the day, are as fresh and fit for their duties now as they were then. And this, not from any natural strength or stamina, but simply because they have always taken pains to carry out the fundamental laws of health.

The remainder of this book will be directed to the consideration of these laws, on which the whole question of breakdowns and their prevention depends.