Diet and Sanitation

As for diet, the importance of which is now recognized as a prime factor in the maintenance of health and in the cure of disease, the same writer tells us that in those days “little was said about it, and less was taught concerning it in the medical schools. All, or nearly all, at that time believed, empirically believed, in antiphlogistin system of treatment [treatment designed to reduce inflammation, understood at that time as bleeding, and the use of salts and antimony]; and almost every sick man, or wounded man, or crazy man, for that matter, was put on a diet as near bread and water as possible.”—Ibid., 187.SHM 19.3

With such an absence of true scientific knowledge regarding diet, sanitation, and rational therapy among the profession, it was inevitable that among the laity there should be a deplorable prevalence of suffering due to unhealthful practices. Of this there is abundant evidence in the literature of that time and in the testimony of our grandparents. Said a physician in 1867:SHM 19.4

“That people are sick needs no argument. From almost every hamlet the wail of the sufferer is heard, and very few houses exist under whose roof some poor victim has not ended his sufferings, and been relieved from his misery by the King of Terrors. And most who die at the present time die prematurely. ...SHM 20.1

“The customs of society are not favorable at the present time to healthful living. No sooner is life commenced than the stomach is made the recipient of some poisonous nostrum, which weakens it; and, with many, this practice is kept up from the cradle to the grave. The brain is stupefied at one time with a poisonous dose, and at another time it is excited by poison; food of a very unhealthful nature is supplied for the nourishment of the body; the body is very unhealthfully clothed; and the habits of mankind are so generally perverse that it would seem that the ingenuity of man had been taxed to the utmost to invent means to waste vitality, impair the constitution, and shorten life.”—J. F. Byington, M.D., in The Health Reformer, May, 1867.SHM 20.2

A woman practitioner of the same period bewailed the prevalence of sickness among those of her sex; and she asserted that the women of America “are, with scarce an exception, diseased.” Addressing the feminine readers of a health journal, she said:SHM 20.3

“Could each and all of the diseased within your ranks, with one fell swoop, be set aside, how many think you would remain? So few, I trow, that it would be scarcely worth the while to count; for upon those on whom no definite disease is preying, nervousness and debility have so strong a hold that life seems scarce worth the effort you are compelled to make in order to keep even your slight hold upon it.”—Mrs. E. P. Miller, M.D., in Herald of Health. (Quoted in The Health Reformer, September, 1866.)SHM 20.4