What are the health habits that should become instinctive and effortless for every worker? What acts can we make our lower nerve centers - our subconscious selves

do for us or remind us to do?

The following constitutes

a daily routine that should be as involuntary as the process of digestion :

1. Throw the bedding over the foot of the bed.

2. Close the window that has been open during the night.

3. Drink a glass of water.

4. Bathe the face, neck, crotch, chest, armpits (finishing if not beginning with cold water), and particularly the eyes, ears, and If time and conveniences permit, bathe all over.

nose.

5. Cleanse the finger nails.

6. Cleanse the teeth, especially the places that are out of sight and hard to reach.

7. Breakfast punctually at a regular hour. Eat lightly and only what agrees with you. If you read a morning paper, be interested in news items that have to do with personal and community vitality.

8. Visit the toilet; if impracticable at home, have a regular time at business.

9. Have several minutes in the open air, preferably walking. 10. Be punctual at work.

11. As your right by contract, insist upon a supply of fresh air for your workroom with the same emphasis you use in demanding sufficient heat in zero weather.

12. Eat punctually at noon intermission; enjoy your meal and its after effects.

13. Breathe air out of doors a few minutes, preferably walking. 14. Resume business punctually.

possible that you enjoy and that agrees with you.

17. Be regular, temperate, and leisurely in eating the evening meal; eat nothing that disagrees with you.

18. Spend the evening profitably and pleasantly and in ways. compatible with the foregoing habits.

19. Retire regularly at a fixed hour, making up for irregularity by an earlier hour next night.

20, 21, 22. Repeat 4, 6, 8.

23. Turn underclothes wrong side out for ventilation. 24. Open windows.

25. Relax mind and body and go to sleep.

No man chronically neglects any one of the above rules without reducing his industrial efficiency. No man chronically neglects all of them without becoming, sooner or later, a health bankrupt.

In addition to this daily routine, there are certain other acts that should become habitual:

1. Bathing less frequently than once a week is almost as dangerous to health as it is to attractiveness.

2. Distaste for unclean linen or undergarments and for acts or foods that interfere with vitality should become instinctive.

3. Excesses in eating or playing should be automatically corrected the next day and the next. Parties we shall continue to have. It will be some time before reasonable hours and reasonable refreshments will prevail. Meanwhile it is probably better for an individual to sacrifice somewhat his own vitality for the sake of the union, the class, or the church. While trying to improve group habits, one can acquire the habit of not eating three meals in one, of eating less next day, of sleeping longer next night, of being particularly careful to have plenty of outdoor air.

4. Visits to the dentist twice a year at least, and whenever a cavity appears, even if only a week after the dentist has failed to find one; whenever the gums begin to recede; and whenever anything seems to be wrong with the teeth.

5. Periodic physical examination by a physician.

6. Examination by a competent physician whenever any disorder cannot be satisfactorily explained by violation of the daily routine or by interruption of business or domestic routine.

Health habits do not become instinctive until a continued, conscious effort is made to accustom the body to them. When this is once done, however, the body not only

attends to its primary health needs automatically, but it rebels at their omission, as surely as does the stomach at the omission of dinner. Witness the discomfort of the consumptive, trained to fresh air at a sanatorium, when he returns to his overheated and underventilated home, or the actual pain experienced in readjusting our own healthy bodies to the stuffy workroom or schoolroom after a summer vacation out of doors. I heard a consumptive say that

THE FRESH-AIR GOSPEL

he left a sanatorium for a day class after trying for three nights to sleep in an unventilated ward. For many people the regular morning bath is at first a trial, then a pleasure, and finally a need; if omitted, the body feels thirsty and dissatisfied, the eyes sleepy, and the spirit flags early in the day.

Cold baths are not essential or even good for everybody. The same diet or the same amount of food or time for eating is not of equal value for all. The temperature of bath

water, the kind and quality of food, are influenced by one's work and one's cook. Set rules about these things do more harm than good. Such questions must be decided for each individual, by his experience or by the advice of a physician, but they must be decided and the decisions converted into health habits if he would attain the highest efficiency of which he is capable. Here again our old contrast

between "doing things" and "getting things done" applies. Get your body to attend to the essential needs for you, and get it to remind you when you let the exigencies of life interfere. Don't burden your mind every day with work that your body will do for you if properly trained.

Obstacles to habits of health are numerous; therefore the importance of correcting those habits of factory, family, trade, city, or nation that make health habits impracticable.

We must change others' prejudices before we can breathe clean air on street cars without riding outside. When one's co-workers are afraid of fresh air, ventilation of shop, store, and office is impossible. So long as parents fear night air, children cannot follow advice to sleep with windows open. Unless the family coöperates in making definite plans for the use of toilet and bath for each member, constipation

and bad circulation are sure to result. Indigestion is inevitable if employees are not given lunch periods and closing hours that permit of regular, unhurried meals. Cleanliness of person costs more than it seems to be worth where cities fail either to compel bath tubs in rented apartments or to erect public baths. A temperate subsistence on adulterated, poisonous, or drugged foods might be better for one's health than gormandizing on pure foods. No recipe has ever been found for bringing up a healthy baby on unclean, infected milk; for avoiding tuberculosis among people who are