Avenues to health / by Eustace H. Miles.

  • Eustace Miles
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Avenues to health / by Eustace H. Miles. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    396/462 page 378
    developed. It then is natural for him to crave wine. A mother’s love is natural to a mother ; a relation’s love is natural to a relation. But it does not in the least follow that such love is best and knows best. When people say “ Do not expect success, and then you won’t be dis- appointed,” they mean this very kindly. They little realise how paralysing such ideas are. “ I do hope you will get on all right ” they say in a tone which implies “I am almost sure you will fail.” This again has a ■ depressing effect. It is accountable for a vast deal of failure. Yet most mothers imagine that because they ilove their children therefore they know what is best for their children. They give them quantities of sugar, which later on may develop the desire for alcohol. They imake a thousand and one mistakes. And their sole answer is either that custom must be best, or that they, as mothers, must know best—far better than those who are not mothers. Another fallacy which is fatal to good health is that illness is inevitable. I used to think that illness was inevitable, until I changed my diet; after that, so long as I kept to that diet, good health became inevitable and natural. That is to say, it became so after the change of one single condition. What would be the effect if we changed many conditions? This single changed condition raised me from the lower plane ot being ill onto the negative plane of not being ill, and thence by degrees onto the positive plane of being well. People will not experiment. They take it for granted that illness must come. When it comes, it is regarded as something sent from the outside. It is not something due to their gross ignorance. They have an utterly wrong idea of illness, as if it were an evil. It is not an evil; it is an opportunity for greater health than ever before. They have another fallacy about disease. They do not realise that a severe disease has been accumulating perhaps for years. There need be no sign of this disease, i.e. no sign which an ordinary doctor would detect. I have recently witnessed the case of a lady who appar- ently had been perfectly well all her life. At the age of
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3