Health: Five Lay Sermons to Working-People

One word more; you should call your Doctor early. It saves time; it saves suffering; it saves trouble; it saves life. If you saw a fire beginning in your house, you would put it out as fast as you could. You might perhaps be able to blow out with your breath what in an hour the fire-engine could make nothing of. So it is with disease and the Doctor. A disease in the morning when beginning is like the fire beginning; a dose of medicine, some simple thing, may put it out, when if left alone, before night it may be raging hopelessly, like the fire if left alone, and leaving your body dead and in the ruins in a few hours. So, call in the Doctor soon; it saves him much trouble, and may save you your life.

And let me end by asking you to call in the Great Physician; to call him instantly, to call him in time; there is not a moment to lose. He is waiting to be called; he is standing at the door. But he must be called, – he may be called too late.

SERMON II

THE DOCTOR: HIS DUTIES TO YOU

YOU remember our last sermon was mostly about your duties to the Doctor. I am now going to speak about his duties to you; for you know it is a law of our life, that there are no one-sided duties, – they are all double. It is like shaking hands, there must be two at it; and both of you ought to give a hearty grip and a hearty shake. You owe much to many, and many owe much to you. The Apostle says, "Owe no man anything but to love one another"; but if you owe that, you must be forever paying it; it is always due, always running on; and the meanest and most helpless, the most forlorn, can always pay and be paid in that coin, and in paying can buy more than he thought of. Just as a farthing candle, twinkling out of a cotter's window, and, it may be, guiding the gudeman home to his wife and children, sends its rays out into the infinite expanse of heaven, and thus returns, as it were, the light of the stars, which are many of them suns. You cannot pass any one on the street to whom you are not bound by this law. If he falls down, you help to raise him. You do your best to relieve him, and get him home; and let me tell you, to your great gain and honor, the poor are far more ready and better at this sort of work than the gentlemen and ladies. You do far more for each other than they do. You will share your last loaf; you will sit up night after night with a neighbor you know nothing about, just because he is your neighbor, and you know what it is to be neighbor-like. You are more natural and less selfish than the fine folks. I don't say you are better, neither do I say you are worse; that would be a foolish and often mischievous way of speaking. We have all virtues and vices and advantages peculiar to our condition. You know the queer old couplet, —

"Them what is rich, them rides in chaises;Them what is poor, them walks like blazes."

If you were well, and not in a hurry, and it were cold, would you not much rather "walk like blazes" than ride listless in your chaise? But this I know, for I have seen it, that according to their means, the poor bear one another's burdens far more than the rich.

There are many reasons for this, outside of yourselves, and there is no need of your being proud of it or indeed of anything else; but it is something to be thankful for, in the midst of all your hardships, that you in this have more of the power and of the luxury of doing immediate, visible good. You pay this debt in ready-money, as you do your meal and your milk; at least you have very short credit, and the shorter the better. Now, the Doctor has his duties to you, and it is well that he should know them, and that you should know them too; for it will be long before you and he can do without each other. You keep each other alive. Disease, accidents, pain, and death reign everywhere, and we call one another mortals, as if our chief peculiarity was that we must die, and you all know how death came into this world. "By one man sin entered the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned"; and disease, disorder, and distress are the fruits of sin, as truly as that apple grew on that forbidden tree. You have nowadays all sorts of schemes for making bad men good, and good men better. The world is full of such schemes, some of them wise and some foolish; but to be wise they must all go on the principle of lessening misery by lessening sin; so that the old weaver at Kilmarnock, who at a meeting for abolishing slavery, the corn laws, and a few more things, said, "Mr. Preses, I move that we abolish Original Sin," was at least beginning at the right end. Only fancy what a world it would be, what a family any of ours would be, when everybody did everything that was right, and nothing that was wrong, say for a week! The world would not know itself. It would be inclined to say with the "wee bit wifiekie," though reversing the cause, "This is no me." I am not going to say more on this point. It is not my parish. But you need none of you be long ignorant of who it is who has abolished death, and therefore vanquished sin.

Well, then, it is the duty of the Doctor in the first place, to cure us; in the second, to be kind to us; in the third, to be true to us; in the fourth, to keep our secrets; in the fifth, to warn us, and, best of all, to forewarn us; in the sixth, to be grateful to us; and, in the last, to keep his time and his temper.

And, first, it is the duty of the Doctor to cure you, – if he can. That is what we call him in for; and a doctor, be he never so clever and delightful, who doesn't cure, is like a mole-catcher who can't catch moles, or a watchmaker who can do everything but make your watch go. Old Dr. Pringle of Perth, when preaching in the country, found his shoes needed mending, and he asked the brother whom he was assisting to tell him of good cobbler, or as he called him, a snab. His friend mentioned a "Tammas Rattray, a godly man, and an elder." "But," said Dr. Pringle, in his snell way, "can he mend my shoon? that's what I want; I want a shoemaker; I'm not wanting an elder." It turned out that Tammas was a better elder than a shoemaker. A doctor was once attending a poor woman in labor; it was a desperate case, requiring a cool head and a firm will; the good man – for he was good – had neither of these, and, losing his presence of mind, gave up the poor woman as lost, and retired into the next room to pray for her. Another doctor, who, perhaps, wanted what the first one had, and certainly had what he wanted, brains and courage, meanwhile arrived, and called out, "Where is Doctor – ?" "O, he has gone into the next room to pray!" "Pray! tell him to come here this moment, and help me; he can work and pray too"; and with his assistance the snell doctor saved that woman's life. This, then, is the Doctor's first duty to you, – to cure you, – and for this he must, in the first place, be up to his business; he must know what to do, and, secondly, he must be able to do it; he must not merely do as a pointer dog does, stand and say, "There it is," and no more, he must point and shoot too. And let me tell you, moreover, that unless a man likes what he is at, and is in earnest, and sticks to it, he will no more make a good doctor than a good anything else. Doctoring is not only a way for a man to do good by curing disease, and to get money to himself for doing this, but it is also a study which interests for itself alone, like geology, or any other science; and moreover it is a way to fame and the glory of the world; all these four things act upon the mind of the Doctor, but unless the first one is uppermost, his patient will come off second-best with him; he is not the man for your lives or for your money.

They tell a story, which may not be word for word true, but it has truth and a great principle in it, as all good stories have. It is told of one of our clever friends, the French, who are so knowing in everything. A great French doctor was taking an English one round the wards of his hospital; all sort of miseries going on before them, some dying, others longing for death, all ill; the Frenchman was wonderfully eloquent about all their diseases, you would have thought he saw through them, and knew all their secret wheels like looking into a watch or into a glass beehive. He told his English friend what would be seen in such a case, when the body was opened! He spent some time in this sort of work, and was coming out, full of glee, when the other doctor said: "But, Doctor – , you haven't prescribed for these cases." "O, neither I have!" said he, with a grumph and a shrug; "I quite forgot that"; that being the one thing why these poor people were there, and why he was there too. Another story of a Frenchman, though I dare say we could tell it of ourselves. He was a great professor, and gave a powerful poison as a medicine for an ugly disease of the skin. He carried it very far, so as to weaken the poor fellow, who died, just as the last vestige of the skin disease died too. On looking at the dead body, quite smooth and white, and also quite dead, he said, "Ah, never mind; he was dead cured."

So let me advise you, as, indeed, your good sense will advise yourselves, to test a Doctor by this: Is he in earnest? Does he speak little and do much? Does he make your case his first care? He may, after that, speak of the weather, or the money-market; he may gossip, and even haver; or he may drop, quietly and shortly, some "good words," – the fewer the better; something that causes you to think and feel; and may teach you to be more of the Publican than of the Pharisee, in that story you know of, when they two went up to the temple to pray; but, generally speaking, the Doctor should, like the rest of us, stick to his trade and mind his business.

Secondly, It is the Doctor's duty to be kind to you. I mean by this, not only to speak kindly, but to be kind, which includes this and a great deal more, though a kind word, as well as a merry heart, does good like a medicine. Cheerfulness, or rather cheeriness, is a great thing in a Doctor; his very foot should have "music in't, when he comes up the stair." The Doctor should never lose his power of pitying pain, and letting his patient see this and feel it. Some men, and they are often the best at their proper work, can let their hearts come out only through their eyes; but it is not the less sincere, and to the point; you can make your mouth say what is not true; you can't do quite so much with your eyes. A Doctor's eye should command, as well as comfort and cheer his patient; he should never let him think disobedience or despair possible. Perhaps you think Doctors get hardened by seeing so much suffering; this is not true. Pity as a motive, as well as a feeling ending in itself, is stronger in an old Doctor than in a young, so he be made of the right stuff. He comes to know himself what pain and sorrow mean, what their weight is, and how grateful he was or is for relief and sympathy.

Thirdly, It is his duty to be true to you. True in word and in deed. He ought to speak nothing but the truth, as to the nature, and extent, and issues of the disease he is treating; but he is not bound, as I said you were, to tell the whole truth, – that is for his own wisdom and discretion to judge of; only, never let him tell an untruth, and let him be honest enough, when he can't say anything definite, to say nothing. It requires some courage to confess our ignorance, but it is worth it. As to the question, often spoken of, – telling a man he is dying, – the Doctor must, in the first place, be sure the patient is dying; and, secondly, that it is for his good, bodily and mental, to tell him so: he should almost always warn the friends, but, even here, cautiously.

Fourthly, It is his duty to keep your secrets. There are things a Doctor comes to know and is told which no one but he and the Judge of all should know; and he is a base man, and unworthy to be in such a noble profession as that of healing, who can betray what he knows must injure, and in some cases may ruin.

Fifthly, It is his duty to warn you against what is injuring your health. If he finds his patient has brought disease upon himself by sin, by drink, by overwork, by over-eating, by over-anything, it is his duty to say so plainly and firmly, and the same with regard to the treatment of children by their parents; the family doctor should forewarn them; he should explain, as far as he is able and they can comprehend them, the Laws of Health, and so tell them how to prevent disease, as well as do his best to cure it. What a great and rich field there is here for our profession, if they and the public could only work well together! In this, those queer, half-daft, half-wise beings, the Chinese, take a wiser way; they pay their Doctor for keeping them well, and they stop his pay as long as they are ill!

Sixthly, It is his duty to be grateful to you; 1st, for employing him, whether you pay him in money or not, for a Doctor, worth being one, makes capital, makes knowledge, and therefore power, out of every case he has; 2dly, for obeying him and getting better. I am always very much obliged to my patients for being so kind as to be better, and for saying so; for many are ready enough to say they are worse, not so many to say they are better, even when they are; and you know our Scotch way of saying, "I'm no that ill," when "I" is in high health, or, "I'm no ony waur," when "I" is much better. Don't be niggards in this; it cheers the Doctor's heart, and it will lighten yours.

Seventhly, and lastly, It is the Doctor's duty to keep his time and his temper with you. Any man or woman who knows how longed for a doctor's visit is, and counts on it to a minute, knows how wrong, how painful, how angering it is for the Doctor not to keep his time. Many things may occur, for his urgent cases are often sudden, to put him out of his reckoning; but it is wonderful what method, and real consideration, and a strong will can do in this way. I never found Dr. Abercrombie a minute after or before his time (both are bad, though one is the worser), and yet if I wanted him in a hurry, and stopped his carriage in the street, he could always go with me at once; he had the knack and the principle of being true in his times, for it is often a matter of truth. And the Doctor must keep his temper: this is often worse to manage than even his time, there is so much unreason, and ingratitude, and peevishness, and impertinence, and impatience, that it is very hard to keep one's tongue and eye from being angry: and sometimes the Doctor does not only well, but the best, when he is downrightly angry, and astonishes some fool, or some insolent, or some untruth doing or saying patient; but the Doctor should be patient with his patients, he should bear with them, knowing how much they are at the moment suffering. Let us remember Him who is full of compassion, whose compassion never fails; whose tender mercies are new to us every morning, as his faithfulness is every night; who healed all manner of diseases, and was kind to the unthankful and the evil; what would become of us, if he were as impatient with us as we often are with each other? If you want to be impressed with the Almighty's infinite loving-kindness and tender mercy, his forbearance, his long-suffering patience, his slowness to anger, his Divine ingeniousness in trying to find it possible to spare and save, think of the Israelites in the desert, and read the chapter where Abraham intercedes with God for Sodom, and these wonderful "peradventures."

But I am getting tedious, and keeping you and myself too long, so good night. Let the Doctor and you be honest and grateful, and kind and cordial, in one word, dutiful to each other, and you will each be the better of the other.

I may by and by say a word or two to you on your Health, which is your wealth, that by which you are and do well, and on your Children, and how to guide it and them.

SERMON III

CHILDREN, AND HOW TO GUIDE THEM

OUR text at this time is Children and their treatment, or as it sounds better to our ears, Bairns, and how to guide them. You all know the wonder and astonishment there is in a house among its small people when a baby is born; how they stare at the new arrival with its red face. Where does it come from? Some tell them it comes from the garden, from a certain kind of cabbage; some from "Rob Rorison's bonnet," of which wha hasna heard? some from that famous wig of Charlie's, in which the cat kittled, when there was three o' them leevin', and three o' them dead; and you know the Doctor is often said to bring the new baby in his pocket; and many a time have my pockets been slyly examined by the curious youngsters, – especially the girls! – in hopes of finding another baby. But I'll tell you where all the babies come from; they all come from God; his hand made and fashioned them; he breathed into their nostrils the breath of life, – of his life. He said, "Let this little child be," and it was. A child is a true creation; its soul, certainly, and in a true sense, its body too. And as our children came from him, so they are going back to him, and he lends them to us as keepsakes; we are to keep and care for them for his sake. What a strange and sacred thought this is! Children are God's gifts to us, and it depends on our guiding of them, not only whether they are happy here, but whether they are happy hereafter in that great unchangeable eternity, into which you and I and all of us are fast going. I once asked a little girl, "Who made you?" and she said, holding up her apron as a measure, "God make me that length, and I growed the rest myself." Now this, as you know, was not quite true, for she could not grow one half-inch by herself. God makes us grow as well as makes us at first. But what I want you to fix in your minds is, that children come from God, and are returning to him, and that you and I, who are parents, have to answer to him for the way we behave to our dear children, – the kind of care we take of them.

Now, a child consists, like ourselves, of a body and a soul. I am not going to say much about the guiding of the souls of children, – that is a little out of my line, – but I may tell you that the soul, especially in children, depends much, for its good and for its evil, for its happiness or its misery, upon the kind of body it lives in: for the body is just the house that the soul dwells in; and you know that, if a house be uncomfortable, the tenant of it will be uncomfortable and out of sorts; if its windows let the rain and wind in, if the chimney smoke, if the house be damp, and if there be a want of good air, then the people who live in it will be miserable enough; and if they have no coals, and no water, and no meat, and no beds, then you may be sure it will soon be left by its inhabitants. And so, if you don't do all you can to make your children's bodies healthy and happy, their souls will get miserable and cankered and useless, their tempers peevish; and if you don't feed and clothe them right, then their poor little souls will leave their ill-used bodies, – will be starved out of them; and many a man and woman have had their tempers, and their minds and hearts, made miseries to themselves, and all about them, just from a want of care of their bodies when children.

There is something very sad, and, in a true sense, very unnatural, in an unhappy child. You and I, grown-up people, who have cares, and have had sorrows and difficulties and sins, may well be dull and sad sometimes; it would be still sadder, if we were not often so; but children should be always either laughing and playing, or eating and sleeping. Play is their business. You cannot think how much useful knowledge, and how much valuable bodily exercise, a child teaches itself in its play; and look how merry the young of other animals are: the kitten making fun of everything, even of its sedate mother's tail and whiskers; the lambs, running races in their mirth; even the young asses, – the baby-cuddie, – how pawky and droll and happy he looks with his fuzzy head, and his laughing eyes, and his long legs, stot, stotting after that venerable and sair nauden-doun lady, with the long ears, his mother. One thing I like to see, is a child clean in the morning. I like to see its plump little body well washed, and sweet and caller from top to bottom. But there is another thing I like to see, and that is a child dirty at night. I like a steerin' bairn, – goo-gooin', crowing and kicking, keeping everybody alive. Do you remember William Miller's song of "Wee Willie Winkie?" Here it is. I think you will allow, especially you who are mothers, that it is capital.

"Wee Willie WinkieRins through the toun,Up stairs an' doon stairsIn his nicht-goun,Tirlin' at the window,Crying at the lock,'Are the weans in their bed,For it's noo ten o'clock?'"'Hey Willie Winkie,Are ye comin' ben!The cat's singin' gray thrumsTo the sleepin' hen,The dog's speldert on the floor,And disna gi'e a cheep,But here's a waakrife laddie!That winna fa' asleep.'"'Onything but sleep, you rogue!Glow'rin' like the moon!Rattlin' in an airn jugWi' an airn spoon,Rumblin', tumblin' roun' about,Crawin' like a cock,Skirlin' like a kenna-what,Wauk'nin' sleepin' folk."'Hey, Willie Winkie,The wean's in a creel!Wamblin' aff a bodie's kneeLike a verra eel,Ruggin' at the cat's lug,And ravelin' a' her thrums, —Hey, Willie Winkie, —See, there he comes!'"Wearied is the mitherThat has a stoorie wean,A wee stumpie stousie,Wha canna rin his lane,That has a battle aye wi' sleepAfore he'll close an e'e, —But ae kiss frae aff his rosy lipsGi'es strength anew to me."

Is not this good? first-rate! The cat singin' gray thrums, and the wee stumpie stousie, ruggin' at her lug, and ravlin' a' her thrums; and then what a din he is making! – rattlit' in an airn jug wi' an airn spoon, skirlin' like a kenna-what, and ha'in' a battle aye wi' sleep. What a picture of a healthy and happy child!

Now, I know how hard it is for many of you to get meat for your children, and clothes for them, and bed and bedding for them at night, and I know how you have to struggle for yourselves and them, and how difficult it often is for you to take all the care you would like to do of them, and you will believe me when I say, that it is a far greater thing, because a far harder thing, for a poor, struggling, and it may be weakly woman in your station, to bring up her children comfortably, than for those who are richer; but still you may do a great deal of good at little cost either of money or time or trouble. And it is well-wared pains; it will bring you in two hundred percent in real comfort, and profit, and credit; and so you will, I am sure, listen good-naturedly to me, when I go over some plain and simple things about the health of your children.

To begin with their heads. You know the head contains the brain, which is the king of the body, and commands all under him; and it depends on his being good or bad whether his subjects, – the legs, and arms, and body, and stomach, and our old friends the bowels, are in good order and happy, or not. Now, first of all, keep the head cool. Nature has given it a nightcap of her own in the hair, and it is the best. And keep the head clean. Give it a good scouring every Saturday night at the least; and if it get sore and scabbit, the best thing I know for it is to wash it with soft soap (black soap), and put a big cabbage-blade on it every night. Then for the lungs, or lichts, – the bellows that keep the fire of life burning, – they are very busy in children, because a child is not like grown-up folk, merely keeping itself up. It is doing this, and growing too; and so it eats more, and sleeps more, and breathes more in proportion than big folk. And to carry on all this business it must have fresh air, and lots of it. So, whenever it can be managed, a child should have a good while every day in the open air, and should have well-aired places to sleep in. Then for their nicht-gowns, the best are long flannel gowns; and children should be always more warmly clad than grown-up people, – cold kills them more easily. Then there is the stomach, and as this is the kitchen and great manufactory, it is almost always the first thing that goes wrong in children, and generally as much from too much being put in, as from its food being of an injurious kind. A baby, for nine months after it is born, should have almost nothing but its mother's milk. This is God's food, and it is the best and the cheapest, too. If the baby be healthy it should be weaned or spained at nine or ten months; and this should be done gradually, giving the baby a little gruel, or new milk, and water and sugar, or thin bread-berry once a day for some time, so as gradually to wean it. This makes it easier for mother as well as baby. No child should get meat or hard things till it gets teeth to chew them, and no baby should ever get a drop of whiskey, or any strong drink, unless by the Doctor's orders. Whiskey, to the soft, tender stomach of an infant, is like vitriol to ours; it is a burning poison to its dear little body, as it may be a burning poison and a curse to its never-dying soul. As you value your children's health of body, and the salvation of their souls, never give them a drop of whiskey; and let mothers, above all others, beware of drinking when nursing. The whiskey passes from their stomachs into their milk, and poisons their own child. This is a positive fact. And think of a drunk woman carrying and managing a child! I was once, many years ago, walking in Lothian Street, when I saw a woman staggering along very drunk. She was carrying a child; it was lying over her shoulder. I saw it slip, slippin' farther and farther back. I ran, and cried out; but before I could get up, the poor little thing, smiling over its miserable mother's shoulder, fell down, like a stone, on its head on the pavement; it gave a gasp, and turned up its blue eyes, and had a convulsion, and its soul was away to God, and its little soft, waefu' body lying dead, and its idiotic mother grinning and staggering over it, half seeing the dreadful truth, then forgetting it, and cursing and swearing. That was a sight! so much misery, and wickedness, and ruin. It was the young woman's only child. When she came to herself, she became mad, and is to this day a drivelling idiot, and goes about forever seeking for her child, and cursing the woman who killed it. This is a true tale, too true.