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Medical Ministry
often repeated, and pressed home to the conscience, that education
will be of little value if there is no physical strength to use it after it
is gained.
Students should not be permitted to take so many studies that
they will have no time for physical training. The health cannot be
preserved unless some portion of each day is given to muscular
exertion in the open air. Stated hours should be devoted to manual
labor of some kind, anything which will call into action all parts of
the body. Equalize the taxation of the mental and physical powers,
and the mind of the student will be refreshed. If he is diseased,
physical exercise will often help the system to recover its normal
condition. When students leave college they should have better
health and a better understanding of the laws of life than when they
entered it. The health should be as sacredly guarded as the character.
Dull Minds and Dietetic Errors
Many students are deplorably ignorant of the fact that diet exerts
a powerful influence upon the health. Some have never made a
determined effort to control the appetite or to observe proper rules in
regard to diet. They eat too much, even at their meals, and some eat
between meals whenever the temptation is presented. If those who
profess to be Christians desire to solve the questions so perplexing
to them, why their minds are so dull, why their religious aspirations
are so feeble, they need not, in many instances, go farther than the
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table; here is cause enough, if there were no other.
The Teacher’s Health Habits
Many separate themselves from God by their indulgence of ap-
petite. He who notices the fall of a sparrow, who numbers the very
hairs of the head, marks the sin of those who indulge perverted ap-
petite at the expense of weakening the physical powers, benumbing
the intellect, and deadening the moral perceptions.
The teachers themselves should give proper attention to the
laws of health, that they may preserve their own powers in the best
possible condition, and by example as well as by precept may exert a
right influence upon their pupils. The teacher whose physical powers