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79
When we add to over indulgence in food and drink the strain of
social and business ambitions, worry, emotional states, anger and grief,
then our errors are followed by structural changes tn our organs. The
mad and ineffectual race for life becomes the triumphant race for death.
I cannot understand why so many of our fellow men should prefer the
high blood pressure, the corpulence, the mental depression, memory
weakness and constipation with its consequent blood poisoning, all of
which they get in return for indiscretions in eating and drinking.
When will people learn to cut down their intake after 40, and pay a
little attention to the hygiene of the intestine. The wise, who do this,
have a clear eye in their heads, a retentive memory, an elastic step, an
unirritated brain, resilient and elastic arteries, and a green old age as
their reward. Careless dietetic habits and the wear and tear of life
can be detected not only in the tortuous stiff arteries and the dry skin,
for an analysis of a man's waste products at 40 or 45 sometimes discloses
incipient and early alteration in the kidneys. The food is not
assimilated properly and converted into energy; hence the waste
material irritates the kidneys and the endocrines, i.e., the all-important
ductless glands. These ductless glands are:—The thyroid gland
situated in the neck, the thymus gland; the pituitary and pineal glands
in the brain, the suprarenal glands, which are found one on the top of
each kidney, the pancreas, and finally the gonnidia or reproductive
glands. Of these, the thyroid is probably the most important. Each
of these glands has an internal secretion, and if this is deficient much
harm is done to the system. These glands all work together: if you
damage one you tend to injure the others. Now take the thyroid
gland. The late Sir Victor Horsley, the eminent surgeon, said that
old age was due to degeneration of the thyroid gland. The thyroid
governs the vital processes of the body. If it acts deficiently, then we
become an easier prey to intoxications and infection; the invading
germs, which we all encounter, find their fell work made easy. A
deficient thyroid gland is responsible for a host of signs and symptoms,
e.g., a wrinkled dry skin, lax muscles, apathy, somnolence, falling out
of the hair, obesity, premature greyness of the hair, headaches,
migraine, neuralgia, etc. A healthy thyroid should contain a quantity
of colloid fluid containing iodine; but if the thyroid degenerates, it
developes an undue proportion of connective tissue, a fatty degeneration
of the lining cells, and a deficiency in colloid fluid and hence in iodine.
The age of a man depends upon the quality of his thyroid gland.
If this gland is senile then the other ductless glands tend to lose their