Good Health Is Contagious

Correct habits for 25 years hard to break.

An instance of how hard it is to break some bad habits, the morphine habit for one.

"Good health is contagious," said Dean Victor C. Vaughn in his lecture before the Y.M.C.A. Sunday night in speaking on the subject of "Habit."

The doctor continued his talk in part: "Robert Ingersoll said that it would be a good thing if health were contagious, but with all due reverence to the departed thinker, I must say that scarcely any disease is more contagious. If a man forms correct habits until he is 25 or 30 years old it is hardly possible for him to go wrong. You should form the habit of helpfulness and try to make it a part of your life to administer to the wants of your fellow men. There are some people in whom the milk of human kindness has undergone lactic fermentation. There are no chains stronger than those you weave about your own life, and you should always be careful to form such habits as will not require your breaking away from them. If you should eat predigested food for a while you might keep in good mental and physical health, but when you return to boarding house hash I am afraid that you would not be able to digest it."

Dr. Vaughn when related very vividly an experience that he had with a man who had unconsciously formed a habit he was unable to break away from, however hard he might try. A man once came to him and told how a doctor had given him a certain remedy which quieted his nerves remarkably well. That once he had boarded an ocean liner and neglected to procure any of this remedy. He went without it as long as he could and finally called the ship physician and told him what he had been taking. "That is something I do not happen to have, but morphine is just as good," said the ship physician. This was the first time that the man ever knew that he had been taking a drug and when he tried to stop the habit he found it impossible to stop. In fact it did become impossible for him to go without the drug for any length of time. This intellectual person was not able to break away from this habit try hard as hard as he might, so he came to Dr. Vaughan and implored him to break it or kill him. Dr. Vaughan placed the man and his family in an isolated dwelling and frequently visited his patient, who made a compact with the doctor that he would not take any more morphine if it killed him, but when his physician came he would frequently get down on his knees and beg for the drug. Once when he was in extreme agony he prostrated himself before the doctor and said: "I would sell my soul for just one more night with morphine." Eventually the patient became cured of the horrible habit and some years later Dean Vaughan received a telegram from the man summoning him to a neighboring state. His former patient was in another doctor's care and had a cancer of the stomach. He had been told that the only thing to do was to take morphine, but he would not break his compact until he had Dr. Vaughan's consent. "We like to say," said the lecturer, "that all men are created free and equal. While this is true to a certain extent it is also not true. I know that there are a great many cases in which we do not appreciate the conditions and environments of our fellow men."