To learn what system is most beneficial you have only to study those races remarkable for health, strength, and length of days.  If common observation shows us that medicine neither increases health nor prolongs life, it follows that this useless art is worse than useless, since it wastes time, men, and things on what is pure loss.  Not only must we deduct the time spent, not in using life, but preserving it, but if this time is spent in tormenting ourselves it is worse than wasted, it is so much to the bad, and to reckon fairly a corresponding share must be deducted from what remains to us.  A man who lives ten years for himself and others without the help of doctors lives more for himself and others than one who spends thirty years as their victim.  I have tried both, so I think I have a better right than most to draw my own conclusions.

For these reasons I decline to take any but a strong and healthy pupil, and these are my principles for keeping him in health.  I will not stop to prove at length the value of manual labour and bodily exercise for strengthening the health and constitution; no one denies it.  Nearly all the instances of long life are to be found among the men who have taken most exercise, who have endured fatigue and labour. [Footnote:  I cannot help quoting the following passage from an English newspaper, as it throws much light on my opinions:  “A certain Patrick O’Neil, born in 1647, has just married his seventh wife in 1760.  In the seventeenth year of Charles ii. he served in the dragoons and in other regiments up to 1740, when he took his discharge.  He served in all the campaigns of William iii. and Marlborough.  This man has never drunk anything but small beer; he has always lived on vegetables, and has never eaten meat except on few occasions when he made a feast for his relations.  He has always been accustomed to rise with the sun and go to bed at sunset unless prevented by his military duties.  He is now in his 130th year; he is healthy, his hearing is good, and he walks with the help of a stick.  In spite of his great age he is never idle, and every Sunday he goes to his parish church accompanied by his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.”] Neither will I enter into details as to the care I shall take for this alone.  It will be clear that it forms such an essential part of my practice that it is enough to get hold of the idea without further explanation.

When our life begins our needs begin too.  The new-born infant must have a nurse.  If his mother will do her duty, so much the better; her instructions will be given her in writing, but this advantage has its drawbacks, it removes the tutor from his charge.  But it is to be hoped that the child’s own interests, and her respect for the person to whom she is about to confide so precious a treasure, will induce the mother to follow the master’s wishes, and whatever she does you may be sure she will do better than another.  If we must have a strange nurse, make a good choice to begin with.