Great Construction

A Way to Health That Creates Pampered Children

     The sanitation and health measures of contemporary medicine are, put in other words, a method that creates pampered children. You may think this peculiar, but this is what I mean.
     Contemporary medicine holds that the way for human beings to keep healthy is to not strain themselves, get enough sleep, eat easily digestible foods, masticate well when eating, keep from getting chilled—Japanese particularly are careful to keep their stomachs warm by wearing a band around their stomachs, gargle when returning home from an outing, and the list goes on and on.
     Does practicing this health regimen, however, really help to achieve and maintain good health? I declare it is the opposite, that good health will not be maintained and that further weakness will ensue. Let me explain in simple terms what happens.
     To start with, the prohibition on straining or overdoing. The more human beings overdo, the more they become healthy. As proof, look at athletes who overdo to the extreme in order to achieve new records. It is for straining that their capabilities improve. The case of the swimmer, Hironoshin Furuhashi, is the best. Thus it can be seen that when individuals overdo, their levels of health have increased to the point where they can overdo to that extent. I, myself, will be sixty-seven years old this year, and I leave the young people behind when I hike in the mountains. The reason for this is, of course, because I overdo.
     Conditions such as a lack of sleep do not become the cause of tuberculosis. This exhortation is also completely backwards. Probably the group of people who get the least sleep are hoteliers, restaurateurs, and entertainers. Indeed, even medical science reports that these groups show the least number of persons that come down with tuberculosis. I therefore try to go without as much sleep as I can.
     When easily digestible foods are eaten, the vitality of the stomach weakens. Masticating thoroughly produces the same results. The Creator fashioned a wide variety of foods, from the easily digestible to the difficult to digest, which means that human beings are supposed to eat them in appropriate amounts. Items such as as squid, slugs, octopus, yellow pickled radish, pickled plums, eggplant, and so forth might be thought to be indigestible, but we should eat what we feel like eating.
     People are afraid to catch colds, but colds are the simplest way to increase good health. I continually teach that colds are God’s most unique blessing.
     The Japanese have the custom of wearing a band around the stomach to keep the stomach warm, but doing so weakens the skin of the abdomen, and when the band happens to be removed for some reason, chills result. But, if the Japanese would refrain from habitually using stomach bands, skin of the abdomen area would toughen, and conversely, the Japanese would not become chilled in the abdomen. Neither I nor any of the members of my family make it a point to wear stomach bands.
     It is better to refrain from gargling as well. Human saliva naturally contains a strong germicidal agent. Different types of insects actually weaken in human saliva. As proof, when you catch a flea and hold it on a finger that has your saliva on it, the flea will weaken. The germicidal agent in your mouth temporarily disappears after gargling, so gargling is actually dangerous because it renders the inside of your mouth susceptible to germs.
     All of this explanation is not mere argument. It has been corroborated by what actually occurs so there will be some readers who nod in acknowledgement. The way to better health recommended by the medical profession which does not permit any suffering, is akin to the way a pampered child is raised. The child has no resistance, and therefore is of no use as a human being when it comes time to go out into the big world.

Hikari, Issue 20, July 30, 1949
translated by cynndd