Shut Your Mouth and Save Your Life (Illustrated) E-Book

George Catlin

• Herausgeber: David De Angelis
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Walking among and studying various Native American tribes in the 19th century, the author noticed that many of the elders possessed a serene and well-preserved appearance. The young members of the true seemed especially healthy, with an innate resistance to certain illnesses and congenital conditions. Seeing the tribe's members sleeping, he noted that they all did so with closed mouths.

Catlin pondered whether this habit contributed to the physical vigor of the people, and investigated further. After venturing back to the towns of the Midwest, he attests to witnessing how terrible many people who had practiced mouth breathing throughout life appeared, and became deeply opposed to its practice. This book details how children and young people can be encouraged against mouth breathing, and notes how different the facial countenance appears between mouth breathing people and nose breathers.

Today, the notion that mouth breathing promotes physical ugliness or decrepitude is wholly disavowed as an eccentric idea with no basis in fact. However, sleep researchers have demonstrated that breathing with the mouth open while asleep can result in more snoring and thus a lower quality of sleep and therefore health. Overall, one could venture that Catlin's ideas possess a certain merit, even if his book is an exaggeration.

Although primarily known today as a painter and traveler who became an emissary of sorts to the Plains tribes, George Catlin was also an enthusiastic if occasional writer. He admired the Native American peoples for their traditions and distinctive appearance, and took to painting them - his marked talent led to their respect for his gifts, and they duly welcomed him with friendship.

Leseprobe

Shut your mouth and save your life

GEORGE CATLIN

WITH 29 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR

Fourth Edition considerably enlarged

Edition 2022 by ©David De Angelis

All rights are reserved

PREFACE

No person on earth who reads this little work will condemn it: it is only a question how many millions may look through it and benefit themselves by adopting its precepts.

THE AUTHOR

SHUT YOUR MOUTH.

This communication, being made in the confident belief that very many of its Readers may draw from it hints of the highest 'importance to the. enjoyment and prolongation of their lives, requires no other apology for its appearance, nor detention of the Reader from the information which it is designed to convey.

With the reading portion of the world it is generally known that I have devoted the greater part of my life in visiting, and recording the looks of, the various native Races of North and South America; and during those researches, observing the healthy condition and physical perfection of those people, in their primitive state, as contrasted with the deplorable mortality, the numerous diseases and deformities, in civilized communities, I have been led to search for, and able, I believe, to discover, the main causes leading to such different results.

During my Ethnographic labors amongst those wild people I have visited 150 Tribes, containing more than two millions of souls; and therefore have had, in all probability, more extensive opportunities than any. other man living, of examining their sanitary system; and if from those examinations I have arrived at results of importance to the health and existence of mankind, I shall have achieved a double object in a devoted and toilsome life and shall enjoy a twofold satisfaction in making them known to the world; and particularly to the Medical Faculty, who may perhaps turn them to good account.1

M an is known to be the most perfectly constructed of all the animals, and consequently he can endure more: he can out-travel the Horse, the Dog, the Ox or any other animal; he can fast longer; his natural life is said to be 'threescore and ten years,' while its real average length, in civilized communities, is but half equal to that of the brutes whose natural term is not one-third as long!

This enormous disproportion might be attributed to some natural physical deficiency in the construction of Man, were it not that we find him in some phases of Savage life, enjoying almost equal exemption from disease and premature death, as the Brute creations; leading us to the irresistible conclusion that there is some lamentable fault yet overlooked in the sanitary economy of civilized life.

The human Race and the various brute species have alike been created for certain respective terms of existence, and wisely supplied with the physical means of supporting that existence to its intended and natural end; and with the two creations, these powers would alike answer, as intended, for the whole term of natural life, except from some hereditary deficiency, or some practiced abuse.

The horse, the dog, the ox, and others of the brute creations, we are assured by the breeders of those animals, are but little subject to the fatal diseases of the lungs and others of the respiratory or digestive organs; nor to diseases of the spine, to Idiocy or Deafness; and their teeth continuing to perform their intended functions to the close of natural life, not one in a hundred of these animals, with proper care and a sufficiency of food, would fail to reach that period, unless destroyed by intention or accident.

Mankind are everywhere a departure from this sanitary condition, though the Native Races oftentimes present a near approach to it, as I have witnessed amongst the Tribes of North ,and South America, amongst whom, in their primitive condition, the above-mentioned diseases arc seldom heard of; and the almost unexceptional regularity, beauty, and soundness of their teeth last them to advanced life and old age.

I n civilized communities, better sheltered, less exposed, and with the aid of the ablest professional skill, the sanitary condition of mankind, with its variety, its complication, and fatality of diseases--its aches and pains, and mental and physical deformities presents a lamentable and mournful list, which plainly indicates the existence of some extraordinary latent cause, not as yet sufficiently appreciated, and which it is the sole object of this little work to expose.

From the Bills of Mortality which are annually produced in the civilized world, we learn that in London and other large towns in England, and cities of the Continent, on an average, one half of the human Race die before they reach the age of five years, and one half of the remainder die before they reach the age of twenty five, thus leaving but one in four to share the chances of lasting from the age of twenty-five to old age.

Statistical accounts showed, not many years past, that in London, one half of the children died under three years, in Stockholm, one half died under two years, and in Manchester, one half died under five years; but owing to recent improved sanitary regulations, the numbers of premature deaths in those cities are much diminished, leaving the average proportions as first given, no doubt, very near the truth, at the present time; and still a lamentable statement for the contemplation of the world, by which is seen the frightful gauntlet that civilized man runs in his passage through life.

The sanitary condition of the Savage Races of North and South America, a few instances of which I shall give, not by quoting a variety of authors, but from estimates carefully made by myself, whilst travelling among those people, will be found to present a striking contrast to those just mentioned, and so widely different as naturally, and very justly, to raise the inquiry into the causes leading to such dissimilar results.

Several very respectable and credible modern writers have undertaken to show, from a host of authors, that premature mortality is greater amongst the Savage, than amongst the Civilized Races; which is by no means true, excepting amongst those communities of' savages who have been corrupted, and their simple and temperate modes of life changed, by the dissipations and vices introduced among them by civilized people.

I n order to draw a fair contrast between the results of habits amongst the two Races, it is necessary to contemplate the two people living in the uninvaded habits peculiar to each; and it would be well also, for the writer who draws those contrasts, to see. with his own eyes the customs of the Native Races, and obtain his information from the lips of the people themselves, instead of trusting to a long succession of authorities, each of which has quoted from his predecessor, when the original one has been unworthy of credit, or has gained his information from unreliable, or ignorant, or malicious sources.

There is, perhaps, no other subject upon which historians and other writers are more liable to lead the world into erroneous conclusions than that of the true native customs and character of Aboriginal Races; and that from the universal dread and fear which have generally deterred historians and other men of Science from penetrating the solitudes inhabited by these people, in the practice of their primitive modes.

There always exists a broad and moving barrier between savage and civilized communities, where the first shaking of hands and acquaintance take place, and over which the demoralizing and deadly effects of dissipation are taught and practiced ; and from which, unfortunately, both for the character of the barbarous races and the benefit of Science, the customs and the personal appearance of the savage are gathered and portrayed to the world.

It has been too much upon this field that historians and other writers have drawn for the exaggerated accounts which have been published, of the excessive mortality amongst the Savage Races of America, leading the world to believe that the actual premature waste of ]life caused by the dissipations and vices introduced, with the accompanying changes in the modes of living in such districts, were the proper statistics of those people.

I have visited these semi-civilized degradations of Savage life in every degree of latitude in North America, and to a great extent also in Central and South America, and as far as this system extends, I agree with those writers who have contended in general terms, that premature mortality is proportionally greater amongst the Native Races than in Civilized communities; but as I have also extended my visits and my inquiries into the tribes in the same latitudes, living in their primitive State, and practicing their native modes, I offer myself as a living witness, that whilst in that condition, the Native Races in North and South America are a healthier people, and less subject to premature mortality (save from the accidents of War and the Chase, and also from Small-pox and other pestilential diseases introduced amongst them), than any Civilized Race in existence. -

Amongst a people who preserve no Records and gather no Statistics, it has been impossible to obtain exact accounts of their annual deaths, or strict proportionate estimates of deaths before and between certain ages; but from verbal estimates given me by the Chiefs and Medical Men in the various tribes, and whose statements may in general be relied on as very near the truth, there is no doubt but I have been able to obtain information on these points which may safely be relied on as a just average of the premature mortality in many of those Tribes, and which we have a right to believe would be found to be much the same in most of the others.

As to the melancholy proportions of deaths of children in civilized communities already given, there is certainly no parallel to it to be found amongst the North or South American Tribes, where they are living according to their primitive modes; nor do I believe that a similar mortality can be found amongst the children of any aboriginal race on any part of the globe.

Amongst the North American Indians, at all events, where two or three children are generally the utmost results of a marriage, such a rate of mortality could not exist without soon depopulating the country; and as a justification of the general remark I have made, the few following instances of the numerous estimates which I received and recorded amongst the various tribes, I offer in the belief that they will be received as matters for astonishment, calling for some explanation of the causes of so wide a contrast between the Bills of Mortality in the two Races. Whilst residing in a small village of Guarani of 250 persons, on the banks of the. Rio Trombutas, in Brazil; amongst the questions which I put to the Chief, I desired to know, as near as possible, the number of children under 10 years of age, which his village had lost within the last 10 years, a space of time over which his recollection could reach with tolerable accuracy. After he and his wife had talked the thing over for some time, they together made the following reply, viz.--’that they could recollect but three deaths of children within that space of time: one of these was drowned, a second one was killed by the kick of a horse, and the third one was bitten by a Rattle-snake.’

This small Tribe, or Band, living near the base of the Acarai Mountains, resembled very much in their personal appearance and modes of life the numerous bands around them; all mounted on good horses; living in a country of great profusion, both of animal and vegetable food.

The ‘Sleepy Eyes,’ a celebrated chief of a Band of Sioux, in North America, living between the headwaters of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, in reply to similar questions, also told me that in his Band of 1500, he could not learn from the women that they had lost any of their children in that time, except some two or three who had died from accidents. He told me that the women of his Tribe had no instances of still-born children; and they seemed not even to know the meaning of' Abortions.'