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;