17. Be regular, temperate, and leisurely in eating the evening meal; eat nothing that disagrees with you.
18. Spend the evening profitably and pleasantly and in ways compatible with the foregoing habits.
19. Retire regularly at a fixed hour, making up for irregularity by an earlier hour next night.
23. Turn underclothes wrong side out for ventilation.
No man chronically neglects any one of the above rules without reducing his industrial efficiency. No man chronically neglects all of them without becoming, sooner or later, a health bankrupt.
In addition to this daily routine, there are certain other acts that should become habitual:
1. Bathing less frequently than once a week is almost as dangerous to health as it is to attractiveness.
2. Distaste for unclean linen or undergarments and for acts or foods that interfere with vitality should become instinctive.
3. Excesses in eating or playing should be automatically corrected the next day and the next. Parties we shall continue to have. It will be some time before reasonable hours and reasonable refreshments will prevail. Meanwhile it is probably better for an individual to sacrifice somewhat his own vitality for the sake of the union, the class, or the church. While trying to improve group habits, one can acquire the habit of not eating three meals in one, of eating less next day, of sleeping longer next night, of being particularly careful to have plenty of outdoor air.
4. Visits to the dentist twice a year at least, and whenever a cavity appears, even if only a week after the dentist has failed to find one; whenever the gums begin to recede; and whenever anything seems to be wrong with the teeth.
5. Periodic physical examination by a physician.
6. Examination by a competent physician whenever any disorder cannot be satisfactorily explained by violation of the daily routine or by interruption of business or domestic routine.
Health habits do not become instinctive until a continued, conscious effort is made to accustom the body to them. When this is once done, however, the body not only attends to its primary health needs automatically, but it rebels at their omission, as surely as does the stomach at the omission of dinner. Witness the discomfort of the consumptive, trained to fresh air at a sanatorium, when he returns to his overheated and underventilated home, or the actual pain experienced in readjusting our own healthy bodies to the stuffy workroom or schoolroom after a summer vacation out of doors. I heard a consumptive say that he left a sanatorium for a day class after trying for three nights to sleep in an unventilated ward. For many people the regular morning bath is at first a trial, then a pleasure, and finally a need; if omitted, the body feels thirsty and dissatisfied, the eyes sleepy, and the spirit flags early in the day.