Overeating causes more deaths than any other single factor. The use of
tobacco, coffee or alcohol has a tendency to reduce the desire for food
and thus these drugs at times prove to be conservers of individual
lives, though they are undoubted racial evils. They never can or will
take the place of self-control. The senses were given us to use for our
protection, but most people abuse them for temporary gratification, and
thus they go in the way of self-destruction.
Other things being equal, a healthy child will live longer than a weakly
one. But other things are not equal, so it often happens that a weakling
has as much chance to survive as a healthy person. Strong people
frequently squander their inheritance by the time they are forty or
fifty years old. Healthy people are very imprudent. They are well so
they think they will always remain well. What a surprise it is when
after thirty they discover that they cannot do with impunity what they
could do before with apparently no bad results! When warned about their
eating habits they boast that they can "eat tacks". Smoking and drinking
are harmless, they say! But the day of reckoning always comes and the
account is often so great that under the conventional treatment of today
they die.
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