Article by David Crawford
Your Vacation
When your head starts drooping about three o’clock in the afternoon, when you begin complaining of the heat, and when your work loses much of its usual interest, you are about ready for your vacation. You may think you are doing better to stay home and work. Scientific studies show, however, that a vacation is an asset from the financial point of view, because you do more productive work afterward than you did before.
An old-time doctor was asked by a young assistant how to run his office successfully. The doctor gave him two suggestions for routine treatment. “First,” he said, “ask your patients what they eat and order something else; second, find out where they are going on their vacations and send them someplace else.” The old doctor knew from common experience that most people do not pick their vacations properly for health and rest.
Any vacation should bring about a change from the routine of daily life, but rest is most important.
Vacation Food And Drink
In picking a place for your vacation always consider questions of health. Pure water, good sanitation, pure milk and a good food supply are absolutely essential.
Any exposed drinking water is a possible source of danger. Seaside springs should be distrusted. Health authorities ought to cover them with concrete and arrange to discharge the flowing water into a river or a sewer. Any spring water properly filtered and treated with chlorine may be considered safe. Spring water in camps may be protected by suitable disposal of sewage. Water unfit for drinking is probably equally unfit for bathing, in most instances. It is always wise to take some drinking water with you when you go on a camping trip.
Dishes may be washed in water taken from springs or rivers, provided the water is first thoroughly boiled. It is safer to eat canned vegetables and fruits than to take a chance on vegetables sold at a roadside stand, without proper equipment for cleaning them. Improper handling of vegetables may be responsible for many kinds of illness.
Flies around eating places are a constant menace. Eating places should be guarded from flies by use of mosquito netting or screening.
Some persons traveling on vacations try to get along with a diet of bread, eggs, and coffee. Such diets are tiresome and lack the essentials of a well-balanced diet, which include fresh fruits, vegetables, and plenty of milk. A suitable diet is a great help to a healthful vacation.
Many persons who go to American-plan hotels overeat and return from their vacations with digestion completely disordered by the extra strain they have borne during the weeks supposed to be given to rest. Your internal organs need a rest, as well as the muscles and the brain.
A Healthful Vacation
Chief factors of a healthful vacation can be listed as follows: first, change of occupation; second, sunshine and the open air; third, plenty of rest at night and during the day; fourth, congenial friends and surroundings; fifth, freedom from social routine.
This, for instance, was the type of vacation long taken by Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs-all noted for hard work, success and long lives. These representative notables used to travel about in a motor car, camping at night in the woods or in some convenient place. They were with congenial people who were not included in their usual environment. They had interesting conversation different from that of their daily lives. They went to bed early at night and arose when they wished in the morning. They were not governed by any routine on their vacation. They did not have to dress for meals or for the evening but wore the most comfortable and roughest clothing that they had. Their vacations have become proverbial as representing the best type.
Your vacation always should be selected according to your build and; your state of health. The real vacation for the average city dweller is one in which he can have comforts suitable to the conditions of his body. Instead of attaining these comforts, many a worker who has had fifty weeks of office routine tries mountain climbing or playing thirty-six holes of golf daily, putting terrific stress on his blood vessels and his heart. Thereafter, instead of sleeping in a comfortable bed, he finds a strange bed with a mattress concocted from cotton, straw, or corncobs. Then he wonders why his back and his thighs hurt so much when he gets up the next morning.
Touring And Camping
The people who really have to worry most about their vacations are those who take to the road. It is astounding how much wreckage a family vacation in a motor car can bring about, from a health point of view. Driving all day means that the calls of nature are ignored. Cinders fly in the eye; elbows and knees are bumped and rubbed. The digestion is disturbed and the muscles are cramped by hours of sitting in contorted positions. Children suffer from the glare of the sun, the dust of the road, the impossibility of getting the right kind of food, insect bites, bad meals and water. A baby should never be taken on such a vacation, and even children from two to six years of age are likely to suffer from such performances.
Fortunately, most of our states have taken over control of motor camps, so that you can be reasonably sure in such camps of suitable water and milk supplies. Smart tourists nowadays carry along twenty or thirty yards of mosquito netting to fend off insects. There is little fear of infection from the average mosquitoes in the northern part of the United States, but a mosquito bite that itches or bleeds can spoil any vacation. A weak solution of camphor or a one-per-cent solution of menthol in a suitable lotion will stop the itching and give comfort.
Every camper ought to take along a spade and a first-aid kit. The spade is used to bury remnants of food, empty tin cans, and bottles. These always should be buried twenty-five feet from any running stream or body of water. The spade also is used to cover fires.
The first-aid kit should contain, at least, a bottle of tincture of iodine,a cake of soap, two rolls of gauze, some cotton, and adhesive plaster. It should also carry some of the family’s favorite laxative, vaseline or petrolatum, and a simple ointment for abrasions, chafing, and sunburn. Any ordinary zinc-oxide ointment serves this purpose. There should be cold cream for use on dry, chapped lips and perhaps a small amount of some antiseptic solution that is really antiseptic and will not act as a caustic on a bum. Such a first-aid kit may save a life, and is of great help in securing comfort and relief from pain in emergencies Manufacturers now make such kits for use of motorists.
Nervous Breakdown
There seems to be an idea that anyone who suffers from nervous exhaustion or nervous breakdown will be benefited by a sea voyage. Such voyages do have the advantage of taking people away from their usual surroundings. But certain precautions must be taken.
If depression is a prominent symptom the intervals between ports should be short. People who are melancholic become more and more depressed by the sight of nothing but water for several days. People who have been ill and get seasick easily should not take a sea voyage for convalescence. A person who has had a nervous breakdown should never travel alone.
After all, the choice of a vacation is a relatively simple matter if you are reasonable, but it does demand a good deal of foresight. A good vacation is one during which you enjoy yourself thoroughly, in which you are rested when you return, and in which your mind selects a new groove. A good vacation is one without undue exposure to the sun, the rain or the cold or bad weather generally, particularly if you suffer from coughs or colds, hay fever or asthma.
A good vacation is one in which the persons who surround you are so congenial that you never lose your temper. A good vacation is one in which your health is benefited, as determined by effects on your digestion, your blood pressure, your circulation, and your nervous system. A good vacation is one taken in a place where there is pure water, pure milk, and a good food supply. A good vacation is one in which the muscles are exercised, but not to the point of exhaustion or danger to the tissue beyond repair. A good vacation is one in which you think of your business, but do not worry about it. A man who thinks so little of his business that he can forget it completely while on a vacation is not in the right business.