Dr. McDougall's Health Crisis

[jts]

A little psychological or sociological or whatever kind of observation.

Most people (around me at least) seem to not much value health. They look upon health minded people as kooks or nuts. They poke fun at health minded people. They say life is not about not dying, and the pleasure of poisoning oneself is more important than health, and all those remarks.

Yet everyone values health when they lose it. Dr. Alex Burton said most health minded people are either very sick or very intelligent. Perhaps unusual intelligence is needed to value health while one has it.

I noticed something about health teachers. With few or no exceptions, they came from an unhealthy background. For example, Dr. Russell Trall was so unhealthy as a child that he was not expected to live to adulthood. That was his motivation to become interested in health. He couldn't do anything else until he regained health first. I read somewhere that Dr. Tilden was in poor health the first 50 years of his life. Yes, even the great Dr. Herbert Shelton had "fragile" health. Dr. Fielder goes into detail about several life threatening health problems and he overcame all of them. Dr. Vetrano was a ballet dancer with a tendency to get overweight. T. C. Fry had a whole bunch of health problems up to his mid-40s. (He later killed himself with fruitarianism but that is beside the point.) Cornaro (author of 'Discourses on the Sober Life') had serious health problems before he became health minded. Are there any exceptions?

Yup, even Dr. McDougall. He claims to be healthier at 60 than he was at 18 or 22.

2 minutes