Keep Pure - Rise Early Smile
All the great peace scouts who have succeeded in exploring or hunting expeditions in wild countries have only been able to get on by knowing how to keep themselves and others healthy. They had to, because diseases, accidents, and wounds might be suffered by them or their men, and they couldn’t find doctors in the jungles to cure them. A Scout who does not know something about taking care of himself would never get on at all; he might just as well stay at home for all the good he will be.
Therefore practice keeping healthy yourself, and then you will be able to show others how to keep themselves healthy too. In this way you can do many good turns.
Also, if you know how to look after yourself you need never have to pay for medicines. The great English poet, Dryden, in his poem, Cymon and Iphigenia, wrote that it was better to trust to fresh air and exercise than to pay doctors’ bills to keep yourself healthy:
Keep Yourself Clean
If you cut your hand when it is dirty, it is very likely to fester, and to become very sore. But if your hand is quite clean and freshly washed, no harm will come of it—it heals quickly.
Cleaning your skin helps to clean your blood. Doctors say that half the good of exercise is lost if you do not have a bath immediately after it.
It may not be always possible for you to get a bath every day, but you can at any rate rub yourself over with a wet towel, or scrub yourself with a dry one, and you ought not to miss a single day in doing this if you want to keep fit and well.
You should also keep clean in your clothing—your underclothing as well as that which shows.
And to be healthy and strong, you must keep your blood healthy and clean inside you. This is done by breathing in lot of pure, fresh air, by deep breathing, and by clearing out all dirty matter from inside your stomach, which is done by having a “rear” daily, without fail; many people are the better for having it twice a day. If there is any difficulty about it one day drink plenty of good water, especially before and just after breakfast, and practise body- twisting exercises, and all should be well. Never start work in the morning without some sort of food inside you.
Smoking
Every Scout knows the Scout Law. But there is an extra point to that Law which is not written but is understood by every Scout. It is this: “A Scout is not a fool”, and that is why Scouts do not smoke while they are still growing boys.
TOMMY THE TENDERFOOT No. 9 - TOMMY TRIES SMOKING
Tommy thought smoking would give him some fun. But he quickly wished he had never begun.
Any boy can smoke—it is not such a very wonderful thing to do. But a Scout will not do it because he is not such a fool. He knows that when a lad smokes before he is fully grown up it may weaken his heart, and the heart is the most important organ in a lad’s body. It pumps the blood all over him to form flesh, bone, and muscle. If the heart does not do its work the boy cannot grow to be healthy. Any Scout knows that smoking spoils his sense of smell, which is of greatest importance to him for scouting on active service.
A large number of the best sportsmen, soldiers, sailors, and others, do not smoke—they find they can do better without it.
No boy ever began smoking because he liked it, but generally because either he feared being chaffed by the other boys as afraid to smoke, or because he thought that by smoking he would look like a great man—when all the time he only looks like a little ass.
So just make up your mind for yourself that you don’t mean to smoke till you are grown up, and stick to it. That will show you to be a man much more than any slobbering about with a half-smoked cigarette between your lips. The other fellows will in the end respect you much more, and will probably in many cases secretly follow your lead.
Drinking
A soldierly-looking man came up to me one night and brought out his discharge certificates, showing that he had served with me in South Africa. He said he could get no work, and he was starving—every man’s hand was against him, apparently because he
was a soldier. My nose and eyes told me in a moment another tale, and that was the real cause of his distress.
A stale smell of tobacco and beer hung about his clothes, his finger-tips were yellow with cigarette smoke, he had even taken some kind of scented lozenge to try to hide the whisky smell in his breath. No wonder nobody would employ him, or give him more money to drink with, for that was all that he would do with money if he got it.
Much of the poverty and distress in the world is brought about by men getting into the habit of wasting their money and time on drink. And a great deal of crime, and also of illness, and even madness, is due to the habit of
