Left- Why not Grow Young, published in 1928
Service: From The Heart
Recently I aquired an interesting collection of short literary pieces by various authors and issued in book called "Literary Treasures of 1927" published out by the International Magazine Company, Inc. Among the shorts in this book is a eight page biographical piece by Robert Service which I now bring to the Service Station.
After beginning to read the text I soon discovered that it was taken from Roberts book of health "Why Not Grow Young" published the next year in 1928. This book is an interesting blend of biography, philosophy and self sermonizing. The reader finds Robert expounding on staying young by gracefully growing old. His interest in health was spured by the news that he had a cardiac condition, an enlarged heart. Of interest is another book Robert Service wrote in 1927 entitled "House of Fear". This mystery Novel's main character is Peter MacBeth, a incurable cardiac. One can sense Roberts own health problems as he inflicts them on his character Peter.
I can identify with Robert's fears about his health problem, I too have been diognosed with an enlarged heart for which I take medication. I remember when first finding out about the diognosis. I too, felt as if the Grim Reaper was about to make a harvest. I found that Robert's advice on health made good sense, at least his views on moderation and a positive personal outlook.
Readers might be interested in Robert's description of the Spa city of Royat. The town still remains as resort. The mineral springs still bring tourists and health addicts to it's magical waters. To find out more about Royat go to: http://www.guideweb.com/auvergne/thermaa.html
Without further ado, from "Literary Treasures of 1927" here is:
Heart Disease Taught Me How To Live
By Robert W. Service
"Whatever have you been doing?" demanded the doctor.
"Keeping fit," I answered, bunching my biceps and cording my stomach muscles in the approved washing board fashion.
Yes I was proud of myself. Had I not at fifty attained a physical development that would have done me credit at thirty? So I expanded my chest and tried to look like a picture post-card of Carpentier. But the doctor's gaze was grim.
"What's the idea?" he snorted.
"Oh, I'm not going in for any Olympic Games," I assured him. "Only, its so jolly to be an athlete. You know, I can walk on my hands."
I expected him to be surprised. He was. After a pregnant pause he asked: "What's your system?"
"Strenuous, rather. Yesterday, for instance, I worked two hours in the gym and had a swim in the pool before luncheon. In the afternoon I had a three-hour hike."
"Was that All?"
"No. In the evening I put on the gloves. It was that I came to see you about. I thought of going in for a boxing tournament and wanted to be sure everything's o.k, It is, isn't it?"
Wait a moment." He left me and returned holding in his hand a big rosy apple. With a snap he broke it in two. At the core it was black! There's the answer."
"What's the matter?" I faltered.
The motor's the matter. Running a hundred to the minute. Stuttering too, Leaky valve. Back-fire."
"What do you mean?"
"Your heart. You've got as big as that of an ox. And it whistles."
"But I never felt so fit in my life."
"I don't doubt it. All the same, you're killing yourself. Slow Suicide. You wanted to be a beau garcon, I suppose?"
"It's nice to have a good line and to feel loose in one's cloths, " I admitted.
"Is it?" Well, let me tell you: the man who tries to make himself an athlete at fifty is probably going to make himself a corpse at sixty."
I gasped. "But surely I must keep fit? I said a t last.
"The fitness of a man of fifty is not the fitness of a man of thirty, or even forty. You have mad an effort out of proportion to your years. In developing your muscles you have strained the greatest one of all. The walls of your heart are dilated. There's regurgitation. Perhaps a lesion. You're in bad shape."
"What must I do?"
Give up on the Olympic stuff. Your idea of keeping fit at fifty is all right, only you've gone about it the wrong way. You have perfected your body at the cost of its most vital organ. At present, to all middle-aged men you are a warning."
"I see. I've been a fool. Will I get over it?"
"I can only hope so. And now I am not going to give you any drugs, I want you to try to cure yourself naturally."
"I get you. Go ahead."
You must give up alcohol, tobacco, red meat, coffee, all exciting food generally. Eat very little in the evening. Walk a great deal, but never hurry. Keep cheerful; cultivate calm;practice placidity. Above all, give up your exercise gradually. As a man of muscle let your fad-out be a long and lingering one."
I had walked into that doctor's feeling like a million dollars; I slunk away looking like thirty cents. In twenty minutes I seemed to have grown older by twenty years.
Had I not received what seemed to be a death warrant! Doomed! Cut off in my prime! What a blind, besotted fool I had been!
Unconsciously I had quickened again into the old stride. Crumpled, crestfallen, I dropped into the cardiac crawl, and my eyes assumed a look of a pathetic resignation. Already I was dramatizing myself in my new part. I walked wearily, with what I thought mus be an expression of patient fortitude. I even imagined that the passers-by were regarding me with commiseration. They seemed to be saying: "Look at that poor devil, hard-headed for the boneyard"
Then suddenly a gleam of cheer. Tea was not on the taboo list and I adored afternoon tea.
In the window seat of a snug tea-shop I sorrowfully ordered hot muffins. Across the way I could see into a well-known dressmaker's, and the sight of the manikins changing their robes cheered me somewhat; so that with my third cup of tea I was inclined to be less pessimistic.
"There's comfort even in calamity," I said as I finished my fifth muffin. "Now let me take a gentle stroll to Piere-Lachaise, there to pick out a cozy corner for myself. Or how about a cheerful visit tio the Crematorium?"
Of Course I got the wind up, and instead of breaking off my exercise by degrees, I threw my dumb-bell out the window, burned my extensors, cursed physical culture and collapsed into inaction. And then the fun began.
Up to that time I had been physically unaware that I possessed a heart; now I seemed to be all heart. I could feel it tapping on my eyeballs and throbbing in my fingertips. I vibrated from head to foot like a rickety flivver. For my heart, after being accustomed every day to make a prodigious effort, suddenly found itself ignored. With violent indignation it protested. That master muscle, after responding to all my exigencies, was not going to be let down like that. It rebelled, began to cut up like the very devil. It was at night thit it enhoyed its greatest triumph. How I grew to dread the sleep-time! You would too if you had a sensation of a coffin-lid being battened down on you the moment you lay flat., Later on, it became a mere paving-stone that lay on my chest, so that I had to take short, gasping breaths. If I dozed off, my breathing became so rapid it woke me up again. Often I spent the night in a sitting positon.
Then if I did chance to sleep, there would come a swishy sound in my skull, like a wind swirl in an attic. This would awaken me with a start of terror. Or else I would dream of death and monsters and nameleless horrors that would rouse me trembling, with my heart beating like a mad thing. For months I expected to pop off in my sleep, and for a whole year I could lie on my left side.
But in my mind the worst of all was the eternal tock-tock under my pillow. It was as if I had put a large alarm-claock there, a clock with a defective action. For hours I would lie listening to it. With every ten ticks or so, it would falter and break, like a gallooping horse that stumbles and recovers. Only, in the pause that preceded recovery, I felt as if the cayuse had kicked me in the wind. I lay waiting for that interrupted action, dreading it.
And how often I felt as if never again could I get warm! Let me pile quilt on quilt, still I seemed to be immersed in chilly water. Despite three poairs of socks my feet would be freezing. I would awake with my arms dead to the shoulders. I got to look on my bed with the same joy a victim of the Inquisiiton meht have regareded a charming speciman to the rack.
Yes, my heart was taking its revenge, and even by day it allowed me no respite. After eating it got so fussy I became scared to eat at all. Following a meal it would palpitate for hours. And wasn't I nervous? If you spoke to me suddenly I would jump a foot, while the slam of a door shocked me as much as did during the war the bang of a Big Bertha.
If I rose quickly from a stooping position I would get so dizzy I had to clutch at something for support. Even blowing my nose made me giddy. And the look of me! My face was as yellow as a five dollar gold piece; my eyes had thje dull look of a dead fish, while my neck was as scraggy as that of a plucked pullet. So I crawled around wretchedly, made my will, and resigned myself to fate. And thus passed the first year of my athlete's heart, a year of martyrdom.
However, this is no mere tale of woe. If I dwell in detail on my miseries it is to point a moral, to show that in the end one may triumph despite the devil. For almost imperceptibly I began to be aware that I was entering on a more cheerful stage. I was accepting my condition more equably, even making a joke of it. Then one night I realized that the alarm-clock under my pillow had become a chronometer. It did not keep me awake so much; bit by bit it became attenuated to a tiny wrist watch. Indeed sometimes I didn't hear it at all. Other improvements too. Feet less icy. I could tie a bootlace without getting giddy. That heart thumping after meals had simmered down to a gentle flap. And so one after another the most distressing of my symtums bamosjed/ O kist see,ed tp fprget abpit tje,; then suddenly remembering, behold they were not there.
In this, my baletudinarian year, my favorite hobby was consultation of doctors. They all handed me out the same diagnosis - hypertrophy of the hear, a local defect, abnormally high blood-pressure. Yet I might with care live longer than if I had nothing the matter with me. Paradoxically, if you atttain old age, you should acquire a malady and look after it. Sometimes sickness may be a blessing in disguise. So at least I tried to persuade myself.
Behold me then going about with a new interest in licfe, perhaps a more wholesome one. But if my weakness made me a philosopher, it also made me a social outcast. A man on a rigid diet does not relish being asked out to dinner. And the conviiality of the cafe! What a sad memory!
Oh, how I'd love to souse my throttle
With rich red wine from a dusty bottle;
Alas! my doctors says I oughter
Drink only tea and Vichy water.
Tobacco, too. How comforting between spells of work the whiff of a cigaret!
I'd love to puff a panetela
With any other lusty fellow;
Alas! If I should chance to wish one -
"Cut out the weed!" Cries my physicion.
No, never again. With me it must be everything or nothing. So, infinitely better but still guarded flame, I spent the second year of my career as a cardiac. Although it was relenting, my heart yet held the centre of the stage. I t not until the third year of my heart expedrience that I achieved a return to normal; and this I owe to the mahical springs of Royat in Auvergne
