Efforts to define health have not given very satisfactory results. The dictionary defines health as a "state of bodily or mental well being; normal condition of mind or body in which all parts and faculties perform their functions duly, easily, satisfactorily; soundness, freedom from disease, disorder, pain or weakness."
The word is from the Anglo-Saxon and means wholeness, integrity. It is thought that originally the word had reference to the absence of obvious bodily wounds and injuries and had little or no reference to the deeper and more obscure processes of life. Be this as it may, wholeness is no mere negative thing -it is not the mere absence of loss. It is a positive thing and signifies the presence of parts and functions. To define it as "freedom from weakness and disease" is to define it in a very negative manner and to rob it of the most essential part of its meaning. To say that health is the absence of disease is merely to say that health is the absence of discomfort or, it is a state of comfort. This covers but a small part of health.
Pathologists, we are told, have long felt the
need for a definition of health in terms of resistance to disease.
Such a definition would be a fallacy. There is no such thing as disease
to resist. The whole concept of resistance with reference to disease is
based on a very ancient and very wrong conception of the nature of the
process called disease. There are many things to resist, but disease is
not one of them. Any
definition of health that does not include more positive factors than
that of the mere idea of resistance to disease must fail to properly define
it.
Health must be defined in terms of biological and physiological efficiency and integrity. Any definition of health that regards the individual as an isolated unit and fails to consider his functions in nature, must fall short of a complete definition.
Prof. J. Arthur Thompson says that the body is now regarded as a chemical and physical system and that "by health we mean mainly useful, efficient, and harmonious production of energy." He asserts that this production of energy depends more upon general functional harmony and perfection than upon structural integrity.
Up to the time of his death Prof. Thomson was the British chief priest
of the cult of Darwinism and as a Darwinian he was unwilling to recognize
the pathological condition of all forms of life that have strayed from
the path of biological rectitude and, as a consequence, have undergone
degeneration ("simplification"- in Darwinian language) and acromegaly ("over-specialization",
the Darwinians call it.) Pathology o a whole species, even of the whole
genera, is health in his language.
The body does not merely produce energy, it also expends energy .It works. It also reproduces. Health involves not only the ability to produce energy, but also the ability to use it and the ability to reproduce. Loss of structure or impairment of structure means loss of ability to work. It should also be said that pathological reproduction is common in nature.
We cannot accept Thompson's definition of health nor his negation of the importance of structural integrity. Unless he or some of his echoes, can show us that function (we will not ask for "general functional harmony and perfection") can go on in a vacuum, we will continue to believe that structural integrity is essential to "general functional harmony and perfection." Function without structure simply does not exist.
He tells us that if a man's temperature is normal, his heart sound,
his blood pure and of good quality and if there are no microbes in his
veins, "even if the man has lost an arm or a leg or an eye, we can label
him healthy, and can safely infer that he has normal health, i.e. normal
capacity for work."
For what kind of work does a one-eyed man possess normal capacity?
For what kind of work does the one-armed or one-legged man possess normal
capacity? Work must not mean merely the various artificial occupations
of civilization. We must not exclude or neglect biological work.
He makes the same kind of mistake when he says: "There is no great advantage in the possession of large muscles and great muscular energy. Perfect health is possible without unusual muscular development, muscular strength, or muscular endurance."
We presume that the parasite that has lost eyes, head, feet, wings, and digestive system would, if it could talk, also say that perfect health is possible without the possession of these things. At least the parasite can "survive" without these organs and parts and "survival" is the all important thing in Prof. Thompson's view.
Muscles are part of the body; indeed they form a great part of it and any statement that perfect health is possible when these are in a state of neglect or under-development, is ridiculous. The organic correlation and interdependencies within the body make it necessary that full health involves muscular development.
Change of structure is not altogether a local affair, but carries with it certain consequences in the nature of correlated changes in other parts of the body. These correlated changes are also functional and not merely structural. Relations and correlation depend on function and when function is impaired or suspended, every relation and correlation is correspondingly limited.
The removal of relatively "unimportant" organs may be rashly declared to result in no harm; an individual who is a veritable caricature of human being due to antithetic development, may be as rashly declared to be healthy, but such foolish declarations ignore functional and structural relations and correlation. How foolish to declare the eunuch or the spayed woman to be healthy and all the while ignore all the results of the surgical spoilation of these people. Internal physiological stability is a prerequisite to efficiency of external biological function. Asymmetry, disharmony, antithetic developments, dwarfism, giantism, acromegaly and all other departures from the norms of life are pathological and their possessor is not healthy. It will not do to declare, as Professor Thompson does, that disease is relative and undefinable. If we fail to adequately define the abnormal, we are not, thereby, justified in including it in the category of normal.
Harry Benjamin, a British Natural Therapist, writing in the July (1943) issue of Health for All, attempts to define health for us. He rightly points out that what the medical profession and the average individual means by health is only average health. He says that what passes for a healthy man or woman today is someone who may have defective teeth, impaired vision, flat feet, faulty body posture, and minor ailments such as constipation and catarrh. Mr. Average man and woman do not know what health really is and adopt a definition that would fit Prof. Thomsons conceptions.
Dr .Benjamin also falls into this same trap. He declares that health "has nothing to do with extra muscular development, or with strength in the sense of purely physical strength. Whether that body be very muscular and physically strong does not enter into the matter. If all organs of the body are working efficiently, it must mean that the muscular system is properly developed throughout the body. Excessive muscular development does not mean an extra degree of health."
His last statement is empty of all meaning for the reason that he does not define "excessive muscular development." But it does seem strange to us that a man can recognize poor vision as an evidence of poor health and then claim that muscular condition is relatively unimportant to health. He seems to think a state of comparative muscular weakness is compatible with a high degree of health.
He is not consistent, however, for he does unconsciously recognize the correlation of health and muscular condition when he says that if all the organs of the body are working efficiently it must mean that the muscles are properly developed throughout the body. If it can be shown that the muscles are not properly developed throughout. it must follow that all the organs of the body are not working efficiently.
Dr. Benjamin falls into his errors because he adopts a very narrow and one sided definition of health. Although he insists that health is different from the condition of "just not being un- well, he describes it as "a feeling of 'alivenes,' a feeling of buoyancy and ease in movements, and a zest in work and activity; and with it goes readiness to face life and its problems and not shirk them or pass them on to other peoples' shoulders...it is just a feeling pure and simple; a feeling which comes from within, owing to the natural and easy functions of all the organs, glands and other vital machinery of life."
This effort to define health as feeling is as wrong as Prof. Thompson's effort to define it as ability to produce energy. Zestfulness and a feeling of ease and aliveness go with health, but are not health. They are expressions of health.
Health is biological as well as physiological and is based on biological as well as upon physiological factors. It is a state of wholeness -of structural integrity and functional efficiency- based on hygienic living and wholesome biological relations. It does not matter how good one feels today, if his relations and conduct are not what they should be, he will not feel so good tomorrow. It does not matter how efficiently he produces energy today, if his conduct and relations flout the laws of life, his energy production will flag tomorrow. If he is not whole, entire, he cannot have perfect health or even near perfect health. The half-man can never have the health of the whole-man.