One of the symptoms of her condition is lung congestion, which leads to periodic bouts of coughing. One struck just as we sat down. To some of those near us, her spasms were clearly an affront.
We read the room and fled.
There’s nothing new in the idea that we are each responsible for our own well-being. Illness has long been seen as a measure of our character, even of our moral values. But when Kennedy implied that exercising and avoiding junk food will save someone from the worst that measles can do, that unfairly places blame on those who do get seriously ill. It also suggests that each of us is the captain of our fate, and that eating right and exercising is just about all it takes to avoid illness.
Of course, Kennedy didn’t invent the idea that health is the testament to a well-lived life. The belief that those with good habits can shrug off disease runs through the history of medicine. In 1721, London and Boston faced twin outbreaks of smallpox. A handful of pioneers responded with variolation: scratching material from sores of those already afflicted into the limbs of volunteers who had not yet suffered the disease. Such proto-vaccination was far from risk-free, but for the majority of recipients, it worked.
A case of smallpox was a window on one’s soul; sin had brought the disease upon each sufferer, which meant that any hope for recovery required repentance. Boston’s city leaders believed this to be true and, in late June, called for a town-wide observance of a day of penitence and fasting.
For the next two centuries, though, even though explicit appeals to religious faith became less common, the underlying belief remained: health was a moral choice, secured by choosing the right habits. Of course, that meant that if illness did come, it was a reflection of failure. Take, for example, what a most unlikely wellness influencer, Walt Whitman, had to say in his 1858 series on “Manly Health and Training.”
Henry Lindlahr, one of the most influential naturopathic writers of the early 20th century, claimed that vaccinations made “the human body a swill pot for the collection of all sorts of disease taints and poisonous antiseptics and germicides.” By contrast, good health could be achieved through natural prescriptions and “by cultivating the right mental attitude.”
Trusting that good health is simply a matter of will has always been a seductive act of faith, offering the hope that our fate is under our control. But it’s an illusion. No amount of positive thinking or healthy eating will keep an illness from doing potentially lethal harm.
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