Health

HEALTH, a concept usually contrasted with disease (see) and, like the latter, a relative one. A person is generally considered healthy if they do not exhibit any obvious physical or mental defects in their specific given environment. This last addition is absolutely necessary, since absolutely healthy people, equally adapted to any environment, do not exist in nature. It is necessary to distinguish between subjective and objective health, as these two aspects do not always coincide. For example, a person may be infected with syphilis while subjectively feeling completely healthy. After recovering from an infection, a person often feels healthy before the objective pathological changes caused by the pathogenic agent have disappeared. On the other hand, an abundance of subjective complaints and very poor well-being, sometimes leading to a loss of working capacity, are not always accompanied by demonstrable objective changes (numerous cases of neurasthenia). It must further be remembered that health at a given moment by no means excludes the possibility of the individual possessing a potential for a severe, sometimes fatal disease: the latter manifests either at a certain age or under certain altered external conditions. Diabetes, for example, manifests only at a certain (mostly middle or elderly) age, and sometimes only in connection with nervous shock, overeating, etc. Meanwhile, the individual was potentially ill their entire life, since the predisposition to diabetes was inherited by them. Finally, it must be remembered that personal health never guarantees against transmitting severe diseases to offspring: if a certain genotypic disease is recessive, then the carrier of the corresponding gene (heterozygote) is usually completely healthy in relation to this disease. When one heterozygote mates with another similar one, ¹/₄ of the offspring stand a chance of receiving this gene from both parents (homozygote) and turning out to be ill. There are very many such recessive diseases in humans. A healthy organism usually tolerates infections and various harmful environmental influences much more easily. But even in this respect, there are exceptions. Thus, during the last "Spanish flu" epidemic, an especially severe (often fatal) course of the disease was noted in people who were physically particularly robust.