Study and Stimulants Part 13

M. WURTZ, PARIS.

In reply to your letter of the 7th February, I have the honour to recall you the opinion which is current to-day among doctors of the highest authority, namely, that the abuse of alcohol and tobacco offers the greatest inconvenience from the point of view of health.

Alcoholism produces a state of disorder of the organism to which a great number of maladies attach themselves. It is not a question of the moderate use of excitants, but the limit between use and abuse is difficult to trace, because it varies according to the country, the climate, and the habits of the individual const.i.tution.

A. WURTZ.

March 14, 1882.

APPENDIX.

DR. RISDON BENNETT.

"There are few people, I believe, who are aided in the actual performance of brain-work by alcohol; not that many, nay, most persons, are not rendered more ready and brilliant in conversation, or have their imagination quickened for a time. But the steady, continued exercise of the mental powers demanded of professional men is more often impeded than aided at the time by alcohol."

_Contemporary Review_, vol. 34, p. 343.

THE REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M. A.

"It has been said that moderate doses of alcohol stimulate work into greater activity, and make life happier and brighter. My experience, since I became a total abstainer, has been the opposite. I have found myself able to work better. I have a greater command over any powers I possess. I can make use of them when I please. When I call upon them, they answer; and I need not wait for them to be in the humour. It is all the difference between a machine well oiled and one which has something, among the wheels which catches and r.e.t.a.r.ds the movement at unexpected times. As to the pleasure of life, it has been also increased. I enjoy Nature, books, and men more than I did--and my previous enjoyment of them was not small. Those attacks of depression which come to every man at times who lives too sedentary a life rarely visit me now, and when depression does come from any trouble, I can overcome it far more quickly than before. The fact is, alcohol, even in the small quant.i.ties I took it, while it did not seem to injure health, injures the fineness of that physical balance which means a state of health in which all the world is pleasant. That is my experience after four months of water-drinking, and it is all the more striking to me, because for the last four or five years I have been a very moderate drinker. However, the experience of one man is not that of another, and mine only goes for what it is worth to those to whom, as much alcohol as is contained in one gla.s.s of sherry, or port, alters away from the standard of health. I have discovered, since abstinence, that that is true of me. And I am sure, from inquiries, I have made, that it is true for a great many other people who do not at all suspect it. Therefore, I appeal to the young and the old, to try abstinence for the very reasons they now use alcohol--in order to increase their power of work and their enjoyment of life. Let the young make the experiment of working on water only. Alcohol slowly corrupts and certainly r.e.t.a.r.ds the activity of the brain of the greater number of men. They will be able to do all they have to do more swiftly. And this swiftness will leave them leisure--the blessing we want most in this over-worked world. And the leisure, not being led away by alcohol into idleness, into depression which craves unnatural excitement, into noisy or slothful company, will be more n.o.bly used and with greater joy in the usage. And the older men, who find it so difficult to find leisure, and who when they find it cannot enjoy it because they have a number of slight ailments which do not allow them perfect health, or which keep them in over-excitement or over-depression, let them try--though it will need a struggle--whether the total abandonment of alcohol will not lessen all their ailments, and by restoring a better temper to the body--for the body with alcohol in it is like a house with an irritable man in it--enable them not only to work better, but to enjoy their leisure. It is not too much to say that the work of the world would be one-third better done, and more swiftly done, and the enjoyment of life increased by one-half, if no one took a drop of alcohol."

Speech at Bedford Chapel, July 20th, 1882.

WILLIAM C. BRYANT.

(BORN 1794; DIED 1878.)

I promised to give you some account of my habits of life, so far, at least, as regards diet, exercise, and occupation. I have reached a pretty advanced period of life, without the usual infirmities of old age, and with my strength, activity, and bodily faculties generally in pretty good preservation. How far this may be the effect of my way of life, adopted long ago, and steadily adhered to, is perhaps uncertain.

I rise early, at this time of the year about 5 1/2; in summer, half an hour, or even an hour, earlier. Immediately, with very little inc.u.mbrance of clothing, I begin a series of exercises, for the most part designed to expand the chest, and at the same time call into action all the muscles and articulations of the body. These are performed with dumb-bells, the very lightest, covered with flannel; with a pole, a horizontal bar, and a light chair swung around my head.

After a full hour, and sometimes more, pa.s.sed in this manner, I bathe from head to foot. When at my place in the country, I sometimes shorten my exercises in the chamber, and, going out, occupy myself for half an hour or more in some work which requires brisk exercise. After my bath, if breakfast be not ready, I sit down to my studies until I am called.

My breakfast is a simple one--hominy and milk, or in place of hominy, brown bread, or oat-meal, or wheaten grits, and, in the season, baked sweet apples. Buckwheat cakes I do not decline, nor any other article of vegetable food, but animal food I never take at breakfast. Tea and coffee I never touch at any time. Sometimes I take a cup of chocolate, which has no narcotic effect, and agrees with me very well. At breakfast I often take fruit, either in its natural state or freshly stewed.

After breakfast I occupy myself for awhile with my studies, and then, when in town, I walk down to the office of _The Evening Post_, nearly three miles distant, and after about three hours, return, always walking, whatever be the weather or the state of the streets.

In the country I am engaged in my literary tasks till a feeling of weariness drives me out into the open air, and I go upon my farm or into the garden and prune the trees, or perform some other work about them which they need, and then go back to my books. I do not often drive out, preferring to walk.

In the country I dine early, and it is only at that meal that I take either meat or fish, and of these but a moderate quant.i.ty, making my dinner mostly of vegetables. At the meal which is called "tea," I take only a little bread and b.u.t.ter, with fruit, if it be on the table. In town, where I dine later, I make but two meals a day. Fruit makes a considerable part of my diet, and I eat it at almost any part of the day without inconvenience. My drink is water, yet I sometimes, though rarely, take a gla.s.s of wine. I am a natural temperance man, finding myself rather confused than exhilarated by wine. I never meddle with tobacco, except to quarrel with its use.

That I may rise early, I, of course, go to bed early: in town, as early as 10; in the country, somewhat earlier. For many years I have avoided in the evening every kind of literary occupation which tasks the faculties, such as composition, even to the writing of letters, for the reason that it excites the nervous system and prevents sound sleep.

My brother told me, not long since, that he had seen in a Chicago newspaper, and several other Western journals, a paragraph in which it is said that I am in the habit of taking quinine as a stimulant; that I have depended upon the excitement it produces in writing my verses, and that, in consequence of using it in that way, I had become as deaf as a post. As to my deafness, you know that to be false, and the rest of the story is equally so. I abominate all drugs and narcotics, and have always carefully avoided every thing which spurs nature to exertions which it would not otherwise make. Even with my food I do not take the usual condiments, such as pepper, and the like.

March 30, 1871.

_Hygiene of the Brain_, New York, 1878.

DR. KING CHAMBERS, HONORARY PHYSICIAN TO H. R. H. THE PRINCE OF WALES.

"The physiology of the action of alcohol has a very practical bearing on the physical regimen of the mental functions. Alcohol has the power of curbing, arresting, and suspending all the phenomena connected with the nervous system. We feel its influence on our thoughts as soon as on any other part of the man. Sometimes it brings them more completely under our command, controls and steadies them; sometimes it confuses or disconnects them; then breaks off our power and the action of the senses altogether. The first effect is desirable, the others to be avoided. When a man has tired himself with intellectual exertion a moderate quant.i.ty of alcohol taken with food acts as an anaesthetic, stays the wear of the system which is going on, and allows the nervous force to be diverted to the due digestion of the meal. But it must be followed by rest from mental labour, and is, in fact, a part of the same regimen which enforces rest--it is an artificial _rest_. To continue to labour and at the same time to take the anaesthetic is an inconsistency. It merely blunts the painful feeling of weariness, and prevents it from acting as a warning. I very much doubt the quickening or brightening of the wits which baccha.n.a.lian poets have conventionally attributed to alcohol. An abstainer in a party of even moderate topers finds their jokes dull and their anecdotes pointless, and his princ.i.p.al amus.e.m.e.nt consists in his observation of their curious bluntness to the groundlessness of their merriment. There is no more fatal habit to a literary man than that of using alcohol as a stimulant between meals. The vital powers go on getting worn out more and more without their cry for help being perceived, and in the end break down suddenly, and often irrevocably. The temptation is greater perhaps to a literary man than to any other in the same social position, especially if he has been induced by avarice, or ambition, to work wastefully against them; and if he cannot resist it, he had better abjure the use of alcohol altogether.... Mental activity certainly renders the brain less capable of bearing an amount of alcohol, which in seasons of rest and relaxation does not injuriously affect it. When any extraordinary toil is temporarily imposed, extreme temperance, or even total abstinence, should be the rule. Much to the point is the experience of Byron's Sardanapalus:--

"The _goblet_ I reserve for hours of ease, I war on _water_."

"It is true that Byron a.s.sumes in his poetry the character of a _debauche_, and says he wrote Don Juan under the influence of gin and water. But much of that sort of talk is merely for stage effect, and we see how industrious he was, and read of his training vigorously to reduce corpulence, and of his being such an exceptionally experienced swimmer as to rival Leander in crossing the h.e.l.lespont....

The machinery of sensitive souls is as delicate as it is valuable, and cannot bear the rough usage which coa.r.s.e customs inflict upon it. It is broken to pieces by blows which common natures laugh at. The literary man, with his highly-cultivated, tightly-strung sensations, is often more than others susceptible of the noxious, and less susceptible of the beneficial results of alcohol. His mind is easier to cloud, and there is a deeper responsibility in clouding it....

Equally when we descend into the lower regions of Parna.s.sus, the abodes of talent and cleverness, and the supply of periodical literary requirements, we find the due care of the body absolutely essential to the continued usefulness of the intellect. The first thing to which one entering the profession of literature must make up his mind is to be healthy, and he can only be so by temperance.... Tobacco should not be indulged in during working hours. Whatever physiological effect it has is sedative, and so obstructs mental operations."

_Manual of Diet in Health and Disease_.

1876, p. 162.

PROFESSOR THOMAS R. FRASER, EDINBURGH.

"The stimulating action on the brain of quant.i.ties far short of intoxicating, is accompanied with a paralysing action which seems most rapidly and powerfully to involve the higher faculties. Mental work may seem to be rendered more easy, but ease is gained at the expense of quality. The editor of a newspaper will tell you that, if he has been dining out, he cannot with confidence write a leading article until he has allowed sufficient time to elapse from the effect of the wine he has drunk, in moderation, to pa.s.s away; and even the novelist, whose brain-work is in the regions of imagination, will relate a similar experience.... In a person accustomed to the use of tobacco the intellectual work is difficult when smoking cannot be indulged in, the mind cannot easily be concentrated on a subject, and unrest is produced--but this disappears when recourse is had to smoking; and probably some of its reputation as a soothing agent has on this account been acquired. The circulation is also a little excited, and no doubt this a.s.sists in rendering brain work more easy. In a short time, however, the circulation is slightly depressed, the pulse becoming smaller; and this may a.s.sist in producing the soothing effect generally experienced."

_The Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Stimulants and Tobacco_.

1881

HUBERT HERKOMER, A. R. A.

"It is no credit to me for being an abstainer. The credit is due to my father, who gave up smoking, drinking, intoxicating drinks, and eating meat at the same time, about twenty years ago; and as I was only ten years old then, I naturally grew into my father's habits (I now eat meat, however). The blessings of that reform have come down upon my children."

Sherlock's _Heroes in the Strife_.