The Butte inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1901-1912, 1901-12-20
FOOD AND BRAINS.
Great Thinkers as a Rule Are Abste-
mious Men.


mious Men.
In a passage of is Confessions" des-
canting upon the nature of drunken
ness, DeQuincy concludes that the exact
conditions indicated is a question of ac-
curacy in terms He was assured on
medical authority that a man could be,
and had been, drunk upon beefsteak.
This is largely true, for even solid food
may produce at any rate great mental
torpor. The comfort of a good dinner
may have suggested a writer's theme,
we debut If it ever promptly stirred
his pen. 1t is the empty stomach that
best suits a full head, and ideas that
flow out freely before. retire with the
entry of a substantial repast.
oliver Wendell Holmes, with that
charming blend of wit and scientific
knowledge that gave the distinction to
his writings, has discoursed upon this
very point. He talks of the Dubious
headed fellows steaming as they write'
and shows how to meet the demands of
thought and imagination. The brain
must have more than it's share of the cir
culating blood. There must be no rival
in the full liver or the activity digesting
glands of the gastric mucous membrane.
Do not eat, heavily. then, if you are soon
to think hard. Either your ideas or your
dinner will be neglected and lie sorry
weight upon your head or your epigas-
trium. The poor, half-starving poet Is
familiar to everyone. We may mitigate
our pity Dy rejecting that in many cases
he would have been no poet If he had
not starved.
Enough fuel to sustain the fire of life
is necessary for work, but heap on the
coal and you will deaden the overbur-
dened flame. The great thinkers, the
great workers in any direction but a
purely physical one, have for the most
part been abstemious men. If not
naturally of small appetite they have
exercised constant restraint, grudging
from the play of higher functions every
moment and every energy spent upon
the animal activities of their nature.
habit soon helps the fine effort of such
people, and it becomes natural for
them to eat less, to drink less and to
sleep less than their fellows. Thus, in
a long life Of intellectual activity many
scores of hours are utilized for the
main purpose which in the case of
other men are squandered upon the
dinner table or in the mere nothingness
of sleep or idling.
Carlyle was justified in declaring
capacity for work to be the essence Of
genius. Whatever great mans life Is
read, no matter how brilliant his nat
ural gifts, sooner or later he is found
to have worked with answering con-
stancy and imperturable devotion.
Others as gifted have left no mark; it
was in the will and power to work
that the genius asserted itself. It Is
common to hear a man say "So-and-so
is a genius, if he worked he could do
anything" Just because he does not
work 'So-and-so'' must be denied the
title. In the natural sciences and pro-
LESSONS, such as medicine, that depend
upon them, the inevitableness of great
work for great achievement is, perhaps,
more obvious than in the service of art
and literature. The artist and the
writer of genius are gifted with inspir-
atoms falling to no man of mere talent.
however hard he works. Yet, even SO,
the genius works to illustrate his in
spiration. whether 1t Is Raphael at his
easel or Shakespeare at his desk, with
a kind Of frenzy of application and a
continuous determination that are inn
possible to men not SO endowei.-Lon-
don Lancet.