The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-12-16
THE STOMACH AND THE BRAIN.


LHe LdlleT WOTkS beSL w HSH lle FoI-
 mer is Not Overloaded.
 The London Lancet assured it's read CTS that man who is too well fed is
 not likely to do much brain work Tn a passage of his Confessions,
 descanting upon the nature of drunk 1 eness De Quincey concludes that the
 exact condition indicated is a question
 of accuracy ill terms" says the Lancet.
 He was assured, on medical authority,
 that a man could be, and had been, drunk on a. beefsteak. This is largely i true, for even solid food may produce at any rate great mental torpor. The !, comfort of a good dinner may have sug- gested a writer's theme, but we doubt whether it ever promptly. stirred h.s pen. It is the empty stomach that pests 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 with and scientific knowledge that gave the distinction to his writings, has dis coursed upon this very point He talks of the 'bulbous- headed fellows steaming as they write and shows how to meet
 
 tion.
 ''Ehe brain must have more than it's share of the circulating blood. There must be no rival in the full liver or the activity digesting glands of the gastric mucous mebrane. DO not eat heavily, then, if you are soon to think hard. Either your ideas or your dinner will be neglected and lie in a sorry weight upon your head or your epigastrium. The poor, half-starving poet is familiar to every one. We may mitigate our pity by reflecting 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 over burdened flame. The great think CTS, the great workers in any direction but q 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 ev cry moment and every energy spent upon the animal activities of their na- ture.
 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 declar- ing a capacity for work to be the es- sence of genius. Whatever great mans life is read, not matter how brilliant his natural gifts, sooner or later he is found to have worked with unswerving constancy and imperturbable devotion Others as gifted have left no mark; it was in the will and power to work that the genius asserted itself. It is com mon to hear a man say. atSo-and-so is a genius; if he worked he could any thing Just because he does not work 'So-and-so' must be denied the title Tn the natural sciences and professions, 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 inspiration falling to no man of mere talent. however hard he works Yet even so the genius works to illustrate his inspiration, whether it is Raphael at his easel or Shakespeare at his desk, with a kind of frenzy of application and continuous determin- ation that are impossible to men not so endowed Such labors of the will 4lS. ott tI,r ln whole energies of human being. No lower member of the confederate body must seek employment while the mas ter parts are thus at work. So it Is, then, that the little-eatng worker blesses the world with fruits which the and the gourmet may possi- ply enjoy at his well-fed ease, but can never hope to emulate"