Waterbury evening Democrat., 1905-10-20

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 Americans don't work enough; also they sleep too much. Such are the as- 1 sertions of Thomas A. Edison, accord Ing to James Creelman, who recently interviewed the inventor at his lab pratory for the New York World. h. | cidentally Mir. Edison says Americans eat too much, and as evidence of this be offers the fact that he has lived for two months on four ounces of food three times day.
 "Yes, it's true the country is food drunk, '"said Mir. Edison. "Pm not so much interested in the economic side of overeating at a time when the cost of living is increasing, but have in- vestigated the subject enough to know that man can't do good, clear, logical brain work with his stomach full of undigested food.
 'The fact is that people eat too much, sleep too much and don't work enough. The average man would be much better off and would do very much better work if he would cut down his food and sleep and labor a little harder. Men eat and sleep themselves stupid. Sometimes they eat and sleep them selves into the grave. They rsak about working too hard. That is absolute nonsense. Generally speaking, man can't work too hard.
 "Why, I've worked for five days and nights without sleep and with. very lit- tie food and did as good work in those conditions as I ever did in my life. That was when I was working out the incandescent light idea. It's all mat ter of habit.
 Some time ago my stomach troubled me. I didn't know what was the mat ter, but imagine now that it was the X ray that caused some internal con striction. However, when my trouble was acute I began to experiment with my diet to see what would come of 1t. I had always been a light eater, but I decided to cut down my food still more.
 For two months 1 lived on four ounces of food for each meal. That made twelve ounces of food day. Of course I varied my food. would take a teaspoonful of peas, a small piece Of toast and caviar, a tiny sandwich, . ! little bit of ham, fragment of rye bread, with Swiss cheese and so on.
 What was the result? At the end of i two months of this diet weighed just as much as when began, exactly 1855 pounds. I found that living on twelve ounces of food a day for four weeks had made me mentally brighter and had neither diminished my strength nor my weight. And, mind you, had been working just as hard as before I cut down the size of my meals.
 "As for sleep, that is another prevail 1 ing form of intemperahce. People Sleep ] too much. They drug themselves with sleep. The truth is that this vice of oversleeping is a habit. If a man will only try to get along with less sleep he will be surprised to discover how little he really needs. And he will find his faculties very much im- proved by the effort.
 Tt is not so much the quantity as the quality of sleep that counts. The man who lies eight or nine hours in bed, tossing about from time to time, doesn't get anything like as much rest as the man who sleeps soundly for five hours.
 "We are slaves to sleep. Why, for instance, should we go to sleep at night? The only difference between night and day is that the sun goes down in one case and comes up in the other. What difference should that make? I suppose it is simply habit acquired through thousands of years of ancestry. We have become like the chickens, who go to roost when 1t Is dark. l cannot account for it except on the ground of long continued habit
 Another common mistake is to look upon hard work as injurious. You see Mir. This-and-that-and-th -other-fellow announcing that he has been working very hard and must go of to Europe for rest. Boshl He has been eating and drinking too much and hasn't worked half enough.
 'The healthy man can't work too hard or too much. When his work tires him out be will go to sleep and will get the right kind of sleep.
 Work, hard work, simply puts an edge on a man for more hard work. If he is dull and can't sleep let him work little more. If that doesn't help mat. ters let him work still more and still harder. In the end he will come out all right.
 Smoking tobacco Is a pretty good working stinulant. I find 1t much bet ter than drink of any kind. Alcohol seems 10 scatter the thoughts. It's a poor thing to work on. But tobaeco helps.
 But cigarettes! They're deadly. Ii isn't the tobacco. it's the acrolein pro duced by the burning paper that does the harm. and, let me tell you, acroleir Is one of the most terrible drugs in it: effect on the human body. The burning of ordinary cigarette paper always produces adolein- That Is what makes the smoke 30 irritating really be Iieve that 1t often makes boys insane We sometimes develop acrolein in thli laboratory in our experiments witt glycerin. One vhif of t from the over drove one of my assistants out of ths building the other dsy. I can hardly exaEeerate the dangerous nature oi nrrrIntn nrf ref fflnf is rhaf q man nr