The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-11-10
Poisoning Ourselves.

Our arboreal ancestor, asleep in a
tree. walked hungry, and breakfasted
perhaps on fruit or berries, which may
have taken an hours exercise to find
Fault, however, is not largely sustain
ing, and during the course of the
morning there was again the same old
gnawing in his tum-tum. If he wished
to pres e at a table d'hote before sur
set he had to make a good kill or over
haul an ant hill, or make prolonged
search for succulent roots.
The hungry tissue cells Of the
arboreal ancestor were instructed to
extract every molecule of nutrition
from the food ingested, while at the
same time the muscular nerve required
for self-preServation kept his bodily
functions active. You see, it was in
the long ago that orders were given
those ~reedy little cells along the diges-
tive tract to suck up all possible pro-
vision for the maintenance of the body
and start it on its way to the blood
stream.
The same orders are issued today,
while the habits of civilized man differ
| So widely from that free ranging in
| the open air that a word was coined
| to indicate this modern method of Iiv-
| ing. We say, The man has a sedentary
occupation; or, Most women live a
| sedentary life. That is true! We sit!
We sit to eat, to read, to write, to
motor, to drive, to be shaver, to be
| SnaInpOO6Q, TO De IQan1CuroQ ana poQ1-
! cured, and on Sunday to be preached
| at and sung to.
If you walked at dawn tomorrow and
| had to run down a rabbit for your
| breakfast or go hungry you would feel
no need of punching bag or head
| ache powder. No feari You will rise,
! and having no appetite, languidly
| breakfast on half a grapefruit, one egg,
two cups Of coffee, three rolls, and four
andoulettes. You will make a late
| luncheon on Frenched potatoes, rolls,
| q, fried spider, peach pie, and iced tea.
After a pick-me-up you will devastate
| a four-course dinner whose materials
are drawn from the ends of the earth.
You will have stored kinetic energy
| to run a Marathon and spent as much
| as it might take to push a pen or the
| typewriter keys for a few hours. Every
| organ is straining to take care of this
| surplus nutrition; the liver and kid
| neyS especially are taxed to do their
| share in the separation and elimination
of debris. Every little cell in the body
is shrieking for pure water and oxygen,
to flood burn up, or wash away its
| waste products. But the blood, that
river which is to them and to you the
river of life, answers:
go slow with that oxygen! I'm SO
| loaded with impurities my oxygen car
riers have struck; and as for pure wa
ter, the boss won't drink it,
This abnormal process is called auto
intoxication, because the poisons which
| overwhelm the tissues are self-derived
And what train of sequences follows
this lack of elimination and subsequent
absorption of toxins and ptomaines, Of
more simply, poisonous products of fer
menting digested food? Pimply COM
pIexion, loss of appetite, impoverished
blood. headache, neuralgia, rheuma-
tism, flatulence gastritis, gallstones
collie, appendicitis.
That is a sufficiently ferocious list
and it is only a part of the possibilities
1t is true that all these disorders may
spring from other causes; but 1t is also
true that auto-fntoxication so lower:
bodily resistance that the victim il
susceptible to every pathological lesion
-Joslyn Manning M D., in New Yorl
| Tribune.