South Bend news-times. (South Bend, Ind.) 1913-1938, 1913-08-28

lie NJ II HDOOI Inn
CROUCH YOU CARRY. =
x Why ii is Poison TO Your Bcdy j
X and How it VIII Kill You if =
x You Keep the Crouch Ac- i
x lively at Work. \
). X X X X X X X X X X X i
BY ALBERT FORD FERGUSON.
How many times do you poison
yourself with a crouch?
Don't laugh and try TO pass it of
as a joke. We are not using poi
son" as a figure Of speech. We're
using il TO mean just what the die
tiOnary says: ANY substance which
introduced into the living organism
directly tends 10 destroy the life or
impair the health of that organism. "
And the crouch is a far more popu-
lar form of poison for suicide than
bichloride Of mercury or arsenic or
laudanum. Most of the people who
take it don't know they are commit
ting suicide. They think they are ex-
ercising the God-given right of
American citizens TO conduct them
selves as they please. but Srouches
kill just as surely though not quite
so quickly as any Of those violent
poisOns that have been noted.
Did you ever hear of the pneumo-
gastric nerve?
You probably have, but haven't
bothered yourself to distinguish it
from a new brand of soap or breach
of the mental healing industry. 1t
isn't either and ii has some of the
properties usually assigned to both.
1t has a cleansing power, in a sense,
IL H. Of Ha lose
slender threads with which all the
mental healers hitch their extrava-
giant claims to imperishable fact. In
a word, ii is the means of furnishing
nervous energy to the lungs, the heart
and the stomach.
The pneumogastric nerve furnishes
the stomach with whatever sense Of
action it possesses. 1t isn't neces-
sary for anyone to tell you that when
YOU are eating-when you are filling
the stomach with fOOd-the stomach
should have every opportunity in the
world to do its work properly. There
should be nothing that would inter-
rupt its functions or reduce its power
to digest food.
Now when you try to entertain
food and a crouch in the same sys-
tenn you do about the same thing
that railroad dispatchers, in mo-
they start two trains going in oppo-
site directions on the same track.
There is going to be a collision. You
can't carry two loads along the main
line of the nervous system any more
than you can on q railroad track.
Something has got to give way.
To properly digest food it Is neces-
sary that each factor of digestion
should work to it's maximum efficien-
of
the factory into which you turn your
raw materials for strength and ener-
gy, must contribute its proper and eX-
act power Nature isn't eXtravagant
in providing materials with which to
work. She gives just enough and no
more. Now, when that pneumOgas-
trio nerve of yours is engaged in dis
tributing your crouch over it's de-
partment of the nervous system it
cannot give the attention its job at
the stomach demands
You probably know that in chem
istry there are lots of perfectly harm
! less solutions or com binatiOnS that
include a lot o poisOns. 1t is the
combination of several of them that
makes them nOn-pOisOnous. 1t is
more or less the same way with the
organic functions of the human body,
especially the functions of the Stom-
ach and digestive organs. They are
secreting or expelling chemicals all
the time If a lot of these chemicals
got loose in the system by themselves
they would play hob. They are sup
posed to circulate together or with
something else in just the right pro-
portion-that is, they do when all of
the organic functions are working.
But
When you have been making a
monkey out of your pneumagastric
nerve with a crouch, those bodily
functions can't all work together and
some of those pOisOns do get loose in
the system and they do play hob.
They don't kill you at once. Far
from it, They provide you with nice.
long, lingering, painful death.
You start in with what you call
nervous dyspepsia, and then you de-
velop -gastritis and then prob
ably gastric fever and not infrequent-
ly apopleXy. You'll find "a lot of high
sounding, high priced, aristOcratiC
names for them in the dictionary. But
the right name is crouch.
Cut out the crouch and you'll put
five TO 20 years usefulness onto the
end of your life. Because cutting out
the crouch means cutting out the
dose of poison you take every time
you have one.