Year: 1873

All hygienic reformers agree ih decrying
the use of artificial stimulants. There is,
however, q natural stimulant, which, when
wrongly employed, has worked more harm to
great men than any spirituous compound ever
yet invented.


1 allude to the excessive activity of the hu-
man brain in some one direction, through as
piration or emulation. Many people are MUIR
dered outright by the strength of strong but
undisciplined wills. They are as dangerous
to the possessor, as baleful as fraught with
evil consequences, both mental and physical,
as are the natural elements of earth, air, fire
and water, when not restrained by the neces-
sary governing power.


We have all been recently saddened by the
death of the great editor, Horace Greeley.
He furnishes one oft the most mournful, as we'll
as one Of the most illustrious examples on re-
cord of the terrible power of the mind over
the physical functions. No man with so strong
will could possibly have had as hard a
master as it proved itself to him, and in the
end no worse enemy. The hardest-hearted
overseer of scourged and covering slaves nev-
er drove his victims with the ferocity with
which the arch-tyrant goads its defenseless
servants, the brain and the body, into doing
its hard behests.


These self:inAicted lashes are the most mer-
cless ofall. A man may eschew every known
stimulant excepting this one. But if he knew
not not now to moderate and keep in bounds the
demand upon his brain and body, his precau-
tions in the end will still prove useless.


If living regular life, as concerns habit of
eating, drinking and exercising, the whip and
the spur may with seeming impunity be ap-
piled for years. But if the will, during these
years, is allowed unchecked power, and that
power is all turned in one direction, new
and most dreadful danger is gradually created.


The force of the will being all bent upon
the ends to which the mans life is dedicated,
it requires constantly from the brain unlawful
services.


He who can not habitually, when he is
down at night, leave all his cares at his bed
side, with the garments which he has put off,
stretching himself on the hollow of Gods
hand, content to slumber there in all child's
abandon, till the dawning light awakening
him, finds him full of new strength to take up
again the burden of his days, has no grounds
to hope for continued health and strength
much less for long lfe There are, however,
some rarely organized, who, even under NOR
bid conditions may almost by the mere force
of will, keep alive and active for years, after
an ordinary man would be in his grave; but
of such stuff is not made the common run OF
humanity. The mere fact of habitually ta-
king his cares to bed with him, kills many a
man in the meridian of life.


This is because the unceasing censorship
exercised by the will over the brain, compell-
ing it to continue active when it should be in
active, gradually but surely lays the founda-
ton of Inability to sleep. Of all morbid con-
ditions, this, when once developed, is the har-
dest to conquer. You may tell me that man
can not work, can not walk, can not eat; but
1 will not lose hope till you tell me that he
can not sleep. For then I certainly know
that death is coming, it may be slowly but
surely. But if can induce the patient to
sleep naturally, I know that shall be able,
in time, to reestablish his appetite, and upon
that his strength will follow.


Upon sleep, which is rest, and upon rest,
which is new life, I must build up all other
things.


Let every man beware, then, how he turns
deaf ear to the murmurs of tired nature, and
let him not, in his passion to do, ride rough
shod over brain and body, else, ere long, the
master will be left with none to dohis bidding,
powerless and alone when he shall have worn
out, prematurely, his much abused vassals.


This means the severance of soul and body
or worse, the death in life-of insanity.
Hence there is no power which a man who
makes a workshop of his brain, ought to cul-
tivate more assiduously than the power to
sleep.