INDIGESTION AND NERVOUS DEPRESSION. 229 



dition to do so. The man, and very likely his friends also, wonders at 

 his condition, and when he goes to his medical attendant to describe 

 his case he says, " I take all sorts of strengthening things, and yet I 

 feel so weak." If, instead of using these words, he were to say " Be- 

 cause I take all sorts of strengthening things I feel so weak," he would 

 express a part at least of the truth. He and his friends who wonder 

 with him forget that all the functions of life are more or less pro- 

 cesses of combustion, and that they are subject to laws similar to those 

 which regulate the burning of the coal in our fireplaces. Two things 

 are necessary for the combustion, fuel and oxygen; sometimes it is the 

 fuel that fails, but not unfrequently it is the oxygen. Sometimes, no 

 doubt, our fires go out because the fuel is quite exhausted, but this is 

 very rarely the case. It is only under very exceptional circumstances 

 that we find a fire burned away so completely as to leave nothing but 

 ash. Almost invariably some fuel still remains often, indeed, enough 

 to make up a good fire when properly put together. If we sift the 

 ashes from the grate we generally find a quantity of cinders, sufiicient 

 to make a fire, and these have ceased to burn because they were un- 

 provided with oxygen, which was prevented from reaching them by 

 the ashes with which they were covered. 



The reason why our fires burn low, or go out altogether, either is 

 that we put on too much coal, or that we allow them to be smothered 

 in ashes. It is the child who pokes the fire from the top to break the 

 coal and make it burn faster; the wise man pokes it from below so as 

 to rake out the ashes and allow free access of oxygen. And so it is 

 with the functions of life, only that, these being less understood, many 

 a man acts in resrard to them as the child does to the fire. The man 

 thinks that his brain is not acting because he has not supplied it with 

 sufficient food. He takes meat three times a day, and beef -tea, to sup- 

 ply its wants, as he thinks, and he puts in a poker to stir it up in the 

 shape of a glass of sherry or a nip from the brandy-bottle. And yet, 

 all the time, what his brain is suffering from is not lack of fuel, but 

 accumulation of ash; and the more he continues to cram himself with 

 food, and to supply himself with stimulants, although they may help 

 him for the moment, the worse does he ultimately become, just as the 

 child's breaking the coal may cause a temporary blaze, but allows the 

 fire all the moi*e quickly to become smothered in ashes. It would 

 seem that vital processes are much more readily arrested by the accu- 

 mulation of waste products within the organs of the body than by the 

 want of nutriment to the organs themselves. In all "cases of fasting, 

 whether voluntary or compulsory, life is prolonged to a much greater 

 extent if water be freely supplied. Without water the individual 

 quickly dies, however much other nourishment he may get, but with 

 abundance of water he may live for a considerable time, even if he 

 take no solid nutriment at all. Here it is not that the water acts as a 

 food; it supplies no new energy to the body, for, unlike starch, or 



