658 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the object of his thought with necessary food, clothing, and 

 shelter, and care and relief in sickness. When these are adequate, 

 and not before, is the exercise of the " so-called " religious influ- 

 ences of any avail. This, of course, is nothing more than practical 

 common sense. A man reduced by lack of proper and sufficient 

 nourishment, and surrounded by all the depressing influences 

 of poverty, can not do wise thinking. There is not in his body 

 the blood to send to the brain for use. Where there is no fuel 

 there can be no fire. 



It is safe to say, as a general rule, that when a man is well 

 nourished his natural leaning is toward industry. He must have 

 something to do. When a man is healthy and industrious he is 

 a safe citizen. Health and industry united often point the way 

 to ambition, and ambition directed in the right path may lead 

 into vast regions of power and influence.* 



No richer endowment can be bestowed upon one than a healthy 

 and vigorous physical constitution. The possibility of starting 

 man on the journey of life so equipped rests largely with women. 

 The care of little children falls entirely to them during the time 

 when they most need the greatest amount of wise and intelligent 

 attention in order that they may be started in life with a sound 

 body, which shall be the temple for the sound mind which is to 

 be developed and cultivated later. Specialists of children's 

 diseases claim that the manner in which a child is fed and cared 

 for during the first five years of life determines what he shall be 

 ever after. 



I listened last winter to a series of lectures on insanity by a 

 specialist of the subject. In speaking of the different forms of 

 the disease, hallucination, melancholia, acute mania, etc., he said 

 that those forms of disease almost always begin with the inability 

 of the individual to digest food well. He does not eat well, does 

 not sleep well, and after a time becomes what is called " nervous," 

 which is usually nothing more than a malnourished condition of 

 the nervous system ; then he drifts into melancholia and finally 

 insanity. 



The treatment by Weir Mitchell the noted specialist of such 

 diseases, is what might vulgarly but graphically be called 

 stuffing. His patients are put to bed under the pleasantest and 

 most comfortable conditions of absolute rest and freedom from 

 responsibility, and then they are fed with as much nutritious and 

 wholesome food as they can be made to eat. The results of this 

 treatment have been most gratifying. 



What woman with the belief that it was within the bounds of 



* By ambition here is not meant the worldly ambition of amassing a fortune, but the 

 noble ambition of doing some worthy and useful work in the world. 



