Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/171

Rh for a grapple-swing; the Boston Hygienic Institute has patented a kind that can be fastened without visible damage to the ceiling. If the baby won't stop crying, something ought to be done about it. Yes, and as soon as possible: remove the strait-jacket apparatus, swaddling-clothes, petticoat, and all, spread a couple of rugs in a comfortable corner, and give the poor little martyr a chance to move his cramped limbs; let him roll, tumble, and kick to his heart's content, and complete his happiness by throwing the paregoric-bottle out of the window.

—Eight hours of healthy sleep are sufficient to restore the energy expended in an ordinary day's work. Extraordinary efforts, emotional excitement, sensual excesses, or malnutrition (either by insufficient food or dyspeptic habits), induce a general lassitude—a warning that the organism is being overtasked. Repose and a healthier or more liberal diet will soon restore the functional vigor of the system. But during such periods of their diminished activity the vital powers can be rallied by drastic drugs or tonic beverages—in other words, by poisons. The prostrate vitality rises against a deadly foe, as a weary sleeper would start at the touch of a serpent; and, as danger will momentarily overcome the feeling of fatigue, the organism labors with restless energy till the poison is expelled. This feverish reaction, dram-drinkers (patent dram-drinkers especially) mistake for a sign of returning vigor, persistently ignoring the circumstance that the excitement is every time followed by a prostration worse than that preceding it. Feeling the approach of a relapse the stimulator then resorts to his old remedy, thus inducing another sham revival, followed by an increased prostration, and so on; but before long the dose of the stimulant, too, has to be increased, the stimulator becomes a slave to his poison, and passes his life in a round of morbid excitements and morbid exhaustions—the former at last nothing but a feeble flickering-up of the vital flame, the latter soon aggravated by sick-headaches, "vapors," and hypochondria.

The stimulant habit in all its forms—"exhilarating beverages," "tonic medicines," "prophylactic bitters," etc.—is a dire delusion. A healthy man needs no artificial excitants; the vital principle in its normal vigor is an all-sufficient stimulus; the inspiration bought at the rum-shop is but a poor substitute for the spontaneous exaltations of a healthy mind in a healthy body. Playing with poisons is a losing game; the sweetness of the excitement is not worth the bitter reaction. In sickness stimulants can not further the actual recovery by a single hour. There is a strong progressive tendency in our physical constitution; Nature needs no prompter: as soon as the remedial process is finished, the normal functions of the organism will resume their work as spontaneously as the current of a stream resumes its course after the removal of an obstruction. A "prophylactic" brandy is Old Scratch in the rôle of an exorcist. Fevers can be prevented by