Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/471

Rh they will regain their native vigor! Their infirmities could not have been traced to any single cause, but were due to the combined influence of numerous unnatural conditions.

A similar combination of abnormal circumstances causes thousands of the perplexing complaints known as nervous diseases—nervous debility, languor, want of vital vigor. The introduction of narcotic drinks is no sufficient explanation for the present increase of such disorders. Prince Pückler-Muskau describes an iron-fisted Arab chieftain of Southern Tunis who, in his eightieth year, could manipulate a bow that would have nonplused the champions of our archery clubs, who undertook an expedition that kept him in the saddle for three days and two nights, and who could abstain from food for the same length of time, but always traveled with a skinful of moist coffee-paste, which he sucked and chewed like tobacco. West China mountaineers, able to contest the prize of any weight-lifting match or wrestling-bout, and of otherwise most abstemious habits, can not subsist without a daily dose of the national beverage. No sensible person would maintain that such people owe their vigor to their narcotic tipples; no pathologist would deny that it deprives them of part of their strength, but that its use alone could cause the premature decrepitude of millions of Indo-Germanic invalids would be an equally untenable assertion. It is merely an additional factor in the multitude of unnatural habits that make up the misery of our modern modes of life.

That our primogenitors passed their days among trees is one of the few points on which Moses and Darwin agree; whether four handers or frugivorous two-handers, they certainly were forest-creatures, and breathed an air saturated with elements of which the atmosphere of our tenement barracks is more devoid than the briny breeze of the ocean. Our lungs suffer for it; but not our lungs alone. Besides being the best pulmonary pabulum, oxygen is a nerve-tonic; a forester, a hunter, a Swiss shepherd-boy, in a state of tubercular consumption, would be less exceptional phenomena than in a state of nervous fretfulness. A constitutional kind of good-humor sweetens the hardships of the overtaxed peasantry of Southern Europe, as its absence certainly aggravates the misery of our factory-slaves. And it would be a mistake to suppose that only summer air can exercise this nerve-soothing influence. Let a chlorotic girl take a sleigh-ride on a cold, clear winter day, or through a snow-storm; let her skate; give her a chance to get an hour's out-door exercise even on drizzly or frosty days. The north wind may white-freeze her ear-tips, but it will restore the color of her cheeks, it will restore her appetite, her energy, and her buoyant spirits. Those whom necessity compels to limit their out-door rambles to the half-mile between home and shop, should let the night make up for the shortcomings of the day, and sleep—in dry weather, at least—in the draught of a wide-open window. Only a first experiment of that sort will necessitate the addition of a night-cap to