Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/101

96 and nerve-rust, rushes to the kidneys, and there unloads its bad freight; but all servants get tired, and so do the organs named; so that after a while they cease to drain and sift so perfectly as of yore; consequently the alkaline phosphates and urea are not all discharged, but a portion is poured back into the circulation, until finally every inch of the physical body is poisoned; and a healthy soul cannot healthfully act through poisoned nerves and tainted fluids. The kidneys begin to suffer and give out; the supra-renal capsules change their fibre, and no longer act as storehouses for the kidney-life placed there daily by the watchful soul. The bladder goes next, then the testes, prostate, ovaries, or uterus follow; and before you know it, the man or woman is a splendid wreck. Wherefore follow Solomon's advice, and remember two things: 1st, that there's a time for work and rest and sleep, and amusements and converse and amorous diversion; next, that all work, and no play, makes Jack a dull boy; meals, sleep, love-seasons, all should be as nearly as possible orbital or periodic in their motions, just as the day, night, winter, spring, and autumn in the world without. In a little while nature, will assist, and each season will come in full force at its proper time, just as eclipses occur, and green fields smile again.

Surely married people will understand this delicate, but very important suggestion. Hundreds of people, consulting me as physician, have benefited by that advice, and by resolutely sleeping apart, as a custom, have begun to realize a domestic felicity they never before imagined to be possible. Nay, it is absolutely necessary in all cases where perfect restoration does not follow every night's slumber.

Reader, you have one hundred and sixty bones, and five hundred muscles; your blood weighs twenty-five pounds; your heart is five inches in length and three inches in diameter; it beats seventy times a minute, four thousand two hundred times per hour, one hundred thousand eight hundred times per day, and twenty-six millions seven hundred and twenty-five thousand two hundred times per year. At each beat a little over two ounces of blood is thrown out of it; and each day it receives and discharges seven tons of that wonderful fluid. Your lungs will contain a gallon of air, and you inhale