It is because these little matters of keeping the brain in its best
condition by attending to details of living have not been thoroughly
understood, that we have so many unaccountable accidents occurring
every day. The knowledge of man’s forces and how they are controlled
has not kept pace with his wonderful mechanical and electrical
discoveries, so we have gone along with brain, instincts and training
well enough for handling the plow and side-wheel steamboat, but not for
the safe control of the delicate and powerful machines of to-day.
For example: a young man who runs an auto goes one night to a dance
where he breathes foul air, smokes and drinks a little beer. He returns
late to his bed and rises early in the morning to take out the auto
for a speedy spin. He knew the day before that he was to go with a
party of children and women for an early drive. But what he did not
know was that the foul air, tobacco and beer would surely make for less
correct connection between his brain impulses and the response from his
muscles, hands and arms.
Now all this little night’s pleasure, while harmless enough perhaps in
its way and certainly harmless for a man who was to drive a hack the
next morning, was injurious for one who needed every tenth of action
between brain and hand under absolute control. There is coming a time
when all these matters will be taught as well as the combustion parts
of an engine.
In these details I am not referring to dissipation as it is generally
considered. We accept without argument the injury such habits do――the
certain ruin which follows drink and all that goes with that state. We
take this auto driver whom we are using for an example, as a temperate
man. And justly considered he is one, but nevertheless he has by this
apparently harmless pleasure of one night, gone to work the next day
with the fine edge off his brain-tools. When the time comes for the
most accurate judgment and an immediate response of hands to avoid the
danger the brain sees, there is a part of a second in delay, and then
the awful accident happens.
How did it happen? Those left alive cannot understand. The right thing
was done at the right moment, so all think. The driver was a careful
young man, of good habits, temperate, “never known to have been under
the influence of drink, and always trustworthy.”
To-day is the day of the brain worker, and the man who lets the edge
of his brain become dulled is a danger to himself and whatever he
controls. And it is these little things which dull the brain; matters
of such little importance in a man’s outward life that no one would
suspect the direful results.
You can no longer do as your fathers used to do; we are living in a
distinctly different age; we are daily dealing with powerful forces
undreamed of in the past generation, and we must make ourselves ever
ready to handle these forces.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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