Study and Stimulants: Or, the Use of Intoxicants and Narcotics in Relation to Intellectual Life, as Illustrated by Personal Communications on the Subject, from Men of Letters and of Science
Science
Study and Stimulants: Or, the Use of Intoxicants and Narcotics in Relation to Intellectual Life, as Illustrated by Personal Communications on the Subject, from Men of Letters and of Science
My breakfast is a simple one--hominy and milk, or in place of hominy,
brown bread, or oat-meal, or wheaten grits, and, in the season, baked
sweet apples. Buckwheat cakes I do not decline, nor any other article
of vegetable food, but animal food I never take at breakfast. Tea and
coffee I never touch at any time. Sometimes I take a cup of chocolate,
which has no narcotic effect, and agrees with me very well. At
breakfast I often take fruit, either in its natural state or freshly
stewed.
After breakfast I occupy myself for awhile with my studies, and then,
when in town, I walk down to the office of _The Evening Post_,
nearly three miles distant, and after about three hours, return,
always walking, whatever be the weather or the state of the streets.
In the country I am engaged in my literary tasks till a feeling of
weariness drives me out into the open air, and I go upon my farm or
into the garden and prune the trees, or perform some other work about
them which they need, and then go back to my books. I do not often
drive out, preferring to walk.
In the country I dine early, and it is only at that meal that I take
either meat or fish, and of these but a moderate quantity, making my
dinner mostly of vegetables. At the meal which is called "tea," I take
only a little bread and butter, with fruit, if it be on the table. In
town, where I dine later, I make but two meals a day. Fruit makes a
considerable part of my diet, and I eat it at almost any part of the
day without inconvenience. My drink is water, yet I sometimes, though
rarely, take a glass of wine. I am a natural temperance man, finding
myself rather confused than exhilarated by wine. I never meddle with
tobacco, except to quarrel with its use.
That I may rise early, I, of course, go to bed early: in town, as
early as 10; in the country, somewhat earlier. For many years I have
avoided in the evening every kind of literary occupation which tasks
the faculties, such as composition, even to the writing of letters,
for the reason that it excites the nervous system and prevents sound
sleep.
My brother told me, not long since, that he had seen in a Chicago
newspaper, and several other Western journals, a paragraph in which it
is said that I am in the habit of taking quinine as a stimulant; that
I have depended upon the excitement it produces in writing my verses,
and that, in consequence of using it in that way, I had become as deaf
as a post. As to my deafness, you know that to be false, and the rest
of the story is equally so. I abominate all drugs and narcotics, and
have always carefully avoided every thing which spurs nature to
exertions which it would not otherwise make. Even with my food I do
not take the usual condiments, such as pepper, and the like.
March 30, 1871.
_Hygiene of the Brain_, New York, 1878.
DR. KING CHAMBERS,
HONORARY PHYSICIAN TO H. R. H. THE PRINCE OF WALES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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