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
I am not of his lordship's opinion; but seeing the great longevity of
many of our most eminent lawyers, and some of whom in early life
seemed disposed to live fast rather than long, I am more than ever
confirmed in my opinion of the vitalizing influences of temperance,
good air, and daily activity, which, with the benefits of change and
travel, can so far in after life save those whom no original force of
constitution could have saved from the effects of jollity, or of
gigantic efforts of study in early life. For one' of such hard livers,
or hard brain-workers who have escaped by the periodical resort to
healthful usages, how many thousands have been "cut off in the midst
of their days?" A lady once meeting me in Highgate, where I then
lived, asked me if I could recommend her a good doctor. I told her
that I could recommend her three. She observed that one would be
enough; but I assured her that she would find these three more
economical and efficient than any individual Galen that I could think
of. Their names were, "Temperance, Early Hours, and Daily Exercise."
That they were the only ones that I had employed for years, or meant
to employ. Soon after, a gentleman wrote to me respecting these "Three
Doctors," and put them in print. Anon, they were made the subject of
one of the "Ipswich Tracts;" and on a visit, a few years ago, to the
Continent, I found this tract translated into French, and the
title-page enriched with the name of a French physician, as the
author. So much the better. If the name of the French physician can
recommend "The Three Doctors" to the population of France, I am so
much the more obliged.
May 20, 1871.
_Hygiene of the Brain_, New York, 1878.
THE REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY
Found great benefit from the use of tobacco, though several times he
tried to give it up. He smoked the poorest tobacco, however, and Mr.
C. Kegan Paul thus describes the care Charles Kingsley took to
minimise the dangers of the habit:--
"He would work himself into a white heat over his book, till, too
excited to write more, he would calm himself down by a pipe, pacing
his grass-plot in thought, and in long strides. He was a great smoker,
and tobacco was to him a needful sedative. He always used a long and
clean clay pipe, which lurked in all sorts of unexpected places. But
none was ever smoked which was in any degree foul, and when there was
a vast accumulation of old pipes, they were sent back again to be
rebaked, and returned fresh and new. This gave him a striking simile,
which in 'Alton Locke,' he puts into the mouth of James Crossthwaite,
'Katie here believes in Purgatory, where souls are burnt clean again,
like 'bacca pipes.'"
HARRIET MARTINEAU.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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