THE HUMAN ENGINE AND HOW TO STOKE IT.
An express train was standing in a London terminus, on the point of
starting for her run to Edinburgh. Several persons were admiring the
great locomotive, which was throbbing like a hound in leash, ready
to be off the moment the guard’s signal was given. The guard waved
his flag, and the train glided out of the station so smoothly, that
the unwary passenger standing up in his compartment at the time was
not even jolted. The first stopping-place, a hundred miles away, was
reached on the stroke of time, without a hitch of any sort.
The man who was responsible for this perfect running was not the driver
so much as the stoker, that humble individual, as we are apt to regard
him, whose duty it was to put the coal on the fires. Unless he had done
his work efficiently, the best driver of the finest locomotive ever
built could not have made a good run.
He took care to use the right sort of coal, to put in enough of it to
keep the fires bright, but not so much as to choke them up, and to
shovel it in with discretion and at suitable times. Few people realise
that there is a distinct art in stoking a furnace.
Yet that stoker was not a happy man. He was sallow and of a livery
type. He often suffered from headaches and spots before his eyes,
heartburn and nausea. Although he was muscular and powerfully built, he
frequently felt so tired and listless that he was hardly able to face
his day’s work.
All this was due to the circumstance that, although he had mastered the
stoking of an engine, he had never learned to feed himself properly.
He had not realised that he himself was an engine, quite as much so as
the locomotive he worked on, and that the food he took was the fuel
which supplied the driving power to his system and kept his machinery
running. It had never dawned on him that there is an art in eating
just as important as that of stoking, and demanding as much care and
foresight.
He would take his meals at any time that happened to be convenient, and
would eat anything that came before him, regardless as to whether it
suited him or not. Furthermore, he often ate to repletion, and bolted
his food down without masticating it properly. And that was why his own
machinery ran badly and he felt tired and depressed. In which respects
he was exactly like thousands of other people.
This resemblance between a steam engine and the human body is a
pronounced one. As we have already pointed out, the food, after being
digested and absorbed through the walls of the digestive tract, is
burnt up in the tissues by a process closely corresponding to that of
ordinary combustion, and there is a residue of waste products left
behind resembling the cinders and ashes of a coal fire. Nature is able
in various ways to dispose of this waste, eliminating it from the body.
If, however, the amount of food taken be excessive, the residue is so
large that the resources of the system are not sufficient to cope with
it, and in consequence it accumulates in the tissues.
Then the individual suffers from discomfort or pains in the muscles,
and from headache with a sense of tiredness, even apart from exercise
or work; also from various other symptoms, owing to this waste matter
circulating in the blood.
The wrong sort of food may have been taken, or eaten either too quickly
or at unsuitable times, and dyspepsia results. Then there is a certain
amount of undigested food constantly left behind in the stomach, and
this begins to ferment, developing a poison of its own, which gets into
the circulation and aggravates the effect of that already present. At
the same time the nutritive quality of the food is diminished, so that
there is superadded a process of starvation. There is plenty of food,
but little nourishment.
The final stage is therefore one of poisoning and inanition combined.
The effect of this on the whole body, and especially on the nervous
system, is harmful to the last degree. The headaches are accentuated,
and the individual feels depressed and irritable. The irritating
influence of these baneful products is so marked, that the different
organs begin to show signs of the damage which is slowly but surely
taking place, and the delicate nervous system feels the influence of
it most of all. The pain, discomfort and nausea caused by the contact
of acid undigested food with the lining of the stomach add to the
feeling of misery.
This may go on for years, until with one thing and another life is
hardly worth living. It may disappear for a time, only to return,
perhaps, in an aggravated form. Meanwhile the strain on the whole
organisation becomes greater, as the organs grow less capable of
propping each other up. If it is allowed to continue indefinitely, the
time may come when Nature will rebel, refusing to be treated in this
scurvy manner any longer.
The art of feeding resolves itself into four considerations: the sort
of food to take, the amount necessary, how and when to eat it.