I find that about two glasses of champagne are an admirable stimulant
to the tongue, and is, perhaps, the happiest inspiration for an after
dinner speech which can be found; but, as far as my experience goes,
wine is a clog to the pen, not an inspiration. I have never seen the
time when I could write to my satisfaction after drinking even one
glass of wine. As regards smoking, my testimony is of the opposite
character. I am forty-six years old, and I have smoked immoderately
during thirty-eight years, with the exception of a few intervals,
which I will speak of presently. During the first seven years of my
life I had no health--I may almost say that I lived on allopathic
medicine, but since that period I have hardly known what sickness is.
My health has been excellent, and remains so. As I have already said,
I began to smoke immoderately when I was eight years old; that is, I
began with one hundred cigars a month, and by the time I was twenty I
had increased my allowance to two hundred a month. Before I was
thirty, I had increased it to three hundred a month. I think I do not
smoke more than that now; I am quite sure I never smoke less. Once,
when I was fifteen, I ceased from smoking for three months, but I do
not remember whether the effect resulting was good or evil. I repeated
this experiment when I was twenty-two; again I do not remember what
the result was. I repeated the experiment once more, when I was
thirty-four, and ceased from smoking during a year and a half. My
health did not improve, because it was not possible to improve health
which was already perfect. As I never permitted myself to regret this
abstinence, I experienced no sort of inconvenience from it. I wrote
nothing but occasional magazine articles during pastime, find as I
never wrote one except under strong impulse, I observed no lapse of
facility. But by and by I sat down with a contract behind me to write
a book of five or six hundred pages--the book called "Roughing it"--
and then I found myself most seriously obstructed. I was three weeks
writing six chapters. Then I gave up the fight, resumed my three
hundred cigars, burned the six chapters, and wrote the book in three
months, without any bother or difficulty. I find cigar smoking to be
the best of all inspirations for the pen, and, in my particular case,
no sort of detriment to the health. During eight months of the year I
am at home, and that period is my holiday. In it I do nothing but very
occasional miscellaneous work; therefore, three hundred cigars a month
is a sufficient amount to keep my constitution on a firm basis. During
the family's summer vacation, which we spend elsewhere, I work five
hours every day, and five days in every week, and allow no
interruption under any pretext. I allow myself the fullest possible
marvel of inspiration; consequently, I ordinarily smoke fifteen cigars
during my five hours' labours, and if my interest reaches the
enthusiastic point, I smoke more. I smoke with all my might, and allow
no intervals.
MARK TWAIN.
March 14, 1882.
MR. CORNELIUS WALFORD, F. S. S., F. I. A.
The subject you enquire about is one of vital consequence to
brain-workers. I am distinctly of opinion that all stimulants are
decidedly injurious to the physical system, and that as a consequence
they tend to weaken and destroy the mental powers. I believe tobacco
to be a more insidious stimulant than alcoholic beverages. It can be
indulged in more constantly without visible degradation; but surely it
saps the powers of the mind. In this view I gave it up some years ago.
Many men say they smoke to make them think. I notice that a number of
them seem to think to very small purpose, either for themselves or
mankind generally. I am not a total abstainer, and theoretically have
had a belief that pure wine ought to be beneficial to the human
system. In practice I have not found it so, though I have always been
a very moderate drinker. I certainly never drank a glass of wine or
any other liquor in view of mental stimulus, and did not know it was
ever seriously regarded as having any such effect, except in so far
as it might invigorate the body, which I now find it does not do; but
in case of sedentary occupations is positively injurious in its
effects. Until mankind can rise above beer and tobacco, the race will
remain degraded, as it now is, mentally, socially and physically.
P.S.--I have never had so large an amount of mental labour on hand as
now--three works in the press (including an encyclopedia, whereof all
the articles are written by myself), all requiring much thought and
research. I am taking no stimulants whatever.
CORNELIUS WALFORD.
March 9, 1882.
MR. G. F. WATTS, R. A.
In answer to your letter asking for my experience and opinion as a
worker, on the subject of tobacco and alcoholic stimulants, I must
begin by saying that reflection and experience should teach us the
truth of the adage that "What is one man's meat is another man's
poison," and that what may be wisely recommended in some cases is by
no means desirable in all; in fact, that it is equally unwise and
illiberal to dogmatise upon any subject that is not capable of
scientific proof. Being myself a total abstainer from tobacco, and
equally so, when not recommended by my doctor, from wine and all
stimulants, I confess to having a strong prejudice against them. The
use of wine seems to be natural to man, and it is possible he would be
the better for it if it could be restrained within very moderate
limits; but I have good reason for concluding that the more active
stimulants are altogether harmful. It is natural as time goes on that
new wants should be acquired, and new luxuries discovered, and
doubtless it is in the abuse, and not in the use, of such things that
the danger lies; but we all know how prone humanity is to abuse in its
indulgences. It is, I believe, an admitted fact that even people who
are considered to be strictly temperate as a rule, habitually take
more wine than is good for them. With regard to tobacco, I cannot help
thinking that its introduction by civilised races has been an unmixed
evil. History shows us that before it was known the most splendid
mental achievements were carried put, and the most heroic endurance
exhibited, things done which if it be possible to rival, it is quite
impossible to excel. The soldier, and sailor, the night-watchman
especially in malarious districts may derive comfort and benefit from
its use, and there I think it should be left; for my observation has
induced me to think that nothing but evil results from its use as a
luxurious habit. The subject is doubtless one of vital interest and
importance; but I must end as I began by disclaiming a right to
dogmatise.
G. F. WATTS.
Feb. 19, 1882.
PROFESSOR ANDREW WILSON, Ph. D., F. R. S. E.
The question you ask concerning the effects of alcohol and tobacco
upon the health of brain-workers, relatively (I presume) to myself, is
a complex one. Personally, I find with often excessive work in the way
of lecturing, long railway journeys, and late hours, writing at other
times, that I digest my food with greater ease when I take a little
claret or beer with meals. Experiment has convinced me that the slight
amount of alcohol I imbibe in my claret is a grateful stimulus to
digestion. As to smoking, I take an occasional cigar, but only after
dinner, and never during the day. As to health, I never suffer even
from a headache. I usually deliver 18 lectures a week, often more; and
I have often to make journeys of over 50 miles after a hard day's work
here, to lecture in the country. My writing is done at night chiefly,
but as a rule, I don't sit after 12-30. My work is exceptionally
constant, yet I seem to be exceptionally healthy. I regard my claret
or wine to meals in the same light in which others regard their tea,
as a pleasant stimulus, followed in my case by good effect. At the
same time, there may be others who may do the same amount of work as
abstainers. My position in this matter has always been that of
recognising the individual phases of the matter as the true basis of
its settlement. What I can urge is, that I am an exceptionally healthy
man, doing what I may fairly claim to be exceptionally hard work, and
careful in every respect of health, finding that a moderate quantity
of alcohol, with food, is for me better than total abstinence.
Whiskey, or alcohol, in its strong forms I never taste.
ANDREW WILSON.
Feb. 14, 1882.
MR. JUSTIN WINSER.
Referring to your note, I may say that I have never used stimulants
to incite intellectual work, but have found occasionally in social
gatherings a certain intellectual exhilaration arising from its use,
which conduces to quickness of wit, etc., but perhaps not so much from
alcoholic liquors as from coffee, a cup of coffee being with me a good
preparation for an after-dinner speech. My moderate use of a stimulant
has not disclosed to me beneficial or hurtful effects. I often go long
intervals without it; and have never indulged in it, to great extent,
so that my testimony is of a narrow experience. My use of tobacco is
so inconsiderable as to show nothing.
JUSTIN WlNSER.
March 9, 1882.
M. WURTZ,
PARIS.
In reply to your letter of the 7th February, I have the honour to
recall you the opinion which is current to-day among doctors of the
highest authority, namely, that the abuse of alcohol and tobacco
offers the greatest inconvenience from the point of view of health.
Alcoholism produces a state of disorder of the organism to which a
great number of maladies attach themselves. It is not a question of
the moderate use of excitants, but the limit between use and abuse is
difficult to trace, because it varies according to the country, the
climate, and the habits of the individual constitution.
A. WURTZ.
March 14, 1882.
APPENDIX.
DR. RISDON BENNETT.
"There are few people, I believe, who are aided in the actual
performance of brain-work by alcohol; not that many, nay, most
persons, are not rendered more ready and brilliant in conversation, or
have their imagination quickened for a time. But the steady, continued
exercise of the mental powers demanded of professional men is more
often impeded than aided at the time by alcohol."
_Contemporary Review_, vol. 34, p. 343.
THE REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M. A.
"It has been said that moderate doses of alcohol stimulate work into
greater activity, and make life happier and brighter. My experience,
since I became a total abstainer, has been the opposite. I have found
myself able to work better. I have a greater command over any powers I
possess. I can make use of them when I please. When I call upon them,
they answer; and I need not wait for them to be in the humour. It is
all the difference between a machine well oiled and one which has
something, among the wheels which catches and retards the movement at
unexpected times. As to the pleasure of life, it has been also
increased. I enjoy Nature, books, and men more than I did--and my
previous enjoyment of them was not small. Those attacks of depression
which come to every man at times who lives too sedentary a life rarely
visit me now, and when depression does come from any trouble, I can
overcome it far more quickly than before. The fact is, alcohol, even
in the small quantities I took it, while it did not seem to injure
health, injures the fineness of that physical balance which means a
state of health in which all the world is pleasant. That is my
experience after four months of water-drinking, and it is all the more
striking to me, because for the last four or five years I have been a
very moderate drinker. However, the experience of one man is not that
of another, and mine only goes for what it is worth to those to whom,
as much alcohol as is contained in one glass of sherry, or port,
alters away from the standard of health. I have discovered, since
abstinence, that that is true of me. And I am sure, from inquiries, I
have made, that it is true for a great many other people who do not at
all suspect it. Therefore, I appeal to the young and the old, to try
abstinence for the very reasons they now use alcohol--in order to
increase their power of work and their enjoyment of life. Let the
young make the experiment of working on water only. Alcohol slowly
corrupts and certainly retards the activity of the brain of the
greater number of men. They will be able to do all they have to do
more swiftly. And this swiftness will leave them leisure--the blessing
we want most in this over-worked world. And the leisure, not being led
away by alcohol into idleness, into depression which craves unnatural
excitement, into noisy or slothful company, will be more nobly used
and with greater joy in the usage. And the older men, who find it so
difficult to find leisure, and who when they find it cannot enjoy it
because they have a number of slight ailments which do not allow them
perfect health, or which keep them in over-excitement or
over-depression, let them try--though it will need a struggle--whether
the total abandonment of alcohol will not lessen all their ailments,
and by restoring a better temper to the body--for the body with
alcohol in it is like a house with an irritable man in it--enable them
not only to work better, but to enjoy their leisure. It is not too
much to say that the work of the world would be one-third better done,
and more swiftly done, and the enjoyment of life increased by
one-half, if no one took a drop of alcohol."
Speech at Bedford Chapel,
July 20th, 1882.
WILLIAM C. BRYANT.
(BORN 1794; DIED 1878.)
I promised to give you some account of my habits of life, so far, at
least, as regards diet, exercise, and occupation. I have reached a
pretty advanced period of life, without the usual infirmities of old
age, and with my strength, activity, and bodily faculties generally in
pretty good preservation. How far this may be the effect of my way of
life, adopted long ago, and steadily adhered to, is perhaps uncertain.
I rise early, at this time of the year about 5 1/2; in summer, half an
hour, or even an hour, earlier. Immediately, with very little
incumbrance of clothing, I begin a series of exercises, for the most
part designed to expand the chest, and at the same time call into
action all the muscles and articulations of the body. These are
performed with dumb-bells, the very lightest, covered with flannel;
with a pole, a horizontal bar, and a light chair swung around my head.
After a full hour, and sometimes more, passed in this manner, I bathe
from head to foot. When at my place in the country, I sometimes
shorten my exercises in the chamber, and, going out, occupy myself for
half an hour or more in some work which requires brisk exercise. After
my bath, if breakfast be not ready, I sit down to my studies until I
am called.
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.
"The physiology of the action of alcohol has a very practical bearing
on the physical regimen of the mental functions. Alcohol has the power
of curbing, arresting, and suspending all the phenomena connected with
the nervous system. We feel its influence on our thoughts as soon as
on any other part of the man. Sometimes it brings them more completely
under our command, controls and steadies them; sometimes it confuses
or disconnects them; then breaks off our power and the action of the
senses altogether. The first effect is desirable, the others to be
avoided. When a man has tired himself with intellectual exertion a
moderate quantity of alcohol taken with food acts as an anaesthetic,
stays the wear of the system which is going on, and allows the nervous
force to be diverted to the due digestion of the meal. But it must be
followed by rest from mental labour, and is, in fact, a part of the
same regimen which enforces rest--it is an artificial _rest_. To
continue to labour and at the same time to take the anaesthetic is an
inconsistency. It merely blunts the painful feeling of weariness, and
prevents it from acting as a warning. I very much doubt the quickening
or brightening of the wits which bacchanalian poets have
conventionally attributed to alcohol. An abstainer in a party of even
moderate topers finds their jokes dull and their anecdotes pointless,
and his principal amusement consists in his observation of their
curious bluntness to the groundlessness of their merriment. There is
no more fatal habit to a literary man than that of using alcohol as a
stimulant between meals. The vital powers go on getting worn out more
and more without their cry for help being perceived, and in the end
break down suddenly, and often irrevocably. The temptation is greater
perhaps to a literary man than to any other in the same social
position, especially if he has been induced by avarice, or ambition,
to work wastefully against them; and if he cannot resist it, he had
better abjure the use of alcohol altogether.... Mental activity
certainly renders the brain less capable of bearing an amount of
alcohol, which in seasons of rest and relaxation does not injuriously
affect it. When any extraordinary toil is temporarily imposed, extreme
temperance, or even total abstinence, should be the rule. Much to the
point is the experience of Byron's Sardanapalus:--
"The _goblet_ I reserve for hours of ease, I war on
_water_."
"It is true that Byron assumes in his poetry the character of a
_debauche_, and says he wrote Don Juan under the influence of gin
and water. But much of that sort of talk is merely for stage effect,
and we see how industrious he was, and read of his training vigorously
to reduce corpulence, and of his being such an exceptionally
experienced swimmer as to rival Leander in crossing the Hellespont....
The machinery of sensitive souls is as delicate as it is valuable, and
cannot bear the rough usage which coarse customs inflict upon it. It
is broken to pieces by blows which common natures laugh at. The
literary man, with his highly-cultivated, tightly-strung sensations,
is often more than others susceptible of the noxious, and less
susceptible of the beneficial results of alcohol. His mind is easier
to cloud, and there is a deeper responsibility in clouding it....
Equally when we descend into the lower regions of Parnassus, the
abodes of talent and cleverness, and the supply of periodical literary
requirements, we find the due care of the body absolutely essential to
the continued usefulness of the intellect. The first thing to which
one entering the profession of literature must make up his mind is to
be healthy, and he can only be so by temperance.... Tobacco should not
be indulged in during working hours. Whatever physiological effect it
has is sedative, and so obstructs mental operations."
_Manual of Diet in Health and Disease_.
1876, p. 162.
PROFESSOR THOMAS R. FRASER, EDINBURGH.
"The stimulating action on the brain of quantities far short of
intoxicating, is accompanied with a paralysing action which seems most
rapidly and powerfully to involve the higher faculties. Mental work
may seem to be rendered more easy, but ease is gained at the expense
of quality. The editor of a newspaper will tell you that, if he has
been dining out, he cannot with confidence write a leading article until
he has allowed sufficient time to elapse from the effect of the wine
he has drunk, in moderation, to pass away; and even the novelist,
whose brain-work is in the regions of imagination, will relate a
similar experience.... In a person accustomed to the use of tobacco
the intellectual work is difficult when smoking cannot be indulged in,
the mind cannot easily be concentrated on a subject, and unrest is
produced--but this disappears when recourse is had to smoking; and
probably some of its reputation as a soothing agent has on this
account been acquired. The circulation is also a little excited, and
no doubt this assists in rendering brain work more easy. In a short
time, however, the circulation is slightly depressed, the pulse
becoming smaller; and this may assist in producing the soothing effect
generally experienced."
_The Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Stimulants and Tobacco_.
1881
HUBERT HERKOMER, A. R. A.
"It is no credit to me for being an abstainer. The credit is due to
my father, who gave up smoking, drinking, intoxicating drinks, and
eating meat at the same time, about twenty years ago; and as I was
only ten years old then, I naturally grew into my father's habits (I
now eat meat, however). The blessings of that reform have come down
upon my children."
Sherlock's _Heroes in the Strife_.
COLONEL THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.
"I have been a busy worker with the brain all my life, and have
enjoyed very unusual health. I am now fifty-three, and have not been
confined to the house by illness since I was seventeen, except for a
short time during the war, when suffering from the results of a wound.
This favourable result I attribute to (1) a good constitution--and an
elastic temperament; (2) simple tastes, disinclining me to stimulants
and narcotics, such as tea, coffee, wine, spirits, and tobacco; (3) a
love of athletic exercises; (4) a life-long habit of writing by
daylight only; (5) the use of homoeopathic medicines in the early
stages of slight ailments. I have never been a special devotee of
health, I think, but have followed out my natural tastes; and have
certainly enjoyed physical life very much. It may be well to add that,
though, as I said, my constitution was good and my frame always large,
I had yet an unusual number of children's diseases, and have often
been told that my life was several times preserved, in infancy,
against all expectation, by the unwearied care and devotion of my
mother. This may encourage some anxious parents."
Nov. 11, 1877.
_Hygiene of the Brain_, N.Y., 1878.
WILLIAM HOWITT.
I have read with very great pleasure the letter of Mr. Bryant.... Let
me observe that while the modes of my own life and those of Mr. Bryant
very much accord, in a few particulars they differ, as, I suppose,
must be the case in almost any two individuals. Mr. Bryant never takes
coffee or tea. I regularly take both, find the greatest refreshment in
both, and never experienced any deleterious effects from either,
except in one instance, when, by mistake, I took a cup of tea strong
enough for ten men. On the contrary, tea is to me a wonderful
refresher and reviver. After long-continued exertion, as in the great
pedestrian journeys that I formerly made, tea would always, in a
manner almost miraculous, banish all my fatigue, and diffuse through
my whole frame comfort and exhilaration, without any subsequent evil
effect.