How to rest; food for tired nerves and weary bodies

Front matter

Glass.

Book.

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Man Who Tired Out His Family . 1

II. Why Certain Brain Activities Need

Chapter I The Man Who Tired Out His Family

" There is a pool in South Behar called the ' Pool of the Blue Lotus,' and two Geese had for a long time lived there. They had a friend in the pool who was a Tortoise, and he was known as ' Shelly-neck.' It chanced one evening that the Tortoise overheard some fishermen talking by the water. ' We will stop here tonight,' they said, ' and in the morning we will catch the fish, the tortoises and such like. Extremely alarmed at this, the Tortoise repaired to his friends the Geese, and reported the conversation.

What ever am I to do, Gossips? ' he asked. 1 The first thing is to be assured of the danger,' said the Geese.

' I am assured,' exclaimed the Tortoise; ' the first thing is to avoid it, don't you know? ' " (The Hitopadesa.)

The first thing to do in obtaining rest for body and nerves, and peace of mind, is to understand those avoidable conditions which tire and exhaust. These conditions are manifold and frequently brought about by constant contact with those whose ragged nerves seem to infect all with whom they associate. Under certain conditions health is infectious, but always is nervous instability, mental wabbling and the grouch of psychic exhaustion infectious.

I knew a man — one of many — who would go down to breakfast a terror to his family. He would sit down with a frown on his brow, an ominous growl for his wife and children, while the whole household tremblingly waited for his customary outburst of scoldings and temper.

He would find fault with his coffee, by his dour attitude suppress the joy and laughter of his young son, then want to know why his wife did not realize that the whole country was going to the dogs. His morning amiability was that of a snarling, teeth-peeling dog. He soured and cooled everything on and at the table by his unreasonableness and uncontrollable conduct. Even after he had left the house and the personal factor of depression was absent, there still remained a state of depression and fatigued nerves in the wife and children. The atmosphere even penetrated to the kitchen, for not until the servants were assured that he had left the house did they sit down with relief and appetites.

In sheer desperation sometimes the wife would open all the windows of the breakfast room, hoping the fresh air might rid the atmosphere of its noxious and infectious material.

This irascible husband had complained morning after morning of the lassitude and tired looks of his wife. He told her she was careless and neglectful of her health; that she was getting too thin and scrawny, losing her color ; that she needed to " brace up," take more time to rest, for she was lacking in all interest in his work and what was going on in the world.

Yet few men knew better than he the injurious effects of nagging, unkind words; injustice to one who was constantly striving to do right and always had done right. He knew the dangerous effects upon the ductless glands in women who are psychically wearied; how rapidly they will dry up and bring on premature age and sometimes insanity. He realized the absolute necessity of keeping the body and mind perfectly poised if health and happiness are to be obtained and retained. Knew all these facts, yet tired out his wife in a far more injurious way than any scrubwoman ever suffered.

He had reached that period in the life of so many successful men of knowing how to control others but not themselves. And yet there is no stronger foundation for a man to build upon than that one he builds for himself. The one we build for others is certain to have some defect unless it is well cemented by the after-work of the individual himself — or herself.

This husband, who was rapidly tiring out his wife and family, was a refined and educated physician, yet blind to the fact that every morning he started and aggravated a physical and mental indigestion in all with whom he came in contact — his family.

I believe more cases of indigestion in wives are due to the nagging and unkind, stinging words uttered at the breakfast table than to anything eaten or drank. No kind of pills, tablets or digestive ferments do aught but irreparable injury in the majority of stomach troubles, for these fundamentally are due to outside ferments — the sour dispositions of the " head of the family."

But to get back to our patient — the husband, not the suffering wife.

He was a specialist in nervous diseases ; patient, sympathetic and eminently successful with irritable and unreasonable neurasthenics and hysterics, yet he had brought his own family to a state of nervous exhaustion through his conduct at home.

So disagreeable and unreasonable had he become in his home that finally his family contrived to get through breakfast before he came down. Otherwise they would feel tired out before the day had begun for them.

He would often find fault with his son's school report, never realizing that he so upset the mental poise of the lad that he went to school unable to concentrate upon his lessons.

Finally this state of affairs put the family into a strained attitude and instead of matters improving under the new breakfast arrangement, they became worse.

The wife merged into an extremely nervous

state, but the only treatment she received from

a man sought far and wide for advice was:

' You're too nervous. You need a rest. You're

too sensitive. Why don't you let up on your housekeeping, cleaning, dusting, fretting about useless matters. You're fretting yourself to death and making this house a place of terror to me! You don't eat enough breakfast — you just nibble and go out of the room to look around for a turned-up rug. Why don't you rest? "

On one particular morning when this husband and father came down before the family had fled, and was letting loose his garbage of scoldings, his son said to him, " Pa, give us a rest — all of us! "

It did the trick, for the man was a wellmeaning man and the son's advice struck him as humorous but really valuable advice.

The principles which underlie human behavior usually can be traced to the mechanism of character formation and character dissociation. If these psychic mechanisms are not understood and controlled or utilized for progression, deterioration and retrogression result.

There are masses of statistics, rules, systems, measurements lately put forth, showing how to estimate the physical or caloric output of the human machine. Measurements for physical energy, psychological tests for efficiency and adaptability, physiological experiments attempting to tell the wife how " to feed the brute," and many other good schemes for aiding the body to work and repair itself, are ready at hand.

All these facts are mighty good facts to tabulate and give to the wife who has to depend upon her husband to saw the wood, fetch the water, pay the bills ; but valueless and discouraging to that woman who has to live with a man whose mental energy and nervous force are daily expended upon a score of other women and men, and who returns home to blow out the exhaust and nauseating residue.

This particular husband left his house for his office with the son's admonition, " Pa, give us a rest! ", repeating its truth and suggestion over and over. He analyzed the matter, pulled his grouch apart and realized that his conduct was literally tiring out his wife — wrecking her life.

" Yes, she needs rest ; freedom from my infernal nagging, freedom from the fear of my — no, not bodily presence, but mental contamination."

Such were his conclusions and musings as he walked on. He saw now that to send his wife away " for a rest " when she would return only to face the same conditions which were wearing her out was utter folly. "Folly?" he said to himself, — " no; cruel! Yes; give them a rest! "

He sent for me, and after a very plain talk requested me to explain matters to the good wife and see to it that all be assured of the kind of rest they needed.

"It is the old maxim applied to the doctor: 1 Shoemakers' children generally go barefoot,' " he remarked. " Here I am trying to adjust nervous instabilities, worries and ' tired-out women,' by getting their husbands to apply the same treatment to their wives they apply to their clients and customers — courtesy, calm speech, mental poise, sympathy, jovial conversation, sincerity — all those personal attributes and factors which smooth life's roadways, yet denying my own wife and children these absolutely necessary conditions for health and happiness.

" We know," he continued, " a good deal about the results adequate mental energy brings to those who need our energy. Here I am a highly specialized organism capable of transmitting and transmuting energy and doing so every day. But about the only thought I have had of my home and wife is that of a place to renew my energy by the intake of food and thorough sleep. And, worse than this selfish and purely personal idea, I have believed that was about all my wife and children needed — the cash of the world and the calories of the physiologists.

" The fact that the professional or business man uses up his energy and disturbs his mental poise during his day's work may be a truthful explanation of the many tired-out wives and irritable conditions of many households — but it is no excuse.

" I have been just as much at fault as my male patients and just as unjust and brutal — yes, brutal is the right word.

" Why, it is really funny for the moment. Only yesterday I tried to impress a very prominent business man, whose wife is a neglected woman in the sense we are discussing, that it was just as necessary to save up, to take home, kind words, appreciation, nervous stability and love's energy as it was money — in fact, far more so, for it is a wrong idea the world has that all a woman wants from a man whom she loves is money and the liberty to spend it. No; money will not restore or repair shattered nerves where ugly dispositions have been the cause.

" There are all kinds of tired-out wives and working women who need medical advice and treatment. But the wife who has for a husband one who exhausts his nervous force upon others, saves none for his family and brings home the depressing by-products, needs the rest which only can come from a rested or resting husband. This means one who has force enough left to control himself.

" My wife is tired out, worn out and frayed out until she is really a wreck simply because I kept away from her those receptors for real rest absolutely needed by all humans. Food for the stomach, sleep for the brain, really are secondary factors for energy and rest. We must have the sun of heavens and the sunny personality of those we love — in fact, of everyone around us.

" Now, the enormous amount of energy elaborated or released by a good idea or sympathetic act cannot be estimated. The enormous amount of depression which can be released and literally shot into another close to us, spiritually and physically, only can be realized when your son tells you to give his mother ' a rest.'

" I've given you quite a lecture, old chap, but it has been a sort of Freudian cathartic for me. I have let out a lot of rotten temperamental stuff that was in me. Now to replace it byworth-while stuff."

" Well," I said, " I hope you'll do better in adjusting your psychic mechanism so it will run smoothly and noiselessly around your house, than you did with that motor boat we had. Remember? "

" Jack, you remind me of that erratic and neurasthenic boat. She was a handsome model, but you never could control her actions because you could not control yourself. Her hull and fittings were of the best, and wherever we succeeded in finally anchoring she attracted much attention. Of course, those were the early days of motors. We didn't understand much about them — any more than you have understood your wife. You would not take the time nor have the patience to try to understand that boat.

" When she would stop right in the midst of good going you blamed and cursed her. You hammered here, tinkered there, oiled her so her footboards were afloat in oil. You blamed her

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maker, sent her designer to , then threatened to sink her just as soon as you could work her into a safe place for you to get ashore. You lost all faith in motor boats and said they never could be made so as to be depended upon.

" There was nothing the matter with you, so you repeatedly said — it was all the fault of the engine. When we finally reached New London and once got ashore, you gave a farewell kick at the stern just as the engine let out a terrific back explosion which nearly blew you into the harbor.

" Out of patience, disgusted and growling at me and everything, when a lobsterman asked you what you'd take for the boat, you replied: ' Anything. But I warn you — she's no good. Engine won't work except in fits — when it wants to stop it just stops.'

■ You sold it for less than the brass fittings cost. But, say, Jack, the fellow who bought her had reserved his energy and patience. He knew the way to please that engine so it would work for him, for the next morning he had it running around the harbor beating out all the other boats and sold it for a large sum.

" Now, do you see the moral, or lesson, whatever you want to call it?

" You have been unable to run your household motor so it would go along smoothly and joyfully. You have been blaming the patient wife. Now start in and see where the fault really lies. No, you don't get me to do what that lobsterman did with your boat — start your house boat. You have to overhaul your psychic motor yourself, and when it is adjusted the wife will get the rest she needs."

Self-control is the gold within us. Like that rare substance it must be searched for and brought to the surface where it can be refined. Some men are merely gold-plated ; beneath, they are soft metal or alloy. In these individuals tests of life wear away in spots the superficial control and development, and man is revealed in all his weakness.

This physician had a rich vein of gold running all through his system, but had neglected to search for it while developing for others their powers for self-control. He immediately commenced to get out his own ore.

Physically he always took the best of care to be in good condition. There was nothing the matter with his physiologic system, brain or nerves, and he knew that all he needed to bring peace and rest to his wife was to get out of his psychic nature the injurious morning personality. For remember the best of us have a second personality nagging away at our better and primary one, and it is the weakening of this secondary ego with the strengthening of the primary that makes the conquering man.

This duality of humans accounts for the blame or praise every honest man and woman is bound to receive. Our good enemies see only the personality they desire to see, our real friends see only our real personality. Hence there never was, there will never be, nor is there now, a man who is always blamed, or a man who is always praised.

The last thing our patient did that day before leaving his office was to put down in red ink on yellow paper: "B , you are under treatment. Go down smiling. Now smile, smile; you disagreeable cuss! Don't you utter a word in the morning unless it can be a kind word. Remember now; this is the first lesson. Now smile!''

He pinned this chromatic adviser under his necktie. When he retired that night he had completely forgotten his resolution until, in pulling off his collar and tie, the pin which fastened the paper pricked his finger. " Good pin! " he muttered, and repeated the advice inscribed. So he went to sleep with this self-applied suggestion sinking into his memory cells.

Evidently his habit of self -neglect in control had a forcible hold upon him, for he rose the next morning and the first words he spoke before being fully dressed were, " A queer sort of wife you are. Didn't I tell you to have the plumber here yesterday? This shower is plugged."

The nerve-wearied woman fled while trying to tell him that she had telephoned for the plumber. She did not wait for the dreaded usual outbursts which she knew would last until he left the house. But in dressing, that paper turned up in his hands and the man dropped into a chair, reading the instructions, then got up smiling and went down smiling.

The son had hurriedly finished his breakfast and left the room. The wife came in, hovering around like a frightened bird, and received quite a shock as smilingly her husband remarked, " This grapefruit is not ripe."

Well, even a complaint with a smile was some relief from what she had tremblingly been expecting.

He had the paper stuffed in his pocket and felt for it. He wanted to place it before him on the table; but a false shame, a feeling that he would be demonstrating a weakness, held him back. However, the incident made him again realize that he was really a pretty mean man in his home.

This fact, coming to him again and again, drove away the smile and brought the look so well known to his wife, and she fled the room. He finished his breakfast without another word and was pleased with himself as he left the house with even this childish improvement.

He kept that paper pinned to his necktie, shirt or handkerchief for a week, adding nothing to it. Several times he thought he would place it in the mirror, but feared his wife would see it. But, woman as she was, she knew he was struggling somehow, under some method, to at least be less of a morning terror. She knew if he suspected he was under any kind of watchfulness, he would rebel, and then matters would be as bad if not worse than before.

He improved. Noticeably to all the household he became less of a terror. One morning he rose before his wife — a very unusual thing — and while putting on his shoes uttered a very forcible, "Ouch! What the "

The wife turned over to hide her laughter; the first spontaneous laughter she had had for months, for she had surreptitiously discovered him the night before putting tacks in his. shoes.

She dressed and went down just as he entered the breakfast room; kissed him as he sat down and took her place, smiling, at her rightful end of the table.

For the first time in years there was decent peace in the house that morning. As he was leaving to step into the auto, the happy wife put her arms around him and said: " Jack, it's so good of you to try to get into good humor once more — it's more like the good old times. Keep up the tacks, won't you? You've had all of us on tacks for the last few years," and laughingly she rushed up the stairs.

Well, they soon understood each other. They had a good talk over it that night after returning from the theater and supper. He told her all about his treatment of himself — how he hated himself for tiring them all out ; how he never intended to say a cross word, but in spite of all his resolutions his tongue would spit spitefulness and meanness.

In time he cured himself. That is, he gave to his wife that constant rest she had so long needed. In his private library now hangs this advice from the ethical handbook of Buddhism: " Rouse thyself by thyself, examine thyself by thyself."

" Search for the woman " is a maxim of criminologists. When you have a wife tired out, a woman who apparently has lost all interest in the activities of the world, yet still clings to her children and home, a woman whose sole remedy is a long period of rest — look for the nagging husband !

Chapter II Why Certain Brain Activities Need Rest

The only person I know of who really had three days of continuous rest was Jonah. Yet it is probable that even this fortunate man had much to worry about which put his brain upon a strain. To be sure, he secured some physical rest, and undoubtedly as he again sat down on the sands of the shore mental quietude came over him.

I have often thought that the very best sanitariums for the " rest cure " would be to secure a score or more of whales, confine them to some salubrious harbor, and rent their abdominal rooms to those who needed a complete change of environment and freedom from the annoyances of the outside world. I know of no other way to keep the American from getting stock reports, keeping the restless confined to quarters where cocktails and cabarets are not handy, and giving the patient time to think over his constant waste of energy.

It is 'almost an impossibility for the active American to secure complete rest of body and mind under the conditions of competition, rush and erroneous ideas of success. The normal " rest cure," undisturbed slumber, is seldom the fortunate lot of progressive man or woman today. Yet to possess this normal and physiologic factor for perfect health is an absolute necessity and not a difficult thing to acquire.

It may be that our unrest and nerve-racking methods of living in the past few decades were necessary in the course of our social evolutionary progress, but the time has arrived when we should take into serious consideration the causes and effects of our overrush of mental and physical energies.

While we have progressed intellectually by the steady strain and work animating our civilization, we have yet to learn how to rest body and mind so that we and our followers can have full nervous force for continuance of progression and also a reserved power for emergencies — individual and national.

The peoples of the East went through a [20]

period of energetic progress, of " hustle," wars of conquest, feverish hunts for wealth and power, and finally reached a high state of civilization which in many respects we have not equaled. No matter how barbarous or " uncivilized " their social and religious life appears to us, the fact that they gradually exhausted their national and individual energies and sank into a state of worldly indifference and apathy from which they have not recovered should be a lesson to us.

We are a nation living upon our nerves. The successful merchant and the farmer's wife equally suffer from lack of power to rest at will their daily exhausted forces. We shall not reach the level of the Oriental by simply accepting the conditions as inevitable — as fate, Kismet — nor will a new and strange religion bring us to the state of believing that mental poise and physical improvement can be found in submission to things as they are, or that by sitting down unwashed and gazing for days at our naked belly we shall be carried away in a cloud of glory to some lotus fields where the seraphs will feed us on caviar and offer the drink of everlasting manhood.

No, we have been going to the other extreme. We have overworked our bodies and nerves to such an extent that many, very many, are chasing the blondes of the cabarets and accepting the poisons of the white-clad philanthropists of the cafes.

The American people must learn how to rest and repair physiologic forces and powers. And they must understand how to utilize the natural tonics and repair material within their bodies and not through the ruinous drugs now so universal.

The energy which now is either too early exhausted or ignorantly dissipated can and must be reserved for progressive work. This work we have been set to do can be done with all that pleasure health and lasting vigor inevitably give.

We need to adopt new forms of rest for the body and brain — individual forms varying in detail according to the nature and condition of the individual. The old methods and ideas of a few days' vacations, afternoon naps, Sundays' loafing or in bed, retreats, sanitariums, the " tired business man's show," and worse than all, drugs to " relieve that exhausted feeling,"

must go into the discard, where already we have tossed many fallacies.

For the mind we need to learn how to control all impulses — good or evil. We need to learn how to do and not to do. We need to learn how to couple Action to Will, mental poise to energy. We must know how to uncouple the daily unessentials from essentials; to recognize brain fatigue from untrained will-power and how to rest the former state and develop the latter.

All these attributes of mental and moral progression can be acquired without losing any of our potential powers for force and energy. We shall always have to fight our way upward and we must always be in fighting trim to do so.

It was neglect of these facts which brought the Eastern nations to their present state of apathy and pacifism even in mental contests. Their religions gave them all sorts and kinds of aphorisms, prayers, moral advice and ethical rules that taught the habit of non-resistance in everything.

' Victory breeds hatred, for the conquered is unhappy. He who has given up both victory and defeat, he, the contented, is happy.

" No sufferings befall the man who is not attached to name and form, and who calls nothing his own.

" Sitting alone, lying down alone, walking alone without ceasing, and alone subduing himself, let a man be happy near the edge of the forest."

These are samples of the advice given to an exhausted race. We need to cull a little from the books of the East, but the majority of the stuff they offer for peace and rest of body and mind is only fit for the half-witted and the aged, incurable pacifists.

For example — here is a bit of good advice found in the Dhammapada which applies to many neurasthenics today: " They who fear when they ought not fear, and fear not when they ought to fear, such men, embracing false doctrines, enter the evil path."

The one outstanding trait of Americans is impatience with moralizing and theorizing. They " want to be shown." Perhaps this is the best way at present to get facts into working order.

One great cause for so many wives and mothers becoming exhausted long before their time — and really there never should be a time of exhaustion, only periods of fatigue — is a wrong sense of duty. It sounds strange, but a false " sense of duty " is the real cause of many disrupted households.

The first duty of every man and woman is to procure and secure health and radiate it. If you are mentally and physically in health you think right and go morally right. You guide right, advise correctly, influence for the best.

You can spread ill health as quickly as you can smallpox. Your disposition can be transferred to those around you if they have not learned to shun those who constantly talk of their troubles, disagreeable feelings and nasty tempers.

The first duty of a wife or mother — in fact, of everyone — is to see that they avoid all company and conversation which does not radiate the warmth of health. Over two hundred years ago Sir Richard Steele wrote in the Spectator: " It is an unreasonable thing some men expect of their acquaintances. They are either complaining that they are out of order or displeased, or they know not how; and are so far from letting that be a reason for retiring to their own homes that they make it their argument for coming into company. What has anybody to do with accounts of a man's being indisposed but his physician? If a man laments in company, where the rest are in a humor enough to enjoy themselves, he should not take it ill if a servant is ordered to present him with a porringer of caudle or posset drink, by way of admonition that he go home to bed.

" That part of life which we ordinarily understand by the word conversation is an indulgence to the sociable part of our make and should incline us to bring our proportion of good will or good humour among friends we meet with, and not trouble them with relations which must of necessity oblige them to a real or feigned affliction. Cares, distresses, diseases, uneasinesses, and dislikes of our own are by no means to be obtruded upon our friends.