Child's Health Primer For Primary Classes Part 4

When you are asleep, you are not thinking, but you are breathing and other work of the body is going on.

If the thinking part of the brain does not have good quiet sleep, it will soon wear out. A worn-out brain is not easy to repair.

If well cared for, your brain will do the best of work for you for seventy or eighty years without complaining.

The nerves are easily tired out, and they need much rest. They get tired if we do one thing too long at a time; they are rested by a change of work.

IS ALCOHOL GOOD FOR THE NERVES AND THE BRAIN?

Think of the wonderful work the brain is all the time doing for you!

You ought to give it the best of food to keep it in good working order.

Any drink that contains alcohol is not a food to make one strong; but is a poison to hurt, and at last to kill.

It injures the brain and nerves so that they can not work well, and send their messages properly. That is why the drunkard does not know what he is about.

Newspapers often tell us about people setting houses on fire; about men who forgot to turn the switch, and so wrecked a railroad train; about men who lay down on the railroad track and were run over by the cars.

Often these stories end with: "The person had been drinking." When the nerves are put to sleep by alcohol, people become careless and do not do their work faithfully; sometimes, they can not even tell the difference between a railroad track and a place of safety. The brain receives no message, or the wrong one, and the person does not know what he is doing.

You may say that all men who drink liquor do not do such terrible things.

That is true. A little alcohol is not so bad as a great deal. But even a little makes the head ache, and hurts the brain and nerves.

A body kept pure and strong is of great service to its owner. There are people who are not drunkards, but who often drink a little liquor. By this means, they slowly poison their bodies.

When sickness comes upon them, they are less able to bear it, and less likely to get well again, than those who have never injured their bodies with alcohol.

When a sick or wounded man is brought into the hospital, one of the first questions asked him by the doctor is: "Do you drink?"

If he answers "Yes!" the next questions are, "What do you drink?" and "How much?"

The answers he gives to these questions, show the doctor what chance the man has of getting well.

A man who never drinks liquor will get well, where a drinking man would surely die.

TOBACCO AND THE NERVES.

Why does any one wish to use tobacco?

Because many men say that it helps them, and makes them feel better.

Shall I tell you how it makes them feel better?

If a man is cold, the tobacco deadens his nerves so that he does not feel the cold and does not take pains to make himself warmer.

If a man is tired, or in trouble, tobacco will not really rest him or help him out of his trouble.

It only puts his nerves to sleep and helps him think that he is not tired, and that he does not need to overcome his troubles.

It puts his nerves to sleep very much as alcohol does, and helps him to be contented with what ought not to content him.

A boy who smokes or chews tobacco, is not so good a scholar as if he did not use the poison. He can not remember his lessons so well.

Usually, too, he is not so polite, nor so good a boy as he otherwise would be.

REVIEW QUESTIONS.

1. How do the muscles know when to move?

2. What part of you is it that thinks?

3. What are the nerves?

4. Where is the spinal cord?

5. What message goes to the brain when you put your finger on a hot stove?

6. What message comes back from the brain to the finger?

7. What is meant by "As quick as thought"?

8. Name some of the muscles which work without needing our thought.

9. What keeps them at work?

10. Why do not the nerve messages get mixed and confused?

11. Why could you not feel, if you had no nerves?

12. State some ways in which the nerves give us pain.

13. State some ways in which they give us pleasure.

14. What part of us has the most work to do?

15. How must we keep the brain strong and well?

16. What does alcohol do to the nerves and brain?

17. Why does not a drunken man know what he is about?

18. What causes most of the accidents we read of?

19. Why could not the man who had been drinking tell the difference between a railroad track and a place of safety?