Confessions of a Neurasthenic Part 3

When I was necessarily obliged to quench my thirst at a public drinking-place I drank up close to the _right_ side of the handle of the cup, as I thought that would be the spot least contaminated. In order not to breathe any more germs than I could possibly avoid, I kept away from theatres and places where motley crowds a.s.semble and shunned dust and impure air as I would a leper. I had read that there was on the market a sanitary mask to be worn when going to places where there was the greatest danger of coming into contact with germs, but I did not think that I could work up sufficient nerve to appear in public muzzled in this way. I knew from reading how many million microbes of different kinds there are inhabiting every cubic inch of air, and it was indeed appalling to think what even one of them would do for me if it chanced to hit me in a vulnerable spot. I did the best I could and kept my windows open wide both day and night, that some of these little imps of Satan might ride out on the breeze. _On a cold day I would sit shivering with my overcoat and heavy wraps on, while the wind was blowing a hurricane through any room._ At this some of the neighbors were wont to smile, but when they rather intimated that I was a little off I reminded them that Columbus and all other men who lived in advance of the times were regarded as hopeless lunatics.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The wind was blowing a hurricane through my room.]

One evening when I went to bed with my windows open as usual the weather was quite warm, but the temperature suddenly fell during the night and I chilled, in consequence of which I nearly had pneumonia. After that I thought it best to exclude some of the elements and try to put up with the germs. I went to the other extreme of avoiding fresh air. My main reason for doing so was that I read that one could become immune to his own brand of germs--the kind that constantly live in your own house and eat your own food. I thought this seemed reasonable, on the same principle that parents can get used to their own children easier than they can to other people's pestiferous brats. I don't know that there is science about any of this--no means of escape is all there is to it.

Of late years I have changed my opinion regarding germs, the same as I have done over and over regarding everything else. We are all apt to think that the only good germs are like good Indians--dead ones. Perhaps most of these microscopic creatures are conservative and play some useful part in life's economy if we only knew what it is. Then we don't know whether microbes are the cause or the product of disease--just as we don't know which came first, the hen or the egg. What we don't know in this matter would make a stupendous volume. At any rate it is of no use to run from germs, for they are omnipresent.

Appendicitis was a disease that I spent much time in battling. I read up on it and knew all the symptoms. I went to the public library and hunted up a Gray's _Anatomy_ and studied the appendix. It seemed to be a little receptacle in which to side-track grape-seeds and other useless rubbish. I would no sooner have knowingly swallowed a grape- or a lemon-seed than I would a stick of dynamite. I would not eat oysters lest I get a piece of sh.e.l.l or even a pearl into my vermiform appendix. I was exceedingly careful never to swallow anything which I thought might contain a gritty substance. I had once heard a lecturer on hygiene and sanitation speak of the limy coat which forms on the inside of our tea-kettles from using "hard" water. He stated that in time we would get that sort of crust inside of us from drinking water which contained mineral matter. I thought how easy it would be for some of it to chip off and slip into the appendix and set up an inflammation. So to be on the safe side, I thought I would try drinking spring water for a while, but it gave me a bad case of malaria. I then came to the conclusion that between being dead with chills and having an inner concrete lining I would choose the latter, which seemed the lesser evil. But with some friend being operated upon for appendicitis nearly every day I could not easily dismiss this disease from my mind. Yet I realized that it was a high-toned disease and also a high-priced one, and that most fellows with my commercial rating are immune from it.

I happened to be visiting a friend in a small town, for a few days, and was acquiring a voracious appet.i.te. One evening I was seized with a sudden pain, and I knew the dread disease had come at last. The doctor came. He was an old-fashioned fellow without any frills, but he had what books and colleges do not always bestow--a head full of common sense. I said:--

"Doctor, will it have to be done to-night?"

"What done?" asked the doctor.

"Because," I replied, putting my hand on my left side, where the pain was, "I have appendicitis and I supposed----"

"My friend," said this well-seasoned physician, "you are perhaps not aware of the fact that the appendix is on the _right_ side."

My knowledge of anatomy had betrayed me.

The old doctor then gave me this homely advice, which may or may not be correct. At any rate I never forgot it. He said:--

"You've been eating too much and have a little indigestion and stomach-ache. But like thousands of others who have fertile imaginations, you have appendicitis--on the brain. People rarely had this disease thirty years ago. Why should they have it so frequently to-day? Is the human body so radically different from what it was a few years ago? I have been practicing my profession here for twenty-five years and during all this time I have seen very few cases of severe appendicitis, and those recovered under common-sense medical treatment. There may be an occasional case that requires the surgeon's knife, but such are exceedingly rare."

I have never since had a symptom of the disease, and somehow I can't help a.s.sociating _appendicitis_ with _hospitalitis_.

CHAPTER X.

DIETING FOR HEALTH'S SAKE.

Next I must say something about my dietetic ventures. I have at one time and another eaten everything and again eschewed everything in the way of diet, all for the sake of promoting health and longevity. I had read somewhere that a man is simply a reflex of what he puts into his stomach, and also that by judicious eating and drinking he may easily live to be one hundred years old. I started out to reach the century milestone. Why I wanted to attain an unusual age I am unable to explain, for I am sure that my life was not so profitable to myself or to anybody else. But that is another story.

I dieted myself in various ways. It seemed to be on the "cut and try"

plan, for when one course of regimen proved disappointing, I very promptly tried something else--usually the very opposite. I was very fond of coffee, but I read that it was the strongest causative factor in the production of heart disease. In medicine advertis.e.m.e.nts in the newspapers I saw men falling dead on the street as a result of heart failure--always the same man, it is true; but that made little difference to me. I cut out both tea and coffee and drank only milk and water. When I got to reading about tuberculous cows and the action of State Boards of Health and public sanitarians in the matter, I became afraid to continue drinking milk. Next I drank only cocoa for a short season.

I took two or three health magazines, but the opinions contained therein were so conflicting that it was a difficult matter for me to follow any of them. For example, in one of them I read that no person who ate pickles, vinegar and condiments could hope to live to a healthy, green old age.

Another stated that good vinegar and condiments in moderation caused the gastric fluids to flow and thus materially aided in the process of digestion.

For awhile I was a confirmed vegetarian. The idea of man slaughtering animals to eat was repulsive to me in the extreme. I recalled that the good Creator had in Holy Writ spoken of giving His children all kinds of fruits and herbs for food, but had not said much about edible animals. An argument against flesh-eating was the fact that some of our strongest animals, the horse, the ox and the elephant, never touch meat. I followed the vegetarian system of dietetics for some time, and while it seemed to agree with me, I had some misgivings as to whether or not it was the best thing for me. The thought happened to occur to me that, after all, we had a few powerful animals that subsist almost wholly upon the animal kingdom.

Among these were the lion, the tiger and the leopard. The argument that all the strong animals eat only herbs and fruits was here knocked galley-west. I began eating meat again, although as I now look at my actions in this matter I can see no earthly reason why I should have turned either herbivorous or carnivorous. There was certainly no sense in trying to make a horse or a tiger out of myself.

One day I thought I would look up a few points regarding the relative value of foods from a scientific basis. In my chemistry I ran across a table giving the quant.i.ty of water contained in certain foods. I found that about everything I had been eating was the aqueous fluid served up in one way or another. Here is a part of the table:--

Per cent. water Watermelon .98 Cabbage .92 Carrots .83 Fish .81 Cuc.u.mbers .97 Beets .88 Apples .80 Meat .75

That was an eye-opener. I was getting less than 10 per cent. of nourishment in nearly everything that I ate. Thus, I should be obliged to eat nearly a hundred cuc.u.mbers and as many heads of cabbage to get one of the real thing. I was afraid that I was imposing upon the good nature of my stomach in asking it to digest so much water and debris in order to get a little nutriment into my system. I thought it would be better to drink the water as such and take my food in a more concentrated form. The body being composed of proportionately so much more fluids than solids, I concluded that plenty of pure water with a minimum quant.i.ty of food would be worthy of trial. For a little while I drank water copiously, and each day ate only an egg and a small piece of toast, with an occasional apple or orange thrown in mainly to fill up.

When a new kind of food--a cereal product, it was supposed to be--appeared on the market and was heralded as a great life-giver, I became one of its faithful consumers. There were some fifteen or twenty of these and I had eaten in succession nearly all of them--I mean my share of them. It read on the boxes: "Get the habit; eat our food," and I was doing pretty well at it until I met with a discouragement. One day I met a traveling man who told me that in a town in Indiana where there was a breakfast-food factory, hundreds of carloads of corn-cobs were shipped in annually and converted into these tempting foods. My relish for this article of diet left me instanter.

I partook of one kind of dietary for a while and then changed to something so entirely different that my stomach began to rebel in earnest. My appet.i.te became very capricious. Sometimes I got up at one or two in the morning and went to a night restaurant nearby and would try my hand, or rather my stomach, on a full meal at this most unseasonable hour. Then at times quite unseemly I would get such an insatiable appet.i.te for onions, peanuts, or something, that it was only appeased by hunting up the thing desired. I began taking syrup of pepsin to artificially digest my food and thus take some of the burden off my stomach. A friendly druggist took sufficient interest in me to inform me that there was not enough pepsin in the ordinary digestive syrups and elixirs to digest a mosquito's dinner.

When asked why this ferment was omitted from such preparations, the druggist confided to me in a whisper: "Pepsin is a drug that costs money, while diluted mola.s.ses is cheap."

As I had apparently not made much of a success at dieting myself, I thought I would consult a physician who called himself a specialist on "metabolism." I first thought the name had some reference to metals, but I found out differently. This man gave me what he was pleased to term a "test breakfast," for the purpose of diagnosing my case. Now, good friends, if you never had a "test breakfast" from one of these ultra-scientific men, you are just as well off in blissful ignorance of it. Take my word for it, it is also calculated to put your good nature to the test. This doctor found out everything that I was eating and then told me to eat just the opposite.

A few weeks later I went to see another specialist of the same kind. I wanted to compare notes. This man, too, inquired carefully into what I was eating. I knew at once that he wanted to prescribe something different.

Sure enough, when I told him what my bill-of-fare now was he threw up his hands and said: "Man, those things will kill you!" He told me to go back to my former diet.

So many doctors act on the presumption that we are doing the wrong thing.

It reminds me of this little conversation between a mother and her nurse-maid:--

_Mother_--"Martha, what is Johnnie doing?"

_Martha_--"I don't know, mum."

_Mother_--"Well, find out what he is doing _and tell him to stop it this very minute_."

By the way, I learned a few things in an experimental process about the great subject of alimentation. No matter much what we eat, the system appropriates what elements it wants. The taste bulbs were planted in our mouths for a useful purpose. Our taste is about the surest index to the body's requirements in the matter of nourishment. If our appet.i.te calls for a thing and it tastes all right, it will do us good whether it be carbo-hydrate or hydro-carbon or something else.

CHAPTER XI.

TELLS OF A FEW NEW OCCUPATIONS AND VENTURES.

Only casual mention has been made for a while concerning my occupations.

The reader may imagine that in the pursuit of health I found no time to engage in the usual avocations of life. If such be your opinion I would say, be at once undeceived. The neurasthenic has the faculty of being able to turn off more work of a varied and useless character than any person living. I had a fund of information, mainly of a superficial nature, but it enabled me to turn my hand to a great many different things. I had once studied shorthand and I put this acquirement to what I thought was a useful purpose. I carried a number of note-books and took down everything that I saw or heard. Whenever a man of reputed wisdom was heard speaking, either from the rostrum or in private conversation, I was busy in the mechanical act of writing it down, and in so doing failed to get from the talk that inspiration which is so often more important than the mere words of the story. I had such a mess of notes in these little hooks and crooks that I never found time to hunt anything up and read it over. In fact, I doubt whether in all this rubbish I could have found anything I wanted had I searched ever so long. Still I obtained considerable information, mainly as I did when a boy, by absorption.

I was full of tables and statistics. By keeping some of these in my brain in an easy place to get at them when wanted, I was able to formulate rules and plans for almost any condition that might arise. By unloading abstruse and unusual facts at the proper time and place I gained the reputation of being a very shrewd fellow, but I was always careful to introduce subjects in which my a.s.sertions were likely to go unchallenged. I had established the habit of reasoning by deduction and a.n.a.logy, and would often startle people by what they thought was my profound wisdom. I had a system of cues by which I tried to cultivate a memory so tenacious that nothing could escape me, but this proved a great deal like my voluminous note-taking. It often crowded out some things of the most vital importance; besides, I often forgot my cues--just as one ties a string in his b.u.t.ton-hole to keep from forgetting something and then forgets to look at the string.

By my suave manners and versatile speech I was enabled to work myself into the good graces of people and thus obtain desirable positions. But always on some pretext I shifted from one thing to another. Once I held for a short time a very remunerative place in a banking establishment, but I got to thinking that in case of robbery or defalcation I might be unjustly accused; so I promptly handed in my resignation. Through the recommendations of influential friends I was next able to secure a Government clerkship which I held for a few months. My reason for remaining with it so long was perhaps due to the fact that I became interested in social problems and I was in touch with a cla.s.s of people from whom I could obtain valuable ideas. As soon as I thought I had mastered the intricacies of socialism, I started out on a lecture tour. I wanted to enlighten benighted humanity on economic matters and unfold to it a scheme that would lift the burden of poverty from its shoulders. If I could get this feasible plan of mine in operation, with the proper distribution of wealth and everybody compelled to work just a little, we could all have a tolerable easy time. The poor, over-worked and under-fed people would then have a chance to read and cultivate their minds. It did not occur to me at the time that among the wealthy who had oceans of time there was a paucity of mind cultivation.

The lecture was a failure; my ideas were too far in advance of the times, and I realized as never before that great movements, like great bodies, must move slowly. However, two or three wealthy and enthusiastic co-workers came to my financial rescue right n.o.bly. I could usually find some one fool enough to "back up" any scheme I might see fit to project.

The next thing I conceived was to work to the front in a manufacturing industry of some kind. I had read that, for mastering all the details of a business, there was nothing like beginning at the ground and working up.

Nearly all men of affairs had begun in that way; why should I not?

Accordingly I started in as a laborer in a foundry with the full determination of forging to the front. But the first day I burned my hand and I at once gave up the idea of ever becoming a captain of industry.

Having dabbled in literary work a little at odd times I had obtained a slight recognition as a writer. My vivid imagination had impressed two or three magazine editors favorably. One of these in particular called for more of my short stories, and in his letter occurred these sentences:--