Literary persons require more sleep than laborers. Children require more than adults. Do not lie in bed long after awaking at morning. Open your window wide as soon as you arise—it is supposed to be partially open at the top all night.
In inhaling air at night or morning, do it only through the nostrils. Night air is not injurious any more than day air if so inhaled. Sleep when sleepy—this is a good rule, unless disease induces unnatural sleep.
What shall we eat?
Eat what relishes well, and agrees with you afterwards. This is the best general rule I have been able to adopt for eating.
There has been so much ridiculous stuff written upon “diet” that most sensible people have given up trying to follow the prescribed rules of writers, if not their physician’s directions on that score.
Take the following, by one celebrated Dr. Brown, of England, for an example, although we may find others quite as ridiculous nearer home:—
“For breakfast, toast and rich soup made on a slow fire, a walk before breakfast, and a good deal after it; a glass of wine in the forenoon, from time to time; good broth or soup to dinner, with meat of any kind he likes, but always the most nourishing; several glasses of port or punch to be taken after dinner, till some enlivening effect is perceived from them, and a dram after everything heavy; one hour and a half after dinner another walk; between tea-time and supper a game with cheerful company at cards or any other play, never too prolonged; a little light reading; jocose, humorous company, avoiding that of popular Presbyterian ministers and their admirers, and all hypocrites and thieves of every description.... Lastly, the company of amiable, handsome, and delightful young women and an enlivening glass.”
Dr. Russell, to whom we are indebted for the quotation, might well say that “John Brown’s prescriptions seem a caricature of his system.”
A “Stomach-mill” and a “Stewing-pot.”
There have been many speculations about the nature of the digestive process, and in relation to them the celebrated Hunter remarked, playfully, “To account for digestion, some have made the stomach a mill; some would have it to be a stewing-pot, and some a brewing-trough; yet all the while one would have thought that it must have been very evident that the stomach was neither a mill, nor a stewing-pot, nor a brewing-trough, nor anything but a stomach.” All that can be said is, that digestion is a chemical process, the mechanical agency spoken of being of service only in thoroughly mixing the gastric juice with the food.