Every part of the body, the bones, muscles, stomach, heart, and lungs, has these useful little nerves to let the master know when anything is wrong with them.
Elmer: Do the nerves ever get sick, mother?
Mother: Oh, yes, very often! Sometimes they are so ill that no message can pass over them to the brain. Then we say the person is paralyzed. A lady had her limbs paralyzed. She could not walk, or move her feet at all. One day she took a foot bath. She could not tell whether the water was cold or hot, and soon the nurse found the skin on her feet blistered, because the water was too warm. The nerves were dead, and she felt no pain at all. Pain is hard to bear, but if there were no pain, the house we live in would soon be ruined. It tells us when danger is near, and because we do not like the pain, we take care of the body. The nerves are more wonderful than any telephone or telegraph, and when you get older, you must learn all you can about them.
Helen: The brain must have a lot of work looking after the nerves and sending so many messages over them. I don’t see how it can think of anything else.
Mother: Perhaps I can explain it to you. Suppose there is a family who have much to do. The father does the hardest work of all. When his wife sees how much he has to do, she tries to help him all she can, so she does many things without saying anything to her husband about it. They have one son, a strong, upright young man, and he takes part of the work, because he wishes to help his parents. We will call the large brain the father, because it does so much of our thinking. As you say, Helen, if he looked after all parts of the body, there would be but little time for study and helping other people. Besides, he falls asleep sometimes, so the little brain, which we will call his wife, takes the work that must be done all the time, as good wives and mothers do, such as keeping the heart beating, the lungs breathing, and other parts of the body at work which can not stop to rest. Then there is the spinal cord, which we will call the son, and he takes charge of the feet and hands when they have common kinds of work to do. When you went to school this morning, I saw you reading a book while you walked. Your brain did not send word to each muscle what to do every time you took a step, but you walked “without thinking,” as we say. The spinal cord took charge of your feet, so we know it can do an easy kind of thinking. When you were learning to skate, Percy, you kept thinking all the time how to move your feet and what to do to keep from falling. But after you had learned how, Father Brain gave his son, Spinal Cord, charge of you, and he thinks of something else most of the time while you skate. It is the same with anything we have learned to do well by doing it over and over, such as playing the piano, riding a bicycle, and many other things we keep doing again and again.
Percy: Does alcohol harm the nerves, mother?
Mother: Yes, indeed. Alcohol seems to like the nerves better than any other part of the body, and it does them more harm than any other, except the brain. When alcohol touches a nerve, it dries it up and makes it hard, as though it had been burned. It causes that dreadful disease, paralysis, of which I have told you. The nerves get so stupid and sleepy they do not know what the brain says to them. They can not tell the muscles what to do, and this is why a drunken man staggers. A drunkard has trembling hands, because the poison has made his nerves sick. Sometimes those wonderful nerves of the eye and ear tell him lies, and he believes what they say. Sometimes the poor nerves and brain are so nearly dead that the man falls down, and people say he is “dead drunk.”
“The little boy is forming a bad habit.”
Elmer: I have heard people say tobacco was good for the nerves, that it made them feel rested, and they could think better.