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Untitled Article
rishing the organs and of stimulating them to the due performance of their functions . A weak , stunted , and deformed frame , a still weaker and more deformed mind , a short and wretched existence , a life happy only in its brevity , must be the inevitable consequence . Deficiency of food , at all times acting most perniciously on the system , enfeebling and corrupting the body , and equally enfeebling and corrupting the mind , is most injurious in infancy and childhood . Then it is that the
system is to be built up ; then it is that all the organic actions go on with the greatest rapidity and vigour ; then it is that the expenditure is the largest , and that the supply requires to be proportionately ample . If this supply be not at this tender age regularly afforded , a check is given to the physical and the mental health , which is never recovered . Life may not be immediately destroyed , but it is fearfully abridged , and still more fearfully perverted . To suppose thatan individual , or thata race of
people can acquire moral excellence without intellectual vigour , or intellectual vigour without physical strength , or physical strength without a due supply of nutritious food from the first day of infancy up to manhood , is vainer than the wildest dream at this moment passing through the mind of a maniac . The true philanthropist , then , is he who labours to give the people , not food ^ but the knowledge which will enable them to secure it in abundance for themselves , and for their children :
and no one saves , prolongs , or blesses human life , like him who instructs the people in their own interests . How excess in food operates in obstructing the functions of the body , in obscuring the faculties of the mind , in producing disease physical and mental , sometimes extinguishing life in an instant , and at all times rapidly exhausting the flame , you will be able clearly to understand from what has been already
stated . And excess , like deficiency , is far more injurious in the young than in the adult , and the younger the more pernicious . See how the fluids abound in the infant , how easily it is excited , with what rapidity its heart beats , what slight causes will make it double or treble the number of its contractions in a moment ; with what activity and energy its capillary vessels work ; how tender , how irritable the whole extent of its alimentary canal : how still more delicate and
excitable the soft and tender substance of its brain ; listen to its cries , watch its contortions when it has taken food unsuited to it , or when it has been gorged with the most wholesome food , and there is no mother , whose understanding is equal to her affection , who will not be most anxious to ascertain the kind of diet best adapted for her
children , and who having once ascertained it will not rigidly adhere to it . Never forget that the foundation of the moral , the intellectual , and the physical health and vigour of your child is laid in its infancy , and do not imagine that it is so spiritual and refined a being , that these qualities are not influenced by its diet . '
The advantage of an abundant supply of fresh air , and the pernicious effects of all such contrivances as closely-drawn bed-curtains must he evident , when it is remembered , that air , besides acting powerfully upon the nerves , is the agent that converts the food into nutriment . Some of the facts connected with the effects of heat and cold upon the system are interesting . * Heat is a stimulus . It acts powerfully on the nervous ays tern , and through it on all the organs , and more especially on the entire apparatus of the circulation . The effect of a ,
Untitled Article
Dr . Southwood Smith on the Animal Economy . 208
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1833, page 203, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2610/page/59/
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