success in life? It is not likely the position can be maintained; but if it can, it is not the fault of education. but of the individual in whom it engenders unjustifiable expectations. He has put on his education as a badge of distinction, and so is distinguished for his folly. The remedy is in making higher education so common, that it will cease to be a badge of distinction.

There is another feature of the subject, properly belonging to mental health, upon which the writer enters with some hesitation; not because his suspicions of the truth of what he may say, fall far short of profound conviction, but because he has not the statistics at hand to fully verify them, viz: That insanity comes mainly as a consequence of disuse, instead of overuse of brains. Any careful observer who walks through the wards of a hospital for the insane will be impressed with the apparent want of intellectual development of the great majority of its inmates; and on inquiry he will find that the proportion of those not possessed of the rudiments of a con.mon education, is very large. He will also learn that the proportion of those tolerably well educated is very small, of those who enjoy books still smaller, and of those whose mental discipline had at any time of life been thorough, very few indeed. Doctors and lawyers, and preachers will be there, but to be either or all, is not a sufficient guarantee of having had either a sound mental or moral training. But the inquirer will be more surprised when he learns the occupations of the great mass of inmates. The proportion of farmers is enormous. Indeed farmers and housewives, and housekeepers and laborers furnish the great mass in many of our great hospitals. Of course the proportion varies as the agricultural or other interests obtain in different States and localities. But what is especially noticeable is this, that those avocations commonly understood to be, and which are in fact specially healthful, are furnishing so large a proportion of the insane; and this is still more remarkable, when we reflect that insanity is now, almost without exception among specialists. believed to be a consequence of physical disorder. Statistics make the conclusion almost inevitable that those avocations requiring the least intellectual development, although they are healthful, furnish more than their proportion of the insane. Even intellectual activity in a limited number of directions, seems a partial bar to insanity. Even the poor sewing girls, whose daily toils press sorely upon their physical constitutions, have a very small representation. Inventors, whose mental activities in given directions are intense, and their disappointments constant, have a very limited, or no representation; and it will appear through the entire list of occupations, that those which require the most mental strength and activity are least likely to break down. But if statistics should prove that the statement is not strictly true, it would not even weaken the other proposition, namely, that most of the insanity comes from disuse and not overuse of brain power; for if a man goes into the competition of life, and risks his success upon the superior strength he may display in his little finger and breaks it, or paralyzes it, it is no proof that he would not have succeeded if

he had used the strength of his whole body. The simple truth is, we march out into the thick battles of life without reserve corps or a base of supplie, and some of us are wounded, some crippled, and some annihilated. Our brains should be our base of supplies-our impregnable fortress. If they are not, then we have none.

But what shall we do with heredity? A large proportion of the insane have insane antecedents. Is heredity a hell-gate against which no power can be successfully projected? We do make successful war against heredity in other directions. If heredity had been an impregnable fortress, we should all be savages today! If we wound an arm, we put it in a sling, and use other members of the body, until it rests itself well. The same physiological law holds good in relation to the brain. Every physician understands this law, and when his friends are overwhelmed by a great sorrow, gives them something to do, and something to think about, that the wounded spirit may have rest. Alienists understand it, and so object to isolating hospitals for the insane. They would locate them in close proximity to towns, where they can feed some faculties through eyes, and ears, and so rest the disordered members, through diversion; but unfortunately the great majority of the insane, have no mental appetite-no mental stomachs have been grown that can digest food, and so they must be left to find their way out or perish utterly.

The world has many schemes for securing the welfare and highest happiness of mankind. Some of them are formulated and enforced as panaceas. A formulated and coerced faith may have the power of momentum, but it will never secure personal development, good conduct or purity of heart in the mass of its adherents. If a dogmatic and coercive religion had been enough to secure the highest well being of the race, mankind would have been, long centuries ago, on the highway to the zenith of its power. It is not intended to undervalue the beneficence of religion upon man. kind or the individual, especially of Christianity; for, to deny its triumphs for good would be to falsify history and common observation.

Nor is it intended to deny that heights of moral grandeur are sometimes attained by the very ignorant, that stand forth a prophecy and hope to the race; but what is meant and insisted on. is that any formulated statement of religious or theological truth, the acceptance of which is made alike obligatory upon all minds and ail consciences. plants in the very center of both mind and conscience, vitiated seed that must in the end eventuate in partial loss of mental and moral health; and, more than this, all organizations, whether political or civil, whether social or religious, whether open or secret, that do not make the highest practicable development of every individual soul their chief corner-stone, will ultimately fail of great results, and the highest possible good.

Foods and Domestic Beverages.

BY. O. G. SELDEN, M. D., OF TOMAH.

MEMBER OF

THE STATE BOARD OF HEALTH.

FOODS AND DOMESTIC BEVERAGES.

The importance of taking such food and only such as is proper for us, will become manifest when we consider that our whole being is nourished by the ingestion of the nutritive principles of what we eat. Much also depends on the time and manner of taking food and the quantity taken at a given time; also, on the nutritive quality of the food itself. After adult age the quantity of food should compare as nearly as possible to the waste of the body; and for this reason the man of active habits will, all things being equal, require more food than those who live a sedentary life.

In this bustling age of ours, where the man of business grudges the expenditure of minutes as a miser does his pennies, many evil results follow the practice of eating too fast. The food enters the stomach imperfectly masticated, the digestive forces are overtaxed, and if presisted in, such a course must lead to such derangement of health and the proper nutrition of the body, as follow a dyspeptic habit of the system, I say habit because a long experience has taught me that most dyspeptics can be restored to health by establishing a proper time and manner of taking their daily food. This haste in eating should be guarded against at all times, and no portion of food of whatever kind should ever enter the stomach until it is perfectly masticated.

Many, nay most, people eat too much. The hasty eater is especially liable to fall into this error. The sensation of hunger does not depend on any peculiar condition of the digestive organs, as was formerly supposed, but by the demand of the whole animal organism, when its supply of nutrition is exhausted. The hasty eater entirely ignores this fact, practically, and by rapidly filling the stomach with improperly masticated food, arises often from the table with a feeling of oppression and fullness of the stomach, which distress would have been avoided if he had spent a few more minutes in taking his meal. Dr. Benj. Franklin who was, when young, a great bustler, and placed an exaggerated value on time, says a man should arise from the dinner table with a good appetite; a rule applicable to most cases, but not to all. I would not be thought as encouraging a needless waste of time in eating or in anything else, but that man must but poorly improve his hours of business or labor who cannot spare half an hour in which to take his every meal.

The common practice for adult persons in health is to take food three times each day-morning, noon and evening. This division of the periods of taking food is probably as good as any that can be suggested. But this stated period should be the only time of taking food. The pernicious practice of eating between meals, so