Jane Andrews

“ IS ALCOHOL GOOD FOR THE NERVES AND THE BRAIN?
Think of the wonderful work the brain is all the time doing for you!
You ought to give it the best of food to keep it in good working order. Any drink that contains alcohol is not a food to make one strong; but is a poison to hurt, and at last to kill.
It injures the brain and nerves so that they can not work well, and send their messages properly. That is why the drunkard does not know what he is about. ”

“ Each pause is a rest. But the lungs are very steady workers, both by night and by day. The least we can do for them, is to give them fresh air and plenty of room to work in.
You may say: "We can't give them more [100] room than they have. They are shut up in our chests."
I have seen people who wore such tight clothes that their lungs did not have room to take a full breath. If any part of the lungs can not expand, it will become useless. If your lungs can not take in air enough to purify the blood, you can not be so well and strong as God intended, and your life will be shortened. ”

“ Some way is needed to send the gray fluid that is made from the food we eat and drink, to every part of the body.
To send the food with the blood is a sure way of making it reach every part.
So, when the stomach has prepared the food, the blood takes it up and carries it to every part of the body. It then leaves with each part, just what it needs.
THE BLOOD AND THE BRAIN.
As the brain has so much work to attend to, it must have very pure, good blood sent to it, to keep it strong. Good blood is made [95] from good food. It can not be good if it has been poisoned with alcohol or tobacco. ”

“ Pure water is good, and apples are good. But the apple-juice begins to be a poison as soon as there is the least drop of alcohol in it. In cider-making, the alcohol forms in the [88] juice, you know, in a few hours after it is pressed out of the apples.
None of the drinks in which there is alcohol, can give you real strength.
Then why do people think they can?
Because alcohol puts the nerves to sleep, they can not, truly, tell the brain how hard the work is, or how heavy the weight to be lifted.
The alcohol has in this way cheated men into thinking they can do more than they really can. ”

“ Where shall we get lime for our bones?
We can not eat lime; but the grass and the grains take it out of the earth. Then [73] the cows eat the grass and turn it into milk, and in the milk we drink, we get some of the lime to feed our bones.
In the same way, the grain growing in the field takes up lime and other things that we need, but could not eat for ourselves. The lime that thus becomes a part of the grain, we get in our bread, oat-meal porridge, and other foods. ”

“ A healthy, happy child, dressed in clothes which are suitable for the season, is pleasanter to look at than one whose dress, though rich and handsome, is not warm enough for health or comfort.
When you feel cold, take exercise, if possible. This will make the hot blood flow all through your body and warm it. If you can not, you should put on more clothes, go to a warm room, in some way get warm and keep warm, or the cold will make you sick. ”

“ The lungs breathe out the waste matter that they have taken from the blood. This waste matter poisons the air. If we should close all the doors and windows, and the fireplace or opening into the chimney, and leave not even a crack by which the fresh air could come in, we would die simply from staying in such a room. ”

“ The more the drinker takes, the more he often wants, and thus he goes on from drinking cider, wine, or beer, to drinking whiskey, brandy, or rum. Thus drunkards are made.
People who are in the habit of taking drinks which contain alcohol, often care more for them than for any thing else, even when they know they are being ruined by them. ”

“ CARE OF THE BRAIN AND NERVES.
As one part of the brain has to take care of all the rest of the body, and keep every organ at work, of course it can never go to sleep itself. If it did, the heart would stop pumping, the lungs would leave off breathing, all other work would stop, and the body would be dead. ”

“ When the food in the stomach is mixed and prepared, it is ready to be sent through the body; some is carried to the bones, some to the muscles, some to the nerves and brain, some to the skin, and some even to the finger nails, the hair, and the eyes. Each part needs to be fed in order to grow.
WHY DO PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT GROWING NEED FOOD?
Children need each day to make larger and larger bones, larger muscles, and a larger skin to cover the larger body. ”

“ If you try to speak while you have food in your mouth, this little door has to open, and some bit of food may slip in. The windpipe will not pass it to the lungs, but tries to force it back. Then we say the food chokes us. If the windpipe can not succeed in forcing back the food, the person will die.
HOW THE FOOD IS CARRIED THROUGH THE BODY.
But we will suppose that the food of our dinner has gone safely down into the stomach. There the stomach works it over, and mixes in gastric juice, until it is all a gray fluid. ”

“ Barley is a kind of grain from which the brewer makes beer.
He must first turn its starch into sugar, so he begins by sprouting his grain.
Of course he does not plant it in the ground, because it would need to be quickly dug up again.
He keeps it warm and moist in a place where he can watch it, and stop the sprouting just in time to save the sugar, before it [47] is used to feed the root and stem. This sprouted grain is called malt.
The brewer soaks it in plenty of water, because the grain has not water in itself, as the grape has. ”

“ When children have been playing out-of-doors, they often have very dirty hands and faces. Any one can see, then, that they need to be washed. But even if they had been in the cleanest place all day and had not touched any thing dirty, they would still need the washing; for the waste matter that comes from the inside of the body is just as hurtful as the mud or dust of the street. ”

“ If the doctor had put in more alcohol, day after day, as one does who drinks liquor, sores would perhaps have come on the delicate lining of the stomach. Sometimes the stomach is so hurt by alcohol, that the drinker dies. If the stomach can not do its work well, the whole body must suffer from want of the good food it needs. ”

“ The object of all this legislation is, not that the future citizen may know the technical names of bones, nerves, and muscles, but that he may have a timely and forewarning knowledge of the effects of alcohol and other popular poisons upon the human body, and therefore upon life and character. ”

“ The pupil of the eye opens into a little, round room where the nerve of sight is. This is a safe place for this delicate nerve, which can not bear too much light. It carries to the brain an account of every thing we see. ”

“ Wise doctors have said that the boy who uses tobacco while he is growing, makes every part of his body less strong than it otherwise would be. Even his bones will not grow so well.
Boys who smoke can not become such large, fine-looking men as they would if they did not smoke.
Cigarettes are small, but they are very poisonous. Chewing tobacco is a worse and more filthy habit even than smoking. The [19] frequent spitting it causes is disgusting to others and hurts the health of the chewer. Tobacco in any form is a great enemy to youth. ”

“ Wash it off well, and your skin will be fresh and healthy, and able to do its work. If the skin could not do its work, you would die.
Do not keep on your rubber boots or shoes all through school-time. Rubber will not let the perspiration pass off, so the little pores get clogged and your feet begin to feel uncomfortable, or your head may ache. No part can fail to do its work without causing trouble to the rest of the body. But you should always wear rubbers out-of-doors when the ground is wet. ”

“ Now that you know how soft your bones are, and how easily they bend, you will surely be careful to sit and stand erect. Do not twist your legs, or arms, or shoulders; for you want to grow into straight and graceful men and women, instead of being round-shouldered, or hump-backed, or lame, all your lives. ”

“ We must also remember that the brain needs a great deal of blood. If we take alcohol into our blood, much of it goes to the brain. There it affects the nerves, and makes a man lose control over his actions.
EXERCISE.
When you run, you can feel your heart beating. It gets an instant of rest between the beats.
Good exercise in the fresh air makes the heart work well and warms the body better than a fire could do.
DOES ALCOHOL DO ANY HARM TO THE HEART?
Your heart is made of muscle. You know what harm alcohol does to the muscles. ”

“ If he spends it for wine or whiskey, it will go sooner, as these cost more. If no money was spent for liquor in this country, people would not so often be sick, or poor, or bad, or wretched. We should not need so many policemen, and jails, and prisons, as we have now. If no liquor was drunk, men, women, and children would be better and happier. ”

“ Sugar will make fat, and so will starch, cream, rice, butter, and fat meat. As milk will make muscle and fat and bones, it is the best kind of food. Here, again, it is the earth that sends us our food. Fat meat comes from animals well fed on grain and grass ”

“ Horse-car drivers and omnibus drivers have a hard time on a cold winter day. They are often cheated into thinking that alcohol will keep them warm; but doctors have learned that it is the water-drinkers who hold out best against the cold. Alcohol can not really keep a person warm.
All children are interested in stories about Arctic explorers, whose ships get frozen into great ice-fields, who travel on sledges drawn by dogs, and sometimes live in Esquimau huts, and drink oil, and eat walrus meat. ”

“ When the nerves are put to sleep by alcohol, people become careless and do not do their work faithfully; sometimes, they can not even tell the difference between a railroad track and a place of safety. ”

“ If it can not make muscles, nor bone nor nerve, nor brain, it can not give you any strength.
BEER.
Some people may tell you that drinking beer will make you strong.
The grain from which the beer is made, would have given you strength. If you should measure your strength before and after drinking beer, you would find that you had not gained any. Most of the food part of the grain has been turned into alcohol.
CIDER.
The juice of crushed apples, you know, is called cider. As soon as the cider begins to turn sour, or "hard," as people say, alcohol begins to form in it. ”

“ Sometimes, you can not see the perspiration, because there is not enough of it to form drops. But it is always coming out through your skin, both in winter and summer. Your body is kept healthy by having its worn-out matter carried off in this way, as well as in other ways. ”

“ It might have been ground and made into barley-cakes, or into pearl barley to thicken our soups, and then it would have been good food. Now, it is a drink containing alcohol, and alcohol is a poison.
You should not drink beer, because there is alcohol in it.
Two boys of the same age begin school [48] together. One of them drinks wine, cider, and beer. The other never allows these drinks to pass his lips. These boys soon become very different from each other, because one is poisoning his body and mind with alcohol, and the other is not.
A man wants a good, steady boy to work for him. ”

“ Every pore is the mouth of a tiny tube which is carrying off waste matter and water from your body. If you could piece together all these little perspiration tubes that are in the skin of one person, they would make a line more than three miles long. ”

“ Sometimes, a child no older than some of [60] you are, is left at home with the care of a baby brother or sister; so it is best that you should know about this dangerous enemy, and never be tempted to quiet the baby by giving him a poison, instead of taking your best and kindest care of him. ”

“ If the thinking part of the brain does not have good quiet sleep, it will soon wear out. A worn-out brain is not easy to repair. [33]
If well cared for, your brain will do the best of work for you for seventy or eighty years without complaining.
The nerves are easily tired out, and they need much rest. They get tired if we do one thing too long at a time; they are rested by a change of work. ”

“ Newspapers often tell us about people setting houses on fire; about men who forgot to turn the switch, and so wrecked a railroad train; about men who lay down on the railroad track and were run over by the cars. ”

“ Not that it does all this to every youth who smokes, but it is always true that no boy of seven to fourteen can begin to smoke or chew and have so fine a body and mind when he is twenty-one years old as he would have had if he had never used tobacco. ”

“ Perhaps some boy will say: "Grown people are always telling us, 'this will do for men, but it is not good for boys.'"
Tobacco is not good for men; but there is a very good reason why it is worse for boys. ”

“ What you feel, is a muscle (mŭs ́sl) , and it works your joints very much as the rubber strap works the hinge of the door.
One end of the muscle is fastened to the bone just below the elbow joint; and the other end, higher up above the joint.
When it tightens, or contracts, as we say, it bends the joint. When the arm is straightened, the muscle returns to its first shape.
There is another muscle on the outside of the arm which stretches when this one shortens, and so helps the working of the joint.
Every joint has two or more muscles of its own to work it. ”

“ Water. Salt. Lime.
Perhaps some of you noticed that we had no wine, beer, nor any drink that had alcohol in it, on our bill of fare for dinner. We had no cigars, either, to be smoked after dinner. If these are good things, we ought to have had them. Why did we leave them out?
We should eat in order to grow strong and keep strong. ”

“ The man who is in the habit of using alcoholic drinks can not touch, taste, see, smell, or hear so well as he ought. His hands tremble, his speech is sometimes thick, and often he can not walk straight. Sometimes, he thinks he sees things when he does not, because his poor nerves are so confused by alcohol that they can not do their work. ”

“ People who have grown up, need their food for this work of mending.
CARE OF THE STOMACH.
One way to take care of the stomach is to give it only its own work to do. The teeth must first do their work faithfully.
The stomach must have rest, too. I have seen some children who want to make their poor stomachs work all the time. They are always eating apples, or candy, or something, so that their stomachs have no chance to rest. ”