Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 March 1879 — Fish as Brain Food. [ARTICLE]

Fish as Brain Food.

Since during the acts of sensation and intellection phosphorus is consumed in the brain and nervous system, there arises a necessity to restore the portions so consumed, or, as the popular expression is, use brain food. Now, as every one knows, it is the property of phosphorus to shine in the dark; and as fish in a certain state of putrefactive decay often emit light, or become phosphorescent, it has been thought that this is due to the abundance of phosphorus their flesh contains, and hence that they are eminently suitable for the nourishment of the nervous system, and are an invariable brain food. Under that idea many persons resort to a diet of fish, and persuade themselves that they derive advantage from it in increased vividness of thought, a signal improvement in the reasoning powers. But the flesh of fish contains no excess of phosphorus, nor does its shining depend on that element. Decaying willow wood shines even more brilliantly than decaying fish; it may sometimes be discerned afar off 'at night. The shining in the two cases is due to the same cause—the oxidation of carbon, not of phosphorus, in organic substances containing, perhaps, not a perceptible trace of the latter element. Yet surely no one found himself rising to a poetical fervor by tasting decaying willow wood, though it ought, on these principles, to be a better brain food than a much larger quantity of fish.—Dr. J. W. Draper, in Harper's Magazine for April.