Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1907 — DYSPEPSIA AND DESTINY. [ARTICLE]

DYSPEPSIA AND DESTINY.

Who Nesleeted Their Bodie* Faded When Suceeaa Waa Nigh. Man has a machine, an apparatus of delicate adjustment, but of great power—his body—but too often he neglects to use it, says the Boston Globe. He eta It rest in ease or slumber in sloth. He coddles it. He arrays it in fine linen and purple, bedi&ns it with jewels and pampers it with indigestible foods, often sparing ft the arduous labor of mastication. He permits It to sit awkwardly w ith crossed legs or stooped shoulders, as if the trunk was tod fragile to hold up its limbs, or the weight of the atmosphere was an Atlas load for its back. And what reward hath the-mind for this indulgence granted the sybarite flesh? Ingratitude and complaining accompanied by accusations. The poor, debilitated muscles and nerves justly charge that the overseer mind has been neglectful of Its duties and, despising so weak and Ignorant a foreman, desert or rebel, and leave their should-be boss Impotent to carry out the-frue work of a man.

The marvelous mind of Alexander, which ruled a world, bad no discipline for its body after it became acquainted with oriental pomp and seriousness, and disregarded the stalwarl—Eirility with which In other days it tamed Bucephalus. Napoleon, busy with rearranging the map of Europe, did not properly masticate his chicken a la Marengo and allowed it to pass in the-rough into the spoiled child of a stomach, trusting to the liver—a weak one inherited from his father —to complete the lack ol mastication. Probably the great disaster of Leip zlgwasdne-todtscareless'eattHg. Voltaire has said the fate of a nation often, depended on the good or bad digestion of a prime minister, and Motley declares that the gout o'f’Charles V. changes the destinies of the world Balzac, Incomparable novelist, died at 50 when he had planned for a life of rural rest, filed because he allowed the craving stomach to have coffee at all hours and in great quantities; and while his mind sauntered In all the highways, lanes and alleys of human society, his body, cabined in a monk’s robe, took no exercise, but stuck to a garret, except when a sheriff’s approach made flight a thing desired by the agile mind. In that delightful essay, “Saints and Their Bodies,” Colonel Higginson says: “Three of the four Greek fathers ruined their health early and were Invalids for the rest of their days. Three only of the whole eight were able-bodied men—Ambrose? Augustine and Athan-'aslus=-*ndAbe permanent Influence of these three has been far greater than that of all the others put together.” “He is born for a minister,” New England parents once said of the puny twigs Of the family tree, while they deputed the lusty limbs to bear the buffets of secular storms,. Luther scoffed at Juvenal’s axiom of “A healthy mind In a healthy body”— an axiom commended to the degenerate Romans—but other religious leaders have welcomed and heeded the warning contained in the saying of the great satirist. If CalvTm was an invalid all the days of bls life, George, Michael and Martin were robust. If some noted prelates have not treated their bodies as they ought, we have seen even a XIII. illustrate to the letter, "mens sana In corpore sano.”