From sleep to bread to brains, here is the crazy advice and opinions of medical doctors and scientists of the late 1800s.
Concerning Human Life
Sleep
It has been asserted by some scientists that the head of the bed should be placed to the north, so that the polar current may strike vertically through the body toward the feet; others advocate a very low pillow, allowing the neck to remain unbent.
Many people however prefer a more upright attitude during sleep, and some sufferers from insomnia even go so far as to have the spring mattress slightly elevated at the top, so as to form a low incline plane.
The correct position to assume while seeking sleep is on the right side, especially after eating.
The breathing should be done through the nose, and the mouth kept shut if possible.
Bread is Deadly
Bread is now placed under the ban by some of our advanced scientists as the most fatal of the numerous foods which have lately incurred the disapprobation of medical writers.
Several experts, medical and lay, are advocates of the theory that the staff of life becomes the staff of death, and declare that we must avoid bread as the king evil of the starchy foods.
An American writer on hygiene maintains that bread causes indigestion and obesity. Dr. Evans of the Royal College of Surgeons concurs with the New York physician in his gloomy view of bread as a healthful food.
The scientists should have explained that it is the yeast which causes the trouble with the bread. Most yeast bread, particularly yeast rolls, muffins, and griddlecakes, are not baked at a temperature high enough to kill the yeast germs, which are accordingly left to pass alive into the stomach, where they rapidly multiply, set up fermentation, produce acidity, retard digestion, cause dyspepsia and other alimentary ills.
There is no food more healthful in every respect than light, sweet rolls, tea biscuits and similar bread foods if raised with proper baking powder and they should be substituted in place of yeast-raised food wherever possible.
Brains
The British Association for the Advancement of Science at its annual meeting took up, among other things, the study of the structure of human beings. Its comments upon the manner in which the human anatomy is put together in order to give grace and freedom of action. These peculiarities are to a great extant wanting in the lower animals. The marked superiority of the hand over the forepaw of any creature is dwelt upon.
The brain comes in for special study.
It is said that the brains of boys weigh more at their birth than those of girls, and that men of great intellectual power have brains that weigh fifty-five or sixty ounces, while brains of imbeciles may not weigh over thirty ounces.
While this may be and probably is true, the question arises whether quantity is the thing to be sought after in the brain. Many of our intellectual giants have been exceedingly small men, with heads that could by no possibility contain a sixty-ounce brain.
We live far above the level where power, ability and greatness can be measured with a pocket-rule, a tape line or a pair of scales.
Quality so far outranks quantity that it is not to be mentioned in the same connection. By ingenuity, deftness and forethought, a man may perform prodigies of labor without the exercise of as much muscle as other men would employ in doing a fifth of the work.
Source: The age-herald. (Birmingham, Ala.), 01 Jan. 1898.
