162
Healthful Living
hours a day, inhaling the impure air cause by many breaths. The weak
[197]
lungs become affected, the brain, from which the nervous energy of
the whole system is derived, becomes enfeebled by being called into
active exercise before the strength of the mental organs is sufficiently
matured to endure fatigue.—
How to Live, 43
.
841. In the schoolroom the foundation has been too surely laid for
diseases of various kinds. But more especially the most delicate of
all organs, the brain, had often been permanently injured by too great
exercise. This has often caused inflammation, then dropsy of the head,
and convulsions with their dreaded results.... In those children who
have survived, the nervous energy of the brain becomes so weakened
that after they come to maturity it is impossible for them to endure
much mental exercise. The forces of some of the delicate organs of
the brain seem to be expended.—
How to Live, 43
.
Abuse of the Mind
842. The mind which is allowed to be absorbed in story reading is
being ruined. The practice results in air-castle building and a sickly
sentimentalism. The imagination becomes diseased, and there is a
vague unrest, a strange appetite for unwholesome mental food. Thou-
sands are today in insane asylums whose minds became unbalanced
by novel reading.—
The Signs of the Times, January 4, 1905
.
843. The memory is greatly injured by ill-chosen reading, which
has a tendency to unbalance the reasoning powers, and to create ner-
vousness, weariness of the brain, and prostration of the entire system.—
Testimonies for the Church 4:497
.
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844. The exercise of the brain in study, without corresponding
physical exercise, has a tendency to attract the blood to the brain, and
the circulation of the blood through the system becomes unbalanced.
The brain has too much blood, and the extremities too little.—
Christian
Education, 9
.
845. Minds are often abused, and goaded on to madness by pur-
suing one line of thought; the excessive employment of the brain
power and the neglect of the physical creates diseased conditions of
the system.—
Special Instruction on Educational Work 14
.