Study and stimulants, or, The use of intoxicants and narcotics in relation to intellectual life, as illustrated by personal communications on the subject, from men of letters and of science / edited by A. Arthur Reade.

Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Study and stimulants, or, The use of intoxicants and narcotics in relation to intellectual life, as illustrated by personal communications on the subject, from men of letters and of science / edited by A. Arthur Reade. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    bodily fatigue, mental anxiety, and the worry in- separable from constant association with Eastern servants. It would be necessary to write a long letter to the newspapers before retiring to rest. A judicious use of stimulants has, under such circumstances, not only given me sufficient energy to unpack my writing materials, lie on my face, and propped on both elbows, write for hours by the light of a smoky lamp ; but also ], produced the flow of ideas that previously refused to come out of their mental hiding places, or which presented themselves in a flat and uninteresting form. I consider, then, the use of alcoholic and other stimulation to be conducive to literary labours under circumstances of physical and mental exhaustion ; and very often the latter is the normal condition of writers, especially those employed on the press. Perhaps, too, in examining into the nature of some metaphysical and psychological 1 questions the use of alcohol, or some similar stimulant, aids the appreciation of nuances of thought which might otherwise escape the cooler and less excited brain. On the other hand, while travelling in the East during the past few years, and when, as a rule, circumstances precluded the possibility of obtaining stimulants, I found that a robust state of health consequent on an out-door life, made the consumption of alcohol in any D
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