m, is because they immediately
follow a meal with one or two cups of tea or coffee. Now please remember
this: An individual afflicted with "nerves" has no business drinking
either tea or coffee. He should let them both alone. Plain hot water is
the very best drink in the world for a nervous person. If you want a
drink after your meal drink a cup of plain hot water. And you should
also drink a cup of hot water half an hour before breakfast. If you do
not care for breakfast, and feel you do not need this meal, drink the
hot water anyway. The victim of "nerves" should never drink during the
meal but after it, if he must drink anything at all. He should also
drink a pint or more of cold water between meals every day.

Now, another thing with regard to chewing all solid food to a cream. It
has been proved over and over again in my own case and in that of many
others, that in doing this the brain and muscles are both made stronger
and keener for work, that those who chew their food in this way have
much greater endurance, both mental and physical, than those who do not.

Today if I should relax my vigilance in respect to chewing my food I
should soon go down again. But with this aid, which I now so easily
employ, combined with exactly the right things to eat, I find I need
have no fear. It has been ten years since my last breakdown and in that
interval I have done the very best work and by far the hardest brain
work of a lifetime. I do not believe people break down from overwork.
You may think that a perfectly absurd statement. But I have good grounds
upon which to base my belief. If nervous people would eat sparingly and
chew their food to a cream, eating the foods I shall mention later on, I
am confident they would rarely, if ever, break down.

It is certain that in the last ten years, with the greatest mental
strain on me, I should have gone down again, and perhaps more than once,
if I had not found what caused "nerves" and how to prevent it. In the
meantime I have written ten or more books, and every writer, at least,
knows what a nerve-racking profession writing is. In addition to all
this mental labor I have gone right ahead with my medical practice.
Surely there is balm in this particular Gilead.

But if you will not chew your food to a cream you need not expect to win
the entire reward. And you must do this not only one day or one week or
one month or one year, but all the days, weeks, months, and years that
you ma