Meditation XX.

Influence of diet on rest, sleep and dreams.

Whether man sleeps, eats, or dreams, he is yet subject to the laws of nutrition and to gastronomy.

Theory and experience, both admit that the quantity and quality of food have a great influence on our repose, rest, and dreams.

Effects of diet on labor.

A man who is badly fed, cannot bear for a long time, the fatigues of prolonged labor; his strength even abandons him, and to him rest is only loss of power.

If his labor be mental, his ideas are crude and undecided.  Reflection contributes nothing to them, nor does judgment analyze them.  The brain exhausts itself in vain efforts and the actor slumbers on the battlefield.

I always thought that the suppers of Auteuil and those of the hotels of Rambouillet and Soissons, formed many of the authors of the reign of Louis XIV.  Geoffrey was not far wrong when he characterised the authors of the latter part of the eighteenth century as eau sucree.  That was their habitual beverage.

According to these principles, I have examined the works of certain well known authors said to have been poor and suffering, and I never found any energy in, them, except when they were stimulated by badly conceived envy.

On the eve of his departure for Boulogne, the Emperor Napoleon fasted for thirty hours, both with his council and with the various depositories of his power, without any refreshment other than two very brief meals, and a few cups of coffee.

Brown, mentions an admiralty clerk, who, having lost his memorandum, without which he could not carry on his duty, passed fifty-two consecutive hours in preparing them again.  Without due regimen, he never could have borne the fatigue and sustained himself as follows:—­At first, he drank water, then wine, and ultimately took opium.

I met one day a courier, whom I had known in the army, on his way from Spain, whither he had been sent with a government dispatch.  (Correo ganando horas.)

He made the trip in twelve days, having halted only four hours in Madrid, to drink a few glasses of wine, and to take some soup.  This was all the nourishment he took during this long series of sleepless nights and fatigues.  He said that more solid sustenance would have made it impossible for him to continue his journey.

Dreams.

Diet has no trifling influence on sleep and dreams.

A hungry man cannot sleep, for the pain he suffers keeps him awake.  If weakness or exhaustion overcome him, his slumber is light, uneasy and broken.

A person, however, who has eaten too much, sinks at once to sleep.  If he dreams, he remembers nothing of it, for the nervous fluid has been intercepted in the passages.  He awakes quickly, and when awake is very sensible of the pains of digestion.