Nervous Capital Used Up
By W. R. C. Latson
VITALITY is the available working energy of the body; it is to the body what steam is to a locomotive. Between the human body and the locomotive there is, in many respects, a perfect analogy. The locomotive is merely a mechanism by means of which the energy latent, or stored up, in coal and air and water may be converted into energy exhibited as heat and work. Now, the human body, like the locomotive, is a mechanism for the conversion of energy. Food and air and water contain stored-up energy. This energy, latent in the food, air, and water, is converted by the human body into energy manifested as heat and work. Exactly as the power of the steam-engine depends upon the amount of energy it can produce from its fuel, so the power of the man depends upon the amount of energy he can produce from his food. That is to say, “vitality” as applied to a man corresponds exactly to “horse-power” as applied to a steam-engine. The body, then, acting upon food and air and water, produces. Certain acts and influences draw upon that vitality. The greater the amount of vitality made, and the less uselessly expended, the more will there remain to be expended in the chosen work of the individual. The whole matter may be reduced to a very simple equation. Let us suppose the amount of vitality generated by the body to be one hundred per cent. In moving about, in digestion, respiration, etc., one uses up, we will say, eighty per cent of this vitality, which is, so to speak, his nervous capital. This leaves twenty per cent which he can devote to his chosen work. Such a condition of things means physiological balance; that is, health. But what if he devotes to work more than twenty per cent of the vitality made by the body; in other words, if he overworks? In the case of a man who expends in his daily work vitality equal to thirty per cent of that made, there is left for the bodily functions only seventy instead of the eighty per cent which they need. The vitality-making organs deprived of ten per cent of the motive power needed for their work, produce less than the one hundred per cent needed by the body as a whole—say ninety per cent. Of this ninety per cent, thirty is being consumed by the daily work, leaving for the motive power of the organs only sixty per cent, instead of the eighty required. That is to say, the organs which produce vitality need vitality for their motive power. If this motive power be deficient, they will make less and less vitality until the zero-mark is reached. This zero-mark means insanity, nervous prostration, or, at the very least, such a lowering of the vital resistance that the body falls a prey to some wasting disease. Occasionally, the enforced rest enjoined by the disorder affords the vitality-making organs a chance to “catch up.” Usually, however, the illness is fatal, owing to lack of constitutional strength. Few persons, save those who have suffered from it, have any idea of the horrors of nervous prostration. Few persons realize that the causation of nervous prostration may be expressed by a simple formula, as explained above.—W. R. C. Latson, in Success.