STIMULANTS AND NARCOTICS.
By Dr. F. Nansen
No Help in a Cold Climate.
My experience leads me to take a decided stand against the use of stimulants and narcotics of all kinds. It must be a sound principle at all times that one should live in as natural and simple a way as possible, and especially must this be the case when the life is a life of severe exertion in an extremely cold climate. The idea that one gains by stimulating body and mind by artificial means betrays, in my opinion, not only ignorance of the simplest physiological laws, but also a want of experience, or perhaps a want of capacity to learn from experience by observation. It seems, indeed, quite simple and obvious that one can get nothing in this life without paying for it in one way or another, and that artificial stimulants, even if they had not the directly injurious effects which they undoubtedly have, can produce nothing but a temporary excitement, followed by a corresponding reaction. Stimulants bring practically no nutritive substance into the body, and the energy which one obtains in anticipation by their use at one moment must be paid for by a corresponding exhaustion at the next. It may, no doubt, be advanced that there are occasions when a momentary supply of energy is necessary, but to this I would answer that I can not imagine such a state of things to arise in the course of a protracted sledge expedition, when, on the contrary, as regular and steady work as possible is generally the main thing to be aimed at.—Dr. F. Nansen, Arctic Explorer.