Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/72

more force than joyous thought. Nervous diseases are the consequence of continued waste of nervous action and incomplete nutrition, and require nothing but judicious dietetic treatment. We have, at the outset of our movement, always maintained that all nervous disorders and socalled lunacy can be greatly affected by diet, and we maintain this now; healthy and judicious food moulds the character, and nourishes the brain.

But not only do we say that diets can relieve nervous disorders, but that the way in which we either strengthen or weaken our nervous system will largely influence the next generation, and on this point there can be no doubt we err greatly. Our social life, our industries, arts, sciences, our very instruction to our children, are daily becoming more absorbent of brain-power and exhaustive of the nervous system, and our food is, on the contrary, becoming poorer and less able to help us to maintain the strain. Nervous disorders and lunacy are increasing, and we are leaving to posterity a legacy for which it will not thank us; in fact, we have commenced an enfeebling process of the whole human system. We are shortening and vitiating that portion of food which consists in air; our water-supply is no longer of the healthiest and purest, and our organic food-supply from vegetable and animal matter is being lessened, and by heat-processes impoverished to a remarkable degree. Culture of organic food-substances is not carried out for usefulness, but for size and show, it appears, and though something like a consciousness of the importance of food is dawning upon us in the cooking, the real bearings of the case — its scientific substratum and the all-powerful influence food has on bodily and mental development — are as yet little understood. Mind is separated from body in our ideas, when it is impossible to separate them, and when the mind must be fed as well as the body; of the two mental exertion exhausts the frame more than bodily, and if nervous exertion of whatever kind exceeds the limits of the strength at its disposal, it naturally affects also the health of the whole system. Nervous disorders can only proceed from one cause, exhaustion of the nervous system showing itself in various ways, and we are now on the highroad to their increase; this is perhaps the saddest phase in that disregard for the nourishing process of the human frame, in which we have allowed the decking out of our persons with finery to take precedence over the healthy maintenance of both mental and bodily power and strength.

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The Date of Easter. — We revert to this subject with the view to reproduce the arithmetical rule to find Easter Sunday in the Gregorian calendar, which was first given by the eminent German mathematician and astronomer Gauss, in Zach's Monatliche Correspondenz, 1800.

1.	From 1800 to 1899 put m = 23, n = 4.    "    1900 to 2099  "   m = 24, n = 5.
2.	Divide the given year by 19, and call the remainder	a.
3.	Divide the given year by 4, and call the remainder	b.
4.	Divide the given year by 7, and call the remainder	c.
5.	Add m to 19 times a, divide the sum by 30, and call the remainder	d.
6.	Add together n, twice b, four times c, and six times d, divide the sum by 7, and call the remainder	e.

Then Easter Sunday is March 22 + d + e, or d + e - 9 of April.

To apply this rule to the present year, we have —

1.	m = 23; n = 4.
2.	For ${\tfrac {1876}{19}}\,$ remainder is 14	a.
3.	For ${\tfrac {1876}{4}}\,$ remainder is 0	b.
4.	For ${\tfrac {1876}{7}}\,$ remainder is 0	c.
5.	For ${\tfrac {23+19\times 14}{30}}\,$ remainder is 19	d.
6.	For ${\tfrac {4+0+0+6\times 19}{7}}\,$ remainder is 6	e.

And Easter Sunday is March 22 + 19 + 6 = March 47 or April 16; or 19 + 6 - 9 of April = April 16.

Note. — The following are the two exceptions to the above rule: —

1. If Easter Sunday is brought out April 26, we must take April 19.
2. If Easter Sunday results on April 25 by the rule, the 18th must be substituted when the given year, increased by one, and then divided by 19, leaves a remainder greater than 11.

Nature.