m CONSTIPATION, AND ITS UNMEDICINAL CURE. By W. W. HALL, M. D. i vol. i2mo. Si. 50. mono the objects of this book are : First, to show how health may be preserved and disease cured by the proper adaptation of food in quantity and quality to the conditions of the system Second, to discourage self-medication. Third, to cause a higher appreciation of the value of medicine in the hands of the educated and honorable physician. Fourth, that by fatting into the hands of the young of both sexes, their attention may be efficiently turned to the maintenance of a good constitution to a happy, healthy, and useful old age. Some of the contents of the book are : — Apoplexy ; Anodynes ; Appetite ; Amateur Doctors ; Aches and Asthma ; Regulation of Bowels ; Bad Breath ; Brown Bread ; Binding Food ; Costiveness } Cleanliness ; Chilliness at Meals ; Coffee ; Change of Clothing ; Cooling off Slowly ; Cracked Wheat ; Dyspepsia ; Drinking ‘at Meals ; Flannel ; Fainting ; Horseback Exercise ; Hoe Cake ; Hominy ; Late Dinners ; Over-fatigue ; Patent Medicines ; Stockings ; Spectacles ; Toast- ed Bread ; Teeth ; Virginia Corn Bread. “ Dr. Hall has gained an extensive and favorable reputation for his applica- tion of shrewd practical common-sense to the practice of medicine. He is no believer in the long-established custom of turning the stomach into a drug- shop. He has strong faith in the recuperative powers of the constitution, under the influence of proper diet, exercise in the open air, and good general habits. The volume before us treats of the diseases which belong more espe- cially to sedentary life, and of their causes and cure. It is free from technical- ities, and entirely within the comprehension of all classes of readers. We do not doubt that its suggestions, if carried out, would prevent much suffering and prolong many valuable lives. We commend the work particularly to theo- logical students and young ministers, most of whom have much to learn as to the laws of health.” — The Presbyterian , Philadelphia. “ We have a very high estimate of the medical skill, the good sense, honesty, judgment, and discrimination of Dr. Hall. We have read many of these articles with great satisfaction, and believe the book worth its weight ii old to a family ; for if its counsels are heeded, it will save people much si ess aud expense, while it will promote their happiness.” — Baltimore Lu r an Observer . HUBD AND HOUGHTON, New York; H. O. HOUGHTON & CO., Riverside, Cambridge, Mass. jr&w, are not to be taken from 4 Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. University of Illinois Library L161 — H41 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/healthbygoodliviOOhall library ^ . HEALTH BY GOOD LIVING. w. W. HALL, M.D., torroa of '‘hall’s journal of health,” and author of •• bronchitis ant kindred diseases,’’ “sleep,” “health and disease,” “ COUGHS AND COLDS,” ETC., ETC. NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON. ®aral)tfage: a&tberst&e jaress. 1871. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by W. W. Hall, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE' : STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED H f H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. remote storage PREFACE. This book is to show how high health can be main- tained, and common diseases cured by “ good living,” which means eating with a relish the best food pre- pared in the best manner. The best food includes meats, fish, poultry, wild game, fruits, and the grains which make bread. The best cookery preserves the natural tastes and juices. As there can be no “good living” without a good appetite, how to get this great blessing without money and without price necessarily, is pointed out, and it is hoped, in very clear and plain terms. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAQB THE OBJECT OF EATING 1 CHAPTER II. WHEN TO EAT 13 CHAPTER III. WHAT TO EAT 45 CHAPTER IV. HOW MUCH TO EAT 56 CHAPTER V. REGULARITY IN EATING 93 CHAPTER YI. HOW TO EAT 99 CHAPTER VII. BILIOUSNESS Ill CHAPTER VIII. DYSPEPSIA 123 CHAPTER IX. NEURALGIA 166 CHAPTER X. NERVOUSNESS . 173 CHAPTER XI. THE UNITY OF DISEASE 195 CHAPTER XII. AIR AND EXERCISE 200 VI CONTENTS, CHAPTER XIII. PAGB FOOD CURE 210 CHAPTER XIV. “HEALTH BY GOOD LIVING.” — THE ARGUMENT . . . 225 CHAPTER XV. REST 228 APPENDIX 241 NOTES 259 HEALTH BY GOOD LIVING. CHAPTER I. THE OBJECT OF EATING. We eat to live ; and if we eat wisely of what He has provided who giveth us all things richly to enjoy, we shall live well, healthfully, and long. To eat wisely, we must adapt our food to our age, to the various occupations and callings of life, and to the temperaments of the system. This may appear to be a very discouraging complexity in the very outset, but it is only seeming ; for Infinite Wis- dom and Fatherly Beneficence h\s implanted within us a kind of self-acting guide, Ih^s made it a part of our being, and, if it is wisely deferred to and con- siderately followed, half the ordinary diseases of humanity would be blotted out, and a score of years added to the average duration of civilized life. As soon as the little duck breaks its shell, it wad- dles toward the water, and sails away over the bosom of the tiny pond right gracefully. The humble climbing vine will direct its course straight to the nearest bean-pole ; and the roots of flower, and shrub, and tree, as they delve down into 2 THE OBJECT OF EATING. the hard earth, will ferret out the richness and the moisture of the soil, taking the very shortest course to the more favored spots ; and so the infant, in the first hours of its existence, greedily partakes of its mother’s milk, which contains 'in large proportions the elements which supply the first necessities of infantile existence. This wise and friendly guide to animal, and plant, and man is called “ Instinct and is our kindly mentor and preserver from the first cry of infancy, until the fiat of the Maker calls the \ patriarch home to His bosom in heaven ! This in- stinct is chiefly our guide during the undeveloped mental condition of infancy and childhood ; at those accidental seasons of later life when reason may be in abeyance from disease or other causes ; and when action is necessary to the preservation of the body in the various emergencies to which humanity is subject, and which action must be taken before rea- son has had time to assert herself. This is familiarly illustrated in every-day life when the child, or even the man, stumbles and falls forward, throwing his hands before him, to preserve the more important part, the face, from disfigurement. The writer has seen men fall from the tops of houses and from a mile in height, 1 and the body was always noticed to assume the shape of a ball, as if to present the smallest possible surface for the terrible contact. The cattle in the field, in cold, windy, rainy weather and in the sleets of winter, draw up the body or contract the back to a circu/ar form, thus present- ing less surface to the chilling blast. Men, in very i See Note IV. p. 274. THE OBJECT OF EATING. 3 cold winds, thus contract themselves in walking or in sitting down, in the out-doors, by which means less of the surface of the body is exposed to the wind, and, as a consequence, less heat is carried from the system. This is the work of Instinct ; but few, comparatively, knew the philosophy of it until explained to them, as now. It is this same Instinct, exhibited in another di- rection, which calls for food to sustain nature. The animal creation is probably guided by it altogether in eating, as to time, quality, and quantity, and, as we see, is in a measure exempt from disease, dying more by age and violence than by sickness. The animal, the infant, and the demented seem to be guided in their eating, mainly at least, by the instinct of a natural appetite ; and if men were more under this same influence, and were less the slaves of appetites which are artificial and acquired, . it will scarcely be denied that they w’ould be largely exempt from many of the maladies which now afflict civilized society. W e eat to live, and life is warmth, growth, repair, and power of labor. The first ne- cessity of human Existence is warmth, alike indis- pensable to infancy, manhood, and old age. At every period of life, at all seasons of the year, in the tropics and at the poles, the human bo$y in health maintains the same temperature, which is about wiinety-eight degrees, Fahrenheit. This warmth is derived from the food we eat ; and that which yields neat in large proportions is called “ carbonaceous,” answering to one of ths simple, original elements. 4 THE OBJECT OF EATING. u carbon, the more familiar representative of which is charcoal. Carbon or charcoal burned before our eyes gives out heat ; when taken into the system in the form of food, it undergoes a process of burning there also, and throws out a warmth which, diffused over the body, is called vital heat . The amount of such heat necessary to the health of a good-sized man, and which is developed from the food eaten in twenty-four hours, would* heat twenty gallons of ice-cold water to a boil, or from thirty-two de- grees to two hundred and twelve. Sugars, starches, and oils are the more concen- trated forms of carbonaceous food, some of them having scarcely anything left after all the carbon has been withdrawn. And, as if to compel help- less infancy and feeble age to use the means neces- sary to keep the body warm enough to live, Provi- dence has given to childhood an almost insatiable desire for sweets ; and without the element of sweet- ness in its food, the healthiest born infant would die in less than a month. In vain would it nestle in its mother’s bosom, in vain its exposure to the warming sunshine, and in vain the softest blankets and the finest furs to encase its body ; for the warmth which sustains human life must come from within, — njust be generated by the internal com- bustion of the carbonaceous elements of eaten food. As we turn the downhill of life, we begin to grow chilly ; the aged court the sunshine ; they covet the chimney-corner ; or, sitting before the fire on the hearth, they stretch out their feeble, THE OBJECT OF EATING. 5 trembling arms, and spread abroad their thin and bony fingers, and, with open mouth, bend toward the cheerful blaze as if drinking in the delicious heat ; and, on reflection, it will be found that for long years there had been a growing love for meats, and fats, and butter, and oils ; it was instinct leading the way for the generation of that warmth which would be increasingly needed as years passed on, and which was to be more suitably derived from the carbonaceous elements of fats and oils than from the sweets of sugars, so coveted and so rioted in by children ; and it is just as unpliysiological, and just as unwise, to deprive the old man of the fat meats on which he luxuriates, as to deny to childhood the sweets which constitute its heaven ; hence the prej- udice which deprives the young of sweets is founded in ignorance. Childhood must have warmth, and wise Nature has implanted within it an overpower- ing appetite for the sweet foods from which that warmth is to be generated. Reason must be the guide, as will be seen hereafter, as to the times, and quantities, and qualities of the sweets to be taken. It has now been shown that we eat to keep our- selves warm. In the Tables at the end of this book, some of the more familiar and common articles of food are named, with the amount of the carbona- ceous principle in each. Not that we are to eat mathematically, by square or compass, by weight or measure, nor by any inflexible rule ; those who do go will die early. There is not a straight line in all Nature. A loving Providence has created us with 6 THE OBJECT OF EATING. wonderful adaptabilities ; has allowed us a liberal margin of action, that by the aid of reason we may accommodate ourselves to the various exigencies of human life. He has not placed us in this beautiful world to be put in a strait-jacket. He has not made it death to us, if we eat a minute before we are hungry, or drink a drop beyond the wants of the system, but has given our constitutions a cer- tain pliability by which they are able to adapt them- selves to the emergencies incident to our earthly condition. We must not only eat to keep warm, we must EAT TO GROW. The blade of grass of to-day is taller than it was yesterday ; the sapling, larger than a year ago ; and the huge oak stretches its giant arms higher in the air, and wider, than a century since. All these grow in part by feeding on the air, by draw- ing its component elements to themselves, then condensing them into more solid substances, which are incorporated with themselves, and thus become part and parcel of the living body ; but, at the same time, the little roots below stretch out their tiny tendrils deep and broad, and by a mysterious agency dissolve the solid earth and its more solid metals into fluids and thinner gases, and then, drawing them up into the growing body, they become solid- ified, and make a part of the living whole. In ways like these, atom b j atom is added to blade, and stalk, and towering tree, and thus do they grow day by WE EAT TO GKOW. 7 day. Hence vegetation eats to grow, by appropri- ating exterior unliving things to its own living uses ; it takes the inanimate earth and air, and makes them a living part of its living self, and in turn is appropriated to the sustentation of a form of life as much higher than itself as it was above the baser dust on which it fed ; for upon this lower life of grass, and herb, and tree, the cattle on a thousand hills are fed, and they at last are given to men to eat, and thus become incorporated in turn into a still higher existence, are made a part and parcel of the living embodiment of man ; a candidate for an im- mortal state beyond, at so infinite a remove above the beasts which perish, that he is even now but a little lower than the angels, and is ordained to have a nobler name, a higher place, and a grander des- tiny than they ! In a deep, damp, dark dungeon, writes a lady of world-wide renown, I saw him chained to' the cold, slimy stone floor ; his largest liberty was three steps back and forth ; that ugly, clanking chain never by any possibility allowed him to go further ; and all day long, and sometimes all night, for so many mournful years, the weary, naked foot had fallen on the same hard spot on that pitiless stone, and had worn into it a deep hollow ; yes, the solid stone had worn away, but not the soft skin of that unhappy prisoner’s foot ; it gave no sign of wearing aut. The stone was dead matter, and when a por- tion of it, ever so infinitesimally small, was worn away, there was no power to replace it. The sole 8 THE OBJECT OF EATING. of the foot was a living thing. It wore away faster, much faster than the more solid stone ; but as soon as one particle was displaced, another was deposited in its stead ; as when a soldier falls in the front rank of battle, his brave comrade from the rear takes his position, and the line remains always full. This particle supplied to the worn foot is brought to it in the blood which circulates to every pin-point of the body, but that particle is supplied from the food eaten. Hence, we not only eat for purposes of warmth and growth, but WE EAT FOR REPAIR. All machinery, the most perfect piece of mechan ism which ever came from human hands, will wear out, because there is friction. Its cogs, its wheels, its bearings, its axles, and its cylinders all move upon one another, more or less directly. Such motion implies friction, and friction causes loss of substance necessarily. Millions of money are ex- pended every year for the purchase of oils and other lubricants to lessen the tremendous wear and waste in the running of our locomotives, the trains on our railroads, and the machinery of our number- less mills and manufactories. But the living hu- man body came from the hands of the Infinite One. It is the perfection of mechanism, and has within itself the ’power of growth and development ; and more, it makes its own repairs and provides its own lubricants ; it works incessantly day and night, sum- mer and winter, seed-time and harvest, for a hun- WE EAT FOR REPAIR. 9 dred years. It never stops, it never wears out, until the work is completed for which it was made, and the Master-builder bids it run no more ! It is made of its hundreds of muscles, and bands, and sockets, and hinges, and pulleys, all playing upon or dragging across each other. The very smallest of these motions involves waste ; indeed, not a single crook of the finger, not a bend of the arm, not a twinkle of the eye, not a thought of the brain, but is at the expense of some solid portion of the hu- man machine ; and yet, at the end of a century, it remains a whole in all its parts ; while the most perfect constructions of man come to a dead stop in a very few months, and would stand still forever, unless some new cog, or pin, or pulley was supplied. But the tongue which speaks to-day, spoke a hun- dred years ago just as well, and the eyelid winks as easily at fourscore as in infancy ; it does not even wink tiredly. And all this, not because there are no wastes of substance in this wonderful frame of ours, but because they are as promptly repaired as made. We not only eat for warmth, and growth, and re- pair, but for the generation of those internal forces of brain and body, of thought and action, of volun- tary and involuntary motion, which together con- stitute man’s efficiency as an immortal being. All now understand that food gives nourishment, and nourishment includes warmth, growth, repair, and strength or power to work as to body and brain. The ordinary articles of food have one or more of 10 THE OBJECT OF EATING. these elements in varied proportions. Some have all, as milk, and eggs, and bread ; and the instincts of the race have led to the adoption of these as ar- ticles of food the world over. But, whatever we eat, three things must be supplied to us daily, car- bon to keep us warm, nitrogen to give us flesh and strength, and salts, which, in combination with carbon and nitrogen, makes them nutritious ; these “ salts ” are represented by the ashes which are left if we or the food we eat were burnt up. And any article of food which combines in it the three ele- ments named, carbon, nitrogen, and salts, gives the idea of perfect food, of which bread, and meat, and milk are the most familiar samples. POWER TO WORK. The power for bodily labor and mental effort must be supplied from food which contains nitro- gen, expressed hereafter by the single word albumi- nate, from its resemblance to albumen, the most familiar representation of which is the white of an egg. If the blood is cold, and is then heated, a portion of it melts, and becomes fluid ; this is called “ albumen.” All understand that the blood is our life. It is the blood which builds us up, which gives animation to the whole human system. The ele- ment which does all this, is the albuminate por- tion ; and this principle is found in all the food eaten by animals and men ; it is found alike in plant, and bush, and tree ; in the sap, and seed, and fruit ; and more especially, and in largest quantity, POWER TO WORK. 11 in all the grains from which we make bread, which, from this fact, is emphatically the staff of life. Foods which are rich in carbon, which give only warmth, such as starch, sugar, fats, and oils, give no strength, nor can they sustain life long, if not combined with albuminate and salts ; hence, if a man wants the power to work day after day, he must renew that power by eating food which gives it, which contains albuminate. And this is not by any means a mere theory or conjecture. It is the observation of men who, without science, have noticed, in the employment of large numbers of laborers on railroads, that those who had the best appetites did the best day’s work ; mere size was a secondary consideration, except the size of the ap- petite, because, the more food of a mixed kind, such as comes upon our tables ordinarily, a man con- sumes, the larger the quantity of albuminate taken into the system. A good feeder makes a good worker, hence the poorest of all economies is the stinting of those who are employed to do work ; and not only does a man become unable to do a good day’s work on a scanty allowance of food, but he requires time for recuperation ; for after you begin to feed him well, several days are needed to enable him to come up to his proper work. And what has been said of power of body, is equally true as to the brain, for the man who studies hard, must sat abundantly, else not only debility of body follows, but the brain begins to consume itself, to feed on its own substance, — many a man has 12 THE OBJECT OF EATING. thought himself to death. The intense thinking made the brain feed upon itself, because nutriment was not supplied to it fast enough by generous food and a healthful and vigorous digestion ; for, as di- gestion fails, the brain ceases to work clearly, legit- imately, logically, and to advantage. There is a consumption of the brain as well as of the lungs, and both mean death, unless wise remedies are ap- plied, and in a timely manner. The amount of power supplied to the human body in the course of a life-time from the food eaten will strike the unreflecting with amazement. Leave out of the account all the steps a man takes during his threescore years and ten ; leave out, too, all the work he does with his hands, and all the turnings of his body ; and take into calculation the force which only one little organ expends during a life- time, the busy, busy beating heart, which beats three thousand millions of times without a stop, and, in doing so, propels from itself to the farthest extremi- ties of the body which it serves, half a million tons of blood ! and in every such propulsion exists a force represented by thirteen pounds. We eat for power to work. CHAPTER II. WHEN TO EAT. The instinct, observation, and experience of civil- ized society have led to the practice* of eating three times a day, — morning, noon, and night. Circum- stances, habit, necessity, have caused the appoint- ment of different hours for eating in some cases without demonstrably hurtful results ; but the great general rule, for those who work, is as above stated, and for them the best time for BREAKFAST is the early part of the morning, before they go out to their daily labor. A habitual compliance with this single, simple rule would almost exterminate the greatest scourge of the Western Hemisphere, fever and ague ; and this would of itself be a bless- ing of inconceivable value. Any reader who was in the habit of spending a night now and then with the hospitable old Dutch farmers around New York forty years ago, will remember that it was a custom among many of them to breakfast by day- light, especially in the winter-time, and very early in the morning in summer; who were healthier, and lived longer, than the old Knickerbockers ? In the earliest years of the writer, in the great Mississippi Valley, the word — 14 WHEN TO EAT. ANTIFOGMATIC was an expression of every-day life, which carried with it a practice of great value. It then meant an “ early dram,” a good drink of honest whiskey, for it was in the very heart of “ Old Bourbon ” where these things transpired ; but the appellation origi- nate i in the custom of taking something into the stomach very early in the morning, when the damp and pestiferous fogs and bad airs hung low over the country and the town ; for it came by degrees to be observed, that those who ate something very early in the day, were exempt from fever and ague. When it was not convenient to prepare a regular breakfast, it was thought something in its place might answer the same purpose ; and the most con- venient substitute was a drink of whiskey, which then and there was very cheap, about two dimes a gallon. The “ tavern ” was the “ grog-shop ” in those days ; but even at that early time there was something in a name, and some respect for appear- ances ; and the sturdy old fellows, not willing to acknowledge they were going to get a drink of grog, would speak of it as an “ antifogmatic,” a rude combination of words intended to mean some- thing which nullified the effects of the early morn- ing fog upon the general system ; and a good many of those men who took their antifogmatics every morning, lived to the age of sixty, and seventy, and eighty years. In one of the hottest of all hot summers; in the ANTIFOGMA' sickliest locality of all sickly plac States, so sickly that it was called *' it --sru ial ground ; ” on the low-banked, stagnant, and slimy bayous of the South, — then and there, where death was so common, and sudden, and frequent, that men thought human life a mere bauble, and, not satisfied with the fearful fatalities of sickness, rioted in their desperate recklessness, and were hewing each other to pieces with their bowie-knives, for it was then and there that “ Jim Bowie ” lived, — in such a summer, in such a place, the author, fresh with his diploma, first began the practice of medicine. Rid- ing day and night, early and late, through broiling suns and drenching rains ; prompt at every call from one plantation to another, from country to town, from swamps to pine hills; sleeping night by night on the very bank of the most sullen and stagnant and slimy of all the bayous of that region, — he never was sick for one single remembered half second. He never left the house under any circumstance, never went outside the door after daylight, until he had taken his breakfast. While one class of per- sons “ died off like sheep,” it was noticed that another class did not die at all ; they lived and lived on indefinitely long, and finally dried up. Some of them the author knew ; they were old thirty years ago, are apparently no older now — the French Creole planters ; they would have a cup of strong hot coffee brought to their bedsides every morning before they rose to dress. The principle under discussion is one of incalcu- 16 WHEN TO EAT. lable practical importance, especially in new coun- tries, in all flat-lying lands, on all river bottoms, and wherever vegetation is rank, luxuriant, and of rapid growth ; hence pains have been taken to pre- sent facts which cannot be disputed, and if they but make a just impression on the mind of the reader, the practical carrying them out will bring its own reward. Here, in a Northern State, in a Western State, in a Southern State, one practice, adopted by different nationalities in different lati- tudes, was followed by the uniform result of a re- markable exemption from diseases which prevailed in every direction among those who neglected that practice, to wit, of taking something into the stom- ach very early in the morning after a night’s sleep. WHY AN EARLY BREAKFAST. The longer the interval between eating, the weaker does the body, as a whole, become ; and so with each individual member and organ. Five or six hours is the usual average between breakfast and dinner, and between dinner and supper ; and the reader is conscious of a weakness or faintness com- monly preceding the eating hour, especially if work of body or brain has been done. Another observation has been made, that after a meal, in health, we feel better, stronger, more vig- orous. But from supper to breakfast there is an interval of ten or twelve hours, about double that between the other meals ; and although there may not have been as much thought or work as between WHY AN EARLY BREAKFAST. 17 the others, still there has been enough to leave the body more or less faint or languid, as witness our own sensations when we are about getting up in the morning ; witness, too, our indisposition to activity or labor for some time after rising. In proportion as the body is debilitated, every individual part, member, or organ shares its proper portion of that debility. The whole body being more or less debilitated in the morning soon after we get up, the stomach and the heart are propor- tionally weak. In proportion as the body is debilitated, it is sus- ceptible to the influences of disease ; this is true the world over, and is admitted alike by all classes of practicing physicians and all schools of physiolo- gists. Not only is the body more liable to disease in the morning from the long fast of the night and the consequent debility attending it, but it is more liable from the want of vigor of the circulation of the blood ; it lacks power to repel disease and all de- structive agencies. The man who starts out in the morning without his breakfast to cross the Pontine marshes near Rome, will die of disease in a few days, — of some form of malignant fever. He who takes a hearty breakfast, and rides through without a halt, will suffer no harm. Very ignorant people in Rome know this, although they may not be able to account for it philosophically. When food is taken into an empty stomach, it is said to “ stimulate ” it; that is, the very contact of what was swallowed, with the coats of the stomach. 18 WHEN TO EAT. excites a greater, a more active circulation of the blood, and in a very few minutes the body feels more or less of the strengthening influence of the nutriment derived from the food ; hence there is increased action and strength all through the sys- tem, which has the effect to prevent the mischiev- ous ingredient of the air from entering the circula- tion of the blood, for by entering, it becomes a cause of impurity, of stagnation, of poison, and of death. Men have been able to discover the laws of action of the poisonous ingredient of the early morning air upon the debilitated body and the unresisting stomach ; but every effort has hitherto failed to discover any of the physical properties of that ingredient, which is so subtle that a bottle of the air has been taken and analyzed by the best chemical tests known, and the air so taken has not been found to contain any other ingredient than portions of air of the healthiest regions. This proved, not that there was not an additional ele- ment in this disease-producing morning air, but that human skill and ingenuity could not detect it ; at the same time, the laws of its action were deter- mined, and also the agencies by which that action could be antagonized with uniformity and certainty, as will be more specially detailed in treating the subject of “ Miasm,” in subsequent pages. Here it only concerns us to know that in temperate and tropical latitudes the ill effects of early morning air on the human system are measurably avoided BREAKFAST IN WINTER. 19 by taking an early breakfast, warm and nourishing ; the theory being that food, or whatever drink causes a healthful stimulus or stimulating action in the stomach, does, at the same time, give the sys- tem power to resist the ill effects of the agencies in question. Thus far as to the healthful effects of taking an early breakfast in warm weather ; for it will be seen hereafter that the malignant ingredi- ent which is present in the morning air in warm weather, is wholly absent in cold weather, unless in circumscribed localities, as within houses where a warmth is kept up sufficient to generate the specific poison alluded to. BREAKFAST IN WINTER. It promotes health to take a good warm, nutri- tious breakfast early on a winter’s morning, be- cause the heating material taken at supper has been used up during the night ; and if not early supplied in the morning by more food, the whole body is liable to cool down to a chill, which may produce inflammation of the lungs, and death within five days. Little children and old persons, and the feeble of every age, having but a small surplus of heat in winter, are especially liable to inflammatory diseases by being kept too long, in cold weather, without food. From supper to daylight is a long enough interval without food, except to the robust, active, and vigorous ; and even these latter are the safer for the shorter interval which the early winter breakfast gives. 20 WHEN TO EAT. Not only is health endangered by a late winter morning’s breakfast allowing the system to cool down to a point too low for safety, but it occasions a loss of time in getting the internal heat raised to the safe and healthful standard ; for as long as a person feels cold all over, no work either of brain or body can be performed to advantage. But the shorter plan is for any person of intelligence and observa- tion to test the fact in his own person ; and then, having seen the demonstration of the truth, he can never be in doubt again, and will always feel forti- fied and strengthened, in after life, in having the right plan carried out as to all those who may come within his control. But it is an economy of time also, to take an early breakfast in all seasons ; for then the first strokes of work are not only more vigorous and telling, but the strength of the system is not allowed to go so low, to become so used up, that valuable time is lost in bringing it to its natural and health- ful standard : all of which can be put to the test of practical experience in any two mornings, by such readers as want to know things for themselves; for few indeed are the learners from the experience of others, and in a sense it may be said, as to matters like these, that we know only what we have experienced within ourselves. THE BEST SUPPER TIME is demonstrably, especially in warm weather, half an hour or more before sundown ; not as a mere THE BEST SUPPER TIME. 21 convenience, nor is it a far-fetched theory : it is a necessity in the very nature of things, if we wish to avoid a great variety of diseases. First. Whatever elements of disease are found in the morning air in warm weather, are present also in the air about sundown, more particularly ex- plained under the article about “ Miasm.” Second. If supper is delayed too long, the work of the afternoon has so exhausted the strength, the power to work, of the food eaten at dinner, that the system is left weak, and chilly, and cold, while the circulation is languid, and the spirits are de- pressed, as any one may perceive in the uniform dead expression which pervades the countenance of all workers when they reach home at night, and before supper has been taken. Every observant reader has repeatedly noticed two things : first, taking a meal increases the warmth of the system, even before it is finished ; second, it is attended with an enlivening influence on the mind, and heart, and spirits ; while a third fact has forced itself upon the most unobservant, that, during a great part of the year, there is more or less of an ugly chilliness or heavy dampness pervading the air about sun- down. These three facts, therefore, compel us to the conclusion, were there not more imperative reason , that the better time for supper is a while before sundown, — better for the head, the heart, and the body. 22 WHEN TO EAT. DINNER TIME should be at noon, as to the great masses of society. An unfortunate necessity may impel some business men in the large cities to take dinners late in the afternoon, and some may follow the practice with apparent impunity ; but the risk and responsibility are their own, and there it is left, at least for the present. As a common thing, persons cannot take into the stomach more food than will last six or seven hours ; if more is taken, it cannot be acted upon to advantage by the stomach, nor can the person work well. Ordinary labor exhausts the strength contained in a common , meal in the time specified. Persons may habituate themselves to eat more and to work more ; but taking everything into account, families, consisting of old and young, of strong and weak, of the robust and the sickly, will find it most convenient, as an average, to eat at about six hours’ interval ; and this, with an early breakfast, brings the dinner at noon. The work after breakfast whets up the appetite for dinner ; the work after dinner grinds up the food, manipu- lates it in such a manner as to enable the body not only to obtain from it the power to work in the afternoon, but to give something of a surplus, to answer the wants of the system during the night, in connection with a light supper. Hence, the w'orld over, the noon dinner is the great meal of the day ; it supplies the wastes of the forenoon’s work, and, as just said, gives power to labor through the afternoon. LUNCHEON. 23 LUNCHEON has had no place in these pages ; it is the common enemy in cities and large towns, for it engenders afflictive diseases in many, and to not a few it is the fruitful cause of moral and social ruin and a disgraceful and premature death, as we shall see. The word means a lump of food eaten at not a reg- ular meal. It is an eating “ between times ; ” and as this is the main and most frequent cause of our national disease, “ Dyspepsia,” called at other times “ Indigestion,” the latter being from a Latin word, the former Greek, it is well to give the whole sub- ject a critical investigation. In a chapter answer- ing the question “ When shall we eat ? ” it is per- tinent to consider the kindred inquiry, when not to eat. All know that the body as a whole cannot work always, must have rest ; so every portion of it must have rest. It does not require much effort to wink the eye, and yet it becomes tired if winked in quick succession for a minute or two. The stomach is a combination of muscles, hence it is called an organ ; it is in the nature of a ma- chine, and all machines wear out very soon unless rest is allowed. The work which the stomach per- forms is to prepare the food for yielding its warmth, growth, strength, and repair to the whole body; a part of these are almost instantaneously with- drawn from the food while it is in the stomach ; other parts, in its progress through other portions of the body downwards. It has been ascertained that 24 WHEN TO EAT. an ordinary meal is digested, as far as the stomach is concerned, in about five hours ; at the end of that time all the food has been passed out of it ; it is empty, and in a sense goes to sleep, but not for long, for in an hour or two certain vessels con- nected witli it become filled with a fluid, and their distention causes the sensation of hunger, and we want to eat again ; no sooner is this done, than these vessels which caused the sensation of hunger, empty their contents in among the food, dissolving it and preparing it for yielding its nutriment to the system, as before described. But if more food is eaten before the stomach has been emptied, the process of digestion is arrested as to the food which was first taken, and does not go on until the food taken later has been brought to tjhe condition in which the first was, and then all goes on together. It is, however, a law of our nature, that if the food taken into the stomach remains there too long, being kept as it is at a temperature of about a hundred degrees, it begins to sour, just as any moist food would begin to sour if kept warm, neither hot nor cold, for the same time ; by becom- ing sour, this food rots, is unfit to give nourishment and strength, and hence does not answer its legiti- mate purpose. Another ill result is, the food being imperfectly digested, it gives an imperfect nutriment ; and as this imperfect nutriment is the material out of which new blood is made, that blood is imperfect LUNCHEON. 25 and impure; but, being distributed all over the body, it not only does not meet the requirements of the system, but causes an unnatural sensation or condition of things wherever it goes, more particu- larly to parts which, from any cause, have been injured or debilitated. Hence there is found an easy explanation of the many and varied complaints which dyspeptics have ; scarcely any two being alike in the combination of their symptoms ; all, however, agreeing in one thing, that they are wretched, that life is a burden, and enjoyment im- possible. This subject will be further pursued when Dys- pepsia or Indigestion is more especially treated, the object in the remarks now made being to impress on the mind the necessarily injurious effects of eating between meals, for the obvious reason, the stomach has no time for rest, and must, like the body itself, or any individual portion of it, if kept constantly at work, lose its power of working, by being “worn out, ” exhausted, and destroyed. “ EATING DOWN-TOWN” is a form of luncheon which business men adopt in some of our large cities, especially in New York, from apparent compulsion, it being considered im- practicable to leave their various employments in the middle of the day, when even minutes are sometimes of great value, for the purpose of dining with their families up-town, which would involve a dear loss of two or three hours. There co nld be 26 WHEN TO EAT. no enjoyment in such a meal, because there would necessarily be an impending sense of hurry, and more of uneasiness and anxiety to be at their busi- ness places, which sensation would alone be a very important power in generating dyspepsia of the most aggravated kind within a few months. But the tendency of down-town luncheons upon the health and morals of all, ought .to be pointed out, with a view to impress the reader’s mind with the importance of devising some remedy for evils so great and so inevitable. Every merchant pro- poses to himself the general plan of “ taking a snack,” a “hasty plate of soup,” or some other form of light repast at noon, so as to prevent the stomach becoming too empty, or the system from too great exhaustion from the long interval between breakfast and the regular dinner at four or five o’clock, or later. The object is good, and the phil- osophy of it is founded on true physiological rea- sons ; but the manner of the performance makes all the difference in the world. In the first place, there is no regularity in the lunch ; and regularity, order, is Nature’s first law. Every business man will confess that the emergencies of trade and traffic are such that the time of taking lunch varies several hours, and sometimes is forgotten altogether, until it is too late to take one without interfering with the regular dinner in the afternoon. There is no habit, of the body, no function of any organ, which will not be injuriously affected, if not destroyed, by irregular action or working. All know the value THE INSIDIOUS ENEMY. 27 of regular sleep ; and yet cases are given in medicai works where persons have become deranged by continuously broken sleep, or have fallen into such a habit of wakefulness, that an uneasy sleep of three or four hours was all that could be had in any twenty-four. Nature can never be baffled with impunity. Perhaps no other one thing engenders so many and such a variety of diseases as constipa- tion of the bowels, which is brought on, in innu- merable cases, by the person resisting the calls of nature, for the sake of some fancied convenience or some unwisely imagined necessity. If this is done, even for a short time, Nature seems as it were to become indignant, and calls no more ; and a habit is set up which will make the subject a martyr to some form of human suffering as long as life lasts. So with hunger and the stomach ; if the sense of hunger is resisted, if the stomach is not supplied with food at stated times, it loses its tone, its vigor, its power to work, and dyspepsia follows, to sour the disposition, to irritate the temper, to depress the spirits, to change the whole moral nature, caus- ing unhappiness, not only to the sufferer, but more or less to all those who may have to meet him in business or in domestic life. THE INSIDIOUS ENEMY. Men do not dine down-town long, before they get into the habit of “ taking something ” at their meals. In fact, most of the eating-houses calculate to make as much in the way of profit on what 28 WHEN TO EAT. their customers drink, as on what they eat ; and boys, and clerks, and young men, very soon begin to feel that it looks manly to call for something at lunch. They think it adds to their importance in the estimation of the waiters to take a glass of wine, or beer, or other drink ; just as a little ear- lier they thought it “ manly” to smoke a cigar, or “ take a chew.” Men often invite their friends to go and take a lunch with them, when it is expected, as a matter of course, some form of stimulant will be ordered; this is sooner or later reciprocated; and thus, the man who, a while ago, had taken a glass only occasionally, finds himself taking it every day ; and if from any cause he does not get it, there is a disagreeable sensation of wanting some- thing, and this is not appeased until the accustomed glass is supplied ; and this is the beginning of the end, the miserable end, of filling a drunkard’s grave, leaving a ruined estate, a broken-hearted wife and children in want, in destitution, and in despera- tion, and too often soon ready, in their recklessness, to do and dare anything. Very many cases have occurred in New York city, of gentlemen who once would have been shocked to have had a brandy bottle beside them at their own table, in the presence of wife and children, yet in a very short time have gradually fallen into the habit, at down-town lunch, of having a glass of ale, or beer or wine, ending in clear brandy. WALL STREET SENSIBILITY. 29 WALL STREET SENSIBILITY. It is said that Wall Street is the most sensitive Bpot on the globe. That is, it sees, on the instant, what effect national occurrences, at home or abroad, tend to have on monetary affairs ; so alive are men, and so acute, in seeing what is to their own interest. Capital is careful ; and it may surprise the reader very much to know that the practice of drinking liquor in connection with lunch has become so gen- eral in New York with young men, and clerks, and others in subordinate positions, and the ill effects are so apparent, that quite a number of the largest banks in and about Wall Street have for more than a year been in the habit of having substantial lunches spread in their own buildings, under the very eyes of the more responsible bank officers, so that their business may not suffer from their clerks indulging in liquor with their lunch. And if moneyed men, for pecuniary considerations, expend large amounts every year to guard against the evils referred to, it is very certain that the neces- sity for it has been forced upon their attention by incontrovertible facts. And it is high time for parents and guardians, and even sisters and wives, to consider whether they have not a more than pe- cuniary interest in devising measures to counteract die mischief of dining down- town as to the male members of their households. A physiological fact which will not be denied, is that neither body nor brain is in a condition for 80 WHEN TO EAT. effort longer than six or seven hours after eating, and that to eat nothing from breakfast until five or six o’clock in the afternoon will certainly bring on serious, incurable, and even fatal diseases in a very short time. Two practical questions must then be determined. Is it necessary to be absent from home on business from morning until night ? This question must be decided on the responsibility of the individual most interested. If it is necessary, as it is undeniably hurtful to study or work so long without food, WHAT SHALL A MAN DO who must be in business, and who has a family to support by that business ? He must either have a regular dinner at noon, and a light supper with his family when they take their five o’clock dinner, or he must take a safe lunch at noon, take a regular din- ner with his family not later than five, and nothing whatever besides, either eatable or drinkable, until breakfast next morning. But this is not enough ; with this alone the constitution will most assuredly be undermined, sooner or later. The disposition of the time after a five o’clock dinner must be adapted to the circumstances. Something must be done which will promote the healthful digestion of din- ner ; and something can be done which is not only physically healthful and pleasurable, but which, if persisted in, will greatly promote social enjoyment and domestic happiness. It should be arranged that dinner should be over at not a later hour than WHAT SHALL A MAN DO. 31 six o’clock, winter and summer. The first half- hour after dinner should be spent in pleasurable conversation, in leisure promenading, or sitting in an easy, erect position, reading something which requires no continuous thought, such as the short articles of a newspaper. The better plan is a leis- ure promenade in the open air in suitable weather, or in the verandas or halls of the house, or in some large, well aired room, warm enough to give a feel- ing of comfort ; for it is greatly injurious to have a feeling of chilliness within an hour after eating, as it has sometimes induced fatal consequences in a few hours. But besides this, some more active ex- ercise ought to be had before bed-time. A “ drive ” answers a good purpose ; a ride on horseback is much better ; and perhaps better than all, as more frequently available, is an hour’s visit to a friend or neighbor’s family. Such a visit, properly conduct- ed, has a larger number of great advantages than any of the forms of after-dinner pastime named. The rather dull routine of family employment is pleasurably interrupted by a social visit. There is an exhilaration in the exchange of items of news, of neighborhood gossip, and the comparison and expression of views in reference to practical life, which is in itself both interesting and useful. Many a family jar has been interrupted by the casual dropping in of a lively, talkative, and cheerful- faced neighbor ; and their departure allows subjects of conversation or remark, which often obliterate nascent acerbities, and the memory of ruffled feel 32 WHEN TO EAT. ings. Families would be happier, neighborhoods would be happier, and society in general would be elevated, and refined, and humanized, if such inter- change of visits were cultivated and practiced to ten times the extent now customary. Many a time a neighbor’s burden is removed by the hearing of greater ones which press upon others, or are made to appear scarcely worth a notice, by having another look at it from a different stand-point ; and thus a blessing at least is made of what but half a mo- ment before, in a soured or irritated state of mind, seemed an oppressive calamity. The very walk to and from a neighbor’s after tea is refreshing ; it has given that much more luscious out-door air to the system, and every step has added an increased ac- tivity to the circulation, and given additional elas- ticity to the mind, to the spirits, and to the domestic relations and affections. It often happens that going to a friend’s house leaves us more contented and thankful at our own lot, in comparison with what was seen at our neighbor’s, and we return to our own home better satisfied with it than when we left it an hour or two before ; or something may be seen at that neighbor’s table, or in the parlor, or something observed in the general surroundings, which, added to our own home, would increase its coziness or make it more convenient or attractive. An item about cookery may be learned, or the management of servants, or the regulation of the family, or the preparation or arrangement of cloth- ing, from which both comfort and profit may be WHAT SHALL A MAN DO. 33 derived for the remainder of life ; and, not least, a very large fund of quiet enjoyment may be had in * the promotion of neighborly feeling, by making it a point to repeat all the good things and complimen- tary things which have been dropped by lips away, in reference to those now spoken to. By this same thing, little, insignificant as it may seem, and so easy of performance, a very large amount of kindly feeling may be encouraged and diffused in neighbor- hoods, which would largely add to the general en- joyment, by promoting a mutual appreciativeness among the members of a community, the tendency of which is to cement friendships, and kindle and cultivate attachments and mutual kindly feelings, which will last through a long life, and be the means sometimes of hereditary friendships, which are to be a source of happiness to generations yet unborn ; for, let it be remembered, we are social beings by nature, and the cultivation of such a natural quality will necessarily bring with it a large increase to human happiness and human good. These things are recommended as a necessary means of promoting a more active and healthful digestion of the last meal of the day ; of antagoniz- ing the evil effects which will inevitably result to all, sooner or later, of that tardy dinner which is felt by many to be imperative in connection with "ertain business customs in some of our large cities. A man may eat a hearty dinner at five or six o’clock, and remain in-doors until bed-time, under the plea of being too tired or too sleepy to take a 3 34 WHEN TO EAT. walk ; but, if it is not done, evil, unmitigated evil, will be the result sooner or later, and life will be cut short a score of years. Even a half-hour’s walk up and down the street, or along the public high- way, with a wife, or sister, or daughter, or guest on a man’s arm, after a late dinner, will bring a high advantage, will promote a better digestion, will pro- cure a sounder sleep, and will do very much towards removing, or at least alleviating, that sense of full- ness, or oppression, or smothering, which so many have experienced after eating a too hearty meal. CURE OF A SURFEIT. And if, when an excess at dinner has been com- mitted through inadvertency or the solicitation of over-kind hosts, or as complimentary to an accom- plished hostess (for a woman feels complimented in the direct ratio of the heartiness of her guest’s ap- petite, and the amount of her provender which he disposes of ) ; if, it is repeated, from these or other causes, too much has been eaten at a meal, and a sense of “ fullness,” as it is most frequently desig- nated, is experienced, — it is most unwise to attempt to relieve a stomach already too full, by forcing into it one glass more of any fluid whatever, even al- though it be the choicest wine or the purest brandy ever prepared for man’s destruction. Let it be re- membered, on this almost every-day practical point, that the feeling of fullness or other discomfort from over-eating arises from the fact that the stomach is too much distended to be able to act upon tha CURING A SURFEIT. 35 food, so as to put it in a condition to be passed out of itself ; and a glass of wine or brandy, or even of cold water, aggravates the evil by increas- ing the fullness. The rational method of relief is to do something: which aids the stomach in its natural action, and by which it will, in as speedy a manner as possible, relieve itself of a portion of its contents ; and nothing so certainly and so safely in- sures such a result as a moderate walk, just active enough to prevent a feeling of chilliness and to se- cure a very gentle glow on the surface, or the slight- est perceptible moisture, felt by the hand being placed on the forehead. A violent walk, a race, or a horseback ride, on a full stomach, aggravates the evil with perfect certainty ; but a leisure walk, causing a little, a very little moisture on the skin, and kept up until the feeling of relief is very de- cided, is the only philosophical method of getting rid of a surfeit. Medicines can be given which will accomplish the object in a very few minutes ; an emetic will empty the stomach in double-quick time. A good dose of castor-oil will send the engorgement in another direction with railroad speed, but at the expense of a shock to the system which sometimes induces convulsions and death in a few hours, or leaves debilitating consequences, not to be recov- ered from, in some cases, for many weeks. Besides all this, medicine, even the mildest, is essentially a poison, and effects a desired result in proportion to its poisonous quality. It cures by setting up a dis- ease greater than the original which it seeks to 36 WHEN TO EAT. cure, and hence ought to be resorted to only when, in the judgment of a competent physician, it is ne- cessary ; hence the earnestness with which it is urged to use the safe, and mild, and certain means of a leisure out-door walk, or other form of gentle exercise, for an hour or so after a late dinner, as a means of enabling the stomach to empty itself, and be at rest, by the time the body, as to all other parts, is ready to take its repose on the couch for the night, and thus secure a sleep which has in it no startling dreams, no dreadful nightmares. HOW WALKING PROMOTES HEALTH. Physiologists have ascertained that every step taken has an appreciable effect in promoting the activities of the whole alimentary canal, including the stomach and bowels. Their natural activity is health ; their want of that is disease always, every- where, and inevitably. Too great an activity of stomach and bowels is cholera, and all know that locomotion in the first stages of cholera is certain death ; hence absolute rest on the bed is enjoined by all classes of physicians, because every step in- creases the activity. If, then, walking promotes a more active state of the bowels, when the condition of the system is such as to require increased activ- ity, every step taken is to that end. Hence every step taken leisurely after a meal has been eaten, helps the stomach to digest the food eaten more rapidly, thus preparing it for a more speedy distri- bution throughout the system, for purposes of nu- trition* warmth, strength, and vitality. A CHEERFUL HEART. 37 But there is another reason why a leisure walk or friendly visit to a neighbor is healthful, in con nection with a late dinner. It relieves the system of a portion of its solid material in the shape of in- sensible perspiration, and the overfilled stomach participates in that relief. An effort has been made to show how gentle exercise benefits the body after a late dinner, or after any hearty meal ; but any one may demonstrate it in his own person by com- paring the sensations of two consecutive days at ten o’clock at night, or on the subsequent mornings, when a hearty late dinner has been taken, with such a walk following as has been recommended, and an equally hearty dinner without such a walk. A CHEERFUL MIND. Whatever may be the benefit of a leisure walk after a hearty meal, that benefit is very greatly in- tensified by performing that walk in company, es- pecially if a joyousness of spirit is present, and is promoted by lively, exhilarating conversation, by mirthfulness, and a hearty forgetfulness of all dis- turbing thought as to business engagements. It may be safe to say that the benefit of exercise is doubled by its being taken in a jovial, joyous mood. If several hours after a late dinner were every day, as often as a late dinner is taken, spent as above, alternated with attendance on public meetings, lec- tures, parlor amusements, and other forms of agree- able pastime, late dinners may be made compatible 38 WHEN TO EAT. with good health and a genial old age, if wisdom and firmness are habitually shown in taking at noon A PROPER LUNCH, suitable for all classes of business men, travellers, sportsmen, and others who cannot conveniently take dinner at noon, which is simply a 44 sandwich,” with half a glass of water and an orange, or an apple. The term just used was applied to a favorite dish of the Earl of Sandwich, which was originally two pieces of bread and butter, with very thin slices of ham or other salt meat between them. It is well to state how a sandwich may be best prepared, as it comes in place under a great variety of circum- stances, and may be made delicious if proper atten- tion is given to its making up. If this is done, it is good enough for a king, and will be very much relished by any one who has been employed five or six hours in labor or brain work. A DELIGHTFUL SANDWICH is made thus : Take two pieces of light bread, spread with butter. Between these place very thin slices — three or four of them are better than one thick one — of salt or fresh meat, turkey, or chicken, or a slice of each. If the sandwiches are for a party or for the table, several should be prepared and put in a pile. Press them with a clean board, so as to make them stick together, and trim the edges neatly with a very sharp knife. Wrap them firmly in a white, damp cloth, and put them in the SANDWICHES. 39 picnic basket, where they will remain without jos- tling ; or, if for the table, put them on a plate and cover with a damp napkin, until used. But, for one person, two ordinary pieces of bread and but ter and several very thin slices of meat are enough ; for it is not intended to be a full meal, but only enough to stay the appetite, so as to prevent the strength from going too low, and the appetite from becoming voracious. To take this sandwich lunch with really benefi- cial and healthful results, it should be eaten about noon at some regular hour ; not to make one’s self a slave to the minute, but aim to have it within any hour, say from twelve to one, not sooner than twelve, nor later than one : this gives the business man the margin of an hour. It should be taken in an apartment alone, so as to be free from interrup- tion or mental distraction, so that it can be eaten leisurely, quietly, and with deliberation ; then it will be thoroughly chewed, and will pass into the stomach without haste. It may appear to be a small matter, but it is not, to insist that the lunch should, be taken in a private apartment, where no one can intrude. A gentle- man would scarcely care to have a friend, or cus- tomer, or client, or patient come bolting into his office to find him eating a piece of bread and meat, or be compelled, in his haste, to cover it over with a paper, or slide it hastily in a drawer, and feel as if he had been doing some little, mean thing ; any interruption of this kind would inevitably occasion 40 WHEN TO EAT. a mental perturbation or flutter, exceedingly un* friendly to a healthful digestion. It is at all times of considerable importance that we should eat with quiet deliberation, or with an exhilaration of spirits, so as to keep all the fluids of the system in health- ful activity. If, on the other hand, the mind is flurried or the lunch is taken hastily, the result is the same ; the nervous energy which ought to have been expended on the food is used up in the brain, in the mental activities, and the food is not digested; it remains, in a measure, unaltered for hours. The regular dinner comes on ; we do not feel hungry, for the very good reason that there is food already in the stomach ; but as it is dinner hour we think we must eat anyhow, that it would be too long to wait until next morning ; and we do eat the dinner, mixing fresh food with what is in part in a state of decay, of chemical decomposition, or, in plainer terms, in a state of rottenness, — when there can possibly be no other result than a most unpleasant feeling of fullness, or oppression, or nausea, to be followed by a night of dreams, of unrefreshing sleep, and a “ miserable ” to-morrow, with entire unfitness for business ; it is even followed, and that not uncommonly, by an attack of cholera morbus, of bilious colic, or fatal apoplexy. Such results may sometimes be a year or two, or more, in coming ; but that they will come sooner or later to us, and are coming to those we know, at no long inter- vals, is as certain as any uncompleted event can be, for Nature will, at length, always assert herself in THE FATAL GLASS OF WATER. 41 matters of this kind. These may be considered trifling things by some, but life and death often hang on trivialities such as these. THE FATAL GLASS OF WATER. A brave French general, overheated in having some artillery drawn up to the top of a mountain, felt himself almost overcome with thirst, and greedily drinking freely of snow water, fell down and died instantly. Had he taken but a swallow or two at a time, at an interval of half a minute or so, no harm could have possibly resulted ; and yet here was a valuable life lost by drinking a few table- spoonfuls of cold water in one minute instead of ten. So the manner in which a sandwich is eaten may be made agreeable and healthful, or be made a cause of considerable discomfort, according to cir- cumstances. THE REASON WHY the lunch described, taken in the manner pro- posed, will result healthfully in several ways, ac- cords with fixed physiological laws. It has been said that no man can work hard, in brain or body, with advantage and without harmful results, longer than six or seven hours. If the lunch is taken in five or six hours after breakfast, it finds the stomach empty and prepared to receive it ; in fact, the man is hungry ; the general system, by its own instinct, has sent a telegram to the stomach, that recruits are needed at the outposts, recruits of new atoms 42 WHEN TO EAT. of matter to take the place of those which have been destroyed or used up within the last six hours, for that is the meaning of the sensation of hunger. The perfection of nutrition is hunger first, a small amount of plain, substantial food next ; then follows the third process, — a healthful digestion, and a per- fect blood, carrying life and strength to every part of the body. Such a meal in the middle of the day is much more healthful than a full meal, when it has to be followed by more work. A clergyman will always preach better with one sandwich between his sermons than when he sits down to roast turkey with concomitant tempters ; because, in the latter case, the nervous energy which is necessary to the digestion of a hearty meal rallies around the stomach, draining the brain of its forces. In the case of the laborer, he cannot work to advantage soon after a hearty meal, for the necessities of the stomach compel the nervous energies from the muscles of arm and limb and chest ; and it is well that it is so by a fixed physio- logical law, for if the nervous power is withdrawn from the stomach soon after a hearty meal, life is endangered by convulsions, which will inevitably result if the power is kept away but for a few hours. Hence, by taking a moderate lunch at noon the stomach takes hold of the small amount of food greedily and easily, and manipulates it for the re- quirements of the system, which is at once ready to resume its accustomed labor. Gentlemen who have travelled much on horseback, day after day DOWN-TOWN DINNERS. 4S continuously, know full well that but a moderate amount of food must be given at noon to the noble animal ; the heaviest meal is given to him after he has rested at night, or in the morning. A man like the horse could very easily eat a great deal more at midday, but the horse is allowanced ju- diciously by his master ; and the man can more readily allowance himself by taking with him a specific or measured amount. The effect of this moderate meal is that it is wholly digested, that good and healthful blood is made out of it, and it stays the hunger of the system, and prevents that ravenous appetite which is the result of a dinner too long protracted. Thus when a lunch is taken at noon, strength is derived from it to last until dinner, while dinner itself is not partaken of rav- enously ; consequently it is partaken of leisurely, moderately, and time and opportunity are afforded for its easy digestion before the hour for retiring. It is, then, not a late dinner which is in and of itself so pernicious, — not pernicious at all if the circumstances connected with it are judiciously arranged. What has made LATE DINNERS the deadly things they are is their connection with a lunch, which is of itself a full dinner, and made more tempting and more excessive by the liquors which are used with them and the high seasonings which make a part of them. After this full lunch, too often hasty, and taken with a 44 WHEN TO EAT. perturbed state of mind, men dive again into theil business, with every nerve strung to its highest ten- sion, leaving the food to digest very slowly ; in fact, so slow is the process that by the late dinner hour it has not yet been passed to the other parts of the system ; and the man allowing himself to be under the hallucination that he has not taken dinner, but only lunch, feels late in the afternoon that he must take his dinner, and forces it upon himself, or by strong potations gets up a fictitious appetite, which he gratifies to the full, and to his own certain un- doing, — because he is not only taking a late dinner, but an early one too, which is more than one stom- ach can manage, and disease in some form or other, painful and protracted, is an inevitable result. It is thus seen that neither are lunches nor late dinners, in and of themselves, the murderous things they are represented to be, but are made so by a confu- sion of ideas, and by the circumstances which are connected with them. Man is an adaptable ani- mal, intended to live in all latitudes and in all climes, to be surrounded by a great variety of changing circumstances ; and he can live health- fully and long under the equator or at the poles, if he will only conduct himself in wise accordance with his surroundings. CHAPTER III. WHAT TO EAT. It has been already seen that the object of eating is to give warmth, growth, repair, and strength to the body, which things are to be derived from what is eaten, from what is taken into the stomach as food, and whatever gives the tilings just named is comprehended under the one word “ nutrition : ” whether the food eaten gives one, or two, or all of the things named, that kind of food is called nutri- tious. All food gives to the body one or more of three things : carbon to warm, albuminates to give flesh or strength, and salts to make the carbon and albuminates impart nutrition. Whatever then can be gratefully or pleasurably taken into the stomach, and which, when there, can be so managed as to impart nourishment to the system in a healthful manner, should come under the designation of food, and may be eaten. Hence, in answer to the ques- tion, What shall we eat ? it may be taken for reply, “ We may eat whatever we have an appe- tite or taste for, which is capable of nourishing the body, of affording it warmth and strength in a healthful manner, that is, in a way which is not attended with any ill results.” Brandy and other liquors give warmth, for they contain a large 46 WHAT TO EAT. amount of carbon ; and they give strength, but it is a strength without foundation ; it really only enables us to appropriate from the body a part of its store of strength in advance. In one sense it is a pay- ing or using the income before it is due ; in another sense it is a living upon the principal. With a greater evil still, it leaves behind it injurious re- sults : proportioned to the amount taken, it leaves debility ; in other words, it went in debt and the debt has to be paid. Debility is not the only ill result ; if its use is persisted in, actual disease is generated in various parts of the system, which either mars life and life’s pleasures, or destroys it prematurely, according to the amount and fre- quency of, its \ise. Hence liquors cannot be con- sidered food, because they do not impart the ele- ments of food without attendant ill consequences. We may then eat of what gives us nourishment healthfully, and against the use of which as food there is no just restriction. Men can live on men ; men can live on horses, or mules, or other animals, but restrictions are imposed which all good men will respect. APPETITE. We may eat what is nourishing, and if there is an appetite, a taste for it, it will do more good than if taken with repugnance ; it is more easily digested and prepared for imparting nourishment and life to the body. There are some things for which we seem to APPETITE. 4 " have a natural appetite. The infant loves milk the first day of its existence ; the various prepara- tions of bread and eggs and fish seem to be eaten with a relish by all nations ; so are the fruits of the earth ; but men, and animals also, can be edu- cated to eat, and eat with a relish, what once there was a decided aversion to even taste. Hence there is a natural appetite and an educated appe- tite ; the latter is liable to be the cause of great mischief, as when persons learn to use tobacco, eat slate pencils, and the like. It would not, therefore, be correct to say that we should eat whatever there is an appetite for. The general statement sim- ply is made, that we should eat what imparts healthful nutriment to the body. This is intended to apply to those who are well, — who enjoy good health. There are individual cases w T here it is ad- visable not to eat indiscriminately of the flesh of animals and birds and fish, of the grain of the field, of the fruits of the tree, and the various ber- ries which grow on bushes, and the numerous veg- etables which are richly supplied to our tables. Corpulency in man is a disease arising from the fact that certain portions of nutriment which he re- ceives are not conveyed out of the system, but re- main stored there, and accumulate sometimes in such immense quantities as to be of serious incon- venience to the individual, impeding locomotion, hindering greatly in the performance of daily work, causing an abiding and uncomfortable shortness of breath, and seeming to dispose the system to attacks 48 WHAT TO EAT. of apoplexy, or other forms of sudden death. If such a person desires to reduce his weight to more convenient proportions, it becomes of practical in- terest to inquire WHAT SHALL FAT MEN EAT Fat in the human system is an accumulation of heat - producing or carbonaceous material ; hence those desiring leanness should avoid to a reason- able extent the use of carbonaceous food, such as abound in oils, and fat, and starch, and sweets. Another principle of action is that as a man re- quires a certain amount of food daily to supply the wastes of the system, if he wants to reduce his weight, he must eat less every day than the sys- tem requires ; this would be a more speedy method than the mere avoidance of fatty foods. The bear of our country becomes fat in the autumn from the large supply of food which he finds in the forest at that season of the year, and, seeking for some re- tired spot, a cave, or hollow log, he hides himself away, and, with his paw in his mouth, sleeps until spring, unconsciously, it is said, sucking it all the time. He remains the whole winter in a kind of torpid, frozen condition ; but the fire of life had to be kept up all that time, which was done by the gradual use of the surplus fat with which he was supplied when he went into his winter- quarters ; now instead of being rounded, and sleek, and fat, and strong, as he was a few months before, he is but little more than skin and bone, and with THE ACQUISITION OF LEANNESS. 49 the first sunshine of spring he emerges from his winter home to hunt, and feed, and recuperate. All know that in a very short time the ship- wrecked sailor becomes reduced to skin and bone, when food has not b^een supplied to him. The rule, then, for the fat man, who wishes to reduce his bulk is to avoid fatty foods and eat daily less than the system actually needs, and the effects will be more palpable, if, in the mean time, he works hard or aims to spend a large portion of daylight in out- door activities. The advantage of this method is that he will not only not become weak in body or listless in mind, but will find an amazing change in the activity of his limbs, in the soundness of his sleep, and in the life, and buoyancy, and elasticity of his spirits ; the brain, too, will act with extraor- dinary clearness, and all the sensibilities of the sys- tem will become etherealized, elevated, and refined ; and in comparison with his former condition of obesity, breathing will become a bliss, and life a protracted sunshine ; the only drawback will be that he will be hungry all the time, but then he don’t want to be fat. Every acquisition has its effort and its self-denials, and there is no exception in THE ACQUISITION OF LEANNESS. Banting’s System a Cause of Bright’s Disease. — . Dr. Thomas Clemens of Frankfort ( Chemical Gazette ), reports three cases of his own, in which the patients had carried Banting-ism to an excess. So insidious was the invasion of' the renal disorder, that when the patients first 4 50 WHAT TO EAT. applied for medical aid, the symptoms of Bright’s disease, fully developed, were found in each instance. All the cases were fatal, and each was accompanied with a rapid and pro- found disarrangement of the whole system, associated with symptoms referred to the brain and cord. Dr. Clemens be- lieves that a tendency to the disease is caused by the loss of the fat of the kidney, together with an excessive supply of albuminous material in the blood. It will aid the fat man, if some specific state- ments are made by which he may be able to pro- ceed with safety and with system in attaining the object of his laudable ambition ; these statements are the result of carefully conducted scientific ex- periments, made by eminent men by the require- ments of governmental authority, hence cannot be doubted or denied. The quickest way to reduce a man’s fatness is to eat less. If he is in a hurry, eat nothing. A young man lost fifteen pounds in a few days, thus : On Tuesday, the 18th of May, he fell asleep in the steamship Rising Star , and the hatches were closed on him at Aspinwall ; on Wednesday, the following week, about eight o’clock in the morning, an inter- val of nearly nine days, he was discovered on the arrival of the vessel at New York, not having tasted a particle of food or drank a drop of any kind of liquid in the interval. When discovered he was unable to stand up. Tea was given him, but he could not retain it on his stomach ; a spoon- ful or two of sherry wine was next administered ; this was retained, and repeated at ten minutes’ interval for several times ; then more nourishing AN EGG A DAY. 51 food was furnished in very small quantities at short intervals, and by this treatment, he recovered in a few days. AN EGG A DAY. It is known that a celebrated German scholar took refuge in a hay-loft from an infuriated soldiery ; the next day a hen came, made a nest near him and laid an egg, which he ate ; this was repeated daily for fourteen days, when the army having left the town, he emerged from his hiding place, and was able to walk to the house of a friend, having lost several pounds of flesh in the mean time. So that if a man lies still all the time, he may subsist on a very small amount of food, a common egg weighing but two ounces. If, however, a man is walking about, out of bed all day, but not working any, and is in good health, he requires at least a pound or sixteen ounces of nutriment. Different persons require different amounts ; but taking fifty men promiscuously from any crowd, in good health, they will require from sixteen to eighteen ounces of actual nourishment ; but it will take about six pounds of common food in its natural state, as it comes on the table, to yield one pound of nutriment. To make statements more easily remembered and yet sufficiently accurate, it is enough to say that while a man in good health requires a pound of nutriment every twenty-four hours, to keep him at his weight and strength, without work, three quar- ters of this must be warming or carbonaceous food, and one quarter of a pound of albuminate, oi 52 WHAT TO EAT. muscle or flesh-making food, called also nitrates or nitrogenous food. In the experiments made, some persons lost four pounds in weight in two months ; others lost two pounds only. But to show with what accuracy the experiments were conducted, it was determined to find out why some men lost twice as much as others in the same general circumstances ; and it was revealed that the men who were fed on mush and milk at certain meals lost one half less than those who took molasses with their mush ; because molasses is a carbonaceous food, it only warms ; milk is an albuminate, it makes flesh and gives strength, as it is one of the perfect foods, has all the elements of nutrition. If persons wish to diminish their bulk, weight, or fat, the general rules everywhere applicable to the sedentary are : — 1. Eat such amounts, morning, noon, and night, as will keep you hungry three fourths of your waking existence. 2. Let one sixth of your food be albuminate, that is strength and flesh giving, and five sixths of the carbonaceous kind, such as give warmth. 3. If it is desired to hasten the result, either work a great part of the time in the open air, or think intensely ; for both work and thought con- sume the fat of a man. HOW TO GET FAT. It is a striking fact that most persons want to weigh more than they do, and measure their health by their weight, as if man were a pig, valuable in HOW TO GET FAT. 53 proportion to his heaviness. The racer is not fat a good plough horse has but a moderate amount of flesh. Heavy men are not those which experienced contractors employ to build railroads and dig ditches. Thin men, the world over, are the men for work, for endurance ; they are wiry and hardy ; thin people live the longest ; the truth is, fat is a disease, and, as proof, fat people are never well a day at a time, — are not suited for hard work. Still, there is a medium between being fat as a butter-ball and as thin and juiceless as a fence-rail. For mere looks a moderate rotundity is most desirable, to have enough of flesh to cover all angularities. To accomplish this in the shortest time, a man should work but little, sleep a great part of the time, allow nothing to worry hiih, keep always in a joyous, laughing mood, and live chiefly on albumi- nates, such as boiled cracked wheat, and rye, and oats, and corn, and barley, with sweet milk, and buttermilk, and meats. Sugar is the best fat- tener known. Some years ago there was a very remarkable man in Wall Street ; his name was on every tongue throughout the country as “ the man who made paper,” that is, signed other men’s names to notes payable to himself, and sold them to banks, bankers, and moneyed men in the street at large discounts. Most of the purchasers knew the names were forged ; but tempted by the heavy discounts, and the '‘maker of paper” being known to take up his notes always before they were due, the ball rolled 54 WHAT TO EAT. on and up to hundreds of thousands. It was stated on oath at the trial, and corroborated, that he always had the headache, and that he was nevei seen down-town without a cigar in his mouth ; always thin, always complaining. He was sent to the penitentiary — was so faithful to the laws, and so attentive to his business, and withal so reliable, that a clerkship or some easy berth was given him of a very quiet, sedentary character. In the second month of his imprisonment he had gained fifteen pounds in weight. He was never allowed to smoke. Within a year a man was charged with some infraction of the laws, and was sent to prison to await trial, without the knowledge of his wife, to whom he had just before been married, after a short courtship. In about three months, she ascertained where he was ; and, on being shown to his cell, she at first did not recognize him, he had “ fleshed up so. 5 ’ These are cases among ten thousands of others which could be narrated, where persons have grown fatter on going to prison ; the rules of prison-life fully accounting for. the fact. They do nothing but eat and sleep. They eat reg- ularly of plain meats and coarse breads. From all the statements made, the conclusion is undeniable that a safe, healthful, and sure method of increasing flesh is to live a quiet, in-door life, sleep a great deal, eat regularly of plain meat and coarse breads, or any of the grains .named, cracked in pieces, boiled well, and eaten with milk ; keep- ing the system cool by the use of cold water, and HOW TO GET FAT. 55 maintaining a daily and free action of the bowels, which last is pretty sure to follow a diet composed mainly of coarse breads and cracked grain ; because chemistry has demonstrated that the most nutritious and strengthening part of corn, oats, rye, barley, and wheat are in the outer part, in the shell or bran, which is unfortunately separated from the inner portion, giving us the pure white and com- paratively innutritious flour, while the most health- ful and invigorating part, the bran, or outer shell, is thrown away, or given to hogs, horses, and cattle. CHAPTER IY. HOW MUCH TO EAT. The question of how much one ought to eat is perhaps one of the most frequent inquiries made of a physician ; but the reply depends on an infinite variety of conditions. The answer here will apply to those only who are in reasonable health, and eat but three times a day. For out-door laborers, for breakfast and dinner, the general rule should be, eat as much as you want. But do not eat more than you want, — not one single atom more than you want ; for it is the ruin of life’s happiness in multitudes of cases. The domestic animals are frequently observed to leave food before them, blind instinct being their only guide ; and surely the nobler man, with his nobler reason, ought not to act with less wisdom. When nature prompts a man to cease eating, it is because hunger is appeased ; as much food has been taken as there are stomach juices enough to take care of. Every mouthful swallowed after that is without one drop of gastric juice to take care of it, to keep it from rotting ; and that single mouthful, being unprovided for, becomes tainted food, and corrupts, to that extent, the whole mass besides ; the whole amount of blood made from that meal is, to that extent, corrupted and made impure, and LIGHT SUPPERS. 57 mixing with the blood already in the system, as it does in the heart and lungs, the whole mass of blood in the human body is tainted to the extent of that mouthful swallowed which was not wanted, but was forced on the unresisting stomach for the pitiful purpose of, “ saving ” what was not intrinsic- ally worth one single cent. To “ save ” less than a penny, a rational man corrupts the whole mass of his blood, renders it impure, makes his blood “bad;” and all know that “ bad blood 99 is the very fruitful cause of human suffering, because where there is BAD BLOOD in the human body, it is liable to affect injuriously and painfully any portion of the system, or every portion of it, according to circumstances ; hence those who eat too much are never well, are always complaining, and legitimately so, because their blood is never pure and healthful, but is always bad, always diseased, always corrupting. While it is a good rule for the man who works hard out-of- doors to eat as much as he wants at breakfast and dinner, he and all others ought to take LIGHT SUPPERS, if no special labor has to be done until next day. By a light supper is meant a bowl of mush and milk, or stirabout, or boiled cracked wheat, or corn, or other grain. Better, however, than all these would it be if the supper was rigidly confined to a single piece of cold bread and butter, and one cup 58 HOW MUCH TO EAT of warm drink, of any kind of herb tea ; and it is believed that nothing answers the purpose so well as the common “ black tea ” of commerce. Some prefer the “ green tea; ” but to many it is too stim- ulating, and either causes some discomfort in the stomach, or interferes with the sleep at night. Many who are made restless all night by taking green tea for supper, can use the black tea without any disagreeable attendants. Very few families have the moral courage to spread the tea-table without some addition to the bread and butter. This addition is in the shape of sauce, or preserves, or chipped beef, or sliced ham ; and, at certain seasons, berries and cream are sub- stituted. But it is undeniable that this practice of having “ relishes ” on the tea-table ruins the health and shortens the life of uncounted thousands ; it makes our daughters confirmed dyspeptics before they are out of their teens, and to all who spend most of their lives in-doors, it is the bane of human happiness, is the universal curse of farm-house life, and accounts for the belief of many eminent medical men, that, with all the vaunted advantages of country life, there is more sickness in farmers’ families, more diseases of long standing in propor- tion to numbers, than in city families. CITY HEALTHIER THAN THE COUNTRY. The actual truth is that in the largest cities of the world, taking London as an example, the average of human life is longer than in the country. CITY HEALTHIER THAN THE COUNTRY. 5 $ The reason of this, as far as it relates to farmers and other laborers, is, that at the close of the day they are tired ; the circulation is weak and slow, the fire of life is low, they feel weary and sad, and very likely hungry. Under these circumstances they eat a hearty supper, which of itself tends to sleepiness, and that combined with the general weariness makes the tendency to sleep almost overpowering and quite irresistible. In addition, there is the almost deathly stillness at night in the country and a sense of loneliness ; these combined, send the farmer to bed almost as soon as he has swallowed his supper, rarely perhaps out of bed later than nine o’clock ; and while every muscle of the body yearns for rest and falls to sleep, the stomach has had a new task imposed upon it, which it cannot possibly perform short of five or six hours, which brings it toward daylight, the farmer’s hour for rising, when breakfast comes on, and a new burden is imposed upon the unrested stomach — a burden which it is impossible for it to per- form well ; and to the extent this is not done, di- gestion is not perfectly perfoimed, and the blood which is made but of this nutriment is imperfectly made, — gives out but part of its strength ; the man works with proportioned effort and weariness, while the system is rendered more liable to disease, and is all the time, more or less, out of its natural con- dition. These effects are not instantaneously in- duced ; but as silently and as certainly as the snow- flake falls, and falls, and falls, until a mountain bank 60 HOW MUCH TO EAT. or avalanche is formed, so certainly will the ele- ments of disease accumulate in the human system by the continued practice of eating which has been described. Such are some of the ill effects of eat* ing late and heartily ; and they are wise who will give the subject a full examination, and conduct themselves accordingly. LEAVE OFF HUNGRY, is not wise for workers, especially for those who labor out-of-doors, nor for such as use severe mus- cular effort anywhere ; but for women, and for all sedentary persons, for those who are seated a great part of the day, for invalids, and for all who have leisure, of either sex, it is a maxim of incomputable value. Such a habit would add largely to the aver- age length of human life, would greatly ameliorate many of its maladies, and would do very much to- ward eradicating our national disease, dyspepsia. If an out-door laborer eats to his fill, he soon works it off and out of the system ; but those who are in- doors most of the time, have not this opportunity, and hence are liable to discomfort and actual suf- fering. That we all could be well, and not eat near as much as we do, will perhaps not be denied. We all eat too much. Let the reader be persuaded to make the following experiment, and in the light of it make it the habit of his life on this point. Some day, when you have been helped at the table, stop short off when you have eaten three LEAVE OFF HUNGRY. 61 fourths of what was on your plate, while you were somewhat hungry ; in half an hour you will feel as if you had eaten quite enough, and you will be no more hungry next morning than you have usually been, that is, from a single experiment of the kind. At another time eat as much as you want, and within half an hour you will feel as if you had eaten too much, although w T hile you were eating you seemed to have an appetite, and the food tasted well ; still you have a feeling of discomfort, of full- ness, of oppression, of heaviness, or some other sensation, which causes the wish that you had not eaten so much, leaving the conviction that you had eaten too much ; and always, when this is the case, the stomach, in a sense, has not room to work ; it is so distended that it has not the power of contraction and motion, which are necessary to the healthful handling of the food ; nor are there fluids enough to dissolve it, with the inevitable result of imperfect digestion and an imperfect blood, wanting in its natural strength, wanting in its natural life. • It is scarcely possible that any person of even a moderate share of force of character and intelli- gence could practice for a single week the habit of rising from the table a little hungry thrice a day, and then comparing his general feelings of health- fulness with those experienced from the contrary aabit of always overloading, and not be so overpow- eringly convinced of the beneficial effects as to re- solve that for the remnant of his days he would eat temperately, not to his utmost fill at any meal. And 62 HOW MUCH TO EAT. yet, in the face of all this, it would not be safe to say that over one in a thousand readers of these pages will be induced to inaugurate the habit so highly extolled, simply because the animal predominates over the reason, the appetite is stronger than the soul, the body is servant of the propensities and passions ; and with all our strength of mind, with all the con- victions of our rational powers, we debase ourselves to the lusts of the flesh. One of the most remark- able exhibitions of this slavishness to the love of eating that has ever occurred in human history is an item in the life of one of the world’s worthies, who, as to mental power in logic and theology, is without a superior in modern history. He made this quaint confession, “ Three times a day I go to the tabid determined to not exceed ; three times a day I come away finding that I have exceeded.” Not vouching for the verbal exactness of the state- ment, the truth embodied is incontrovertible, that the great man who wrote an immortal work had not the mastery over his appetites, and the con- sciousness of it extorted the frank confession, itself an evidence of a great mind, that he frequently committed indiscretions in eating ; and this very fact may have been a main reason for his dying before he had reached his fortieth year : and phi- losophers, and divines, and great men of all cul- tivated nations have ever since regretted that he had not lived longer, that he might have given the world still greater things as the fruitage of a grand intellect. He died of small-pox, a disease EATING BY WEIGHT AND MEASURE. 63 which a strong constitution can withstand ana throw off ; but no constitution can be strong, can have any store of vitality, where a man eats too much habitually. EATING BY WEIGHT AND MEASURE is neither wise nor practicable, unless a man is a guide only for himself, because no two persons can be found of like circumstances. Age, sex, season, latitude, condition of the system, employment, all have a modifying effect. Half a pound of food would be quite enough for one person, while another might require a much larger amount. A Scotch gentleman of culture and intelligence spent three years with the Indians in the mountatns be- yond the Missouri, and, as a pastime, joined with them in trapping animals for their furs. He told the writer that the custom of the tribe with which he associated was to eat but once a day. They rose at daylight, visited their traps, and chased the animals until night, walking and running the whole day, not stopping to eat a morsel ; but at night they would eat from nine to ten pounds of meat for supper, as a general rule, then talk around their camp-fires, smoke awhile, then lie down with their feet towards the fire. At the peep of day, they would leave their camps, and trap until night, as before. This was a custom adapted to their cir- cumstances, and which seemed healthful. A celebrity in Washington city, a kind of Beau Brummel, ate but once a day ; and when, by being 64 HOW MUCH TO EAT. invited to an evening party, it was necessary to participate in the feasting, making a second meal to him, he would eat nothing at all the day following, so that he might average but one meal a day. He died not Jong since, at the age of about 'eighty years. These cases show the adaptability of the human constitution to different habits, under pecul- iar circumstances. At the same time, those who pursue a regular occupation of body or brain, and work hard, would do better and live longer by eating three times a day ; because, if as much is eaten at one meal as would last until next day, it would be such a load for the stomach that nothing less than absolute rest for quite a number of hours would answer for the proper digestion of the food : like a gorged anaconda, there would be a kind of torpid, inanimate condition of the system, until the load could be worked off. The inhabitants of northern latitudes eat incred- ible quantities at a time. Captain Parry weighed the food eaten in one day by a Greenland boy : the amount consumed was ten pounds of bread and meat, a pint of spirits, and over a gallon of water. Sir John Ross says that a full-grown man in those northern latitudes will consume twenty pounds of meat and grease in a day. A Russian admiral states from personal knowledge that a Siberian ate in one day the hind quarter of an ox, twenty pounds of fat, and a proportionate quantity of melted butter for his drink. In drder to be able to make a more specific statement, the Admiral EATING BY WEIGHT AND MEASUKE. 65 Saritcheff sent for this man with the determination of weighing the food lie might eat in a day, hut he had taken his breakfast already ; how-ever, he sat down to a second meal, and ate twenty-eight pounds of thick rice porridge with three pounds of butter in it. Incredible as these statements may appear to us in our temperate latitudes, they are undoubtedly true. These shiftless people have sometimes to pass days together without a particle of food, and thus, when they do get a supply, must not only make up for lost time, but must also take in a quantity which may last the several days ahead which may intervene before they can obtain another supply of food. It must be taken into account, also, that in those regions of eternal ice and snow, where the thermometer often falls to sixty degrees below zero, and where they have no stoves or furnace-heated apartments, with double windows and weather strips, an immense amount of carbo- naceous food must be consumed to generate the amount of heat requisite to maintain a living tem- perature. As has been stated, a man may live for two weeks on one egg a day, for food and drink ; so that the question of how much to eat, whether one pound or thirty at a time, depends altogether on the cir- cumstances of the case. At the same time, the reader will desire some more specific statement, from which may be derived practical information as applicable to his own case. In this connection, it may be interesting to know how much a man 5 66 HOW MUCH TO EAT. should eat by measurement, who is of average size, and in reasonable health ; but even this depends upon the fact whether he is a worker or an idler. It is very necessary to determine these points with great accuracy, because, when the government has to feed a thousand or fifty thousand a day, — some soldiers, some laborers, and some prisoners, or poor- house inmates who cannot work, — it is important, in order to avoid immense and useless waste, as also to preserve the health and strength of the different classes, to know with considerable pre- cision, even to an ounce, how much each class of persons requires. The element of food which is required to sustain the body and give strength for work is called albu- minate, as before stated ; and the quantity eaten in one day should contain a full quarter of a pound of albuminate for a day laborer weighing a hun- dred and forty pounds. Some articles of food con- tain more of this principle than others. Lean meats and fish, and pease and beans contain a large amount of albuminate ; fruits and vegetables have but little, but they have a great deal of the warm- ing element, carbon, which is as necessary to life as the other ; hence the wisdom of eating different kinds of food at our meals : meats to give strength, vegetables and butter to give warmth. HOW MUCH TO EAT IN A DAV. As an average-sized laboring man must have a full quarter of a pound of albuminate every day, he DIET FOR THE SICK. 67 would, in order to obtain this, have to eat a pound each of roast beef, potatoes, bread, milk, and fruit ; but in this there would also be found enough car- bon or warmth to answer the wants of the system, or a pound and a quarter ; that is to say, an ordi- nary day laborer by eating five pounds of meat, bread, and vegetables, or mixed food, would supply his system with a quarter of a pound of strengthen- ing elements, and a pound and a quarter of warm- ing elements. But in the food above named there would be also a small amount of salts, which would be represented by the ashes if it were burned up ; this portion of salts, although containing no v;armth or strength in itself, is yet necessary to be com- bined with the carbon and albuminate in order to enable them to give nourishment to the system. PRISON FARE. In some of our state prisons about four pounds of solid food are allowed each man every day ; while emigrants on ship board have two and a half pounds of solid food daily, not requiring as much as day laborers, as, instead of working, they are lounging about the vessel, or sleep, consequently make but little waste. In the American army each man is allowed four pounds of solid food, with tea and sugar, and every few days some extras. DIET FOR THE SICK. In some hospitals, patients who are reasonably well have one pound of bread and half a pound of 68 HOW MUCH TO EAT. meat, with, some tea or gruel, or, as in England, some beer. To persons not so well, the daily al- lowance is three quarters of a pound of bread, and a quarter of a pound of meat. Hence it is seen that in answer to the question — 44 HOW MUCH MUST I EAT ? ” there is all the difference between one pound of solid food and six pounds, and that a man can sus- tain life for weeks, if he is very quiet and still, on an egg a day, which is but two or three ounces of food. In the celebrated case of LEWIS CORNARO, an Italian, the specific amount of solid food which he allowed himself each day was a scant quarter of a pound of albuminate and a pound of carbon. It is said, and generally credited, that this man, a nobleman of fortune, had so abused himself by riotous living, being a drunkard and a glutton, that at the age of forty .years his physical condition was such that medical men considered his case hope- less ; that he could not live under any circum- stances ; and that therefore he might as well live as he pleased, and enjoy himself the best way he could for the short remnant of his days. Some accidental circumstance caused him to try the effects of a reg- ular diet, upon which he seemed to improve, and, being encouraged thereby, he persevered in the sys- tem marked out, with the result that he recovered tiis health, lived an exemplary and useful life, and SUMMER DIET 69 died lamented by the public at the age of nearly one hundred years. The answers to the question how much to eat, depend so largely on the circumstances of age, sex, season, latitude, and employment, that it would be impracticable to name any amount as applicable to the majority of any class of persons; in fact, it is one of those questions which each man should aim to answer for himself, that answer being founded on his own close observation and sound judgment. The following rules, however, will perhaps meet all cases as to general habits : — 1. Eat at regular specified times, and at no others. 2. Hard workers, especially those who are most of the time in the open air, should eat as much as they want at breakfast and dinner. 3. Those who are in-doors most of the time, as women, literary men, and students, should never eat full as much as they want. This would be a safe rule for all sick persons also. SUMMER DIET. As the object of eating is to sustain the strength, and to keep warm, carbonaceous or warming food is not as much needed in summer as in winter, any more than as much fuel should be burned in warm weather as in cold. And as carbonaceous foods comprise fats and fat meats, and sugars and starches, in the form of buckwheat cakes and molasses, butter and oils, reason dictates that these should be spar- 70 HOW MUCH TO EAT. ingly used in summer time ; and Nature, by hel instincts, blind though they be, yet unerring, prompts to the same abstemiousness in the use of these articles, and, as if afraid to leave us to our- selves, she takes away our appetite for them, and craves in their stead, more yearningly, as the heats of midsummer come on, the cooling vegetable, and spinach, and fruit, and berry, and melon ; and not only so, but has, in her parental beneficence, ar- ranged that these shall succeed each other in their season, with their delightful variety. The berry and the melon have no carbon at all, and most of the fruits have but a trace ; and if man in his wis- dom, even with the light he has, would but eat on the principles indicated, he might rid himself of a large share of summer diseases. But we resolutely shut our eyes against the light, and ruthlessly and recklessly pander to our passions and our appetites, to our own undoing. The most casual observer has noticed in himself, and as to others, that as the winter disappears and the spring opens, the appetite begins to abate. As we enter the dining-room and scan the spreading of the table, a feeling of disappointment or dissatis- faction passes over us, which is too often expressed by a frown or a scowl. The reason is, our appetite is not waked up ; Nature seems to whisper that the food before us has not the elements now needed. It is the same bread and butter, and potato and roast beef; but we have no craving for them. On a cold winter’s day we would have eyed them with SUMMER DIET. 71 peculiar satisfaction, and would have sat down to the table with pleasurable expectancy ; but now we would almost as lief leave the room, but for form’s sake we sit down and eat, but with no avidity. This goes on for several days with abating strength, and perhaps several undesirable feelings or sensa- tions, or, in other words, symptoms ; and the phan- tom begins to arise that something must be wrong in the system. We are sensible that we have no appetite, that is, in comparison with what we have had, and we straightway conclude that some- thing is the matter with us, and, bringing to re- membrance that when we had a good appetite we were well, the conclusion is hastily adopted that the reason we are not well is because we have no appetite, and that if we had an appetite we would be well ; and, pursuing the false train of argument and conclusion, the opinion is settled upon as an undeniable fact, that we must take something to give us an appetite ; and we begin to “ take ” right vigorously. We take “ dinner pills ; ” we “ take ” a drink ; we take some tonic, some bitters ; we take anything and everything that promises the desired result ; but the result is never reached, because the argument is founded on a fallacy palpable enough for any one to see. We are fighting against Nature, who is attempting to diminish our appetite while we are doing all we can to increase it. 72 HOW MUCH TO EAT. SPRING DISEASES. As the weather gets warmer, less food is needed to keep the body warm ; we, in our blindness, en- deavor to keep up the same heat, to burn as much internal fuel in July as in January. If we do eat as much, the system cannot appropriate it, it is re- jected, it is cast out ; but in making the effort to cast it out, natural force is expended which ought to have been saved, weakening ourselves unnecessarily while we were weak and languid before ; and these were the very feelings which prompted us to be do- ing something to make us feel better, to improve our general condition, and to increase our strength. The means we used were to force upon the stomach much larger amounts than were craved, thus im- posing upon that much abused organ the additional labor, not only to expend the strength of the sys- tem unnecessarily, but to cause irritations, and fevers, and inflammations, which bring wreck and ruin to thousands every spring and summer, — the deaths in the warm months being nearly double those in the cooler ones of October and November. Health increases in the autumn. The health, and strength, and bodily enjoyment of all communities increase as the weather begins to cool in the first days of October ; the appetite gradually improves, because Nature sees that as the weather is getting cooler outside, there must be more fuel consumed within, and she instinctively calls for more food ; and the strength increases proportionably ; we gain more SPRING DISEASES. 73 flesh, and with it come new hopes and new ambi- tions, and a new power of action. Hence it is an indisputable physiological truth that if the instincts of Nature were yielded to in the spring ; were cher- ished in her desire to take less and less food as the weather grows warmer, as they are yielded to in the autumn in taking more, a very large amount of the diseases of spring and summer would be avoided. The great practical lesson to be learned in refer- ence to the subject, a question of health and dis- ease, yes, in multitudes of cases a question of life and death, is simply this : as the winter passes, and the balmy spring-time comes on, do nothing to in- crease the appetite ; eat no more than is called for ; do not be uneasy because you have little or no relish for your food; eat less and less everyday. The very best way to increase your pleasure of eat- ing is to change the quality of the food ; use arti- cles less carbonaceous, less warming; send from your table the pork and bacon, and fat meats and oils, and sugars and starches, the sago and the tapi- oca pudding, and the dumplings and the rich pas- tries ; get hold of the early “ greens,” the spinach, the salads, the turnip-tops, the radish, the early berry and the early fruit, and lean meats ; pay in- creasing attention to the cleanliness of the skin ; be more in the open air, sleep in better ventilated rooms, let your windows be raised higher at night, and your inner doors be left wider open. 74 HOW MUCH TO EAT. KEEPING LENT strictly, without the dispensations usually granted, is founded on a wise physiology. If all persons for a month in early spring were to abstain from all meats whatsoever, as the spirit of the doctrine of Lent requires, it would add greatly to the health of communities, by enabling the system to throw off the impurities of the body acquired by the hearty eating of winter, would cool off the heated blood, and thus destroy the germs of spring and summer diseases ; and thus is it that the proper practice of the precepts of religion promotes not only the spiritual but the physical health of man. These are simple measures ; they are practicable, cost no money, and are available to all ; and if heeded in a rational manner, death would be kept from many a dwelling, and life-time sorrows would be lightened in many bosoms. children’s eating. It is a painful fact that the foundations of life- long dyspepsias are laid in childhood, leading to another truth of terrible significance, — a truth care- fully educed by scientific men of all cultivated nations, — that, in a very large proportion of cases, the seeds of consumption are sown in the constitu tion while the young are in their teens. Consump tion is a disease of debility ; and just as soon as the digestion becomes impaired, the requisite strength is not withdrawn from the food, debility begins, the THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS. 75 power to resist disease is weakened, colds are easily taken and renewed ; soon it is seen that before one is cured another is taken ; they run into one an- other, a continued cold, a continued cough, the beginning of the end. Errors of eating on the part of children have a more serious bearing on the constitution than in grown persons, because they have less vitality, less power of life ; these errors lead to a great variety of diseases, and it may answer an important pur- pose to state the diseases which are associated with the stomach and its connections ; all of which may be prevented by a proper attention to the eating, and may be cured in the same manner. It may be that when parents see what a long list of mal- adies can be avoided if a wise attention is paid to the diet of their children, they may be stimulated by fear and affection, as well as by a sense of duty, to give special supervision over their children, in connection with the food they eat. THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS commence with the entrance of the lips ; next the mouth, throat, stomach, intestines, and kidneys ; their functions being, first, to prepare the food for the stomach, by chewing; in the stomach it is converted into a fluid mass, which, passing along the track of the bowels, undergoes certain changes, and in this changed condition the nutritive por- tions are transmitted to the parts requiring them ; while the refuse — the waste — which cannot be 76 HOW MUCH TO EAT. used in any way, is passed out of the body through the kidneys, and in the daily action of the bowels at the water-closet and privy. The following are DISEASES OF DIGESTION. Appetite, no. Appetite, excessive. Appetite, depraved. Appetite, perverted. Biliousness. Cholera morbus. Colic. Costiveness. Diabetes, or excessive urine. Diarrhoea, or loose bowels. Dysentery, or bloody flux. Dyspepsia, or indigestion. Fistula. Gall-stones. Gravel. Headache. Heartburn. Jaundice. Nettle-rash. Piles. Sick-headache. Sour stomach. Summer complaint. Toothache, in many of its forms* Throat diseases of several kinds* Worms — round, tape, pin. REGULARITY OF CHILDREN’S EATING. 77 Reckless, indeed, must be those parents who can be indifferent as to their children’s food, after they have learned that such a formidable array of mala- dies can be prevented from entering their house- holds by a proper supervision of what is placed before their children at the family table. REGULARITY OF CHILDREN’S EATING is absolutely imperative, if we wish them to grow up in good health. The point on which the ex- ceedingly injurious effects of irregular eating de- pends, has already been alluded to. Order is Heaven’s first law. All things move better, safer, and more smoothly, if regularity and system be everywhere observed. If the stomach be too long without food, the child becomes so ravenous that it is sure to eat fast and over much, bringing on con- vulsions in very many cases. If one meal is followed too soon by another, the certain result is either vomiting or acidity, tending to induce violent attacks of loose bowels of all grades, from cholera infantum to the most malig- nant forms of Asiatic cholera. After a child has been weaned, and up to seven years of age, there should not be a greater interval than five hours between the regular meals of daylight ; but from weaning up to ten years, it would be better between breakfast and dinner to allow a single ^iece of bread and butter, or an apple, and the same between dinner and supper, or sundown. Those who would avoid the disagreeable surprise of 78 HOW MUCH TO EAT. being waked up in the middle of the night by the cries and sufferings, and oftentimes dangerous mal- adies of their children, will make it imperative that after four years of age they should not be allowed to eat anything whatever after supper, which should never be later for them than three or four hours before bed-time. After ten years of age, children can be very readily trained to take nothing between the three regular meals of the day. FORCING CHILDREN TO EAT would seem to be a barbarity, and yet very many sensible and affectionate persons educate their children from very early years to this same unwise and always injurious act, by teaching them that they must not leave anything on their plate, on the plea that waste is always wicked. But it is a much greater waste to crowd a mouthful into the stomach when there is no appetite for it, than to give that same mouthful to some domestic animal, to pig or poultry, or the faithful dog. If no such animals are about the house, let such remnants be given to the poor, or buried in the ground to enrich the soil, or, if thrown in the garden, some insect or bird would make a glorious feast upon it. In either of these ways, every particle would be utilized ; but when crowded into an unwilling stomach, it not cnly cannot be applied to the beneficent purposes named, but it is a positive physical injury to the child, and endangers its life, because, as has been already stated, when there is no sensation of A CRYING PARENTAL FOLLY. 79 hunger, it is because there are no juices in the Stomach to take care of any single half-mouthful that may be “ forced ” into it by being swallowed without a relish, or inclination, or appetite ; and in all such cases it undergoes no natural, healthful, useful change, but remains a foreign matter, to irritate, and ii)flame, and shock the whole system, ending many times in deranged stomach and bowels, convulsions, cholera morbus, and death. A CRYING PARENTAL FOLLY is to compel a child to eat an article of food for which he has no appetite, nay may have a positive disgust at the very thought of swallowing the hated mouthful. Parents do this from the very best of motives, thinking that it would add to the child’s health or comfort in after-life to have learned to eat the article in question. It is just as great an outrage to compel a man to eat a piece of fried snake as to compel a child to eat a piece of fat meat when his stomach revolts at it ; the inhumanity of it is greater, because the man may defend himself, while the child, all unre- sisting and helpless, is made to comply by the one whom he loves best in all the world. The instincts of childhood should be held in a measure sacred to them ; and it may be safe to say that what nature craves, the body has use for ; what nature abhors, the same body has no use for. Every man is at liberty to ride any hobby he chooses to death ; if he wants to ride it to his own 80 HOW MUCH TO EAT. undoing, he may have the right to do it, with some restrictions ; but to u have a theory,” and kill his child in the attempt to carry it out, to make it practical, is not to be applauded. If a man wishes to learn his child to relish any article of food which he does not relish now, a safe method of bringing it about is to take a long walk or ride, far from any human habitation, and after the child has been some time complaining of being very hungry, present the article in question to him, and let him taste it if he will, and in a little while taste it again ; in this way he may be educated to love it in a very short time. The conclusion of the whole matter is this : to compel the swallowing of a mouthful of food against the appetite or inclination for it, is certainly a wicked waste of that much ; it gives no healthful nourishment to the body, is a violence to nature, a shock to the system, and invites loathsome, painful, and even fatal maladies. YOUNG LADIES’ EATING. Young ladies’ boarding-schools are among the greatest afflictions of this country. Now and then one is found which is conscientiously conducted in its various departments ; but their influences, as a class, are pernicious to mind, morals, and constitu- tion. It is to the last named the reader’s attention is specially directed. A gentleman of great wealth sent a much loved daughter of seventeen to a boarding-school in the East. The cookery, the quality and quantity of YOUNG LADIES’ EATING. 81 provisions, were such as to drive a number of the pupils to almost desperate practices ; the gnawings of hunger were often such that they banded to- gether to have other provisions brought secretly to the house ; the result was, that eating something at the regular meals of the establishment to save ap- pearances, and also their own provisions “ between times,” the stomach had no rest, and became so dyspeptic that study was a misery and a mockery ; and years after, when the lady became a mother, she bewailed to the writer the misfortune that had befallen her, and from which she was still suffering, and had no other prospect than carrying it with her to her grave ; not only was her own constitution impaired, but the taint of it was passed over to all her children. The point sought to be impressed here is the too frequent eating; it will inevitably destroy all healthful action of the stomach ; the result of which is bad blood, and the long catalogue of ailments which of necessity follow in the train, and which were enumerated a few pages past. At boarding-schools a table is set which may be good in quality, and answer very well for a single occasion ; but the insufferable sameness of dishes for weeks and months together, which is constantly observable in most of these establishments, soon vails upon the appetite, and the pupil many a time leaves the table without being able to eat scarcely anything. The teachers may prepare what they think is suitable, but it should be remembered that in these schools persons of different temperaments 6 32 HOW MUCH TO EAT. and tastes, coming from different sections of the country, cannot be expected to relish the same kind of food ; and to expect them to eat what they can- not partake of without a species of compulsion is unreasonable. In any Collection of young ladies there may be peculiarities, called, by medical men, “ Idiosyncrasies,” which they can neither dismiss nor control ; and in schools, as well as in other public institutions, the head managers soon become unsympathetic, cold, calculating, and heartless, and in just that proportion are unfit to have control over the tender consciences and feelings of the young girl just from under a loving mother’s eye. At home, parental affection respects these peculiarities of appetite, and wisely humors them. Whatever is placed on the table of a boarding-school must be eaten or let alone ; and the pupil is forced to leave the room hungry, the only alternative being to ob- tain food elsewhere ; and the selection is sure to be unsuitable, as it will very certainly be in the shape of cakes, candies, and other sweetmeats, which clog the stomach, overtax it, and destroy its powers for life. The truth of the main state- ment, that at young ladies’ boarding-schools the food is not in sufficient quantity nor variety to answer the needs of the pupils, will be readily sub- stantiated by the testimony of nine girls out of ten who have lived in these establishments. This subject becomes a matter of very grave im- portance when it is taken into account that the con- sequences of becoming a dyspeptic at school are to MORAL EVILS OF BOARDING-SCHOOLS. 8 6 be felt by tlie future husband ; by children yet unborn, who are, as a result, to be brought into the world with impaired constitutions, with hereditary maladies, which may be handed over to remote generations ! A SICK WIFE often brings pecuniary ruin to the ambitious young husband, who, striving to get ahead in the world, finds that his ailing companion not only keeps him from his business, but, by the anxieties in refer- ence to her health, his mind becomes incompetent to attend to his affairs as ought to be done. In addition, the wife being an invalid, servants take advantage of the situation, idle away their time, neglect their duties, waste provisions, and soon the house is no home ; discouragement and despondency take the place of the cheerful hopefulness of the marriage day; excitements are sought outside, to drown the forebodings of the hour ; unsuitable com- panionships are formed ; bad habits are gradually fallen into ; estrangements and recriminations en- sue ; mutual confidences cease, and domestic, social, and pecuniary ruin follow in the train. Who shall deny that histories of the kind are constantly being made, like the one narrated, as the result of the discouragements and drawbacks of a sickly young wife ? MORAL EVILS OF BOARDING-SCHOOLS. If affectionate parents need additional reasons for hesitating to send their daughters to a boarding- 84 ITOW MUCH TO EAT. school, they are found in the direction of an im- paired morality. It is not possible to prevent young ladies, who are thrown together in the equal com- panionships of the boarding-school, from relieving themselves of its tediousness and sameness in un- occupied hours, by reading novels, by studying rivalries in dress, and talking of the young men of their acquaintance. NOVEL-READING. The pernicious effect of reading novels on the mind of school - girls need not be argued. No intelligent mind can doubt it for a single moment ; for, besides unfitting them for the details of dry study, false views of life are inculcated, and errone- ous ideas as to morals and religion, — ideas not in accordance with the teachings of the Sacred Vol- ume, — and such are everywhere to be found in works of fiction in every age, perhaps more espe- cially in our own. It is impossible for a teacher to keep novels out of the boarding-school, because it is a rule of fear, and they will be smuggled in : it is useless to deny this proposition. FINE DRESSES. Human nature must be changed, if the subject of dress should not employ a large portion of the thoughts of young ladies at school. In Germany, f he best girl schools require that all shall be dressed alike, in pretty much the same fabrics, although va- rious in color, and make, and pattern ; the daughter TALKING ABOUT THE MEN. 85 of the mechanic, the farmer, and the merchant dresses as do the children of the titled names of the country. With us, all dress to the extent of their means ; and when a girl finds her school-mate at- tired more expensively than herself, she becomes at once dissatisfied ; she allows it to be a source of constant mortification ; a feeling of inferiority takes possession of her ; corresponding representations are sent home ; too indulgent parents strain a point ; and the result is, that in the matter of dress alone, more money is often required than would pay the entire expenses of tuition, drawn, too, from resources at home which are not honestly adequate. Thou- sands of struggling parents know well how they have practiced painful economies and even humili- ating self-denials for many months, in order to meet the demands made upon them ; and thus are foundations laid for that unreasoning extravagance in dress which is to be followed up for life, and in- culcated upon the children yet to come, — extrava- gances which are constantly bringing families, first to “ management,” then to subterfuge, to equivocal practices, to downright dishonesties, to shame, to degradation, and to unmistakable poverty. TALKING ABOUT THE MEN is among the immoralities of the female boarding- school. It is natural to do so. It re proper for young women to do so. But to such things there should be certain u metes and bounds,” beyond which young ladies should not go ; but beyond 86 HOW MUCH TO EAT. which, very far beyond, they do go, because it is “ forbidden,” which constitutes it a sufficient reason to be indulged in, in the present state of human na- ture ; and the more it can be indulged, the sweeter it is. This is so, because the government is one of hard, dry restraint ; of cold duty, instead of love. It is very true that these same things transpire at home, immediately under a mother’s supervision, but nothing like to the extent above referred to, for there is always the angel of a mother’s love hover- ing over home, of a mother’s interest, and happi- ness, and affection ; these restrain the girl, while she imperceptibly gathers from her parents’ influences certain feelings of propriety, of delicacy, of purity, which are not found in the school-room or under a stranger’s roof. BROKEN TIES. There is one consideration which ought to over- shadow all the influences that prompt to the sending of young girls vho h^ve mothers away from home to obtain an education, and which undoubtedly overbalances all the supposed advantages of such a step : it breaks the family tie. All our instincts rebel against the separation of members of the same household. If kept together until marriage, chil- dren naturally grow up lovingly ; the ground for associations is laid, the very remembrance of which throws a hallowed influence over all after-life, mak- ing us look back to our father’s house and its sur- roundings with the purest of all satisfactions ; im- MAIDENLY PURITY. 87 . pelling us, too, to cast our eyes, and hopes, and aspirations toward that great future when we shall be reunited, a whole family in heaven ! It is al- together impossible for children to have the same pure and loving affection for one another which they ought to have, and would have if kept to- gether, and which they will not have if separated for many months at a time, — often separated. In addition, parental influence is lessened ; the child’s love is chilled ; affections are divided ; new attach- ments are formed ; and, to a great extent, the daughter is weaned from father, mother, home, and all the sacred influences which should be insepara- ble from it. The household will be soon enough broken up under the most favorable circumstances, without our hastening the sad event long years be- fore the time, thus losing these long years of sweet- ness, and substituting for it the sacrifices and solici- tudes inseparable from a daughter being away at school, among strangers. MAIDENLY PURITY. There is a maidenly reserve, and delicacy, and sweetness, and purity attached to girls who are kept imder a mother’s eye daily, until marriage, which never can belong to those who are brought up in boarding-schools, simply because there is an in- definable something in a mother’s teachings, a mother’s magnetism, which a stranger can never possess. .Besides all this, the mother is the natural educator of the daughter ; and if we change that 88 HOW MUCH TO EAT. relation, harm must follow, which is irreparable* not merely in one, but in many directions. And lest what has been said might not be enough to decide the parent who reads these lines against the serious error of sending a daughter away from home to be educated at the very period when the pure white page is just opened for life-time im- pressions, a single fact may be stated which means more than the superficial imagine, because it car- ries with it considerations not altogether proper for this place ; and it is this, that medical men who have large experiences in connection with these estab- lishments, and who are to a great extent, and ne- cessarily, made the father confessors of those whom they attend professionally, have not failed to say that boarding-schools for girls and young ladies, as a class, are ruinous alike to the physical health and moral purity of those who attend them, as a gen- eral rule. But even with this, the author trem- blingly leaves the subject, because parental pride and ambition come in and whisper something about im- proved manners, and acquaintanceships, and attach- ments, which may shape the future life advantage- ously ; meaning thereby that by going to a boarding- school their daughters may form associations which may lead to a more desirable marriage than if they remained at home ; forgetting for the moment that the trial and risk are great enough of giving away a daughter into the hands of one whom, and whose family connections, you have known from childhood ; but how much greater must they be to put that THE GIRL AT HOM^. 8S daughter out of your protection, and beyond your authority, and into the power of a young man of whose very existence you had no knowledge until within a year, a month ! Better, safer far, is it to bring up a daughter who in her innocence, and purity, and culture, shall be worthy of any man, and then let her take her chances at home, from among the families you have all known from childhood ; for let it be remembered, that no young man’s qualities and character can ever be so well known, so fully appreciated, as by the neighbors, and friends, and associates among whom he has been brought up. Long years of personal association must pass before you can as well understand the character of a stran- ger, if ever, as of those who have lived in the same neighborhood, the same village, or town, or city. THE GIRL AT HOME. It is a perfect martyrdom for a mother to see her children growing up under her very eyes the vic- tims of painful maladies or of slowly fatal diseases ; the dreadful neuralgia, the agonizing asthma, the sure killing consumption, — its hoarse, hollow cough, every sound of which, from the most distant room, strikes a pang into the mother’s heart, and how she listens to it in an agony of foreboding through the livelong hours of the weary night, — and the clammy, grave-like night-sweats, in the progress of weary weeks and months ; how she witnesses them morning after morning sapping away the very life itself ; to know that there is no remedy, and that 90 HOW MUCH TO EAT. the malady, like a mountain avalanche, moves slowly onward, and that no power short of that which made all worlds can arrest its resistless prog< ress, not for a minute of time ; and yet CONSUMPTION is sown in the constitution during the teens, while the child is under the parental roof, in three cases out of four, and which was avertible. The same may be said of dyspepsia ; the foundation of most of the cases is laid while children are at school, under parental control ; and it is done through ERRORS OF EATING at home, which are gradually fallen into and prac- ticed, until imperceptibly diseases creep in and bur- row in the system secretly. In very many cases the constitution is undermined, and the health of the whole body irreparably impaired, before any danger is perceived ; and then, when too late, the parents wake up to the impending calamity, and spend large amounts of money in seeking medical advice from eminent men, in trying the benefits of this system of practice and that system ; then long journeys are taken, first at home and then abroad, but how vainly, many, very many know, and, with breaking hearts, are willing to acknowledge ; for at last, the loved ones come home only to die. THE INSIDIOUS ENEMY. 91 THE INSIDIOUS ENEMY. Impairments of the constitutions of our children! usually foreshadow themselves in an irregularity of appetite at breakfast, generally no appetite at all. When this is first observed, there is no disease, but simply a functional disorder, a temporary derange- ment of the stomach, which does not even require medicine, and is very easily remedied. Thus : when a child is noticed to eat but very little break- fast, simply require that nothing whatever be eaten until the regular dinner time ; let dinner be con- fined to a piece of bread ajid butter, a piece of meat, one vegetable, and half a glass of water, and nothing else, nor anything more until tea time, which should consist of a single piece of cold bread and butter and a cup of any kind of warm drink, perhaps half and half of boiled water and boiled milk, mixed after the boiling, with sweetening to suit, and not a particle besides until next morning. The hour for retiring should be ten o’clock in summer and nine in winter, leaving the bed at the end of nine hours at farthest. An hour after dress- ing has been completed, a breakfast should be taken ■>f one cup of weak coffee or black tea, one piece of bread and butter, and one piece of meat, or a soft boiled egg, or a dish of berries in their natural raw state, without cream , or milk, or sugar ; or as much of the above as there is an appetite for, not urging to eat a mouthful beyond the inclination. A while after breakfast, let several hours be 92 HOW MUCH TO EAT., spent in the open air, in walking or riding with lively companions, or in shopping if in the city ; if in the country, and the weather and season are suitable, the same time spent on horseback, or in visiting a neighbor’s family several miles away, or in berrying ; in short, in any exhilarating occupation or employment in the open air ; and in proportion as there is a pleasurable object in view, the advan- tages will be very greatly increased. Let the dinner be the same as on the preceding day, with one or two hours of out-door activities in the afternoon, whether in work or games, or other agreeable pas- times, with te'a as on the preceding day. Continue this course until your daughter can eat a hearty breakfast in a joyous mood, and then she is well, CHAPTER V. REGULARITY IN EATING, To sliow on what a little thing human health and happiness and even life sometimes depend, the re- sults of an opposite course, one taken every day in multitudes of families, the following narration may illustrate. The daughter leaves the breakfast table, having; eaten little or nothing. The mother notices it with more or less concern, and perhaps makes a remark about it, ending in advising to take some- thing, or perhaps suggests that some more inviting dish be prepared. The child has not eaten, because she is not hungry ; and every mouthful swallowed under such circumstances does so much more to in- sure an attack of sickness within a few days. But the child who has no appetite for breakfast gets hun- gry enough a few hours later ; and the mistaken mother is glad enough to have her eat heartily, with this most deceptive impression in her mind, that hearty eating and health necessarily go together. Thus the real breakfast is taken several hours after the time, with the result that dinner comes before breakfast has been digested, and there is no more appetite for dinner than there was for breakfast; that comes later in the afternoon. And so all 94 REGULARITY IN EATING. the meals are interfered with, and the system suf- fers. Perhaps it was the late supper at home, or at a party, which caused the want of appetite for breakfast. nature’s habits. So strong is the inclination of the human system to fall into regularity of movement and action, that sometimes the repetition of a thing for two or three days in succession causes a looking for or a requir- ing of that thing at the same hour on the next day ; and before we know it, a habit may be formed which is to last for life, which is to color our whole subsequent existence for time, and beyond also, as witness the manner in which countless multitudes have been inveigled into chewing and smoking, into opium-eating and unconquerable drunkenness. If a person living in-doors sleeps to-day at a par- ticular hour, and has nothing exciting to-morrow, he will discover that about the same hour he will begin to get drowsy again ; and if yielded to, he will find himself in the regular habit of an afternoon nap, which cannot be broken up without an effort. Thus it is with all, and especially the young : if for a very few days there is no appetite for breakfast, but something is taken an hour or two or more later, it will soon be a common thing to require a second breakfast to be prepared; and, as has just been stated, the regular dinner hour coming on be- fore the stomach has passed the breakfast out of it, it is set to work without any rest, cannot discharge NATURE'S HABITS. 95 its duty by the dinner, and it being imperfectly changed into the condition suitable for imparting nourishment to the system, that nourishment is not distributed, proper strength is not given, and very soon there is a falling away in flesh, a decline in general vigor; the spirits become depressed, the whole body has lost its elasticity ; its power of re- sisting the causes of various diseases is lost, and the victim falls an easy prey to maladies more or less painful, dangerous, or incurable. In a short time there is a complaint of cold feet, of being eas- ily chilled ; “ The least thing in the world gives me a cold ; ” headaches come on, the appetite be- comes fitful ; some article of food is wanted, and, if not prepared in an unreasonably short time, it is not wanted, or, if eaten, it “ turns sour,” or large quantities of wind form in the stomach, and there are alternate gurglings, disagreeable eructations, and unseemly belchings. At other times a scalding sensation is experienced at the little hollow in front, at the bottom of the neck, just at the top of the breast-bone, — some call it heart- burn ; to others there is a raw sensation from the stomach up along the centre of the breast to the throat ; others have an unmanageable turmoil in the bowels, or wrench- ing pains. In short, the symptoms which attend the various forms of beginning dyspepsia in the systems of young persons who get into the habit of eating at other times than at the regular meals of families, are endless in their variety and in their combina- tions ; but whatever may be the order of their ap- 96 REGULARITY IN EATING. pearance, or the nature and changeableness of these combinations, one result is perfectly certain, unless the habits are changed ; and that is a ruined con- stitution, a wasted life, and a premature death. The time to prevent all this, and at a little cost of effort, is when a child is observed not to Avant any breakfast ; it is always the harbinger of disease, of something which will endanger, if not destroy life in a few days, or will undermine the system, and lay the foundation of some slow disease which will imbitter all subsequent life. AN INFALLIBLE REMEDY, in every case, is the prompt, decisive, and persist- ent action of the parent in carrying out the sug- gestions on page ninety one. A BAD FAMILY HABIT, where children are growing up, is having any eatables easily accessible to the child. If by the opening of a closet or cupboard door, a piece of cake is always at hand, or an orange, or apple, or any other eatable, the temptation is too strong for a hungry child not to avail itself of the opportunity ; and with the suggestion, “ It can’t hurt me,” some- thing is eaten, and the first step is taken to break in upon the needed rest of the stomach, to end in its entire perversion of function, and this to be followed by some one of the long catalogue of ailments de- tailed on page 76, as the results of a diseased condition of the digestive functions. PERILS OF EATING. 97 It is not intended to advise that no cake or fruits should be kept about the house to offer friends who call, or for other purposes, but so to arrange that these things shall not be accessible to children, whether of nine or nineteen, without very consid- erable trouble. A parent’s duty is to keep tempta- tion out of the way of the young, especially temp- tations connected with the appetite for eating some- thing. And here is an admirable opportunity of teaching the young to ACT FROM PRINCIPLE. It would be going only half way to keep little del- icacies under lock and key, even if that lock and key were the injunction never to taste them with- out permission ; but explain to them the object of the restraint ; show them plainly how such things lead to hurtful habits, which, if persisted in, may lay the foundation for sickness and suffering, and may even endanger life. In this way an important advance may be made in educating the young to act from principle ; and when that is done, the child is safe, and, if mature life is reached, will be influ- ential, honorable, and useful. PERILS OF EATING. A very bright, handsome, gentlemanly youth of ten, tne pride of a widowed mother, known to the writer, died after a few hours’ illness in conse- quence of eating a number of hard-boiled eggs. Children have often been thrown into convulsions 7 98 REGULARITY IN EATING. from eating largely of some one thing, which per- haps they had not tasted for a long time. A safe injunction for all children is, not to eat much of any one thing, however plain and simple or familiar it may be. Ice-cream is a luxury, and a safe one, if eaten leisurely, in moderate quantities ; and yet a young girl from one of the interior counties of Pennsylvania died in an hour or two after eating ice-cream, the thirteenth saucerful. It may be often noticed at the family table that a child will be asked to be helped to some partic- ular dish several times in succession. If indulged, the child will be either taken sick, or, foundering itself, will not touch it again for months or even years. On this point parents ought to exercise a watchful care, and never help a child TO A THIRD DISH, and not even the second if under a dozen years. It is far safer to direct attention to some other dish. But after all, it should not be forgotten that the more frequent cause of disease of all kinds in children under age is IRREGULAR AND FREQUENT EATING. And next to that is allowing them to eat heart- ily of any tiling, under any circumstances, later than sundown, except at a children’s party, when Derhaps the exercise of the body and the exhilara- tion of the mind, in connection with goir/g home after it is all over, would antagonize the ordinary effects of a late and hearty meal. CHAPTER YI. HOW TO EAT. The common vice of our people in the United States, in both town and country, in city and vil- lage, among old and young, rich and poor, is rapid eating, when the stomach, like a dark bottle which is attempted to be filled with a funnel, gets full, and overruns before one knows it. There are two ill effects from hasty feeding ; the food expands con- siderably, both by increased warmth and by its be- ing divided and liauefied, so that if the stomach is not full when one ceases to eat, it will be full enough in a very few minutes by the heating and liquefying process ; thus it happens when a person is called from the table, he may feel as if he could very easily have eaten more, but if detained a very few minutes, he comes back, feeling that he does not want to taste another particle, and ofttimes ex- presses himself impatiently about his dinner being “ spoiled,” when the truth is, his food has been en- larged in bulk by the necessary preparation which it has undergone, thus making the stomach full enough for all healthful purposes, and full enough for comfort. If a meal is eaten with great delib- eration, this expanding, heating, liquefying process begins and keeps pace with the meal, and the man loes not feel like a gorged anaconda. The English 100 HOW TO EAT. people thus eat, as a nation ; they give themselves time to enjoy their food, to experience the pleasure of its taste, and make eating a gratification ; while we Americans, in multitudes of cases, look at it as a thing to be gotten through with, — as a task which has to be performed, and the quicker the better. Healthful digestion is sometimes described as a churning process ; the muscles are in continual mo- tion, pressing the food forward in a kind of circular direction ; and to do this, there must be room for a “ purchase,” — a point to push from and an open field to push to, so that it is easily seen that when there is an unnatural distention, there is no more room for work than for a man so beset by a crowd that he cannot move his arms from contact with the body. There being no room for work, the food cannot be properly manipulated, is kept longer than nature designed, becomes sour, generates wind ; this further increases the distention ; and the result is long hours of uncomfortableness, which dyspep- tics, and heavy feeders, and rapid eaters have intel- ligent experience of. One avenue of relief under the circumstances is an unnatural heat ; a fever is created which causes an evaporation of the more watery portions of the mass, while the wind gen- erated is gulped up in indecent belchings, or is passed off in another direction, the whole “ tran- saction” so prostrating the system and exhausting its power that the glutton is fit for nothing during the remainder of the day ; the whole body is in too great a state of uneasiness to rest ; the victim CHEW FOOD DELIBERATELY. 101 vainly seeks relief in uneasy and fitful movements from sofa to window, from one room to another, al- ternating with strong potations, which only protract the discomforts, and ne ver cure or remove them. Another ill result of rapid eating is that the food is swallowed in too large pieces ; time is not taken to divide it properly with the teeth, and hence it requires such a long time to be “ melted up,” to be dissolved, that it begins to rot before it can be passed out of the stomach, and thus all the pur- poses of eating are frustrated ; and, in addition, not having been acted upon properly and promptly, the odor of carrion begins to be generated, and the breath of the individual is simply disgusting. CHEW FOOD DELIBERATELY, because bits of food in the stomach are like pieces of ice in a glass of water : the ice is melted in thin layers from without inward, and any one can see that the pieces of ice disappear with a ra- pidity proportioned to their smallness, and with the same rapidity is the w r ater cooled. Precisely so is it with the particles of food in the stomach : each one is acted upon on the outer surface by the gastric mice in wdiich it floats ; and if each piece has been slowly and leisurely chewed with good teeth, it en- ters the stomach so well divided or cut up that it ; s taken hold of by the gastric juice, and wholly lissolved in a very short time. If in large pieces, It requires such a long time to be dissolved that the rotting process commences as before described. 102 HOW TO EAT. This putrefaction of food takes place in all cases where it remains in the stomach over five or six hours after it has been eaten, not only with the disgusting results already stated, but, in addition, consequences more or less hurtful, painful, danger- ous, and even deadly are sure to follow ; such as writhing pains in the stomach or bowels, feelings of oppression, distention, shortness of breath, almost ap- proaching a kind of suffocation or smothering ; the stomach is made uneasy by the wind accumulating within it, thus pressing upward against the lungs, interfering with the breathing ; and as the heart is enveloped hy the lungs, covered over and all around by the lungs, its action is impeded, and it struggles and palpitates, sometimes bringing on convulsions and fatal apoplexies. So much for swallowing large bits of food, as far as the stomach is concerned. Sometimes this much abused organ seems to act as if it had a living, reasoning intelligence ; for after vainly striving to manage the food, and not suc- ceeding, it almost seems to make the attempt to thrust it out in anger, to be willing to get rid of it on any terms, by pushing it out of itself into the lower bowel. Thus it is that multitudes have noticed sometimes that what has been passed from them is made up of bits of food unchanged, which had been swallowed many hours before; when such ♦ thing is noticed, it will never fail to be observed that va rious disagreeable symptoms have manifested them- selves; for these bits of food, with their jagged edges and points, cause considerable irritation in CHEW FOOD DELIBERATELY. 103 passing over and along the tender coating of the bowels, sometimes making them bleed, and then we have painful and dangerous dysenteries ; at other times they cause great irritation, producing watery discharges called diarrhoea, which if aggravated by the person persisting to keep up, and on the feet, cholera in its most dangerous forms has followed in millions % of cases. In multitudes of cases this is the identical cause of children and grown persons being surprised in the night with troublesome diar- rhoeas, running in a very few hours, in cholera times, into violent cholera. In the case of little children, the parent ignorantly runs to the brandy bottle or to the vial of paregoric, or laudanum, or some wretch’s 44 soothing syrup,” which often act with charming rapidity in changing the condition of the bowels, and the young mother blesses the inventor of the soothing syrup as a witch or first cousin to Solomon ; a few hours later the child has convul- sions ; in a day or two, water on the brain. There is not an educated physician in the nation who does not know that such is the history of the last sickness and death of multitudes of children every year ; swallowing food in too large lumps, this bringing on an alarming looseness of the bowels, being Nature’s efforts to get rid of the offending mass as soon as possible ; but ignorance steps in to interfere with Nature, thwarts her in her wise and Kindly efforts, arrests the diarrhoea, and kills the victim. 104 HOW TO EAT. LET THE CHILDREN ALONE. Children and hirelings, the world over, are a long time at their meals, and, if let alone, always eat them in uproariousness, in a freedom of con- versation and a merriment of mood which is as wise as it is healthful. For many ages in the past his- tory of the world, a jester was an indispensable concomitant of the feast ; as much a part of it as the roasted pig, or turkey, or mutton, or steak, or plum-puddings ; a better exhilarant than wine itself ; and yet there are many parents who are so mis- taken in their notions, so bent upon instilling into the minds of their children the staidness and pro- prieties which even age, with all its accumulated wisdom, would resent at the feast table, that scarcely a smile or a joke is ever permitted. Very many parents, in order to teach their children “ ta- ble manners, 5 ’ make it a point to have them take their seats with grown persons, at even four and five years of age, where the poor little things are so hampered with previous injunctions that they dare not even squeak ; they feel themselves bound in adamantine chains ; and the dinner table, which ought to be, of all others, a place of gladness and unrestrained mirth, is made a penance and a bore to the joyous heart of childhood. The writer ac- knowledges to have on one occasion, and as often as thought of since, experienced a sensation of deep sadness in connection with the following incident, narrated literally. A beautiful little girl of five LET THE CHILDREN ALONE. 105 years, and as sweet as beautiful, was allowed to be taken by the servant to visit a lady whom the lit- tle thing was proud and glad to see. The mother knew that the child would be presented with some- thing nice to eat, but parted from her darling with this injunction: “Be sure, my little pet, not to do anything that is not proper.” The little child was brought into the parlor and placed on a chair, while the nurse retired outside into the hall. In due time the young visitor was supplied with a delight- ful apple, healthful, soft, and juicy, which was eaten with great relish. After a considerable time spent in silence, restlessness, and apparent deliberation, the little thing was noticed to be making a desper- ate effort at some deliverance. At last it came thus wise : “ Aunty Harper, do you think it would be proper for me to ask you for another apple ? ” To hold such tyrannies over children in connec- tion with their eating, is against all reason and com- mon sense. Let them alone in their eating ; leave them to their instincts, to their natural mirth, and joyousness, and harmless chattings ; these will prove a more effectual preventive of fast eating than all the parental injunctions of a young life-time. Chil- dren should be allowed to eat with children, with their equals, at least in unrestraint ; for it prevents excesses, it promotes digestion, insures health, and makes of eating what a wise and kind Providence n tended it should be, the means of life and a daily source of enjoyment, pleasure, and happiness. Let your children alone when they gather 106 HOW TO EAT. around the family table ; it is a cruelty to hamper them with manifold rules and regulations about this, and that, and the other. As long as their conduct is harmless as to others, encourage them in their cheeriness. If they do smack their lips, and their suppings of milk and other drinks can be heard across the street, it does not hurt the street : let them alone. What if they do take their soup with the wrong end of the fork ? it is all the same to the fork : let them alone. Suppose a child does not sit as straight as a ram- rod at the table ; suppose a cup or tumbler slips through its little fingers and deluges the plate of food below, and the goblet is smashed, and the table- cloth is ruined : do not look a thousand scowls and thunders, and scare the poor thing to the bal- ance of its death, for it was scared half to death before ; it “ didn’t go to do it.” Did you never let a glass slip through your fingers since you were grown? Instead of sending the child away from the table in anger, if not even with a threat, for this or any other little nothing, be as generous as you would to an equal or superior guest, to whom you would say, with a more or less obse- quious smile, “ It’s of no possible consequence.” That would be the form of expression even to a stranger guest, and yet to your own child you re- morselessly, and revengefully, and angrily mete out a swift punishment, which for the time almost breaks its little heart, and belittles you amazingly. The proper and more efficient and more Christian HEALTHFUL FEEDING OF CHILDREN. 107 method of meeting the mishaps and delinquencies and improprieties of your children at the table is either to take no notice of them at the time, or to go further, and divert attention from them at the very instant, if possible, or make a kind apology for them ; but afterwards in an hour or two, or, better still, next day, draw the child’s attention to the fault, if fault it was, in a friendly and loving manner ; point out the impropriety in some kindly way ; show where it was wrong or rude, and appeal to the child’s self-respect or manliness. This is the best way to correct all family errors. Some- times it may not succeed ; sometimes harsh meas- ures may be required ; but try the deprecating or the kindly method with perfect equanimity of mind, and failure will be of rare occurrence. The prominent and practical points to be borne in mind in connection with the HEALTHFUL FEEDING OF CHILDREN, of all ages, are Regularity, Deliberation, Unre- straint, Cheerfulness. There are two subjects which, being almost al- ways more or less directly connected with the im- proper eating of children, may very appropriately be brought in at this place, especially as they are at the very foundation, the very beginnings, of the un- dermining of the constitution of girls at home, and which unremoved will imbitter the remainder of ife physically and mentally. 108 HOW TO EAT. COLD FEET AND HEADACHE, are more often complained of in a family of growing up and grown daughters than any other two maladies in the whole catalogue of human ail- ments. These are more specially treated under their separate heads in my book on “ Health and Disease,” but they are named in the present con- nection in order to impress upon the minds of moth- ers especially that, — First, no child can be well who is troubled with cold feet ; and if the symptom is not removed per- manently, such a daughter is pretty certain to die of consumption before she reaches the age of thirty years. Hence, a wise parent will spare no pains to remedy the trouble, for it is a very common be- ginning of consumption, and it will be difficult enough to remove the symptom in its very earliest stages ; but if delayed, it is a herculean task, and is seldom accomplished, trifling as the symptom may appear. Cold feet many times ushers in croup, in- flammation of the lungs, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and putrid sore throat, any of which may kill with- in forty-eight hours ; hence the moment a child complains of cold feet, day or night, winter or summer, a wise parent will be alarmed, will take immediate measures to have the condition rectified, and ought not to rest satisfied until the work is done, and the danger removed. No one can be well whose feet are not comfortably warm all the time. HEADACHE. 109 HEADACHE, in children under ten, forebodes brain-fever, which means an early death ; in children over fifteen, there is a more immediate connection with a costive con- dition of the bowels brought on by improper eating ; hence parents will not commence too early if at five years of age they should begin to impress on the child’s mind the close connection between this and almost all the diseases to which they are liable, and it will be one of the most important lessons in its connection with human health and happiness which can be impressed on the minds of the young of both sexes. One of the most effective plans of burning this important fact on the memories of the young, is to point out to them, as it occurs in all their sicknesses, that any actual present disease is preceded or ac- companied by a failure of the bowels to act every day, and that in addition, when they have been ail- ing, a change for the better is always accompanied or followed by a freer action of the bowels ; and that grown persons may feel that they have grounds to teach such a sentiment, and find the strongest confirmation of it, they should remember that all uatent medicines, except those used for throat and iung diseases, have the effect to move the bowels , and the fact is, none of the common diseases of mankind begin to disappear until the bowels com- mence acting daily, and this is the reason why such a vast amount of money is spent yearly by the 110 HOW TO EAT. masses for patent medicines : they feel in themselves, and see in others, that diseases are abated by a free condition of the bowels, and that the use of patent medicines brings about this free condition, at least temporarily. If better educated minds could see the same thing, and would take pains to inform themselves of the fact that a safer, and surer, and more permanent change to a regular daily action of the bowels can often be brought about by the use of our natural food rather than by physic, much of the sickness and suffering of the world would be prevented. In another part of this book the cura- tive agencies of food are pointed out, and are com- mended to the reader’s attention. Parents should consider it an imperative duty to impress upon the minds of their children as early as their fifth year the importance of a regular daily action of the bowels, because it is literally a subject of life and death, a practical attention to which would have a very material bearing on the enjoy- ment and success of after life ; and it is greatly to be desired that this should be made a part of the edu- cation of children in all our public schools from the ABC classes to graduation. CHAPTER VII. BILIOUSNESS. In the course of the . day, all the blood in the body is passed through the liver, the proper work of which is to withdraw the bile from the blood, and to collect it into its own receptacle, the gall- bladder, which opens into the intestines just below the stomach ; through this opening, the bile is passed drop by drop, particularly after eating, and it is this bile which is said to “ promote the action of the bowels,” and which gives the yellow appear- ance indicative of a healthfully active condition of the “ bilious organs,” as the liver, the gall-bladder, etc., are called. The bile is the waste matter of the body, which must be constantly passed out of it, in order to keep the system free of those accumulations which are incident to all machinery ; the competent en- gineer is constantly going around and about his machine, carefully removing all grease and dirt, which last is the waste, the effects of the “ wear ” of motion. When the liver does not “ work,” the bile is not withdrawn from the blood, and the face and eyes become yellowish, this being the color of the bile ; this is jaundice : as the liver 112 BILIOUSNESS. ceases to separate the bile from the blood, a man expresses himself sometimes as having A LAZY LIVER. A physician would say that it does not act, that it is torpid, is asleep, does not work ; whenever that is the case for a few hours, some derangement of the machinery begins to take place, and will promptly manifest itself in the way of “ symp- toms.” When, for example, the discharges from the bowels are “ clay-colored,” destitute of their natu- ral, yellow appearance, disease is already present. In Asiatic cholera, the discharges are said to be u colorless ; ” are called u rice-water discharges,” from their being of the color and consistence of water which has been used in washing out some rice preparatory to cooking it. This is the result of the liver not acting at all in cholera : and unless it is made to act in some way, the patient is as cer- tain to die as if the head were cut off. In all forms of fever, the liver fails to act ; and the patient recovers only in proportion as the dis- charges begin to assume the natural yellowish tinge. Among the symptoms of biliousness, in addition to the two already named, is a WANT OF APPETITE. The liver does not act, hence the wastes are not passed out of the system, and to introduce food into it, under the circumstances, is to still increase the trouble, is still further to oppress it with an additional load ; but at this point Nature steps in WANT OF APPETITE. 113 with a benevolent instinct, a ceaseless watchfulness, and takes away the appetite, as if to compel us not to injure ourselves by introducing more into the body, when it was already too full, in consequence of not having been unloaded of what had been put into it. To eat without an appetite, under such circumstances, is to kill one’s self. But in order to make assurance doubly sure, this want of appetite in biliousness is attended with another symptom ; there is not only an indisposition to eat, but there is a positive dislike, an antipathy against all food ; we call it nausea, when the very sight or even thought of food almost occasions vomiting ; and if, in defi- ance of these, we persist in eating, Nature rebels with all her power, and forces the food back, out through the mouth, and this is called vomiting. It is impossible to think of these self-acting watch- guards with which our bodies are provided for their safety and well-being, without being carried away with wonder and surprise, tersely expressed in the language of the Holy Scriptures : “ I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” There are some cases where, in spite of a want of appetite, wise medical men might counsel that something should be eaten ; but a bilious want of appetite, which may be known by the attendant aversion to food, combined with a feeling of nausea, should never be forced, and a strict abstinence from food should be observed until the feeling of hunger becomes very decided. The attentive reader can then readily perceive how very BILIOUSNESS. 114 MISCHIEVOUS TONICS are ; how even suicidal it is to attempt to goad Nature to an appetite by the use of medicines which are thought to have that effect. And yet the great aim of the multitude, when there is no appetite, is to force one ; to create a desire for food when there is an antipathy against it, so strong sometimes that even the thought of swallowing a mouthful almost induces vomiting. Thus do we blindly fight against Nature, thwart her in her efforts to protect and save us ; so ignorant are we of her workings, and of the proper operations of our own bodies. If the bile remains mixed with the blood, it must render that blood impure, thicker than it ought to be, more sluggish in its flow, less life-giving ; hence, does not pass along the blood-vessels as actively and quickly as it ought to do; the result is, it clogs, it dams up, it congests in various parts of the body, giving symptoms as various as the parts or organs where it accumulates most. The reader is familiar with the word CONGESTION, which, as applied to the body, means more blood in a part than there ought to be ; so, when there is an accumulation of this bad blood, blood made bad and impure by having bile mixed with it, or, as is sometimes said, “ loaded with bile,” it gives a feel- ing of heaviness or sluggishness, if in the brain, causing the various grades of indifference, sleepi* DULL PAINS. 115 ness, stupidity ; sometimes there is a tightness about the forehead, and the man is noticed to put his hand up there, and stroke it across his brow ; this stagnation is one of the forms of bad blood about the brain, and other important centres of life, and is so great in some cases, as to give rise to the term congestion of the brain, and in another form is congestive fever, of which persons die in a few hours sometimes. At others, when there is a strong constitution, or the attack is not very malig- nant, they may linger several days, but the uniform result is death, with unconsciousness from the very first, — so heavily does the congested blood press upon the vital parts. Then, again, there are con- gestions of the liver and other important organs, giving, as a general rule, dull pains or aches in any and every part of the body, for the bad blood goes to every pin-point of the system. DULL PAINS are the result of accumulated or stagnant bad blood, and the obvious, and natural, and most speedy rem- edy in such cases is the prompting of the common- est sense. If too much blood has gathered in a part, and gives discomfort, lessen the quantity ; a leech or a lancet will act very promptly ; but as there is a general horror of blood-letting, although not as dangerous as bleeding the pocket, more indi- rect methods of diminishing the quantity of blood in a part which gives a dull hurting sensation are preferred. A mustard plaster near a painful spot, 116 BILIOUSNESS. by drawing the blood from that part to the skin, under the plaster, diminishes the quantity, and gives prompt relief ; or the same thing may be done by rubbing the parts with some coarse material, so as to irritate the skin, thus drawing the blood there. Rubbing with the hand answers a good purpose, by its aiding the circulation, quickening it, and passing the blood onwards. Bathing a dull aching part in hot water is a good expedient ; it thins the blood, by warming it up, by promoting absorption and evaporation, and by stimulating the surface. Active exercise, especially if out-of-doors, and of a cheery nature, whether on foot, on horse- back, or at HARD WORK, diminishes the amount of blood in a part made painful by its thick impurities, by scattering it more equally over the body, and also by getting rid of the more watery portions by the frictions and other wastes, through the pores of the skin. When there is a dull headache from congested bad blood, a good hearty meal cures it for the time, because a portion of the blood is compelled to leave the head and go to the stomach, in order to enable it to per- form the work of digestion of the food eaten. The great practical question comes up now with full force, What is the CURE FOR BILIOUSNESS. 117 CURE FOR BILIOUSNESS ? Bearing in mind that it is an excess of blood, of blood that is bad, the very first step towards cure almost suggests itself instinctively : make no more blood for the present, because there is too much already ; and since every drop of blood is made out of the food eaten, then this is a case where not one single mouthful should be swallowed ; that cuts off at once the entire supply of what causes the mis- chief. The next step to be taken is to open the pores of the skin by a thorough cleansing with soap and warm water, and vigorous scrubbing the whole sur- face of the body, in which there are many millions of pores or little chimneys, out of which, from the body, pass into the open air vapors, and liquids, and solids, all from the blood, and every particle of which, so passed out, diminishes, by so much, the amount of blood in the body, especially of its bad ingredient ; and when it is remembered that several pounds of this waste and impure material pass out of the body into the air, in health, in a single day of twenty-four hours, it can be readily seen how much the quantity of blood in the human body may be lowered, and how speedily, if the pores of the skin are kept open by cleanliness and friction, and no more blood is made by eating any food. If a man does not eat or drfnk a mouthful all day, he will weigh a pound, or two, or more, less at night whan in the morning, even if he remains in the 118 BILIOUSNESS. house or in bed ; simply because there is a constant outgo through the numerous little chimneys named ; so impalpable are these escapes, that we ordinarily cannot see them with the naked eye, hence the term is given of INSENSIBLE PERSPIRATION. But we may perspire so freely that this emanation becomes visible, and we call it “ sweat ; ” and as every one knows that active exercise “ makes him sweat,” then it follows that the quantity of bad blood in the body is still more rapidly diminished if active exercise is taken. Therefore, in summing up the whole matter, the dullest can see that a very efficient, safe, and natural method of correcting a bilious condition of the system, of getting rid of the excess of bile, of separating it from the blood, and thus allowing that blood to become pure and health- giving again, is simply to GO TO WORK. And this is a plan which is always available, costs nothing, and never fails in any curable case, if carried out on the conditions suggested. A more modified form of cure, in less urgent cases, will be found in the general direction of taking abundant out-door exercise. But it ought always to be borne in mind that, as an element in the removal of dis- ease, work, as compared with exercise, is incompar- ably more efficacious ; will accomplish more in half the time, because work has an object in view, — a GO TO WORK. 119 result which stimulates and inspires, which pleasur- ably involves both muscular effort and mental ex- ertion ; time passes imperceptibly ; sickness is forgotten ; and a larger amount of bodily activity is exerted without half the fatigue. But suppose a man sets out to exercise for his health, to walk or ride to a certain post, and then turn round and tramp back again, he necessarily performs this as a task ; his mind is not only on the number of miles, but on the time taken, and, in addition, there is the depressing reflection that he is doing all this be- cause he is sick, and before he is through with it, he finds himself painfully measuring every step and counting every minute ; in all this process, there is no exhilaration of thought, no elasticity of motion, no satisfaction at a desirable result accomplished ; but the whole thing is a task, a burden, and an insufferable bore, and scholars and active business men will find it so. Still some good results from bodily motion ; it is better to be a walking au- tomaton than nothing ; for every step diminishes the excess of blood and impurity in the system ; and every breath of air drawn out-of-doors returns from the body loaded with impurities, and leaves it lightened to that extent. Hence, if a bilious man wants to get well, and is in no special hurry, all that he has to do is to lie down out-of-doors between two broad boards, and stay there until he gets raven- ously hungry ; one board to protect him from the dampness of the earth, and the other from the rain and sun. There is not a combination of medicines 120 BILIOUSNESS. known to man that is half as efficient in removing biliousness ; because absolute abstinence from food cuts off all supply of bile, and every breath of pure air relieves the system of an appreciable amount of the accumulated impurities ; so that a cure event- ually is a necessity in the very nature of things. The writer has tried it, without, however, the im- portant advantage of the boards, being a thousand miles beyond civilization ; but there was a “ passa- ble ” substitute, — the nether board being mother earth, and the upper one the sky. This same wonderful efficiency of THE OUT-DOOR AIR, in unburdening the human system, when the blood has been loaded down with the impurities of dangerous maladies and fearful wounds, has been verified a thousand times on the battle-field, in escapes from savage barbarities, and in casual cases where hospitals have been burned or sacked, — as on one occasion near New York, to prevent quaran- tine houses from being established in a certain local- ity. The sick of yellow fever were taken from the buildings before they were fired, and laid out at a distance on the grass on mattresses ; rain came on in the mean time ; and yet, with these disadvantages, they not only did not die, but recovered, while the city was shocked with the barbarity of the thing. EVERY STEP DOE! EVERY STEP DOES ^ in any case of biliousness, because e^fevy^gteg jnr volves the consumption of some particles, and the forcible thrusting out of others, in addition to the unloading influences of the act of breathing, as al- ready described. And if, in addition to these, no reinforcement of bile takes place from additional food, the number of recoveries from biliousness, and all other maladies where impurity of blood is the prevailing element, would astound any careful observer, because a cure, in every case curable, is a natural and necessary result, being always a mere question of degree and time. There are two points on which the attention should be kept steadily fixed in any effort to cure biliousness in the manner proposed ; if these points are well attended to, the restoration will be all the more certain, speedy, and enduring : 1. The exer- cise should not extend beyond a moderate degree of tiredness ; 2. It should be sufficiently vigorous, while in progress, to cause and keep up a very mod- erate degree of perspiration for an hour or two or more at a time. While strict abstinence from food is an important element in the unmedicinal, but natural cure of biliousness in connection with out-door activities of a pleasurable character and a clean skin, so as to keep the tops of the little chimneys spoken of open, that is, the pores of the skin, it should be remem- bered that as much cold water may be drank, or as 122 BILIOUSNESS. much warm mild liquid, as can be taken with com- fort, which would seem to have the effect of cooling off any fever that might be in the system, of dilut- ing the blood, thus making it more capable of being passed through the small blood-vessels, and in addi- tion giving it a capacity for dissolving the more solid particles, so that they might be more readily “ washed ” out of the body. An effort has been made to be as specific as pos- sible in giving these instructions for the removal of biliousness in a natural w~ay, because it is literally applicable to quite a long list of very familiar symp- toms which are indicative of a bilious condition ©f the system, as different persons are affected differ- ently by biliousness, according to age, temperament, eex, constitution, occupation, and habits of life. CHAPTER VIII. DYSPEPSIA. If a large lump of ice is put in a ^lass of water, it melts slowly ; if it is divided into many pieces, and stirred around, it is dissolved with much greater rapidity, because a greater surface of ice is exposed to the water, and it melts from without, inwards. If a number of lumps of sugar are stirred in a glass of water, they will be dissolved up to a certain point ; after that, the sugar falls to the bottom ; the water is then said to be saturated with sugar ; can be made no sweeter, for it will take up no more, can hold no more. If these comparisons are kept in view, very much will be done towards aiding the reader to under- stand easily what is the essential nature, and what are the principles of cure, of that widely prevalent disease of our own country, dyspepsia. When food is swallowed, it is at once enveloped with gas- tric juice, called “ gastric ” because that is the Greek word meaning stomach. This food, like the ice, is dissolved from without inwards by the stomach juice ; the smaller the pieces, the sooner will the solution or melting take place, hence the reason for eating slowly and chewing the food well, thus mashing, grinding, and cutting it up into many 124 DYSPEPSIA. small bits. It was observed by Beaumont, that when meat or other food was cut up very fine, in smaller than pea-sized pieces, it seemed to digest quite as soon and easily as when it was chewed and swallowed in the natural way. If food is not chewed leisurely, it requires so much longer time to dissolve it that it begins to ferment, to decay, to putrefy. The idea is cer- tainly disgusting ; for there is but little if any dif- ference between eating putrid food, and having it become so soon after it enters the stomach. In about five hours after a healthy person has eaten a regular meal, the food is dissolved, and passes out of the stomach ; if it remains longer, it begins to rot ; this word is used purposely, because, better than any other, it conveys to the popular mind the precise idea, — that of mortification, cor- ruption, destructive decay, generating wind, with sour and putrid odors and gases ; so that the liquid in the stomach, instead of being soft, and mild, and bland, becomes acrid, irritating, inflaming, causing, according to age, sex, occupation, temper- ament, and habits, a great variety of sensations, called symptoms, and combinations of symptoms scarcely alike in any two individuals in a score or more, such as Acidity. Appetite, want of. Appetite, excessive. Bad taste. Appetite, fitful. Belching. Appetite, vitiated. Burning. MENTAL SYMPTOMS. 125 Costiveness. Distention. Dizziness. Emptiness. Eructation. Flatulency. Fullness. General distress. “ Goneness.” Haggard face. Headache. Heart-burn. Heaviness. Load at stomach. Nausea. Nightmare. Oppression in chest. Pain, colic in bowels. Pain, dull. Pain, gnawing. Pain, griping. Pain, sharp. Palpitation. Rumination. Sinking. Skin, harsh and dry. Sleep, disturbed. Sour stomach. Tenderness at stomach. Tongue, white. Ugly dreams. Water-brash. Weak, can’t sit straight. Weight at stomach. To this formidable list of bodily discomforts aris- ing from dyspepsia, there are other peculiarly dis- tressing sensations to be added, which are called the MENTAL SYMPTOMS. Depression of spirits. Despondency. Discouragement. Fretfulness. Forebodings. Irritability. Listlessness. Moodiness. 126 DYSPEPSIA. Nervousness. Self-distrust. Suicidal thoughts. Suspiciousness. Want of energy. The dyspeptic’s thoughts and imaginings are sometimes such as to startle himself, and too dis- graceful to confess : at one time easy to take offense ; at others avoiding company, with a feel- ing that nobody wants to have anything to do with him ; and yet he seems to be happiest when pouring into another’s ear the interminable tale of all his sorrows ; there is no geniality, no joyous- ness, no hope. The very thought of such things must be terrible to the reader who is blessed with good health ; and yet the disease is avoidable in every case, in every case can be prevented, and in every case cured, even if of many years standing, by a judicious attention to food and drink, and air and exercise. It will subserve a good purpose, in helping to understand more fully the essential na- ture of dyspepsia, to ascertain why such a name was given to it, and why also it was called “ indigestion,” for both mean the same disease with some modifi- cation, arising from the different view which two nations had of the malady ; for it prevailed among both Greeks and Romans thousands of years ago. The Greeks thought that the process through which the food went, after it entered the stomach, was in the nature of a boiling ; and when it was hardly done, done with difficulty, they took two EATING TOO FAST. 127 words to express the idea, one called Dus or Dys, meaning “ difficult,” the other Peptein, or boiling, both together meaning 44 hard to be boiled ” or prepared, Dys-pepsia. Later on in history, the Ro- mans, not being willing to commit themselves to the idea that it was a boiling process, there be- ing no fire there, gave it a name signifying un- preparedness, or want of division or preparation, — 44 In ” signifying without, and Digestio, preparation ; meaning simply that the food was not prepared in the stomach for giving its natural qualities to the system in a healthful manner. So that whether we call it dyspepsia or indigestion,* it means that the food in the stomach is not acted on naturally, hence does not serve the purpose of giving nour- ishment, and life, and warmth, and health to the body. Then the important practical question arises, WHY ARE WE DYSPEPTIC? Why is it that the food, after being eaten, is not properly prepared ? It may be said that dyspepsia arises from three causes : — Eating too fast ; Eating too much ; Eating too often. EATING TOO FAST. It has already been explained that when a man eats too fast, the food is not chewed well enough ; is passed into the stomach in such large pieces, 128 DYSPEPSIA. that so much time is required for the gastric juice to dissolve it from without inwards, that it begins to rot, to turn sour, causing the long list of phys- ical and mental maladies previously named. EATING TOO MUCH. In the illustration of bits of sugar put in a glass of water, it was seen that a certain portion of it would be dissolved by a certain amount of water, but that it was impossible for it to dissolve any more sugar, and that if more were put in, it would remain unacted upon, undissolved, and settle at the bottom. It is so with the stomach ; there is a cer- tain amount of gastric juice, which will dissolve so much food healthfully, and not an atom more, by any possibility ; if more is eaten, then it is eating too much, and it remains unfitted for the uses of the system. If a person persists in eating too much, more or less of the symptoms of dyspepsia will present themselves, sooner or later, as a positively inevitable result ; and nothing but a miracle can possibly prevent it, if the practice is persisted in. The question then arises, “ How are we to avoid eating too much ? ” This can be answered more satisfactorily by first ascertaining WHAT IS HUNGER ? Almighty Wisdom made the human body, in a certain sense, a self-preserving machine ; this mech- anism is presided over by a certain form of intel- ligence called instinct, independent of the higher WHAT IS HUNGER? 129 power of reason, because in some forms of disease, or casualty, or sleep, reason is in abeyance, and without instinct we would die in a night. The body is all the time wearing out, and wasting away in every portion of it ; as fast as this is done, and to the extent that it is done, instinct gives warn- ing that replenishment and repair are needed ; this information is imparted, is sent forward to the stomach from all parts of the body, through the nervous system, as if by & net-work of telegraphic wires ; in the stomach they all centre, with a re- sult to fill certain vessels there with a fluid sub- stance, as the need for repair increases ; these vessels distend more and more, and their disten- tion causes the feeling of hunger, which becomes more and more pressing, unpleasant, painful, ago- nizing, as if to compel the individual to attend to the urgent needs of the system ; the very instant the first particle of food reaches the stomach, the sluices of the engorged vessels open, enveloping each particle closely, beginning to dissolve it at once ; the unloading of these overfilled vessels gives ease first, then comfort, then positive pleasure ; hence we warm up to the humanities and amenities of life as a meal progresses. It should be remembered that the amount of gastric juice prepared is adapted by instinct to the w r ants of the system, as nature allows of no waste ; and there never can be an excess of gastric juice enough to dissolve one single mouthful of food more than there is need for ; and any attempt to 9 130 DYSPEPSIA. eat more than the system requires, will be fol- lowed with results already detailed. One error now and then Nature has inherent power to rectify ; but if persisted in she seems to become discouraged, gives up, allows things to take their course, and dis- eases follow. The hunger vessels are so constructed that they must fill gradually, and gradually they empty themselves, and can do it in no other way ; they will not be hurried, and the only method to meet the case is to introduce the food by degrees ; in plain phrase, — EAT SLOWLY. By this means the hunger vessels are slowly and completely emptied, and when emptied, there is no further desire for food, and the man ceases volunta- rily, without having eaten near as much as he would have done otherwise ; while there is the additional advantage of having the food, by this slow eating, well divided into small bits, which are, in conse- quence, fully dissolved, and with great rapidity. Another disadvantage of eating too fast is that be- fore we know it, as in filling an empty bottle through a funnel, it is full and overflowing; and not only so, the bits of food are divided, separated, become less solid, more fluid, hence occupy more room than in the more solid state ; but since the stomach was full before, it now becomes fuller than natural, that is, it is swollen, forcibly distended beyond its Droper size, and the feeling of fullness, of distention, is sometimes positively painful. In this distended EATING TOO OFTEN. 131 condition, the stomach rises, presses upward against the lungs, confining them in their action, and there is* a feeling of a want of breath ; we fairly gasp for air, rush for relief to the door, and the breathing of the pure atmosphere without is a luxury. An- other evil of an overfull stomach is that its disten- tion is so great, the muscles are so stretched, that they cannot contract upon the food to push it about and around ; for by this constant motion in the stomach juice, it is more quickly dissolved by it, as small particles of ice in a glass of water are more quickly dissolved if kept in motion by a spoon. In the course of half an hour or more, -the contents of the stomach are diminished by the thinner por- tions being absorbed or evaporated, and others passing downward, until the diminution has been such as to admit of the natural working of the organ ; but generally the stomach is so very full, and the amount is diminished so slowly, that before digestion has had time to prepare the food properly, it begins to sour, to rot, to ferment, and the symp- toms of dyspepsia soon manifest themselves. If this overloading is persisted in, the symptoms be- come permanent, Nature is less and less able to help and rectify herself, and the man is a confirmed dyspeptic from the habit of over-eating. EATING TOO OFTEN. It has been before stated that it requires about frve hours after eating to have the food healthfully acted upon and passed out of the stomach, prepar- 132 DYSPEPSIA. atory to its having some rest ; for during this five hours, it is in constant motion, and like every other muscle of the body, or set of muscles, must have rest for future action. It has been observed by the naked eye that if a regular meal is eaten, and more is added to it before it is passed out of the stomach, the process of digestion is arrested, and does not go on as to- the first food eaten until the last has ar- rived at the state of preparation of the former por- tion ; this, then, is a loss of time as to the first eaten, of one, or two, or more hours ; hence it begins to sour, to create wind, to decay, to rot; and before the five hours have expired for the working up of the last food eaten, the next regular meal arrives, the stomach is set to work anew without a moment’s rest ; it is overworked, it loses its power, it is weak, does its work with difficulty ; this is literally “ dyspepsia.” It is thus clearly seen that whether we eat too much, or too fast, or too often, the result is one and the same — decay of the food ; its imper- fect preparation and this unnatural condition give rise to the various symptoms before enumerated. ULTERIOR RESULTS. The immediate effect of dyspepsia, of imper- fectly handled food, is not the only ill result ; the evil is far-reaching. All the blood is made out of the food we eat ; if that food is healthfully pre- pared, the blood which it makes is pure, healthful, and life-giving ; otherwise it is impure, does not impart life, health, and vigor ; in short, badly di- BAD BLOOD. 133 gested food makes bad blood, and as this bad blood is distributed to every portion of the body, there is not a single square inch of it which is not liable to some diseased action. No wonder, then, that dys- peptics are full of complaints. BAD BLOOD has been charged as the fruitful cause of innu- merable maladies. But it is well to bear in mind that the designation is a general one ; it may be bad by having too much bile in it, because the liver does not work well, does not act properly, does not do its duty, is torpid, is asleep, and needs to be “ touched,” to be “ acted on,” to be “ stirred up.” The blood may be made bad because the stom- ach does not act healthily on the food ; the blood thus badly made is imperfect, is “ bad,” because it is innutritious. In the two cases named, the blood is too impure, is too thick, does not flow in a lively manner, and the person feels stupid, is dull, is drowsy, indisposed to do anything, and, in his own expressive language, is “ fit for nothing.” The blood may be made bad by unhealthful food, by not having enough to eat, or by the person not being able to get as much nourishment out of it as was needed ; in this case the blood is bad because it is poor, is thin, and the individual is weak, and wasted, and chilly. Very many persons eat a great deal, but are nev- ertheless thin in flesh and weak in body, because the 184 DYSPEPSIA. FOOD DOES NOT STRENGTHEN. This idea is expressed with sufficient correctness by the following illustration : A faithful servant, just recovering from severe sickness, is able to do a small amount of work well ; but if a heavy task is given, there is not strength to perform it, and, in the am- bition to complete it, the whole of it is badly done from haste and want of strength. An overworked, a debilitated stomach may digest a small amount of food thoroughly and well, making out of it pure, good blood, giving life, strength, and nutriment to the whole body, as far as it goes ; but if a heavy meal is taken, it may be converted into blood, but that blood will not be perfectly formed ; it will be badly made, not one drop of it will be pure, life- giving ; and not only so, going to the heart as it does, to be mixed with the otlier blood of the body, it deteriorates it, and there is not an ounce of good blood in the whole system ; and as this blood is sent to every pin-point of the body, it being an unnat- ural material, it makes an unnatural impression ; hence it is that in the entire body of a dyspeptic there is not one single square inch in a natural condition, hence is liable to suffering and disease, those parts complaining most which by any means have been rendered weaker than the others ; for as when the cholera is sweeping off its victims by the thousand, those are first attacked who are in poor health, or whose constitutions are feeble, so when disease is about to attack an individual, it A STRONGER STOMACH. 135 falls upon the most debilitated part of the body. In common colds, for example, if the voice organs have been over-exercised, the cold falls upon the throat, and the man is hoarse ; if the lungs are weak, it falls on them, and there is severe cough- ing ; if the bowels are weak, it attacks them, and occasions diarrhoea, and the cold is said to u run off” through the bowels ; so a dyspeptic will have the brunt of his malady fall on that part of the body or on those organs which are unnaturally weak ; causing the countless combination of symptoms which this unfortunate class of persons have. But as various as the symptoms are, the remote and more immediate cause is one and the same, un- digested food, making bad blood ; and the remedy must in all cases be such as will cause the one result, — A STRONGER STOMACH, one which can digest the food. There are two essential requisites of a healthy digestion. There must be gastric juice. There must be strength in the muscles of the stomach to contract upon the food in such a way as to keep it in motion in the gastric juice, for the purpose of promoting its dis- solution, its melting, as previously illustrated by the melting of small pieces of ice by stirring them around in a glass of water. Medicine cannot make gastric juice. As seen awhile ago, it is a liquid prepared as a consequence of the need of repair ; this need of replenishment and repair is occasioned by a previous waste or 136 DYSPEPSIA. wear ; that waste or wear cannot be brought about without motion of the muscles, which is expressed by the word “ exercise ; ” it is muscular exercise which creates gastric juice. Without gastric juice there never can be any digestion of food, any con- verting of it into healthy blood ; and here at this point are found a vast multitude of failures in the cure of dyspepsia ; it being sought to be done in every possible way except in procuring gastric juice, the absolutely essential element under all conceivable circumstances. It is so much easier to SWALLOW MEDICINE EVERY DAY than to go to work, that human ingenuity has been taxed to the utmost to find something which will make the stomach digest the food. Acting on the presumption that dyspepsia was simply a weak stomach, every conceivable tonic and stimulant has been given to “ strengthen the stomach ; ” but even supposing it were accomplished, a previous prime necessity existed in the presence of gastric juice, which is a product of muscular exercise, voluntary or involuntary, and of nothing else known to man. EXERCISE, and more particularly out-door exercise, is the first, the essential element in the cure of dyspepsia ; this and one other, — strengthening the stomach in a natural manner, — will, sooner or later, ameliorate and remove the disease, it might almost be said in every case, if the man is not already dead, and RECUPERATIVE POWERS. 137 if there has not been set up some organic disease in other portions of the body in consequence of its long duration in the system. As there is only one way to obtain gastric juice, so there is only one way, nat- ural, legitimate, and effectual, of strengthening the stomach, according to a true physiology, and that is by rest, which is the secret of the cure of dys- peptic disease, regardless of its duration ; and it can never be cured without it ; not the rest which opiates give ; not that which is the result of sed- ative remedies, but that which comes naturally, the rest of simple cessation of legitimate action. The Almighty has planted within us, and made it a part of our nature, a kind of self-active agency, called RECUPERATIVE POWER. You bend a bow, but the moment it becomes unrestrained, it returns to a natural state, and thus recovers, as it were, the power to act again. The bow regains, passively, its elasticity, by being al- lowed to remain unstrung ; but there is a more ac- tive process going on all the time in the human system. When it is strung up like the bow, that is, When it is at work as to any of the organs, it ex- pends its power, its strength ; but the moment it ceases its labor, it falls into a state of rest, as far as the expenditure of effort is concerned, and that very moment it begins to regain the strength it has been expending, or, more strictly speaking, it be- gins to gather new strength, or the power to put forth strength : this is recuperative power. When 138 DYSPEPSIA. a man is tired, he lies down, and strength comes to him, so that in a short time the feeling of weariness has disappeared, and he feels as capable of work as ever ; this capability seems to spring up within him as a result of rest. A man thinks, and gets weary ; the brain becomes tired, and he falls asleep ; during sleep the brain recovers its energy ; during sleep, which is the “ rest ” of the brain, new par- ticles are added to it, to be expended in thought again ; and so in succession, day and night, for a life-time. The same principle is applicable in connection with the labor of the stomach ; its work is to digest food, to put it into a fluid condition, preparatory to its absorption into the system as a means of nourishment, strength, and life; and the stomach’s “ rest ” is in having no food in it to keep it at work ; by that means it recuperates, gains power to act on subsequent supplies of food, and in no other conceivable way can it acquire that power naturally and healthfully ; and this u rest ” will al- ways give it that power. Dyspepsia weakens the whole body, and the stomach takes its share of the debility ; in this condition, if it cannot do much, it may do a little, can do something, and the legiti- mate conclusion is, that under the circumstances the way of cure is to give it a small amount of food, thus imposing on it but a little labor, as it has power to do but a little. The natural steps to be taken, then, in THE CURE OF DYSPEPSIA. 139 THE CURE OF DYSPEPSIA, in any case, are first to take exercise, to go to work, so as to generate gastric juice ; the presence of this in the vessels about the stomach causes, as has been explained, the sensation of hunger, which is to be met by small quantities of food. This ex- pression of “ small quantity ” is a relative, com- parative term, and the reader will naturally want something more definite ; but as no two persons are alike in their capabilities for taking food and their need of it, a principle of action must be adopted which will admit of universal application. The ex- ercise of a close observation and a correct judgment will meet the case of every one. A “ large quan- tity of food ” is an amount which, after having been eaten, causes a disagreeable reminder ; an amount of food is “ small ” which, after having been eaten, attracts no attention whatever, unless it be in the way of a pleasurable reminiscence. If a spoonful of food is followed by any disagreeable feeling what- ever, that is a “ large ” amount for that individual. If a mail has not eaten a particle of food for a week, a table-spoonful of meat would be a “ large ” amount for him, would be “ too much ; ” for it would throw him into convulsions in ten minutes or ’ess, because, although ever so hungry, the stom- ach is so completely exhausted, with the other parts of the body, that its muscles cannot act upon it ; it is too weak, too near death or utter prostration, to feel the stimulus of the presence of food. 140 DYSPEPSIA. In a perfectly healthy condition of the stomach and the digestive functions, there is positively no sensation after the food has been swallowed, except that of agreeableness and of entire satisfaction with one’s self, and indeed with the whole world be- sides. All the functions are perfectly and health- fully carried on, without our being at all conscious of any of these processes. But if, instead of this happy state of things, there is any uncomfortable- ness, then it is certain that healthful digestion is not in progress, and that is dyspepsia. DISCOMFORT AFTER EATING arises from one of two causes : the person has eaten too much for him, or he has eaten something which the stomach does not tolerate, which it cannot ma- nipulate, cannot take hold of, cannot dissolve ; but this latter is so seldom the case, that it is scarcely necessary for the mind to make special note of it. Nine times out of ten, the error consists in excess as to quantity ; quality rarely enters into the case. If the patient can only have the force of charac- ter to enable him to avoid eating too much, with this explanation of what is “ too much,” his tri- umph is sure ; he will conquer the disease, and will one day be a well man. The day may be far dis- tant, but it will come, even if he is half a century « old before he enters upon the dreadful conflict ; for the strife, the fierce temptation, the high heroism, the deadly tenacity of purpose brought into requi- A HARD EARNED VICTORY. 141 sition m any case of confirmed dyspepsia of long standing, does make the contest literally dreadful to think of. A HARD EARNED VICTORY. But as that model philanthropist, Amos Lawrence, said, after a fifteen years 5 fight on this same ground, when he contemplated his triumph, “ If men could only know how sweet it was, they would not hesi- tate a moment.” Not that it requires fifteen years of battle thrice a day to keep from eating too much ; it cost the noble man so much, because he turned his whole attention to the one point of not giving his stomach too much work to do ; and shame it was that so good a man should have been so great a coward ; for in order to prevent himself from eating too much, he would not go down to the general table, but had a certain amount brought to his private room. It certainly was the easiest plan of conducting the campaign ; but the manlier course would have been to have fought it out at an abundant table. The contest was over- long in his case, because he took only one branch of the cure ; in addition to his praiseworthy care- fulness not to give the stomach too much work to do, he failed to pay the requisite attention to the natural means of procuring a larger amount of gastric juice ; that is, he did not exercise or work .enough out-of-doors. It was not thought profitable to general readers to enter into minute details, and to lose time in nice philosophical disquisitions connected with dys- 142 DYSPEPSIA. pepsia, but rather to touch on points applicable to the masses of readers. There is, however, one consideration it might be well to remark on. When the stomach has been dyspeptic for a long time, a condition of things is sometimes induced which ends in forming an unnatural lining of its whole in- terior, or parts of it, which in some cases is de- tached, in whole or in part, and is passed out, some- times upward, and at others downward, seeming to have almost the tenacity and toughness of India rub- ber or sole leather. Such cases are happily rare. It is seldom advisable to eat by WEIGHT AND MEASURE. Hence, in adapting food to the capabilities of the stomach, rather than the needs of the system, it is better to follow a simple rule. If discomfort is experienced after a meal, then at the next take less and less, until the amount of food is so small that no discomfort whatever is experienced afterwards ; continue this amount for a few days, and the stomach, as well as the whole body, will become stronger ; for the small amount eaten, hav- ing been well digested, and converted into nour- ishing and pure blood, gives many times more strength and comfort than if a much larger quan- tity of food had been taken, and which, not being properly handled, would have been a hindrance, instead of a help in building up the system. After living a few days in the manner described, the stomach getting stronger with the rest of the body, INAPPEASABLE APPETITE. 143 a little more food may be ventured upon, and in a day or two a little more still, with the result of in- creasing general health, and strength, and vigor. In recovering from dyspepsia, as well as from other diseases, the appetite is occasionally fitful and capricious ; instinct is sometimes wise, and some • times at fault ; the safe plan, under all circum- stances, is to eat very sparingly at first of any cov- eted dish, and feel the way along, increasing the amount by small degrees. An old woman in one of the missionary stations abroad, being very fee- ble, was kindly asked if she could think of any- thing she could relish ; she replied that she thought she would get well if she could only have the roasted head of a little baby to pick. It is not altogether advisable to gratify instincts of that kind ; rather endeavor to direct the attention to some other tidbit, or substitute a monkey’s head. There is another condition in which we find in- stinct at fault, and it is not remembered that it has ever appeared in print, in the practical con- nection in which it ought to be placed, although it is at the very foundation of the cure of dyspepsia. A more full explanation of this phenomenon will be found further on, under the heading of a Hunger.” 3 One of the most prevalent symptoms of this distress- ing malady is an INAPPEASABLE APPETITE. The patient feels as if he would die if he did not eat ; and he does eat, but in a short time is a* 1 See r,p 15? 158 144 DYSPEPSIA. hungry as ever ; yet after each repast there are tortures of mind and body, lasting sometimes for hours, which amount almost to an agony, to be re- peated after each meal, for weary weeks and months and years ! It is sad to think of the multitudes who suffer from one or more of the symptoms of this our na- tional disease, as a result of ignorantly eating too much, or too hastily, or too often, or of engaging too soon after eating in severe mental or manual labor. Dyspepsia is a disease of civilized life, but is almost unknown in Germany, owing in part to their deliberate way of doing almost everything, eating included, and in other part to their patient, out-door life, to their plain food, and their regular habits of eating and living. They make haste slowly, and, as a result, are the most generally thrifty people in the world, are the best scholars, the most patient investigators, and have shown themselves nobly conspicuous and able in everj^ creditable department of civilized life. Quiet, peaceful, courteous, and kind, the German people merit the respect of the cultivated minds of all na- tionalities. It is the HURRY IN EATING and the hurry to go to work after eating, which make us a nation of martyrs to the horrid disease which is here discussed. The type of an Ameri- can in business is to gulp his cup of coffee at a FEELING OF “ GONENESS.” 145 swallow, grab the morning paper with one hand, ' his hat with the other, and bolt for the street door, as if the house were on fire and his life depended on the speediest exit possible ; the moment he takes his seat in his conveyance, whether it be a private carriage or a public vehicle, he is so completely immersed in the item of latest news pertaining to his special branch of business, that he seems to be perfectly oblivious, for the time being, of the exist- ence of anything in the universe besides himself and his business. An American merchant who has FAILED THREE TIMES, and made himself famous for all ages, stated that for seven years he never saw his children awake, except on Sundays. So great was his haste to leave his home early in the morning, to “ get to the store,” and so late was he in returning, that the little ones had all retired for the night, and had not waked when he left in the morning. Such a hurrying through life is always unwise, and will be always attended with some disaster, either to mind, body, or estate. FEELING OF “ GONENESS.” This, or the kindred sensation of a u gnawing ” at the pit of the stomach, or any other uncomfort- ableness, indicates that the machinery of digestion is out of order, that something is amiss. When this occurs in any mechanical combination, the first instinctive act is to stop the machine instantly , 10 146 DYSPEPSIA. but in case of the stomach, at least when there is a morbid appetite and also as to some other sensa- tions, instead of stopping' its working, we either give it more work to do, or, by taking some stimu- lant, cause it to work faster, as by a glass of brandy, a cup of tea, or a tonic. It would be much more rational and beneficial, if, when the stomach com- plains, we would empty it by an emetic, instead of filling it fuller with delicacies or drinks. This subject is of such practical importance, that it will not be amiss to illustrate the point in another way. When there is uneasiness in the stomach, it results from eating improperly ; healthful digestion is not going on, and Nature begins to complain. There is not gastric juice enough to prepare the food for the uses of the system ; and under such circumstances, to add to the amount, either by eat- ing or drinking, is like adding ice to a glass of water when there is already more ice there than the water can melt in any reasonable time. Again : If you want to kindle a coal fire, take a small amount of wood, and let the heat of it be concentrated on a small amount of coal, because the coal will not ignite, until it is, as it were, satu- rated, filled with heat. If, when the fire does not burn, you add more coal, as servant girls at home or passengers on railways often do, and the stove does not give out enough heat, you actually put the fire out, because the heat in the kindling is diffused over a larger amount of coal, and thus it is farther from burning than ever. Precisely so is it in refer- WHET THE APPETITE. 147 ence to eating, and it is a point of the utmost prac- tical importance in every-day life to every man, woman, and child ; therefore, It is wrong to eat while there is any uncomforta- bleness in the stomach, as it is the result of there being too much food there already. It is wrong to eat without an appetite ; for it shows there is no gastric juice in the stomach, and that Nature does not need food, and not needing it, there being no fluid to receive and act upon it, it would remain there only to putrefy, the very thought of which should be sufficient to deter any man from eating without an appetite for the remainder of his life. If a “ tonic 55 is taken to . WHET THE APPETITE, it is a mistaken course ; for its only result is to cause one to eat more, when already an amount has been eaten beyond what the gastric juice supplied is able to prepare. The object to be obtained is a larger supply of gastric juice, not a larger supply of food, and whatever fails to accomplish that essential ob- ject fails to have any efficiency towards the cure of dyspeptic disease ; and as the formation of gastric juice is directly proportioned to the wear and waste of the system which it is to be the means of supply- ing, and this wear and waste can only take place as the result of exercise, the point is reached again that the efficient remedy for dyspepsia is work, — out-door work, beneficial and successful in direct proportion as it is agreeable, interesting, and profitable. 118 DYSPEPSIA. ANOTHER ERROR in the treatment and attempted cure of dyspepsia is, that finding it was caused and continued by eat- ing too much, that the stomach had not the ability to manage so much food, it was concluded that the best means of remedying the evil was to eat very little, almost nothing : this was the starvation cure for many years ; and even up to the present time, it is a very general impression that dyspepsia is to be cured by dieting, and unwise persons, getting hold of the idea, have literally in many cases dieted themselves to death, — reduced themselves so low, brought the stomach to such a debilitated condition, that it lost all power to digest the food ; then of course death was an inevitable result. If food enough is not eaten to sustain the sys- tem, it gets weaker and weaker every day ; the stomach must have its share of the weakness, and must every day have less and less power to perform its office. The very first step in the cure of any case of dyspepsia is to strengthen the stomach ; this must be preceded by strengthening the body ; and this never can be healthfully, and permanently, and safely done in any other way than by obtaining nourishment from the food eaten. All other efforts must fail, always have failed, always will ; and yet this is almost universally attempted. To strengthen the body, nourishing food must be given, — food which requires least stomach power to digest, and which, when digested, proves to be a material the THE DIFFICULTY MET. 149 nearest possible like the bodily elements. And here is where the great error of modern times has crept in, and which has perpetuated the disease instead of curing it. It was and is still almost universally believed that, to cure dyspepsia, veg- etable food should be eaten rather than animal, and thousands have found by sad experience that they grew worse ; now and then a closely observant mind pursued a directly opposite course, excluded vegetables wholly, and ate meat, and bread, and fruits, with a triumphant result ; because the es- sence of dyspepsia, as its name imports, is a diffi- culty in preparing the food for the needs of the sys- tem ; the Roman term “ indigestio ” (we add an ri) means a failure of preparation, — no preparation at all ; both intimating a want of power of preparation, inability to do the necessary work, want of strength. TO MEET THIS DIFFICULTY as well as possible, it would seem to be the dictate of common sense to endeavor to favor the stomach, and give it the food which requires the least strength to prepare ; which, in other words, is most easily, soonest digested, soonest dissolved by the gastric juice ; and here scientific observation comes to our aid. By looking at the tables at the end of the book, the general truth will be observed, to the sur- prise, perhaps, of many readers, that fruits require an hour or two to digest, vegetables five hours, roast beef and roast mutton some three hours, and good bread about the same ; not only is roast meat or 150 DYSPEPSIA. broiled digested in about half the time of boiled cabbage, but it is so near alike, in its elements, to our own bodies, that it is appropriated to the uses and needs of the system with the least possible trouble ; and so with properly prepared soups, eaten with coarse breads. As proof of this statement, dyspepsia is scarcely known among the soup-loving Germans, and not much among beef-eating Eng- iishmen. It is not intended to say that a Dutch- man never has dyspepsia because he will have his soup every day, nor that the people who glory in roasted meats escape the torments of indigestion solely because they eat largely of beef and mutton ; but it is meant that if they are exempted from these maladies, it is the philosophical result of giving their stomachs the least possible work to do, — in that they live largely on food which is easily appropri- ated to purposes of nutrition. To sum up, then, all the practical points in connection with the treatment and cure of dyspeptic diseases, the following recapi- tulation is made. Out-door activities, by promoting the wear and tear of the body, cause a preparation of gastric juice which occasions hunger ; this hunger enables us to partake of food with a relish, which is an impor- tant requisite of a prompt, easy, and healthful diges- tion ; in other words, to get well of dyspepsia, a man must get an appetite by going to work. The next step is, eat such food as is easily di- gested, and which at the same time contains ele- ments most like the flesh and bones of the human THE DIFFICULTY MET. 151 body, and require tlie least amount of labor to be made a part of it. This food should be finely divided, in pieces not larger than a pea ; then chewed deliberately and eaten slowly, so that each particle may pass into the stomach well crushed and ground by the teeth ; for when that is done, the gastric juice, as previously explained, entirely envelops each particle, and melts or dissolves it rapidly. The amount of food to be eaten by each dyspep- tic should be measured by his ability to eat without discomfort. This must be ascertained by close ob- servation, and can always be regulated. Whatever amount is followed by any unpleasant reminder in sensation, is “ too much.” However much can be eaten with no disagreeable feeling from the instant after it is swallowed, that is the temperate amount for such person, because that amount is healthfully digested, will make good, pure blood, and will im- part nourishment and strength to the whole' body; and as the stomach will take its share of that strength, it will be able from time to time to digest more food ; hence the patient may carefully and gradu- ally increase the amount eaten. The meals of a dyspeptic should be not less than five hours apart. Should there be no appetite when the time for eating comes, then resolutely wait until the next meal ; but, at that deferred meal, eat no more than if a meal had not been lost, thus insuring that the stomach shall not be over- loaded, which would cause a fresh attack of dys- pepsia, and thus retard the cure. 152 DYSPEPSIA. Breakfast should be taken in the morning, not later than *an hour after sunrise ; dinner about midday, and supper at sundown : these hours are not imperative, but they are the best, as it enables the person to take the three meals during daylight, with a five-hour interval, and prevents the error of taking supper without a sufficient interval before retiring. The first thing after each meal is to retire to a pure atmosphere ; outside the walls of the house is best, as long as the weather is warm enough to prevent a feeling of chilliness ; such a feeling should be guarded against with great care, as it is always injurious, and, in weak constitutions, has, on several occasions, caused death, when the chill has been decided and severe. If it is fire time of year, then sit in a room where there is an open fire blazing on the hearth, such, for example, as is given out by the Low-down Grate of Dixon & Sons, of Phila- delphia ; for it makes the most cheerful and purest heat from wood or peat, or soft or hard coal, that can be devised. For the first half-hour after eating, there should be quietude of body, with the exhilaration arising from cheerful conveisation, accompanied with a very leisure walking across the floor, with the chin above a horizontal line, and the hands held in each other behind ; this promotes a gentle circulation of the blood, throws out the chest without an appre- ciable effort, and aids in full breathing. WHAT SHALL WE EAT ? 153 WHAT SHALL WE EAT? is the eager inquiry of the unfortunate dyspeptic. Unless the case is confirmed or very aggravated, there need be but one rule for all : eat whatever you relish most, in quantities which shall not be followed by the slightest bodily discomfort what- ever ; but the nearer one can keep to coarse breads, with butter, and ripe, raw, perfect fruits and berries in their natural state, without cream, or milk, or sugar, and rare roast meats, cut up as fine as a pea and chewed deliberately, with tomatoes as a vege- table, the more speedy and encouraging will be the improvement and ultimate cure. The supper of the dyspeptic, the last meal of the day, - should be made of one cup of warm drink, with cold bread and butter. In many cases, how- ever, pilot-bread, or ship-biscuit, or the crust of common bread broken into the cup of warm drink, will agree with the stomach much better than the ordinary bread and butter. Many persons have found very great advantage in using altogether the bread named ; some prefer to take one or two cakes, place them on a plate, cover them with boiling water for a minute, pour it off, and then cover again ; this softens the hard biscuit, on which butter may be spread, if the but- ter does not disagree with the stomach. As it is often difficult to get pilot-bread or ship- oiscuit out of cities, a substitute may be made by any family, by mixing up common flour, or, which 154 DYSPEPSIA. is better, u shorts,” or flour from the whole grain of wheat ; this contains the bran ; bread made of this contains very important elements not found in white flour, and gives more strength than it does ; strength to bones, and teeth, and brain ; this flour should be mixed up with water, in the ordinary way, — rain-water is best, because it is soft and pure ; then make into cakes the size of a common saucer, less than half an inch thick ; put in a hot oven, and keep it hot until baked enough, without burning ; such bread is exceedingly nutritious, and will keep for months. It would answer an admirable purpose, by promoting digestion and strengthening the teeth, if this hard bread were not softened at all, but were broken in small bits, not over half an inch across, and chewed deliberately, so as to be softened by the juices of the mouth. Sometimes, if it can be done without uncomfortableness in the stomach, the sup- per above suggested, may be substituted by a dish of berries in their ripe, raw, perfect natural state, not drinking any fluid with them, nor for two hours after, so as to prevent fermentation. WHAT SHALL WE DRINK at our ordinary meals ? is another natural inquiry of the dyspeptic. The answer to this is more or ^ess applicable to all, whether sick- or well. Actual observation showed, in Beaumont’s experiments, that if cold water was taken into the stomach dur- ing a meal or soon after, the process of digestion was instantly arrested ; and to arrest a natural COFFEE AND TEA. 155 process must be mischievous*. The process did not recommence until the water drank had been raised to the heat of what was in the stomach before, which was about a hundred degrees ; ordinary ice- water, as used at our tables, is about thirty-five de- grees ; spring and well water are not so cold. To heat a glass of ice-water from thirty-five to a hun- dred degrees, must rob the general system of a great deal of its warmth, and has often thrown persons at the table into a chill. Invalids frequently have a chilly sensation at the table, because they have so little vitality, — such a small amount of heat, that there is none to spare to heat cold water or even cold food ; and as the milk provided for the young of animals and man is warm, it may be readily concluded that what is drank at meal-time, ordinarily, should be warm ; it seems at least to be natural ; at the same time, persons in robust health may drink cold fluids at meals with apparent impu- nity. But such a practice is not advised, for it seems to be unnatural. COFFEE AND TEA are usually taken at least for two meals in the day ; for dyspeptics and the young this is not ad- vised ; but a good, and nutritious, and healthful warm drink for all, and many cannot tell the differ- ence between it and THE BEST MOCHA COFFEE, for breakfast, is made thus : parch corn (Indian) 156 DYSPEPSIA. meal to the color of common ground coffee ; take about one teacupful and mix it with one quart of molasses or sirup ; put it into a hot oven, keep it heated and well stirred until it is pretty well dried in lumps, then use as much as is agreeable. So much for the coffee as a warm drink for breakfast. A GOOD TEA for all the young, for invalids, sedentary and ner- vous persons, is made as follows : mix boiling water and boiling milk, half and half, and sweeten to suit ; this is simple, is nutritious, and will be grateful to many stomachs during a meal, if taken warm, almost hot ; either this or the “ coffee ” may be taken at dinner-time, one cup and no more until health is restored. In reference to the weakness, the inability of the stomach in dyspepsia to prepare a full meal for the nourishment and support of the system, there might be power to prepare a part of a meal. It would then seem to follow that if a dyspeptic would eat less at a meal, the whole difficulty would be re- moved. But at this point there comes in one of the most curious and suggestive ideas connected with the subject of human health, which we do not remem- ber ever to have seen published or to have heard mentioned ; yet it seems to be at the very founda- tion of the cure of dyspepsia. The stomach of the dyspeptic has not the strength to prepare the food for imparting nourishment to HUNGER. 157 the system ; hence the patient grows weaker and more wasted generally, although some dyspeptics appear plump and almost fat ; it is because the flesh is watery, and the patient often complains of being “weak as water.” Generally dyspeptics are long, lank, and lean, a model skeleton. The idea referred to is not very readily expressed in few words ; but it is of such practical importance to communicate it in such a way as to make a lasting impression on the mind, that pains will be taken to that end. HUNGER is an instinct, the result of a kind of telegraphic communication, sent from every part of the body to the stomach, thence to the brain, and the mind, indicating that repair of wear and waste is needed ; this sensation causes the preparation of a bland fluid in receptacles which are placed on the sides or walls of the stomach ; as these vessels become fuller and fuller, the sensation of hunger increases, wdiich sensation is pleasurably gratified by eating ; for the moment the first mouthful enters the stomach, these receptacles begin to unload themselves, very much as many readers have noticed a gush of liquid from the inside of the cheeks at the instant of putting something to eat in the mouth while very hungry. But the dyspeptic stomach fails to send nutriment to the parts of the system requiring it, because, al- though a plenty of food is there, it has not strength 158 DYSPEPSIA. to prepare nutriment from it, and blind instinct, thinking as it were that no nutriment comes, be- cause there is no food in the stomach, keeps call- ing for more food, repeats its signals that the wear and tear must be supplied for repairing purposes ; hence it is that the dyspeptic has a voracious appe- tite at times, is almost as hungry soon after a meal as he was before he sat down, and he often exclaims, in anger or hopelessness, — 44 EATING DOES ME NO GOOD.” This arises from the fact, that although there is a plenty of food in the stomach, there is no power to get nourishment out of it ; but nourishment is the thing which is wanted, the system feels itself almost perishing for want of it, and cries in louder and louder tones, just like a hungry baby. This is the false appetite of the dyspeptic, and is one of his chief tormentors. He is always hungry, always craving, yet never satisfied. He gets so hungry sometimes, about an hour before the regular meals, that he feels as if it was impossible to wait till that interminable time of an hour should pass along. Just at this point almost all dyspeptics will eat, and thus aggravate the disease, and make it more incur- able ; they eat a little 44 to stay the stomach,” as they express it, to quiet the painful gnawings within ; but by so doing they but increase the burden, for before this can be digested, the regular meal comes on, the digestion of the 44 snack ” is arrested, and is kept thereby so long in the stomach that it decom- GOOD VINEGAR. 159 poses, sours, aggravates all the symptoms, and aids to perpetuate the disease. In the case above, it is more nutriment that the system is crying for, rather than more food ; and nutriment must be given by taking more exercise rather than more food, for ex- ercise prepares more gastric juice. THE SEVERE GNAWING in dyspepsia, experienced before the regular hour for eating arrives, should be heroically resisted ; for to eat a little to appease it, is but to parley with your worst enemy, to aid in fixing the malady so deep into the constitution as to defy all human means of extirpation. But when more food is taken into the stomach than there is gastric juice present to dissolve prop- erly, nature gives some disagreeable sensation indi- cating that something is wrong, and another morsel should not be swallowed until that wrong has been rectified. These sensations, showing that an error in eating as to quantity or quality has been com- mitted, oftenest in the former, are different in dif- ferent individuals, and are called symptoms or signs of disease ; they are both physical and mental, are over fifty in number, and have been already enu- merated as those which are most common or strik- ing. GOOD VINEGAR. is the nearest in its action on the food to that of gastric juice, known to science. It does not agree with some dyspeptic stomachs, but it is not only 160 DYSPEPSIA. grateful, but decidedly beneficial to many, seeming to add to the power of digestion. Cold, raw, tender cabbage, cut up fine, a handful of it, with a table- spoonful of vinegar, is a cabbage salad, and is a great aid to weak stomachs ; it is a good digester, is called COLE SLAW, and is found to digest in the stomach in about an hour ; boiled cabbage with vinegar requires five hours ; hence we may reasonably conclude that the former is easy of digestion, and may be taken at din- ner time by a dyspeptic with positive advantage. For the great mass of dyspeptics, very succinct instruction may be given, in the light of what has been stated, with an encouraging certainty of cure, and it is this : work out-of-doors until you are really hungry for dinner ; eat as much as you want of plain, nourishing food, without having one single uncomfortable feeling after it, giving preference to that which is most palatable, and that “ agrees ; ” after pleasant relaxation of mind and rest of body in a pure atmosphere with cheerful surroundings for about an hour, go to work again out-of-doors, and keep at it until the meal has been thoroughly di- gested ; take the supper already recommended ; get all the sleep possible between ten and seven o’clock * eat as much breakfast as you can without subsequent discomfort, and, after a suitable rest, go to work as on the day before, with an absorbing object in view. Such a course, persisted in with a spirit of deter- mination and intelligent hopefulness and courage, CURE OF DYSPEPSIA. 161 will cure any curable case in a reasonable time ; will effectually and permanently cure nine cases out of ten. Now and then a peculiar case will present it- self which must have a modification ; it would not be possible in one book to meet every case ; but what has been proposed will seldom fail to make an encouraging change in a fortnight, and whoever, under such circumstances, would not persist in a course which began to do good, is unworthy of be- ing cured ; the presumption would be that what began to improve a man, would continue to do him good, if persisted in. If a man has been a dyspeptic for years, it is not reasonable to suppose that the injury to his system can be repaired as soon as in the case of one whose stomach has been out of order for a few months only ; but it is believed that a patient courage in carrying out the instructions given, with an intelli- gent judgment, would permanently cure the great mass of dyspeptic cases : it has been done multi- tudes of times. Aggravated cases of dyspepsia, of years’ standing, have been cured, and remain cured to the end of a long life, without one grain or drop of medicine, simply by the intelligent observance of the instructions given ; and there is no reason what- ever to suppose that thousands of other cases should not be likewise permanently cured in a reasonable time in the same manner, because the means used are natural. If dyspepsia can be thus cured, and cured per- manently and with such encouraging certainty, 11 162 DYSPEPSIA. why has not the plan attained a world-wide pop- ularity ? One reason is, there is no mystery about it ; a second, because it costs nothing ; a third, be- cause it requires self-denial ; and, fourth, it requires moral courage. If dyspepsia could be cured by drinking a pint of liquid preparation of asafetida with some un- known drug combined equally nauseous, and it were sold at ten dollars a pint, in spite of its price and its nauseousness the seller would gather the in- come of Astor or a Stewart annually, because it requires no trouble beyond the momentary swal- lowing ; but daily effort and self-denial for weeks, and weary months sometimes, prove too bitter a pill for human nature. Rather than try tlm plan proposed for a month, the multitude prefer to ex- periment on ten thousand other methods, one after another, because they can be tried passively, while they are permitted to eat and drink almost what they please, and, above all, to do nothing but loll, and loaf, and lounge about the house, swallowing this man’s bitters and that man’s tonics, guzzling wine, swilling brandy, and cheating the appetite by the beguilements of cookety, to the end of in- creasing the malady every day, and making glorious life a misery. Instead of working in the open air until one is hungry, then eating a moderate amount of plain food and working out-doors again until it is digested healthfully and passed out of the stomach, thus making way for more food, gaining strength and CURE OF DYSPEPSIA. 163 vigor and new life and power daily, a half-and-half course is pursued, thus : the poor unfortunate begins to inquire, “ Will it hurt me to eat this ? ” and as to out-door exercise, between its being too warm or too cold, too damp or too windy, too late or too early, it is managed to walk about a mile in a month ; for these reasons, to wit, that not one in a hundred has any force of character, any moral courage, has not the spirit of a man, but is a moral coward, the masses will still remain martyrs to dys- pepsia until they die. The rule ought to be with all sedentary persons, especially with dyspeptics, to be out-of-doors in the open air, actively, every day, rain or shine, regard- less of the weather. If it is raining, take an um- brella, and let it rain ; if it snows, no one was ever hurt by snow-flakes ; if it is windy, wind purifies the air, and so much the better for your lungs ; if it is cold, wrap up well before you leave the house, shut your mouth, and move off briskly ; if it is mid- summer, take your walk just before sunrise, and walk two hours very leisurely. It should be re- membered that bodily exercise is essential to the maintenance of health ; much more is it necessary to regaining it. If circumstances connected with the weather present obstacles to your taking exer- cise, so much the worse for you ; a miracle will not be wrought to procure a dispensation for your ben- efit and behoof, so that you may omit the exercise with impunity ; not any more than if your house were burning in hot weather, its being hot ex- 164 DYSPEPSIA. cused you from tlie necessity of putting it out ; and yet this is the mode of reasoning which a cer- tain class of persons adopt to excuse them from going out-of-doors or going to church, unless the weather exactly suits. If it is a man’s duty to his Maker, and to his fellow-man as an encouragement and a good example, to go to church on the Sab- bath day, its being a little too warm or cold, too wet or dusty, too cloudy or too clear, does not ex- empt from the duty. Still there is a practical substitute for not taking out-door exercise, if it is insisted that the weather is not suitable. LIVE ON BREAD AND WATER, literally, every day on which no exercise is taken, and then a person will get well of ordinary dys- pepsia almost as soon as under other circum- stances. Proof of this principle is found in the cases already given, where persons sent to prison rapidly improved in health on prison fare, and the cessation of improper indulgences, such as smoking, chewing, snuffing, and drinking. ROCKING-CHAIRS. If persons are debilitated so that but little exer- cise can be taken, and their means do not allow them to ride, a very great advantage will be found in rocking under a piazza or tree, or in a well aired room, — always remembering that there is no pure air within any four walls, and that the actual CARRIAGE RIDING. 165 out-door air and sunlight for one hour will do more good than a two hours’ performance of the same ex- ercise within inclosures. There is a beauty to the eye in all out-doors; a charm to the mind, an exhilaration to the spirits, and a life to the body, which nothing else can give to an invalid ; and it is a world’s loss of happiness, that this great catholicon of nature is so neglected by ailing persons under the deceptive plea of unsuit- able weather, that they will take cold ; forgetting a truth everywhere acknowledged, that the more a person is out-of-doors, the less danger is there of taking cold, and that those who are out-of-doors all of daylight seldom take cold at all. • CARRIAGE RIDING, in the languid manner in which the pampered drive over our asphaltic pavements and our splendid Park, is certainly much better than nothing, for it gives the opportunity of a pure air the meanwhile ; but the less favored should not feel discouraged or repine at their seemingly harder lot ; for an hour’s ride in an omnibus over rough pavements, or in a street car, has advantages over the private car- riage, and can be indulged in at the small cost of about a cent a mile ; for it is important to bear in mind that the efficient remedies so much insisted on, and with such preciseness, and at such length, are out-door air and effort. CHAPTER IX. NEURALGIA. Neuralgia is literally “ nerve-ache,” being composed of two Greek words, “ neuros,” nerve, and “ algos,” ache or pain ; indeed, there is no pain without a nerve, and no nerve which is not capable of being pained ; so that in reality every pain is a neuralgia ; but by the term in common conversation, it is made to mean a severe pain with- out a visible cause. A burn gives pain, but it is not called neuralgia, since the cause of the pain is apparent; this article treats of that kind of pain which has no visible, tangible cause. If pain is caused by any process which is de- stroying the texture or substance of the body, as cancer, we call it an organic disease ; when the lungs are decaying away with consumption, it is an organic disease ; all diseases of the heart are or- ganic which involve the integrity of its structure ; all organic diseases are necessarily fatal. Another kind of disease is called “ functional,” or constitutional ; the ordinary liver complaint is a functional disease, so is a common cold, so is neu- ralgia. Of all functional diseases we may get well permanently ; may become as healthy as at any previous time of life. If a clock has a wheel broken FUNCTIONAL DISEASE. 167 or a cog removed, it is an “ organic ” mishap ; if it is only clogged with dust or other thing, so as to prevent the wheels working, it is a “ functional 99 lisorder ; it can be made as clean as it was on the first day of its completion, and may be made to keep as perfect time as when it first left the hand of its maker. In the article on nervousness, it is explained that nerve and blood-vessels lie side by side along every fibre of the system, and that the slightest touch of a nerve by the point of a pin, gives pain ; as in the nerve of a tooth, the softest touch of the dentist’s instrument causes an instantaneous exclamation and shrinking away. When blood is bad from being thicker than com- mon, — as in biliousness, when it has bile mixed with it, — or when there is too much blood, by having eaten too much and exercised too little, then in this thick state it does not move along the blood-vessels, the nerves, and arteries with its natural rapidity, any more than very muddy water would pass along a hose pipe or other channel as quick as if it were clear ; the consequence is that as the heart sends on the blood as fast as ever, and as it does not pass through the arteries and veins as quick as it ought to do, there is necessarily an accumulation ; for a while the blood-vessels accommodate them- selves to the necessities of the case, and distend a little ; then a little more, having more blood in them than belongs there ; but if a vein distends, it must push against its neighbor nerve, — crowds it ; the 168 NEURALGIA. nerve complains, just as a man complains if he is crowded a little overmuch on the street, or in a vehicle by a not over-polite neighbor ; the com- plaint which the nerve makes is what is called “ neuralgia.” In one part of the face a nerve passes through a small hole in the bone ; when a blood-vessel is overfull in such a locality, the nerve cannot yield a particle ; it is pressed on one side by the blood- vessel, and on the other by the unyielding bone, resulting in the most intolerable pain, called by the French, Tic-douloureux. Persons subject to neuralgia are those who have no active employment, are troubled with cold feet, or constipation, or dyspepsia, — all these having a tendency to make the blood thick, impure, and sluggish ; and unless these symptoms are removed, and the state of things which caused them is recti- fied, a cure is impossible. There are several meth- ods of alleviation ; but a permanent cure is what every reader should endeavor to accomplish, and a cure is certain if proper means are used and are persevered in. The pain of neuralgia is caused by there being too much blood in the part affected ; this is easily proven, for if a mustard plaster is put over the spot or near it, to draw the blood to the surface, the pain is removed, and will not return until the blood gradually settles at the ailing spot again. If a person is promptly bled in the arm, thus dimin- ishing the quantity of blood in every part of the CERTAIN CURE OF NEURALGIA. 169 system, relief is given in proportion to the amount of blood withdrawn. Another method of relief is to employ purgative medicines to remove the constipation, or, if this symptom is not present, still the amount of fluids in the system is thereby diminished. But all these are unnatural remedies ; they shock the system, and do harm in other ways. The great, the essential points are : To diminish the amount of blood in the body ; To obtain a purer blood ; To secure a more equable circulation. The always efficient method of diminishing the amount of blood in the body is to take less food, and thus cut off the supply of blood. In order to hasten this diminution, take exercise, or work ; these, as previously explained, occasion waste and wear ; the blood already in the body supplies this, and consequently the amount in the body will be diminished in the natural way. Exercise and work not only diminish the amount of blood, but they promote the circulation, they make it equal throughout the whole body ; and when this is the case, there can be no pain. It is thus seen that, in the very nature of things, the CERTAIN CURE OF NEURALGIA is found in judicious eating and exercise ; and not only so, a permanent cure cannot be effected in any other way, while these are always efficient. Some years ago a surgeon announced the instan- 170 NEURALGIA. taneous cure of tic-douloureux, the worst form of neuralgia, by cutting the nerve in two ; but this was only removing an effect ; the cause of bad blood, imperfect circulation, still remained, and the pain soon returned ; hence the operation was abandoned. There is no royal road to the cure of disease ; prince and pauper are subject to the same physical laws ; Crcesus and king must travel the same road to health with the poorest and the most unknown. What the physician said to the sick tyrant is ap- plicable to all : “ Your majesty has choice of four methods, — to eat less, to take more exercise, to swallow medicine, or be sick.” No man was ever made to be a loafer ; there was beneficence in the curse, u In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread ; ” labor and health are insep- arable, the world over. The bird is ever on the wing in search of food, and Infinite Beneficence has made its labor a pleasure and a delight ; the cow and the horse, as they browse in the fields, are mov- ing all day ; the very worm burrows in the earth in search of food ; nor can man be either healthy or happy except in the industrious prosecution of men- tal labor or muscular activities. In neuralgia the blood is always too thick, im- pure, and in excess ; and as diet and exercise com- bine to remedy these conditions, some rules in rela- tion to these are desirable. These will be adapted to sedentary persons, to those who live in-doors generally, as women, students, book-keepers, and the like. CERTAIN CURE OF NEURALGIA. 171 It is rather better to eat thrice a day, morning, noon, and night: that is, as soon after sunrise as practicable, for breakfast ; dinner about one o’clock ; supper before sundown. Eat nothing whatever between meals. Breakfast, a single cup of coffee or tea, some cold bread and butter, with a dish of berries or stewed fruit in summer time, and nothing else ; in winter, meat, fish, or poultry, or, in their stead, a couple of soft-boiled eggs. Supper should be made of cold bread and but- ter, and a cup of warm drink of some 7 kind, and nothing else. Dinner the same as breakfast, adding one vege- table, and some fruit, raw or stewed, as a dessert, and nothing else. A different kind of vegetable may be taken every day, for variety ; the kind of meat may be changed at each meal. The object in the specification above made is to discourage variety at meals, because it is this which tempts all to eat too much. Persons at times have felt at the table that they had eaten enough ; but on seeing a very inviting dish unexpectedly brought in, another meal has been eaten of this last variety. The general and hurtful error is that too great a variety is spread on our tables, not only occasioning trouble of preparation and great loss, but also a positive injury in the temptation of the appetite. The reader may try it upon' himself on any two days. A dinner of one vegetable, one ' kind of meat and bread ; at dinner the next day, 172 NEURALGIA. let a great variety be presented ; he will eat double the amount at this repast, with this remarkable dif- ference : an hour after the first meal, he will be entirely comfortable, will, feel as if he had eaten quite enough ; an hour after the latter, there will be decided discomfort, a fullness, a feeling as if some kind of relief were desirable, and in too many cases a resort to the decanter, with the vain hope of a riddance in some way. It cannot be denied that the first steps towards intemperate habits have been taken in using liquors to remove the unpleas- ant consequences of over-eating. A very great aid towards overcoming a habit of too hearty eating will be found in sitting down to a table with only three varieties of food. Certainly this method of getting rid of a painful disease is better than using medicine for the pur- pose, even if medicine were efficient ; but it is not ; sometimes it has a beneficial effect, but it is never permanent, never radical, never actually curative. But it is so much easier to take medicine than to practice self-denial at the table, and, in addition, to work for health, that the multitude are content with alleviants; are always taking medicine, are always sick, are always life-long invalids. Let the startling truth be deeply impressed on the mind of the thinking and intelligent reader, that plain and temperate eating and bodily activities in the glori- ous sunshine will eradicate neuralgia. CHAPTER X. NERVOUSNESS. Nervousness is another name for irritability of mind and restlessness of body ; it is the lenient, the sympathizing expression meant to convey the idea of unreasonableness ; of childishness in grown persons ; in short, a weakness of intellect. High- bred courtesy says of such an one, “ He is very pe- culiar; ” cross at one moment, crying the next ; in one hour startled at every noise, at the very next, perhaps, in profoundest reverie ; unreliable in state- ment, fitful in opinion, inconsistent in conduct, un- able to sleep, indisposed to work ; now in tears, then in “ tantrums ; ” exacting, imagining impossible things, unaccommodating, and a general disturber of the household. No one nervous person may ex- hibit all these characteristics at one time, but all nervous persons have more or less of them in the progress of the malady. If a man is tightly bound, and is gently scratched with a needle on the same line, he will soon be ihrown into convulsions ; this is owing to a prop- erty in the animal economy called “ irritability,’ ' and through the nervous system it extends itself to the mind ; it unmans a man. It has been stated that men have been exposed to have a single drop 174 NERVOUSNESS. of water fall from a height upon the same one spot on the head while so confined as to make a change in position, to the fraction of a hair, impossible ; at first the sensation is rather pleasant, next unwel- come, disagreeable, painful, and finally the victim is left a hopeless maniac ; this is another result of an unnatural, long-continued action on the nervous system ; it is another form of nervousness, and is incompatible with general good health. A nervous person is a sick person ; not sick in any particular part of the body, but in every hair’s- breadth of it ; and it is the result of the action of a kind of blood upon the nerves, unfit for healthful use. Good, pure blood is grateful to whatever portion of the body it is sent, whether to head or heart, tooth or toe, foot or finger. If it is bad from anjr cause, too thin, poor or poisonous, it is not the natural food of the nerves, and causes dis- comfort wherever it is carried ; this discomfort is “ nervousness.” Anatomists have announced sev- eral practical facts which are easily demonstrated : stick the point of a needle into any portion of a man’s skin, and there is pain and blood ; showing that there is no point in the human body where the faithful heart does not send its supply of life, for the blood is the life of a man ; showing also, with great conclusiveness, that nerves are equally omni- present. The nerves feed upon the blood ; and, side by side, nerve and blood-vessel go to every pin-point of the human body. If these nerves feed “ NERVOUSNESS.” 175 on natural, healthful blood, there is well feeling throughout the entire frame of man ; if the blood is poor, it causes an unnatural impression on every nerve, and these being multiplied into millions of filaments, each conveying to the brain its distinct complaint, no wonder there is irritation; confusion, and universal disorder of mind and discomfort of body. THIS IS 46 NERVOUSNESS ; ” and if poor blood, imperfect blood, thin blood, poisonous blood, or by whatever other name it may be called, causes this disturbance, the obvious rem- edy is to make better, purer, richer, more natural and healthful blood. To do this, two processes are necessary : — First, rid the system of its poor blood. Second, supply to it a richer, purer, better ma- terial. Divine Intelligence has so constructed us that every separate motion of every individual muscle in the whole human machine tends to work out of it whatever is foreign to itself, whatever is not a living part of its living mechanism. Whatever cannot be healthfully used by the body, is consid- ered a foreign body. Swallow a pebble, or fruit stone, or penny, and in less than forty-eight hours it is hustled out of the living machine, as an im- pertinent individual is hustled out of a public as- sembly into the street, each member giving him a contemptuous kick in his 44 outward bound.” Stick a needle beyond the head into foot, or leg, or arm, 176 NERVOUSNESS. and in one year or ten, it makes its appearance at the surface, a foot or yard away. So when unnatural blood is found in the body, the instincts of the system are to work it off and out ; and to this end every motion of every muscle directly contributes, and so persistently that death alone can put a stop to the effort. What, then, we are called upon to do in getting rid of the bad blood in the body, or “ nervousness,” is to HELP NATURE. It was just said, that every motion of every mus- cle aided in working the bad blood out of the body ; our wisdom, then, is to increase that mus- cular motion, by walking one or ten miles a day, according to the necessities of the case, or, which is better than a daily walk, work in the health- giving sunshine to the same extent, and keep at it, until the wretched, mischief-making enemy is ex- pelled from the house lately so miserable, but to be now full of health, and geniality, and sunshine, to life’s happy evening. But to facilitate this thrice welcome result, the other half of the remedy must be applied ; and so benevolently are we made, and so economical w T as the great Architect in arranging His forces, that in this, as in many other beautiful instances in connec- tion with the physiology of man, what accomplishes one object is made to pave the way, or is prepar- atory towards bringing about another not less im- portant and equally essential object. If we get OUT-DOOR ACTIVITIES. 177 rid of bad blood, we must supply its place, and with a good material. In the article on dyspepsia, it was shown that to procure a more vigorous and healthful digestion as a means of making a pure, strengthening blood, it was an indispensable requi- site that exertive exercise should be taken, the best form of which was out-door activities. It is thus seen that nature has so arranged it that the very efforts which effect the removal of bad blood and other foreign materials from the body, do at the same time pave the way for introducing a bet- ter supply in its stead ; giving us an idea of econ- omy of means and expenditure, which it would be well to study in all the enterprises of human life ; in plain terms, work pushes bad blood out of the body, and prepares a pure material in its place, by inducing hunger and a healthful digestion ; so that every stroke made in work, every step taken in exercise, especially if out-of-doors, and in the pur- suit of some engaging or profitable object, tends to cleanse the system first, then repair, then build up, thus curing disease and establishing health on a permanent, safe, and enduring basis ; and happy is he who has clearness of perception to see the force of the reasoning, and who has the firmness of pur- pose and persistence of determination to follow up a steady and systematic course of judicious exer- cise and plain and temperate living, in the light of the suggestions just made, until triumphantly rid *>>f that most fretting and belittling of all human ailments, “nervousness.” Small progress may be 178 NERVOUSNESS. made at first ; but it will seldom happen that if the principles of treatment are carried out with reason- able fidelity and judgment, the changes observed in the system will not be sufficiently evident within a very few weeks, or even days sometimes, as to demonstrate a successful result at no distant day. There may be occasional arrests of improvement, and even “ backsets ; ” but these should inspire hope and renewed determination to conquer ; for it is reasonable to suppose that the means which are able to inaugurate an improvement in a short time, will perfect a cure, if persisted in. Sometimes persons are made nervous whenever they take a cold : this is because the nervous sys- tem has been previously debilitated, has become the weak part of the body ; but this is in accordance with the laws of the system. When an enemy attacks a fortress, the weakest portion is assailed ; a common cold is the body’s great enemy, and it seeks to do mischief through those portions of it which are found, from any cause, to have been weakened. Persons whose voice organs have been debilitated by over-exercise in conversation, sing- ing, or public speaking, are made hoarse as soon as they take cold, because the cold is said to “ settle ” there ; in the same manner, if a man is “ weak- chested,” has weak lungs, he will have a bad cough if he takes cold. Others again, on taking cold, will express themselves as having got rid of it by pass- ing it off through the bowels ; that is, the bowels were weak, and diarrhoea was the result of the ILL NATURE. 179 cold falling on them. An estimable lady of close and correct observation says she never takes cold. It is true that she never has a cough or sore throat ; yet she has frequent and distressing attacks of bil- iousness ; these are often brought on by a cold ; she has a feeble circulation, is very sensitive to draughts of air, is easily chilled, loves warm rooms, warm clothing, and warm weather ; and taking but little exercise, and that infrequently, a very little thing gives her a cold, which closes the pores of the skin, and through it affects the liver; hence an attack of biliousness is a sure result ; her colds set- tle on the skin. There are other symptoms of nervousness than those already detailed ; it would be impracticable to name all. It was only intended to mention the more common ; to impress on the mind the one great prac- tical idea, that the nervousness which results from eating too much, and exercising too little, is caused by an impure, an imperfect blood, and that the more prominent symptom, indicating that species of nerv- ousness, was in the individual succeeding perfectly % in making himself as uncomfortable as possible to the unfortunate ones who happen to come within the sphere of 'his malign influence. And when it is remembered that this most ungracious malady arises from the degrading sins of gluttony and lazi- ness, and that a cure is found in a temperate and industrious life, a continuance of the misfortune is discreditable alike to mind arid heart. This disease is sometimes induced by a protracted 180 NERVOUSNESS. series of unavoidable misfortunes resulting from the ill conduct of others or a succession of deaths of loved ones ; these so acting upon delicate organiza- tions, or on highly strung temperaments, and where there are large brains, do certainly induce a spe- cies of nervousness allied to madness in some in- stances ; in others there is an approach to St. Vitus’ dance, where the nervous energy is so fit- ful, so uncontrollable, that the limbs fly in any direction, as if subject to electrical influences ; at other times the head will jerk or fall back ; there will be a regular thumping or beating in various parts of the body, — at one time in the head, another in the limbs, or sensations as if a cannon-ball had passed through the brain ; often quietude of the muscles is an impossibility, motion is a necessity ; but even for these severer forms, which command our warmest sympathies, there is a uniform cure, in regular and temperate eating of plain food, and an imperative and engrossing out-door occupation ; if these things are judiciously combined, no mortal man has any ground for fearing that he may not be restored to permanent good health in an en- couragingly short time, because there is no organic disease ; it is only functional. Given a diet of bread, and meat, and cold water, a man at the plough, and the woman at the wash-tub, compulsorily, with an encouraging remuneration, — a cure will be an every-day event — a cure without a drawback, and which will last for life. Mrs. M., the wife of a gentleman of great wealth, THE TERRIBLE SEA VOYAGE. 181 fell into a nervous condition from having nothing to do. A family had been cared for, and grown up, and settled well in life ; there was no object of ambition before her upon which her mental or physical energies could act, at least none for which she had a liking. u The poor ye have with you al- ways,” said the Master ; and upon these she might have humanely spent herself, going about doing good, and thus have laid up for herself treasures in heaven which could not fail her, and the treas- ure upon earth of a healthful old age. But she pre- ferred to take her ease, to eat, and drink, and sleep ; her whole life was one of inglorious inactivity, and the human machine became clogged up ; its im- purities were not worked off ; the blood became bad, and thick, and stagnant ; the nerves, having no pure blood to feed upon, became deranged in their action ; the strength declined, morbid feel- ings took possession of brain and body, and she became bed -ridden, seldom leaving her couch for many weeks in succession ; so weak at times that it was an effort to walk across the floor or even sit up for a few moments. Medicines availed nothing. At this stage, the intelligent physician advised what seemed a desperate remedy, inasmuch as it was apparently impossible to carry it out — simply a sea voyage in a sailing vessel, of uncertain continuance, but probably of two months’ duration. The suggestion was acted upon. Everything was new to her on shipboard, and supremely un- comfortable by reason of sea-sickness, and stormy 182 NERVOUSNESS. weather, and dangerous navigation, and bilge-water smell, and sleeping on shelves ; eating ship-biscuit and pilot-bread almost as hard as a stone, with old butter and half-spoiled meats ; even the w r ater, bad enough, was scant in supply ; these things were sim- ply terrible to a woman who had always enjoyed every comfort at home which money could procure. She thought at times that she would die, unless means were used to mitigate the calamities which seemed to have accumulated about her so unmerci- fully. Under these circumstances, she began to de- vise, and arrange, and modify, and alter so as if possible to make things at least endurable. This required mental effort and physical exertion as a necessity ; variable weather caused variable efforts ; and then there were the daily calculations, if per- chance a spare hour occurred to give the mind a little rest, as to when these miseries were to end ; calm to-day, fogs to-morrow, head-winds and cross seas ; long days of steady falling rain, to compel refuge in the noisome cabin below decks ; then the matter of course, cold, chilly winds which come after rain at sea. These things together became a new world of thought and action. When land was made, she was apparently a well woman. The elements of cure in this case were small eat- ing, bodily exertion, and compulsory mental activity in a channel wholly different from all previous ex- periences. The points to be noted with exceed- ing interest, in this narration, by every invalid are as follows : — NERVOUS DEBILITY. 188 It was a cure of nervousness of several years 5 duration. It had progressed to the extent of confinement to the house, and chamber and bed for a long time. The patient was already an old woman, giving ground to suppose that the powers of recuperation were lost. No medicine was used. The rough sea took away her appetite. The food was so bad that she could not eat it, had she been ever so hungry, except in homoeopathic quantities. * Physical effort became a necessity. Mental activity of an absorbing character was unavoidable. With such a fact as this, surely no person need be entirely hopeless of a permanent restoration from any nervous disease of a functional character, whether it be NERVOUS DEBILITY or of excessive nervous action, including the lesser forms or classes of insanity, monomania, “ hypo,” hysterics, melancholy, or megrims. One of the items above named as a means of cure is so con- trary to all human reason that it is well worth spe- cial consideration ; still it is at the very foundation of every case of cure, and is contrary to the judg- ment of almost all persons. She ate little or noth- ing, for the sea took away her appetite, and the food was so wretched that she could take but very little 184 NERVOUSNESS. at a time under the most favorable circumstances ; and just here is the rock on which most invalids split in connection with eating and sickness; they will insist upon it that they must eat something to keep up their strength, and that too, whether they have an appetite or not ; and for the sake of getting an appetite, they resort either to tonics, in the form of “ bitters,” or alcoholic preparations, or the pres- entation of the most delicate and inviting articles of food as a means of tempting the appetite, with the unvarying result of keeping up an invalid condition for weeks, for months, for years, and alas in too many cases for a life-time ! Facts must be looked at as they are. This delicate woman — delicate by reason of her age, habits of life, and long years of illness — gradually grew strong and well by eating very small amounts of very un- inviting food, simply because a weak stomach will get nourishment out of that small amount, when it could not get it out of a larger. It has power to “ work up ” an ounce of food ; it has not power to work up a pound. There is perhaps no single fact of as much importance as this in connection with the subject of eating and recovery from disease Another important item is the agency of the mind in restoring the body to health, especially in al) nervous affections. Something must be done in every case to compel the mind out of its usual ruts of travel, either by fear of life, as in the case named, by anxiety for the well being of loved ones, by the excitements of travel and discovery, or by encouraging prospects of pecuniary gain. A BALKY HORSE. 185 Even in severe acute or transient maladies, dis- eased conditions or actions are corrected in an in- stant’s time by the agency of the mind alone, when otherwise the most powerful drugs would be neces- sary in large quantities, and they would be slow in action. If a woman is in a violent fit of “ hysterics,” she will be instantly “ brought to ” if she learns that the house is on fire, or if you spank her with your slipper, or put your foot in her face, or per- form any other act calculated to put an indignity upon her ; for her resentment is awakened, and the mind is forced to act through another channel than the one which induced the hysterical condition. Something of this sort is illustrated amusingly in the animal creation, especially in the case of the noble horse, when he becomes “balky.” It was considered a wonderful feat of superior knowledge by a gaping crowd when the owner of a vehicle had tried all possible means to make his horse start off with his load to no effect, when a countryman stepped up, took a string from his pocket, and tied it tightly around the animal’s ear, then speaking to him in a brisk tone of voice, the conquered crea- ture moved right on. When it is remembered that if a handful of mud is rubbed on the animal’s nose, the same result is often reached, we find a ready solution of the efficiency of such diverse modes of treatment in the fact that both operations have one and the same effect : they divert the animal’s mind. Therefore the conclusion is inevitable that an essential element in the treatment and cure m NERVOUSNESS. of diseases, especially those of a nervous charac- ter, is MENTAL DIVERSION. A lady, from causes kept in successive action for a number of years, had fallen into such a state of nervous prostration that the stomach was unable to perform its functions ; all kinds of food failed to be digested, and generated large quantities of wind ; the debility became so great that she kept her bed for a great part of the time, her head, from the great debility of the system, whirling around in dizziness and confusion the very moment it was raised from the pillow, and she would have to hold on to the bed in rising, to prevent her falling on the floor ; medicine seemed to be unavailing. She was ordered to ride on horseback. As a riding-school was most available, being under shelter, so as to allow regularity, she was conveyed to the place, and rode around the course five minutes. The pros- tration was such that she could not sleep the night following, except in uneasy snatches ; but by resting in bed the succeeding day, and sleeping better the second night, she was able to repeat her rides every other day, with very slow improvement at first ; but having an indomitable resolution, and being pos- sessed of a high moral courage and force of char- acter, she found herself at the end of six months the best rider in the school ; riding became a pleasure, and she could race her courser for an hour at a time, and felt all the better for it. Mean- TAKING A WALK. 187 while her digestion steadily improved, her strength, weight, and flesh increased ; and although many years have passed, she has better health than the average of women of her age, can travel eighteen hours out of the twenty-four in stages, steamboats, and rail-cars, eating what she can get, and whether sleeping on a shelf, in a cot, lying down, or sitting up, her health, and appetite, and digestion, and strength are all improved by it. In this case, the entire nervous system had re- ceived such a shock, that it is fair to infer that some organic injury had been the result ; at all events, she was liable at times to attacks of indiges- tion, the certain and effectual remedy for which is exercise on foot, out-of-doors, and the eating of good substantial food, well prepared, meats gen- erally underdone, broiled or roasted, vegetables well cooked, and home-made bread. The advan- tages of out-door walks are so uniform, so direct in their good effects, that they are resorted to by her with the utmost confidence, and are kept up, no kind of weather being allowed to interfere with the daily out-door walking. In cases of this kind as to the majority of per- sons, especially those living in large cities, there is such a want of energy, such an indisposition to arouse themselves to the absolute necessities of the occasion, such a want of hopefulness, that, although reason is convinced, there seems to be a physical inability, as well as mental, to cooperate with the physician ; the slightest obstacles are magnified to 188 NERVOUSNESS. mountainous proportions, so that, in order to make a beginning, the medical adviser feels obliged to in- sist upon an instantaneous seat in his own carriage to be conveyed to the Riding Academy, and, even when there, to see that the unwilling patient is actu- ally placed on a horse, before he leaves the spot ; such children does disease sometimes make of persons in mature life, and of high cultivation and intelligence. A REMEDY IN NERVOUSNESS. There is a mental as well as a physical nerv- ousness ; both may be caused by an excess of blood in the body, as readily as by a bad blood. If the blood be in excess and pure, too much nervous energy is generated ; if it be bad blood, then the nervous energy generated is unhealthful ; and acts upon mind and body unheal thfully, but in either case, this nervous energy must be worked off, as surplus steam is worked off in an engine. All are familiar with the fact that when a locomotive is stopped, or a steamer is made to go slower, the steam is let off from the boiler ; otherwise there would be an explosion. So in the human body, the nervous energy, the spiritual steam is unconfinable ; it must have exit, it must have an outgo, either upon thin air, or upon some palpable object ; and as it is easier to expend the strength of the arms in work than in “ beating the air,” so it is easier, and better, and more healthful to have the nervous energy ex- pended upon an object than in allowing the mind to SUNDAY IMAGININGS. 189 work upon itself, to be simply thinking, without cor- responding action ; as almost every reader has ex- perienced when waking up in the night, he begins to think upon some matter that presses on the mind unpleasantly, but, not being able to act out his thoughts, the more he thinks, the more excited he becomes ; the mind is, in a sense, feeding on itself, and in process of being consumed by its own fires ; wdien this is indulged in, the man sometimes works himself almost into a frenzy, everything is exag- gerated into monstrous proportions, and the poor unfortunate can scarcely keep his bed ; at long length, however, he sinks into an uneasy slumber from sheer exhaustion, and when he wakes up in the morning, he feels surprised and sometimes really ashamed to think that he should have allowed such comparatively trivial things to work him up to such a pitch. Many a domestic triviality is thus handled, inflicting every day an incalculable amount of sor- row on even loving hearts. SUNDAY IMAGININGS. Observant physicians have frequently noticed that their out-door patients call earlier on Mondays than on any other day of the week, and are more likely to exaggerate their symptoms, having no real foundation ; it is because of the forced inactivity of the Sabbath, especially if a rainy day ; the mind became chafed by inactivity, by the vain beating of air, in running around the circle of some uneasy train of thought ; fretting, and worrying, and tor- 190 NERVOUSNESS. turing itself, in its vain imaginings. These facts, the truth of which the reflective reader must be conscious of, suggest the remedy for a large class of NERVOUS DISEASES. But the remedy must be applied with a wise dis- crimination. If the ailment be a physical nervous- ness, indicated by muscular restlessness, by the person not being able to remain in any one posi- tion long, the true cure, the most expeditious, is work, steady work, hour after hour; if there is no work to be done, then take more exercise, as the next best thing, and let it be kept up until there is a decided feeling that sitting down would be a lux- ury. It sometimes happens that this PHYSICAL NERVOUSNESS becomes so aggravated, the quantity of nervous power is so great, that it is uncontrollable, chronic- ally so, as in St. Vitus 5 dance ; and there is reason to believe that hysteria, commonly known as “ HYSTERICS,” may be more properly classed among the physically nervous cases, combined to some extent, however, with the mental condition. But all that is needed in many cases of hysteria is to divert the mind, and put the body to work ; this is nature’s cure, always available and always efficient. If the nervousness is mental, arising from a tern- GO ABOUT DOING GOOD. 191 porary ill condition of the brain, however caused, the remedy is one — mental diversion ; and this is best accomplished, not by reading, nor conversation, nor any in-door recreation or amusement, but by going out-of-doors to work, walk, or ride. Sometimes it is wise to GO ABOUT DOING GOOD, which has been frequently advised, and considered admirable advice too, as full of “ mother wit,” in- dicating; a true knowledge of human nature. “ If you are at all unhappy or restless in the house, without there being any special cause, the best way is to go out and help somebody.” That is well sometimes, but only an experienced physician knows how to discriminate as to the remedies to be advan- tageously employed in these complicated nervous complaints ; for occasionally the physical and the mental are so conjoined, that while it is safe enough, as far as the body is concerned, to advise the patient to work or exercise in the open air, the mental state is such that its requirements must be delicately met. It is a diversion to a lady, for example, to go a shopping. In ordinary circumstances this would be an agreeable diversion ; but it would be grossly out of place if the person be mourning the death of the loved and lost. At times, the mind of the pa- tient is in a sense “ shattered ; ” it has worked itself out by balancing probabilities, by choosing between the horns of some unfortunate dilemma, by being placed in a state of “ betweenity,” as it is expressed 192 NERVOUSNESS. sometimes. To go a shopping under such circum- stances would be peculiarly inappropriate, because that is a most absorbing occupation, one which greatly debilitates, as every lady knows ; for there is many times a balancing of considerations, which is very perplexing : can I afford this higher priced material ? would not the other wear better ? is not this color “ faster ” than the other ? this might look new longest ; one article is very pretty, but is it not too late, or too early, in the season ? in truth, the considerations are numberless which are to be taken into account in a single half-hour’s shopping ; hence, to advise such a diversion when the mind has been brought already into a nervous condition by balancing, by endeavoring to choose between this and that, would be notably inappropriate. So also, if a person has become nervous in the contempla- tion of suffering and sickness in loved ones at home, it certainly would be out of place to be told to go about doing good to the sick and suffering in the cabins of the poor. Hence discretion must be ob- served in prescribing the recreations of the nervous ; they must be such as will bring into requisition the organs, or propensities, or affections which have not been exercised, which have been held in abeyance, just precisely as in the physical system ; if a man is worn out by sawing wood, he must be rested, recre- ated by some employment which brings a different set of muscles into requisition, while those employed by the sawing operation should, for the most part, remain quiescent. On this principle it becomes JUDICIOUS EXERCISE. 193 very important in some delicate cases to advise the nervous to take exercise in the open air, but to go nowhere ; better to walk or drive to a post, and then turn back and drive home, or at least avoid having any object in connection with the exercise which would require any special mental effort ; it might be proper under such circumstances to visit some near relative ; when it would be very much out of place to make a formal call, where etiquette would be exacted ; for a certain degree of mental effort is re- quired in such cases ; certain proprieties are to be observed, which proprieties are to be determined by conditions as varied as those of the ever-turning kaleidoscope, — conditions in some cases which never happened before, may never happen again ; and to determine how to act in these with the necessary promptitude, requires a surprising amount of mental tact and mental agility. For example, in the days of the French Revolution, a company of gentlemen and ladies were marching to the guillotine ; one of the gentlemen was in the line before a lady, — Madame Roland or some other martyr to Liberty, — and it being an inexcusable violation of the proprieties of civilization for a gentleman to precede a lady, this accomplished courtier did all that was possible under the circumstances ; turning half round, and, bowing to the lady with exquisite grace, he said, “ Excuse me, Madame , for having my head cut off be- fore yours.” And who can help a feeling of pity as well as admiration of the ruling passion strong in death, when royalty entering the bed-chamber of 13 194 WASHINGTON S LAST WISH. Lord Chesterfield, who, conscious of the contor- tions of the last moment, said to his superior, “ Ex- cuse the grimace ! ” These things are narrated to suggest a valuable practical principle to a cer- tain class of nervous persons, under certain mental conditions ; that in these conditions mental exer- cise, mental diversion, is most appropriate, wherein the person shall be placed in no new situation, — no situation which requires the least mental effort to know how or what to decide upon ; for there are times, with the healthiest of us, when the mind is so indisposed to action that a thought is a labor, a word an effort ; too weary to think, too weary to speak, because to answer a question requires a men- tal effort. What immeasurable cruelties are often inflicted upon loved ones while dying, in the form of questions, which in that state of exaggerated conscientiousness which dissolving nature feels on the instant of its appearing before that August One whose essence is “ Truth,” may seem to the well the easiest thing in the world to answer, but really to the sufferer require the weightiest delibera- tion ! “ LET ME DIE IN PEACE ” were among the very last words of the great Wash- ington, when plied with questions and remarks to within two minutes of his ceasing to breathe. Per- sons who are subject to very severe attacks of asth- ma know very well that they at times feel that even to say “yes” or “no” requires an effort which it is almost “ as much as their lives are worth ’ to make. CHAPTER XL THE UNITY OF DISEASE. Biliousness. Neuralgia. Dyspepsia. Nervousness. These four diseases occasion, perhaps, nine tenths of all the sufferings endured in civilized society, arising from chronic ailments ; that is, ailments which last for months and years ; sometimes better, sometimes worse. It is almost impossible to enter any household, and not find one or more of its mem- bers suffering to a greater or less extent from one of the forms of sickness named. It has been shown indisputably that although the effects of these four ailments are very different, the immediate cause is bad blood — blood which is imperfect, impure, unnatural to the system, and hence must injure it. The cause being one, how- ever different may be the effects in different consti- tutions, that cause must be removed as an essential and the very first step towards a cure, and its re- moval must be followed, sooner or later, by the disappearance of the effects in all cases where these effects have not been allowed to remain long enough to produce actual disorganization of some of the parts affected, or long enough to exhaust their 196 THE UNITY OF DISEASE. vitality, their power of recuperation, — such as can- cer of the stomach, liver, bowels, or other parts connected with the digestive process. The cause being one, the method of removal will apply to each of the four ailments named, although this removal of the one cause may be accomplished in various ways ; that is to say, if “ bad blood ” causes bilious- ness, dyspepsia, neuralgia, and nervousness, these maladies, with their effects, will be removed by whatever rectifies this bad blood ; that is, removes and supplies a good, pure, healthful, and life-giving material in its stead. Bad blood is unnatural to the body ; it is essen- tially a foreign body ; and it is physiologically im- possible to introduce a foreign body into the living human body without its making instinctive efforts to cast that foreign body out of itself, and in every case it does put forth all the power it is capable of exerting to effect such a result. Not only so, but it is beautiful to contemplate that when a foreign body is introduced into the system, or when any- thing in it becomes foreign, as food swallowed which it cannot make a healthful use of by reason of its being improper in quality, quantity, or mode of preparation, the system seems to become alarmed, and, ceasing some of its ordinary work, it concen- trates its energies towards the removal of this for- eign body, this internal enemy. For example, if a man eats too much, he either becomes “ sick at stomach,” and Nature summons all her energy to enable him to vomit it up and cast it out in disgust, nature’s instincts. 197 . or drawing fluids from certain reservoirs of the sys- tem, dashes them in upon the bowels in unusual quantities to flood away the offending mass, and in this we have the friendly diarrhoea, which many ignorantly “ stop,” and thus oftentimes thwart Na- ture, and by so doing destroy life in a few days. There is something similar in the intelligence of THE LITTLE BUSY BEE when any “ foreigner” enters the hive. In the case of the human body, it has already been shown that when anything foreign to it is to be excluded, ordinary work is suspended in some direc- tions, and continues suspended until the work of ex- clusion is completed ; hence the weakness which fol- lows diarrhoea and many other forms of disease ; it is because Nature has summoned extra efforts to her aid, requires rest, time for recuperation ; and our highest wisdom in the treatment of all diseases is to discover what Nature wants to do, then to help her in the work, and finally to do what is possible to re- cover from the greater or less exhaustion occasioned by her extra efforts to protect, defend, and recover her strength. When food has become a foreign body in the stomach by its remaining there undi- gested, the appetite is taken away, as if Nature fore- saw that her strength ought to be husbanded for the purpose of being expended on the extrusion, in- stead of asking for more food, which would require additional power for digestion. It seems as if there was a living and reasoning intelligence called into 198 THE UNITY OF DISEASE. requisition in these cases, in so beautifully and wisely adapting the means to the end. In reference to the existence of bad blood in the body as foreign matter, two things are essen- tially necessary to the recovery of health, as has been already explained. First, the bad blood must be got rid of. Second, a pure material must be substituted. It has also been shown as a ruling principle in the living organism, that when there is any foreign substance in the body, the action of every limb, and muscle, and fibre tends to work and push that foreign substance outwards, whether it be undi- gested food, a bullet, a needle, or bad blood, for all are alike unnatural and foreign ; hence it seems to follow intuitively that as a means of helping Nature, we should increase the action of limb, and muscle, and fibre, by going to work, if you please ; or, in the event of having nothing to do, take mere exercise, — that is better than nothing, — and keep it up persistently day after day, until the desired thing is accomplished. And as the muddiest spring will run itself as clear as a bell in time, so will the hu- man body run itself clear of its bad blood, in most cases, if not interfered with, by means even of the involuntary motions and operations of its internal machinery, but much sooner if these involuntary movements are aided by voluntary exercise in the open air. And if exercise works the bad blood of bilious- ness out of the system, it will do the same thing UNITY OF DISEASE. 199 with equal certainty, with a most gratifying uni- formity as to the other three ailments, dyspepsia, neuralgia, and nervousness, showing that there is a certain unity in disease as well as a unity in the mode of cure. There is a great variety of ailments, an infinitude of combinations of symptoms, which would appear hopelessly complicated, but to the professional mind they are promptly classified, and in many cases traced to a single cause, — to the wrong action or want of action in a single organ ; and by rectifying that condition a host of symptoms will promptly disappear. Hence the cause may be one, the effects various ; but the one remedy, by removing the one cause, may cure a dozen or more of the symptoms of the one disease. CHAPTER XII. AIR AND EXERCISE. The importance of exposure to the out-door air as a means of recovery from disease in general, and es- pecially from the ailments more specially considered in these pages, can scarcely be over-estimated ; and yet it is only within two or three years that public attention has been definitely directed to the glorious sunshine as a remedial agent of very great power. There is a genial warmth in the sunlight, a vitality, a life-giving energy never found in any form of ar- tificial heat, and then there is in the comparative purity of out-door air a power of cleansing, of build- ing up, a power to energize peculiar to itself, and of a value not to be expressed by figures in its health- ful influence on the human system. Since atten- tion has been specially drawn to these very practical points by two or three men, armed with incontrover- tible facts, their consideration has been forced upon official attention ; facts have been gradually gath- ered, and deductions drawn therefrom leading to the suggestion of a proposition from high authority, the very announcement of which will fairly shock the reader as one of the greatest inhumanities of mod- ern times, — BURNING HOSPITALS. 201 BURNIN.G EVERY HOSPITAL TO ASHES, rather than pursue the present system of huddling hundreds and thousands of the unfortunate sick un- der the same roof, where every sight, every sound, every association, is of a depressing character. There is nothing curative in the yells of the maniac, in the shrieks of the amputated, in the groans of the dying. The consumptive can never get well as long as a sepulchral cough comes from every room in the building ; the dyspeptic will rather be has- tened to the grave if he meets a skin-covered skel- eton in every corridor or at every turn in the street : the moral as well as the physical atmosphere should be genial, and pure, and life-giving ; everything to elevate, nothing to depress. There is not one cubic inch of pure air within any four walls. It is a familiar fact that one by one of a family died until a window-glass was broken in winter, and the keen- sighted physician forbade its repair ; and there were no more deaths, and the remnant soon returned to vigorous health. There is an odor about every hos- pital which threatens death to the invalid who is long exposed to it. The first fact which broke in upon the minds of observant physicians was, that as to surgical opera- tions in hospitals, the larger the hospital, the sooner the persons operated on died, and the greater was the number of deaths in proportion to the number operated upon, in spite of the increased skill which larger practice gave, in spite of the better nursing 202 AIR AND EXERCISE. which follows experience. The astounding fact presents itself that in the great lying-in hospitals of St. Petersburg, of Vienna, Dublin, and London, one woman out of forty-four dies in her confinement ; in Paris, one out of every nineteen ; while in small hospitals there is only one death in two hundred and eighty-two ; and among persons who live in creviced shanties, where the blessed out-door air will force itself, there is but one death in twelve hundred confinements. Our surgeons frequently noticed during the civil war that the number of persons dying in the rude buildings erected on the battle-field was far less than among those sent to city hospitals. The same con- * elusive facts presented themselves to European sur- geons in the Crimean War, that when the wounded were scattered among the huts and hovels by the way-side, they recovered with greater promptitude and with far greater frequency than when sent to city hospitals provided with all possible facilities, comforts, and advantages ; and when the large hos- pitals were so much crowded that no more could be received, and little huts and shanties had to be * erected within sight of these same hospitals, the oc- cupants of the latter convalesced more rapidly, and died in far less numbers, as compared with those in the main buildings : hence the serious discussion among medical men in the old world as to the pro- priety of abolishing all large hospitals, and distribut- ting their inmates, so that but very few should be congregated under any one roof. Facts like these DYSPEPSIA. 203 ought to make an indelible impression on every in- telligent reader as to the value of a free exposure to out-door air in promoting recovery from all the diseases to which humanity is liable. The plausible theories which do not stand the test of actual experiment, however beautiful they may be, are absolutely worthless ; hence it is thought proper to introduce here various illustrations of the practical and successful carrying out of the princi- ples of cure as to the four ailments named, and of others of an allied nature. Mrs. M , of C , had been a great invalid for years ; she was reduced to a skeleton, had a con- stant hacking cough, was greatly debilitated, and seemed to her family to be in the advanced stages of consumption ; she seldom attempted to leave her chamber. At this juncture she learned that a married daughter was very ill, and greatly desired to see her in Philadelphia. As this involved a jour- ney of eight hundred miles across the Alleghany Mountains, the very thought of it seemed preposter- ous, as at that time there were no canals or railroads, and such a trip would have to be made on horseback or by the mail-stage. A physician was consulted, who decided that, being a clear case of dyspepsia, a horseback journey was not only desirable, but proper, possible, practicable, and very certain of highly beneficial results. The next morning the invalid left Cincinnati for Philadelphia, and travelled one hour in the forenoon, rested until next day, made one hour in the forenoon, and another in the 204 AIR AND EXERCISE. afternoon, increasing the time and distance but a little every day ; stopping with great regularity, travelling only between sunrise and sunset, and eat- ing at three regular hours. In less than two months the journey was completed, with increasing strength, appetite, and flesh, with apparent good health twenty years later. The circumstances which aided most in securing so great a change in the health of this patient were, First, The motive of the journey. All of a mother’s affections and humanities were roused ; it was a sick daughter yearning to see her, and whom she might not see on earth again if time was not improved, and the journey promptly undertaken. These considerations waked up the waning energies, and swept away a thousand little obstacles with con- tempt, which under other circumstances might have appeared formidable ; hence it is insisted that in or- der to obtain extraordinary results in the effort to regain health by out-door activities, the moral ele- ment is of very great importance ; there must be a motive for the exercise ; and in proportion as it is absorbing by reason of the interest, pleasure, and profit connected with it, in such proportion will prompt, marked, and decisive good results follow. Second, The mode of performing the journey. It was to be made on horseback ; this gave a longer exposure to the breathing of a pure out-door air, with less fatigue than if engaged in work. In ad- dition there was no strain, no haste, no worry ; no getting overheated, then cooling off too quickly, to OVER EXERCISE. 205 engender colds, coughs, pleurisies, lung-fever, and the like. Third, Another advantage in this form of exer- cise was that it could be regulated according to circumstances ; the patient could travel a mile a day, or thirty, or more, as the system seemed to be able to bear the fatigue, which in no case needed to be excessive ; when an invalid works or exercises until so weary as to be expressed by being COMPLETELY FAGGED OUT, more harm has been done than all the previous ex- ercise had done good ; that is, all the benefits of the previous exercise have been nullified. In her journey the lady was soon able to ride twelve or fifteen or more miles in the forenoon, when she be- gan to feel hungry ; then, stopping at some neat country inn, she rested awhile, took a good dinner, and in an hour thereafter was on her winding way again, and travelling some dozen miles farther brought her to near sundown, to lay by until next morning after breakfast. Whenever the weather was inclement, she remained a day or two or more, more favorable news from her daughter having made great haste less imperative. Taking it alto- gether, this form of travel with one or two cheerful, considerate, and intelligent companions is one of the best possible as a means of recovering from a great variety of diseases, and very especially those which have been named at the head of Chapter XI. R B left Princeton Seminary as a young 206 AIR AND EXERCISE. minister with shattered health ; in a few weeks he began to u spit blood,” a congh came on, emaciation followed, and it was soon whispered among his near- est friends that he was a hopeless consumptive ; as a last resort, it was arranged that he should take a missionary tour from New York through the South- ern States on horseback. His heart was in the work ; full of enthusiasm in his Master’s cause, he seemed to feel that he was literally fulfilling the command, — AS YE GO, PREACH. This was done with such increasing advantage that the plan was persisted in, and at the age of sixty-five he was one of the strongest, sturdiest, well built men of his time. He had lived to stand be- fore kings, had met with almost every sovereign in Europe, and crowned heads were ever glad to do him honor and greet him with a cordial welcome. He was raised from the dead by persistent out-door activities, and the plentiful eating of plain, whole- some, nutritious food. Within a year Miss W , aged nineteen, was sent to Maine from New York city for her health ; it was a beautiful country home ; her friends and kindred gave her a cordial welcome ; but she was so feeble, so emaciated, had such a wan appear- ance, that they wondered among themselves why her parents should have sent her there to die. Her disease was THE WAY TO HEALTH. 207 DYSPEPSIA AND LIVER COMPLAINT. There were headache, cold feet, costive bowels, hectic chills, nauseated stomach, dreadful dreams, sleepless nights, and such a feeling of debility and depression that it was pitiful to behold her. She had received certain instructions from home, as to eat- ing, exercise, out-door employments ; and having occupied a high position as a teacher in a public school, she had advantages of mental culture,