ties would have become dominant, as their contraries are now. Alterations in the dietary, especially of elderly persons, should be made gradually and with caution. This condition fulfilled, a considerable change may be effected with satisfactory results, when circumstances render it necessary. To revert once more to the question of flesh-eating, it should be remarked that it appears to be by no means a natural taste with the young. Few children like that part of the meal which consists of meat, but prefer the pudding, the fruit, the vegetables, if well dressed, which unhappily is not often the case. Many children manifest great repugnance to meat at first, and are coaxed and even scolded by anxious mothers until the habit of eating it is acquired. Adopting the insular creed, which regards beef and mutton as necessary to health and strength, the mother often suffers from groundless forebodings about the future of a child who rejects flesh, and manifests what is regarded as an unfortunate partiality for bread and butter and pudding. Nevertheless I am satisfied, if the chil. such as well-made bread in variety, and vegetable produce, including fruits, should form a great part of the diet consumed, with a fair addition of eggs and milk if no meat is taken, and little of other animal food than fish. On such a dietary, and without alcoholic stimulants, thousands of such workers as I have briefly indicated may enjoy with very little exercise far better health and more strength than at present they experience on meat and heavy puddings, beer, baker's bread, and cheese. Of course there are workers who belong to neither of the two extreme classes indicated, and whose habits cannot be described as sedentary, but who occupy a middle place between the two. For such, some corresponding modifica tion of the dietary is naturally appropriate. But it is a vulgar error to regard meat in any form as necessary to life; if for any it is necessary, it is for the hardworking outdoor laborers above referred to, and for these a certain proportion is no doubt desirable. Animal flesh is useful also as a concentrated form of nutriment, valuable for its portability; and for the small space it occupies in the stom-dren followed their own instinct in that ach, unrivalled in certain circumstances. Like every other description of food, it is highly useful in its place, but is by no means necessary for a large proportion of the population. To many it has become partially desirable only by the force of habit, and because their digestive organs have thus been trained to deal with it, and at first resent a change. But this being gradually made, adaptation takes place, and the individual who has consumed two or three meat meals daily with some little discomfort, chiefly from being often indisposed to make active exertions, becomes, after sufficient time has elapsed, stronger, lighter, and happier, as well as better tempered, and manifestly healthier, on the more delicate dietary sketched. People in general have very inadequate ideas of the great power of habit alone in forming what they believe to be innate personal peculiarities, or in creating conditions which are apparently part of a constitutional necessity, laws of their na ture and essential to their existence. Many of these peculiarities are solely due to habit, that is, to long continuance in a routine of action, adopted it may be without motive or design; and people are apt to forget that if a routine of a precisely opposite character had been adopted, precisely opposite conditions would have been established, and opposite peculiari matter, the result would be a gain in more ways than one. Certainly if meat did not appear in the nursery until the children sent for it, it would be rarely seen there, and the young ones would as a rule thrive better on milk and eggs, with the varied produce of the vegetable kingdom. A brief allusion must be made to the well-known and obvious fact that the surrounding temperature influences the demand for food, which therefore should be determined as regards quantity or kind according to the climate inhabited, or the season of the year as it affects each climate. In hot weather the dietary should be lighter, in the understood sense of the term, than in cold weather. The sultry period of our summer, although comparatively slight and of short duration, is nevertheless felt by some persons to be extremely oppressive; but this is mainly due to the practice of eating much animal food or fatty matters, conjoined as it often is with the habit of drinking freely of fluids containing a small quantity of alcohol. Living on cereals, vegetables, and fruit, with some proportion of fish, and abstaining from alcoholic drinks, the same persons would probable enjoy the high temperature, and be free from the thirst which is the natural result of consuming needlessly substantial and heating food. There is a very common term, familiar by daily use, conveying unmistakably to every one painful impressions regarding those who manifest the discomforts indicated by it - I mean the term indigestion. The first sign of what is so called may appear even in childhood; not being the consequence of any stomach disorder, but solely of some error in diet, mostly the result of eating too freely of rich compounds in which sugar and fatty matters are largely present. These elements would not be objectionable if they formed part of a regular meal, instead of being consumed as they mostly are between meals, already abounding in every necessary constituent. Sugar and fat are elements of value in children's food, and naturally form a considerable portion of it, entering largely into the composition of milk, which nature supplies for the young and growing animal. The indigestion of the child mostly terminates rapidly by ejection of the of fending matter. But the indigestion of the adult is less acutely felt and is less readily disposed of. Uneasiness and incapacity for action, persisting for some time after an ordinary meal, indicate that the stomach is acting imperfectly on the materials which have been put into it. These signs manifest themselves frequently, and if nature's hints that the food is inappropriate are not taken, they be come more serious. Temporary relief is easily obtained by medicine; but if the unfortunate individual continues to blame his stomach, and not the dietary he se lects, the chances are that his troubles will continue, or appear in some other form. At length, if unenlightened on the subject, he becomes "a martyr to indiges tion," and resigns himself to the unhappy fate, as he terms it, of "the confirmed dyspeptic." Such a victim may perhaps be surprised to learn that nine out of ten persons so affected are probably not the subjects of any complaint whatever, and that the stomach at any rate is by no means necessarily faulty in its action-in short, that what is popularly termed "indigestion" is rarely a disease in any sense of the word, but merely the natural result of errors in diet. For most men it is the penalty of conformity to the eating habits of the majority; and a want of disposition or of enterprise to undertake a trial of simpler foods than those around them consume, probably determines the continuance of their unhappy troubles. In many instances it must be confessed that the complaint, if so it must be called, results from error, not in the quality of the food taken, but in the quantity. Eating is an agreeable process for most people, and under the influence of very small temptation, or through undue variety furnishing a source of provocation to the palate, a considerable proportion of nutritious material above what is required by the system is apt to be swallowed. Then it is also to be remembered that stomachs which vary greatly in their capacity and power to digest, may all nevertheless be equally healthy and competent to exercise every necessary function. In like manner we know that human brains which are equally sound and healthy, often differ vastly in power and in activity. Thus a stomach which would be slandered by a charge of incompetence to perform easily all that it is in duty bound to accomplish, may be completely incapable of digesting a small excess beyond that natural limit. Hence, with such an organ an indigestion is inevitable when this limit is only slightly exceeded. And so when temptations are considerable, and frequently complied with, the disturbance may be, as it is with some, very serious in degree. How very powerful a human stomach may sometimes be, and how large a task in the way of digestion it may sometimes perform without complaint, is known to those who have had the opportunity of observing what certain persons with exceptional power are accustomed to take as food, and do take for a long time apparently with impunity. But these are stomachs endowed with extraordinary energy, and woe be to the individual with a digestive apparatus of moderate power who attempts to emulate the performance of a neighbor at table who perchance may be furnished with such an effective digestive apparatus. But, after all, let not the weaker man grieve overmuch at the uneven lot which the gods seem to have provided for mortals here below in regard of this function of digestion. There is a compensation for him which he has not considered, or perhaps even heard of, although he is so moderately endowed with peptic force. A delicate stomach which can just do needful work for the system and no more, by necessity performs the function of a careful door porter at the entrance of the system, and like a jealous guardian inspects with discernment all who aspire to enter the interior, rejecting the unfit and the unbidden, and all the common herd. On the other hand, a stomach with su perfluous power, of whom its master boast- | so complaining has not yet found his apfully declaims that it can "digest tenpenny propriate diet: that he takes food unsuited nails," and that he is unaccustomed to for him, or too much of it. The food may consult its likes and its dislikes if it have be" wholesome enough in itself," a popany, is like a careless hall porter who ular phrase permitted to appear here, first, admits all comers, every pretender, and because it conveys a meaning perceived among the motley visitors many whose by every one, although the idea is loosely presence is damaging to the interior. expressed; but secondly, and chiefly, for These powerful feeders after a time suffer the purpose of pointing out the fallacy from the unexpended surplus, and pay for which underlies it. There is no food their hardy temerity in becoming amen- "wholesome in itself;" and there is no able to penalty, often suddenly declared fact which people in general are more by the onset of some serious attack, de- slow to comprehend. That food only is manding complete change in regimen, a wholesome which is so to the individual; condition more or less grave. On the and no food can be wholesome to any other hand, the owner of the delicate given number of persons. Milk, for ex stomach, a man perhaps with a habit of ample, may agree admirably with me, and frequently complaining of slight troubles, may as certainly invariably provoke an and always careful, will probably in the indigestion for my neighbor; and the race of life, as regards the preceding pil- same may be said of almost every article grim, take the place of the tortoise as of our ordinary dietary. The wholesomeagainst the hare. It is an old proverb ness of a food consists solely in its adaptthat "the creaking wheel lasts longest," ability to the individual, and this relation and one that is certainly true as regards a is governed mainly by the influences of not powerful but nevertheless healthy his age, activity, surroundings, and temstomach which is carefully treated by its perament or personal peculiarities. owner; to whom this fact may be acceptable as a small consolation for the possession of a delicate organ. For it is a kind of stomach which not seldom accompanies a fine organization. The difference is central, not local; a difference in the nervous system chiefly; the impressionable mental structure, the instrument of strong emotions, must necessarily be allied with a stomach to which the supply of nerve power for digestion is sometimes temporarily deficient and always perhaps capricious. There are more sources than one of compensation to the owner of an active, impressionable brain, with a susceptible stomach possessing only moderate digestive capabilities sources altogether beyond the imagination of many a coarse feeder and capable digester. But it is not correct, and it is on all grounds undesirable, to regard the less powerful man as a sufferer from indigestion, that is, as liable to any complaint to be so termed. True indigestion, as a manifestation of diseased stomach, is comparatively quite rare, and I have not one word to say of it here, which would not be the fitting place if I had. Not one person in a hundred who complains of in digestion has any morbid affection of the organs engaged in assimilating his food. As commonly employed, the word "indigestion" denotes, not a disease, but an admonition. It means that the individual Indigestion, therefore, does not neces sarily, or indeed often, require medicine for its removal. Drugs, and especially small portions of alcoholic spirit, are often used for the purpose of stimulating the stomach temporarily to perform a larger share of work than by nature it is qualified to undertake; a course which is disad vantageous for the individual if persisted in. The effect on the stomach is that of the spur on the horse: it accelerates the pace, but "it takes it out" of the animal; and if the practice is long continued, shortens his natural term of efficiency. It is an erroneous idea that a simple form of dietary, such as the vegetable kingdom in the largest sense of the term furnishes, in conjunction with a moderate proportion of the most easily digested forms of animal food, may not be appetizing and agreeable to the palate. On the contrary I am prepared to maintain that it may be easily served in forms highly attractive, not only to the general but to a cultivated taste. A preference for the high flavors and stimulating scents peculiar to the flesh of verbetrate animals, mostly subsides after a fair trial of milder foods when supplied in variety. And it is an experience almost universally avowed, that the desire for food is keener, that the satisfaction in gratifying appetite is greater and more enjoyable, on the part of the general light feeder, than with the almost exclusively flesh-feeder. For this hotels without stint, alone suffice to blunt the inclination for food of one who, returning from daily occupation fatigued and fastidious, desires food easy of digestion, attractive in appearance, and unassociated with any element of a repulsive character. The light feeder knows nothing of the annoyances described, finds on his table that which is delightful to a palate sensitive to mild impressions, and indisposed to gross and over-powerful ones. After the meal is over, his wit is fresher, his temper more cheerful, and he takes his easy chair to enjoy fireside talk, and not to sink into a heavy slumber, which on awakening is but exchanged for a sense of discontent or stupidity. designation is applicable to almost all those who compose the middle-class population of this country. They consume little bread and few vegetables; all the savory dishes are of flesh, with decoctions of flesh alone for soup. The sweets are compounds of suet, lard, butter, eggs, and milk, with very small quantities of flour, rice, arrowroot, etc., which comprise all the vegetable constituents besides some fruit and sugar. Three-fourths at least of the nutrient matters consumed are from the animal kingdom. A reversal of the proportions named, that is, a fourth only from the latter source with three-fourths of vegetable produce, would furnish greater variety for the table, tend to maintain a clearer palate, increased zest for food, a The doctrine thus briefly and inadelighter and more active brain, and a better quately expounded in this paper may state of health for most people not en- probably encounter some opposition and gaged on the most laborious employments adverse criticism. I am quite content of active life. While even for the last that this should be so. Every proposal named, with due choice of material, ample which disturbs the current habits of the sustenance in the proportions named may time, especially when based on long prevbe supplied. For some inactive, sedenta-alent custom, infallibly encounters that ry, and aged persons the small proportion fate. But of the general truth, and hence of animal food indicated might be advanta- of the ultimate reception of the principles geously diminished. I am frequently told I have endeavored to illustrate, there canby individuals of sixty years and upwards not be the faintest doubt. And I know that they have no recollection of any pre- that this result, whenever it may be acvious period since reaching mature age, complished, will largely diminish the painat which they have possessed a keener ful affections which unhappily so often relish for food than that which they enjoy appear during the latter moiety of adult at least once or twice a day since they life. And having during the last few have adopted the dietary thus described; years widely inculcated such general diesuch appetite at all events as has rarely tetic principles and practice, with abunoffered itself during years preceding, dant grounds for my growing conviction when the choice of food was convention of their value, it appears to be a duty to ally limited to the unvarying progression call attention to them somewhat more and array of mutton and beef, in joint, emphatically than in preceding contribu chop, and steak, arriving after a strong tions already referred to. In so doing I meat soup, with a possible interlude of have expressly limited myself to statefish, and followed by puddings of which ments relating to those simple elementthe ingredients are chiefly derived from ary facts concerning our every-day life, animal sources. The penetrating odors which ought to be within the knowledge of meat cookery which announce their of every man, and therefore such as may presence by escape from the kitchen, and most fitly be set forth in a publication will pervade the air of other rooms in any outside of that field of special and techniprivate house but a large one, and which cal record which is devoted to professional are encountered in clubs, restaurants, and | observation and experience. END OF VOLUME CLXV. |