American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science Part 10

Persons who have a strong const.i.tution, and take much exercise, may eat almost any thing with apparent impunity; but young children who are forming their const.i.tutions, and persons who are delicate, and who take but little exercise, are very dependent for health on a proper selection of food.

It is found that there are some kinds of food which afford nutriment to the blood, and do not produce any other effect on the system. There are other kinds, which are not only nourishing, but _stimulating_, so that they quicken the functions of the organs on which they operate.

The condiments used in cookery, such as pepper, mustard, and spices, are of this nature. There are certain states of the system when these stimulants may be beneficial; such cases can only be pointed out by medical men.

Persons in perfect health, and especially young children, never receive any benefit from such kind of food; and just in proportion as condiments operate to quicken the labors of the internal organs, they tend to wear down their powers. A person who thus keeps the body working under an unnatural excitement, _live faster_ than Nature designed, and the const.i.tution is worn out just so much the sooner. A woman, therefore, should provide dishes for her family which are free from these stimulating condiments.

It is also found, by experience, that the lean part of animal food is more stimulating than vegetable. This is the reason why, in cases of fevers or inflammations, medical men forbid the use of meat. A person who lives chiefly on animal food is under a higher degree of stimulus than if his food was chiefly composed of vegetable substances. His blood will flow faster, and all the functions of his body will be quickened. This makes it important to secure a proper proportion of animal and vegetable diet. Some medical men suppose that an exclusively vegetable diet is proved, by the experience of many individuals, to be fully sufficient to nourish the body; and bring, as evidence, the fact that some of the strongest and most robust men in the world are those who are trained, from infancy, exclusively on vegetable food.

From this they infer that life will be shortened just in proportion as the diet is changed to more stimulating articles; and that, all other things being equal, children will have a better chance of health and long life if they are brought up solely on vegetable food.

But, though this is not the common opinion of medical men, they all agree that, in America, far too large a portion of the diet consists of animal food. As a nation, the Americans are proverbial for the gross and luxurious diet with which they load their tables; and there can be no doubt that the general health of the nation would be increased by a change in our customs in this respect. To take meat but once a day, and this in small quant.i.ties, compared with the common practice, is a rule, the observance of which would probably greatly reduce the amount of fevers, eruptions, headaches, bilious attacks, and the many other ailments which are produced or aggravated by too gross a diet.

The celebrated Roman physician, Baglivi, (who, from practicing extensively among Roman Catholics, had ample opportunities to observe,) mentions that, in Italy, an unusual number of people recover their health in the forty days of Lent, in consequence of the lower diet which is required as a religious duty. An American physician remarks, "For every reeling drunkard that disgraces our country, it contains one hundred gluttons--persons, I mean, who eat to excess, and suffer in consequence." Another distinguished physician says, "I believe that every stomach, not actually impaired by organic disease, will perform its functions, if it receives reasonable attention; and when we perceive the manner in which diet is generally conducted, both in regard to _quant.i.ty_ and _variety_ of articles of food and drink, which are mixed up in one heterogeneous ma.s.s--instead of being astonished at the prevalence of indigestion, our wonder must rather be that, in such circ.u.mstances, any stomach is capable of digesting at all."

In regard to articles which are the most easily digested, only general rules can be given. Tender meats are digested more readily than those which are tough, or than many kinds of vegetable food. The farinaceous articles, such as rice, flour, corn, potatoes, and the like, are the most nutritious, and most easily digested. The popular notion, that meat is more nourishing than bread, is a great mistake. Good bread contains more nourishment than butcher's meat. The meat is more _stimulating_, and for this reason is more readily digested.

A perfectly healthy stomach can digest almost any healthful food; but when the digestive powers are weak, every stomach has its peculiarities, and what is good for one is hurtful to another. In such cases, experiment alone can decide which are the most digestible articles of food. A person whose food troubles him must deduct one article after another, till he learns, by experience, which is the best for digestion.

Much evil has been done, by a.s.suming that the powers of one stomach are to be made the rule in regulating every other.

The most unhealthful kinds of food are those which, are made so by bad cooking; such as sour and heavy bread, cakes, pie-crust, and other dishes consisting of fat mixed and cooked with flour. Rancid b.u.t.ter and high-seasoned food are equally unwholesome. The fewer mixtures there are in cooking, the more healthful is the food likely to be.

There is one caution as to the _mode_ of eating which seems peculiarly needful to Americans. It is indispensable to good digestion, that food be well chewed and taken slowly. It needs to be thoroughly chewed and mixed with saliva, in order to prepare it for the action of the gastric juice, which, by the peristaltic motion, will be thus brought into contact with every one of the minute portions.

It has been found that a solid lump of food requires much more time and labor of the stomach for digestion than divided substances. It has also been found, that as each bolus, or mouthful, enters the stomach, the latter closes, until the portion received has had some time to move around and combine with the gastric juice, and that the orifice of the stomach resists the entrance of any more till this is accomplished. But, if the eater persists in swallowing fast, the stomach yields; the food is then poured in more rapidly than the organ can perform its duty of preparative digestion; and evil results are sooner or later developed. This exhibits the folly of those hasty meals, so common to travelers and to men of business, and shows why children should be taught to eat slowly.

After taking a full meal, it is very important to health that no great bodily or mental exertion be made till the labor of the stomach is over. Intense mental effort draws the blood to the head, and muscular exertions draw it to the muscles; and in consequence of this, the stomach loses the supply which it requires when performing its office.

When the blood with its stimulating effects is thus withdrawn from the stomach, the adequate supply of gastric juice is not afforded, and indigestion is the result. The heaviness which follows a full meal is the indication which Nature gives of the need of quiet. When the meal is moderate, a sufficient quant.i.ty of gastric juice is exuded in an hour, or an hour and a half; after which, labor of body and mind may safely be resumed.

When undigested food remains in the stomach, and is at last thrown out into the bowels, it proves an irritating substance, producing an inflamed state in the lining of the stomach and other organs.

It is found that the stomach has the power of gradually accommodating indigestive powers to the food it habitually receives. Thus, animals which live on vegetables can gradually become accustomed to animal food; and the reverse is equally true. Thus, too, the human stomach can eventually accomplish the digestion of some kinds of food, which, at first, were indigestible.

But any changes of this sort should be gradual; as those which are sudden are trying to the powers of the stomach, by furnishing matter for which its gastric juice is not prepared.

Extremes of heat or cold are injurious to the process of digestion.

Taking hot food or drink, habitually, tends to debilitate all the organs thus needlessly excited. In using cold substances, it is found that a certain degree of warmth in the stomach is indispensable to their digestion; so that, when the gastric juice is cooled below this temperature, it ceases to act. Indulging in large quant.i.ties of cold drinks, or eating ice-creams, after a meal, tends to reduce the temperature of the stomach, and thus to stop digestion. This shows the folly of those refreshments, in convivial meetings, where the guests are tempted to load the stomach with a variety such as would require the stomach of a stout farmer to digest; and then to wind up with ice- creams, thus lessening whatever ability might otherwise have existed to digest the heavy load. The fittest temperature for drinks, if taken when the food is in the digesting process, is blood heat. Cool drinks, and even ice, can be safely taken at other times, if not in excessive quant.i.ty. When the thirst is excessive, or the body weakened by fatigue, or when in a state of perspiration, large quant.i.ties of cold drinks are injurious.

Fluids taken into the stomach are not subject to the slow process of digestion, but are immediately absorbed and carried into the blood.

This is the reason why liquid nourishment, more speedily than solid food, restores from exhaustion. The minute vessels of the stomach absorb its fluids, which are carried into the blood, just as the minute extremities of the arteries open upon the inner surface of the stomach, and there exude the gastric juice from the blood.

When food is chiefly liquid, (soup, for example,) the fluid part is rapidly absorbed. The solid parts remain, to be acted on by the gastric juice. In the case of St. Martin, [Footnote: The individual here referred to--Alexis St. Martin--was a young Canadian, eighteen years of age, of a good const.i.tution and robust health, who, in 1822, was accidentally wounded by the discharge of a musket which: carried away a part of the ribs, lacerated one of two lobes of the lungs, and perforated the stomach, making a large aperture, which never closed; and which enabled Dr. Beaumont (a surgeon of the American army, stationed at Michilimackanac, under whose care the patient was placed) to witness all the processes of digestion and other functions of the body for several years.] in fifty minutes after taking soup, the fluids were absorbed, and the remainder was even thicker than is usual after eating solid food. This is the reason why soups are deemed bad for weak stomachs; as this residuum is more difficult of digestion than ordinary food.

Highly-concentrated food, having much nourishment in a small bulk, is not favorable to digestion, because it can not be properly acted on by the muscular contractions of the stomach, and is not so minutely divided as to enable the gastric juice to act properly. This is the reason why a certain _bulk_ of food is needful to good digestion; and why those people who live on whale-oil and other highly nourishing food, in cold climates, mix vegetables and even sawdust with it to make it more acceptable and digestible. So in civilized lands, fruits and vegetables are mixed with more highly concentrated nourishment.

For this reason also, soups, jellies, and arrow-root should have bread or crackers mixed with them. This affords another reason why coa.r.s.e bread, of unbolted wheat, so often proves beneficial. Where, from inactive habits or other causes, the bowels become constipated and sluggish, this kind of food proves the appropriate remedy.

One fact on this subject is worthy of notice. In England, under the administration of William Pitt, for two years or more there was such a scarcity of wheat that, to make it hold out longer, Parliament pa.s.sed a law that the army should have all their bread made of unbolted flour.

The result was, that the health of the soldiers improved so much as to be a subject of surprise to themselves, the officers, and the physicians. These last came out publicly and declared that the soldiers never before were so robust and healthy; and that disease had nearly disappeared from the army. The civic physicians joined and p.r.o.nounced it the healthiest bread; and for a time schools, families, and public inst.i.tutions used it almost exclusively. Even the n.o.bility, convinced by these facts, adopted it for their common diet, and the fashion continued a long time after the scarcity ceased, until more luxurious habits resumed their sway.

We thus see why children should not have cakes and candies allowed them between meals. Besides being largely carbonaceous, these are highly concentrated nourishments, and should be eaten with more bulky and less nourishing substances. The most indigestible of all kinds of food are fatty and oily substances, if heated. It is on this account that pie-crust and articles boiled and fried in fat or b.u.t.ter are deemed not so healthful as other food.

The following, then, may be put down as the causes of a debilitated const.i.tution from the misuse of food. Eating _too much,_ eating _too often,_ eating _too fast,_ eating food and condiments that are _too stimulating,_ eating food that is _too warm_ or _too cold,_ eating food that is _highly concentrated,_ without a proper admixture of less nourishing matter, and eating hot food that is _difficult of digestion._

X.

HEALTHFUL DRINKS.

There is no direction in which a woman more needs both scientific knowledge and moral force than in using her influence to control her family in regard to stimulating beverages.

It is a point fully established by experience that the full development of the human body and the vigorous exercise of all its functions can be secured without the use of stimulating drinks. It is, therefore, perfectly safe to bring up children never to use them, no hazard being incurred by such a course.

It is also found by experience that there are two evils incurred by the use of stimulating drinks. The first is, their positive effect on the human system. Their peculiarity consists in so exciting the nervous system that all the functions of the body are accelerated, and the fluids are caused to move quicker than at their natural speed. This increased motion of the animal fluids always produces an agreeable effect on the mind. The intellect is invigorated, the imagination is excited, the spirits are enlivened; and these effects are so agreeable that all mankind, after having once experienced them, feel a great desire for their repet.i.tion.

But this temporary invigoration of the system is always followed by a diminution of the powers of the stimulated organs; so that, though in all cases this reaction may not be perceptible, it is invariably the result. It may be set down as the unchangeable rule of physiology, that stimulating drinks deduct from the powers of the const.i.tution in exactly the proportion in which they operate to produce temporary invigoration.

The second evil is the temptation which always attends the use of stimulants. Their effect on the system is so agreeable, and the evils resulting are so imperceptible and distant, that there is a constant tendency to increase such excitement both in frequency and power. And the more the system is thus reduced in strength, the more craving is the desire for that which imparts a temporary invigoration. This process of increasing debility and increasing craving for the stimulus that removes it, often goes to such an extreme that the pa.s.sion is perfectly uncontrollable, and mind and body perish under this baleful habit.

In this country there are three forms in which the use of such stimulants is common; namely, _alcoholic drinks, opium mixtures_, and _tobacco_. These are all alike in the main peculiarity of imparting that extra stimulus to the system which tends to exhaust its powers.

Mult.i.tudes in this nation are in the habitual use of some one of these stimulants; and each person defends the indulgence by certain arguments:

First, that the desire for stimulants is a natural propensity implanted in man's nature, as is manifest from the universal tendency to such indulgences in every nation. From this, it is inferred that it is an innocent desire, which ought to be gratified to some extent, and that the aim should be to keep it within the limits of temperance, instead of attempting to exterminate a natural propensity.

This is an argument which, if true, makes it equally proper for not only men, but women and children, to use opium, brandy, or tobacco as stimulating principles, provided they are used temperately. But if it be granted that perfect health and strength can be gained and secured without these stimulants, and that their peculiar effect is to diminish the power of the system in exactly the same proportion as they stimulate it, then there is no such thing as a temperate use, unless they are so diluted as to destroy any stimulating power; and in this form they are seldom desired.

The other argument for their use is, that they are among the good things provided by the Creator for our gratification; that, like all other blessings, they are exposed to abuse and excess; and that we should rather seek to regulate their use than to banish them entirely.

This argument is based on the a.s.sumption that they are, like healthful foods and drinks, necessary to life and health, and injurious only by excess. But this is not true; for whenever they are used in any such strength as to be a gratification, they operate to a greater or less extent as stimulants; and to just such extent they wear out the powers of the const.i.tution; and it is abundantly proved that they are not, like food and drink, necessary to health. Such articles are designed for medicine and not for common use. There can be no argument framed to defend the use of one of them which will not justify women and children in most dangerous indulgences.

There are some facts recently revealed by the microscope in regard to alcoholic drinks, which every woman should understand and regard. It has been shown in a previous chapter that every act of mind, either by thought, feeling, or choice, causes the destruction of certain cells in the brain and nerves. It now is proved by microscopic science [Footnote: For those statements the writer is indebted to Maudsley, a recent writer on Microscopic Physiology.] that the kind of nutrition furnished to the brain by the blood to a certain extent decides future feelings, thoughts, and volitions. The cells of the brain not only abstract from the blood the healthful nutrition, but also are affected in shape, size, color, and action by unsuitable elements in the blood.

This is especially the case when alcohol is taken into the stomach, from whence it is always carried to the brain. The consequence is, that it affects the nature and action of the brain-cells, until a habit is formed which is _automatic_; that is, the mind loses the power of controlling the brain, in its development of thoughts, feelings, and choices as it would in the natural state, and is itself controlled by the brain. In this condition a real disease of the brain is created, called _oino-mania_, (see _Glossary_,) and the only remedy is total abstinence, and that for a long period, from the alcoholic poison. And what makes the danger more fearful is, that the brain-cells never are so renewed but that this pernicious stimulus will bring back the disease in full force, so that a man once subject to it is never safe except by maintaining perpetual and total abstinence from every kind of alcoholic drink. Dr. Day, who for many years has had charge of an inebriate asylum, states that he witnessed the dissection of the brain of a man once an inebriate, but for many years in practice of total abstinence, and found its cells still in the weak and unnatural state produced by earlier indulgences.

There has unfortunately been a difference of opinion among medical men as to the use of alcohol. Liebig, the celebrated writer on animal chemistry, having found that both sugar and alcohol were heat-producing articles of food, framed a theory that alcohol is burnt in the lungs, giving off carbonic acid and water, and thus serving to warm the body.

But modern science has proved that it is in the capillaries that animal heat is generated, and it is believed that alcohol lessens instead of increasing the power of the body to bear the cold. Sir John Koss, in his Arctic voyage, proved by his own experience and that of his men that cold-water drinkers could bear cold longer and were stronger than any who used alcohol.

Carpenter, a standard writer on physiology, says the objection to a habitual use of even small quant.i.ties of alcoholic drinks is, that "they are universally admitted to possess a poisonous character," and "tend to produce a morbid condition of body;" while "the capacity for enduring extremes of heat and cold, or of mental or bodily labor, is diminished rather than increased by their habitual employment."

Prof. J. Bigelow, of Harvard University, says, "Alcohol is highly stimulating, heating, and intoxicating, and its effects are so fascinating that when once experienced there is danger that the desire for them may be perpetuated."

Dr. Bell and Dr. Churchill, both high medical authorities, especially in lung disease, for which whisky is often recommended, come to the conclusion that "the opinion that alcoholic liquors have influence in preventing the deposition of tubercle is dest.i.tute of any foundation; on the contrary, their use predisposes to tubercular deposition." And "where tubercle exists, alcohol has no effect in modifying the usual course, neither does it modify the morbid effects on the system."

Prof. Youmans, of New-York, says: "It has been demonstrated that alcoholic drinks prevent the natural changes in the blood, and obstruct the nutritive and reparative functions." He adds, "Chemical experiments have demonstrated that the action of alcohol on the digestive fluid is to destroy its active principle, the _pepsin, thus confirming the observations of physiologists, that its use gives rise to serious disorders of the stomach and malignant aberration of the whole economy."

We are now prepared to consider the great principles of science, common sense, and religion, which should guide every woman who has any kind of influence or responsibility on this subject. It is allowed by all medical men that pure water is perfectly healthful and supplies all the liquid needed by the body; and also that by proper means, which ordinarily are in the reach of all, water can be made sufficiently pure.

It is allowed by all that milk, and the juices of fruits, when taken into the stomach, furnish water that is always pure, and that our bread and vegetable food also supply it in large quant.i.ties. There are besides a great variety of agreeable and healthful beverages, made from the juices of fruit, containing no alcohol, and agreeable drinks, such as milk, cocoa, and chocolate, that contain no stimulating principles, and which are nourishing and healthful.