Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, fifth series, no. 135, vol. III, July 31, 1886

No. 135.—Vol. III.
Price 1½ d.
SATURDAY, JULY 31, 1886.
Hygeia, the Goddess of Health, receives many rebuffs. She has numbers of followers, who pretend to listen to her teachings, but who do not quite understand her. She is a very simple and sweet goddess, and it would do us all good to put ourselves under her gentle training for a few of the hot weeks of summer. She would be pleased with our patronage, although she is a reputed Pagan goddess. She is no worse for that, as long as she is practical and poetical and teaches us how to make ourselves comfortable. Oh, these reeking hot days of July! I fear we break the commandments of the goddess by feeding too largely upon them. I am ashamed to own that I have been regaling myself not wisely but too well upon some of the hottest foods within reach, merely because I liked them. I have dined, and am growing hotter and hotter, in consequence of the dishes which appetite and not reason selected.
Whilst ruminating over a pipe on the evening of one of the dog-days, the thermometer being above eighty degrees in the shade, I have wondered what the goddess Hygeia would have done, and what she would have recommended, under the circumstances, for purposes of health and comfort. She wouldn’t have eaten roast duck, I know; but how would she have combated the fierce heat, by way of keeping herself cool? Would she have swallowed haggis and cockaleekie in North Britain, ham and beef in Yorkshire, and tripe and onions in London? Not a bit of it. Hygeia had too much respect for herself as a goddess to indulge in such plebeian and delusive dainties in hot weather.
I can just see her in a scornful attitude, on the top of a marble column such as Alma Tadema loves to paint—she waves her hand over the smoking viands our good cooks are sending up for our delectation. She preaches abstention in a way that makes one feel creepy, as her words seem to come down from the cold marble. She is commanding her followers to keep cool with milk and water, and grapes and strawberries, and to leave all the alcohol and wine and beer for other occasions. I beg Hygeia’s pardon, and shall renounce heat-producers on hot days in future, although they are very good, and like everything else, unfortunately, what dyspeptics like best.