DIGESTION AND FOOD.
THE WATER WE DRINK (p. l55).—Qualities of Pure Water.—"A good drinking water," says Dr. Simpson (in The Water We Drink), "should possess the following physical characters: it should be entirely free from color, taste, or odor; it should, moreover, be cool, well aerated, soft, bright, and entirely free from all deposit. But it should be remembered that a water having all these characteristics may yet be more or less polluted by organic matter, owing to the proximity of drains and sewers….Disease has frequently been traced to the use of perfectly bright and clear water, where there was no sediment, and where the animal organic matter was held in a state of solution."
In the case of diseases, such as typhoid, which attack the stomach, disease germs are removed along with the excreta; and if, as is often the case, the drainage of an infected town flows into a river, and that river is used in some after portion of its course as a water supply, there is great danger of such diseases being communicated. For, however well the water may be purified and filtered, we have no guarantee that it will not contain some of these disease germs, which are so small that they pass through the finest filters. It is in this way that almost all the great cholera and typhoid epidemics have spread.—Chambers's Journal.
Well Water Often Dangerous.—A densely crowded population soon impregnates the soil to some depth with filth, which drains into the water course below, especially if such water is near the surface. This surface water easily penetrates a loosely walled well. Every well, therefore, should not only be widely separated from barnyards, cesspools, pens, sinks, and similar places, but should be made water-tight with cement, so that nothing can reach its interior except water that has been filtered through dense beds of unpolluted ground below. If these precautions are neglected, the best and deepest well may become continually contaminated by infiltration from the surrounding surface. This impure water, even when not used for family drinking, is sometimes supplied to cows, or used for washing dairy pans, or employed in diluting milk for the market, and there are many known cases in which disease has thus been disseminated. Thus, an epidemic of typhoid fever in Cambridge, Mass., was definitely traced to a dairy which supplied the victims with milk. Upon investigation it was found that a short time before there had been a typhoid patient in the farmhouse, and that the well from which water was taken to wash the milk pans had become contaminated with the specific poison brought into it from the surrounding drainage.
All suspected water should be thoroughly boiled before using it to drink. Some physicians insist that the boiling should continue for one or two hours in order entirely to destroy the bacterial germs. The heaviness and insipidity incident to boiled water may be somewhat relieved by afterward filtering it. Filtering, of itself, however, will do little toward ridding the water of microbes, which are much too minute to be arrested by the ordinary apparatus.—When journeying, where one must often take a hasty meal at a railway station, drink hot water in preference to cold. A convenient portable filter may be arranged with a bottle of powdered charcoal, and a piece of filtering paper. A traveler by briskly stirring a tablespoonful of the charcoal into a pint of water, allowing it to stand five or ten minutes, and then filtering it through the paper, may venture to relieve his thirst in almost any part of the country.
Water an Absorbent of Foul Gases.—If a pitcher of water be left uncovered in an occupied apartment for only a few hours, it will become foul from the absorption of the respired and perspired gases in the room. The colder the water, the greater the capacity to contain these gases. Water kept in a room over night is therefore unfit for drinking, and should not be used even to brush the teeth or to gargle in the throat.
Impure Ice, a Breeder of Disease.—We generally take the purity of our ice for granted, and, like the alligator in the bayou, close our mouths and swallow it. In the country, I have seen during the ice- harvesting season, wagon after wagon passing me on the road, laden with ice that had been collected from canals, rivers, and streams receiving sewerage, and from ponds that are in the summer time reeking with slime, and often offensive from the quantity of decomposed vegetable and animal matter brought in by the washing from the meadow. These streams would be shunned as a source of water supply.
Should you interview a native regarding the slimy mud puddle before you, called Mr. So-and-so's private "ice pond," he would say that "in winter it is much better, and when frozen, you know, it makes fine ice," presenting that popular though ignorant belief that while in the act of crystallizing, water rids itself of all its injurious qualities, however offensive it may be in its liquid state. Unfortunately, there is enough truth in the current idea of the elimination of noxious and foreign matter during the process of freezing to give color to the popular belief, but not enough to make it a safe reliance; therefore all means should be used to enlighten the public regarding this subject. Experiment has shown that freezing produces little change or effect in overcoming the poisonous influences, and ice has often served as a vehicle to convey the germs of typhoid and other low forms of fever. Pure ice can be procured only from water free from impurities, and ice for domestic or surgical purposes should never be collected from ponds or streams which contain animal or vegetable refuse, or stagnant and muddy material.—Journal of Reconstructives, Oct., 1887.
THE GLANDULAR COAT OF THE STOMACH, AND HOW IT WEEPS (p. l62).—While the food is thus being continually moved about, it is at the same time subjected to the action of the chemical sac. This is, as we have said, a glandular sac. It is of some thickness, and is made of little glands bound up together with that stringy fibrous packing material which anatomists call connective tissue.
If we were to imagine many gross of small India-rubber vials all placed side by side, and bound together with hay or straw into a great mat, and the mat rolled up into a sac, with all the mouths of the vials turned inward, we should have a large and coarse, but tolerably fair image of the glandular coat of the stomach. Each vial would then represent one of the glands of this coat, one of the gastric or peptic glands, as they are called. Each gland, however, is not always a simple tube, but is often branched at the bottom end, and all of them are lined, except just at their mouths, with large rounded bodies, which not unfrequently almost choke up their cavity.
FIG. 72.
[Illustration: BRANCHED GASTRIC GLAND a. The peptic cells. b. The inert cells.]
The rounded masses, or cells, as they are called, in the interior of each gland, form the really active part of the apparatus. Each cell is a little laboratory, which concocts out of the material brought to it or near it by the blood a certain potent, biting fluid, and is hence called a peptic or digestive cell. Each cell is born at the bottom of the tube, and in process of time travels upward toward the mouth. When it reaches the mouth, it bursts, and pours into the stomach the fluid it has elaborated, or perhaps may give it out without bursting, while it is still within its tube.
In those cases in which it has been possible to look in upon the stomach while at work (as in the famous case of Alexis St. Martin), and where the orifices of the tiny glands (for though we have compared them to bottles, they are exceedingly small) appear like little dots, tears were seen to start at the mouths of the glands, gather into drops, and finally trickle down into the lowest part of the stomach. The stomach, as it were, weeps, and indeed the weeping of tears is just such another effect of glandular activity—only ordinary tears form a mild and, chemically speaking, impotent fluid; while the fluid which the tears of the stomach weep—the gastric juice—is a sharp, piercing water of excessive chemical power.—Hinton.
POISONOUS MILK, CHEESE, AND ICE CREAM (p. l69).—In late years there have been many cases of poisoning by ice cream, cheese, and milk. The poisonous principle sometimes developed in these articles of food has been made a subject of special investigation, and it has been found to be due to natural causes. Dr. Vaughan, of Michigan, after spending several months in experimenting upon samples of twelve different cheeses, which had caused three hundred cases of poisoning, finally succeeded in isolating certain poison crystals, which he calls Tyrotoxicon. He says: "A few drops of an aqueous solution of these crystals placed upon the tongue produces all the symptoms observed in those who had been made sick by eating of the cheese. This was tried repeatedly upon myself, and upon some of my students who kindly offered themselves for experimentation." Dr. Vaughan afterward procured the poison crystals from milk which had stood some months in a closed bottle, and also from a sample of ice cream by which eighteen persons had been made ill. It was learned in the latter case that the custard, of which the ice cream was made, had been allowed to stand in a foul atmosphere for two hours before it was frozen. By placing small bits of this poisonous cream in good milk, and allowing it to stand twenty-four hours, the whole became vitiated. This proved that the poison is due to the growth of some ferment. In the autumn of 1886, many persons in different hotels at Long Branch were poisoned by milk obtained from a certain milkman. In this case it was found that the cows were milked at noon, the warm milk being immediately placed in cans and carted eight miles during the warmest part of the day, in a very hot month. In June, 1887, nineteen persons in New York city were similarly poisoned by milk which also came from one dairy. Many of these persons had narrow escapes from death. These, and many other like instances, teach us the importance of the greatest care in every detail of milk handling. A little dried milk formed along the seam of a tin pail, or any similar lodging place, may be the starting point of poison generation. A month after his first experiments with the ice cream mentioned above, Dr. Vaughan put small pieces of the dried custard in pans of milk, and afterward made custard from this milk. This yielded tyrotoxicon as before, showing the tenacious vitality of the poison, and also explaining the fact that the precise cause of poisoning is in many cases so difficult to trace.
FISH AS FOOD (p. 169).—It is not desirable that fish should be the sole kind of nitrogenous food eaten by any nation; and even if milk and eggs be added thereto, the vigor of such a people will not be equal to that of flesh-eating nations. At the same time, the value of fish as a part of a dietary is indicated by the larger proportion of phosphorus which it contains, and which renders it especially fitted for the use of those who perform much brain work, or who are the victims of much anxiety and distress.—EDWARD SMITH, in "Foods."
For the mentally exhausted, the worried, the "nervous," and the distressed in mind, fish is not simply a food; it acts as physic. The brain is nourished by it, the "nerves"—to use the term in its popular sense—are "quieted"; the mind grows stronger, the temper less irritable, and the whole being healthier and happier when fish is substituted for butcher's meat….I find persons who are greatly excited, even to the extent of seeking to do violence to themselves or to those around them, who can not sleep, and who are in an agony of irritability, become composed and contented when fed almost exclusively on fish. In such cases I have withdrawn butter, milk, eggs, and all the varieties of warm-blooded animal food; and, carefully noting the weight and strength, I find no diminution of either, while fish is supplied in such quantities as fully to satisfy the appetite.—J. MORTIMER GRANVILLE, M.D., "Fish as Food and Physic."
COFFEE AND TEA (p. 170).—Besides the alkaloid Caffeine which coffee contains, it also develops, in roasting, a volatile oil called Caffeone, to which is due its characteristic aroma. The main effects of coffee are due to both the caffeine and the caffeone, which are antagonistic, though not contemporaneous, in action. The volatile oil reduces arterial tension, allows a brisker flow of blood, and so increases the rapidity of the heart's action. It also acts upon the brain, and intellectual faculties in general; keeps one awake, and his mind clear. Caffeine, on the other hand, like digitalis, produces a high arterial tension, and slows the heart beat. It exerts its chief effect upon the spinal cord, to which, like strychnia, it is an excitant. The shaking hand of the inveterate coffee drinker is caused by caffeine. Thus a cup of coffee produces on the drinker a double effect,—of the oil and the alkaloid; the former sooner and transient, the latter later and lasting….Coffee is not in itself nutritious to any marked degree; but it saves food, and also maintains life, by its exhilarating effect upon the nervous system. It is an excellent antidote to opium, producing the wakefulness that antagonizes the narcotic sleep of the drug; is now and then curative of sick headache, and is one of the standard remedies for certain forms of nausea.
To the chemist, Tea is much the same thing as coffee. It contains considerably more tannin, a volatile oil, and an alkaloid (theine) indistinguishable from caffeine. That the injurious effects of overdoses are due as much to the volatile oil as to the alkaloid, is shown by the fact that tea packers are made ill by long breathing of air filled with it, and that tea tasters in China, who avoid swallowing the infusion, can endure their trade but a few years, and leave the country with shattered nerves.
Probably every one numbers among his friends women who are actual slaves of the tea habit, and who would find tea as hard to forsake as men find tobacco. It is not unlikely that the functional cardiac disorder, often spoken of as the "tobacco heart," due to nervous derangement, and accompanied by palpitation and pain in the cardiac region, is more often due to tea than tobacco. In fact, the disorders induced by excessive tea drinking have been grasped as a special disease, to which has been given the name of Theism. This includes a train of symptoms, usually progressive, loss of appetite, pain after meals, headache, constipation, palpitation, cardiac distress, hysterical manifestations, dizziness, and paresis.—DR. MAURICE D. CLARKE, Popular Science News.
Tea drinkers, as a rule, express doubts as regards the correctness of alleged poisonous properties of tea. Numerous instances of individuals of this class have been noticed who were themselves suffering from tea poisoning. Their nerves were in a deplorably abnormal condition, the heart and brain were functionally disturbed, and the sleep less in quantity and less refreshing than it should be….One's opinion of the physical disturbances which may be caused by rum, tobacco, or tea, are not worth much, when the opinion comes from a victim of the excessive use of these agents.
The tannin found in tea does not differ from that found in oak and other barks which the tanners use to convert the raw hides of animals into leather. It is a powerful astringent, which accounts for some of the peculiar physical evils to which confirmed tea drinkers are subject.
Theine does not differ essentially from Cocaine (see p. 223). They both produce exaltation of the nervous system and increased powers of physical endurance. The brain is largely influenced in its functions, and long periods of wakefulness are induced. Continued use of strong infusions of either coca or tea result in great disturbance of nervous centers and functional offices, and either will produce fatal results by persistent use of inordinate quantities.
A cup of tea as served at tea tables contains usually only a trace of the alkaloidal principle, but infinitesimal quantities are capable of exerting baneful effects upon some tea drinkers….Poisons act in a variety of ways, some slowly, and without producing pain; others act violently, and with speedy, fatal results. Inasmuch as we do not observe a very large number of clearly proved cases of acute poisoning by tea, we must conclude that it is characteristically a slow poison, and also that its influence is unlike in different individuals….Four or six cups of tea, however, taken during each twenty-four hours, will in time produce tea poisoning, and greater or less evil effects.
Tea is well enough, when its use is kept under absolute, intelligent control; but if it becomes master in any case, then it must be promptly abandoned, for danger attends the intemperate tea drinker every hour of his life. Those advanced in life crave its stimulating effects, and it is well for them to use it in moderation; but the young should abstain from it entirely.—Abridged from "Tea Poisoning," by DR. NICHOLS, in Popular Science News, December, 1887.
CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF INDIGESTION (p. l72).—When a light breakfast is eaten, a solid meal is requisite in the middle of the day. If the digestive organs are left too long unemployed, they secrete an excess of mucus, which greatly interferes with their normal functions. One meal has a direct influence on the next; and a poor breakfast leaves the stomach over-active for dinner. This is the secret of much excess in eating. The point to bear in mind is that not to eat a sufficiency at one meal makes you too hungry for the next; and that when you are too hungry, you are apt to overload the stomach, and to give the gastric juices more to do than they have the power to perform.
To eat too often, and to eat irregularly, are other sources of indigestion. People who dine at uncertain hours, and eat one meal too quickly on the last, must expect the stomach to retaliate in the long run. A very fruitful cause of dyspepsia is imperfect mastication. We remember one old gentleman who used always to warn young people on this point by saying: "Remember you have no teeth in your stomach." Nervous people nearly always eat fast, and as nearly always are the victims of nervous irritability, produced by dyspepsia….To sit much in a stooping posture interferes with the stomach's action. Well-marked dyspepsia has been traced to sitting immediately after dinner in a low armchair, so that the body was curved forward, and the stomach compressed….
The skin, core, and kernels of fruit should be avoided. Some people are not able to digest raw apples; and dyspepsia has been sometimes greatly aggravated by eating pears. The latter fruit, in its ripest state, contains an abundance of gritty material, which, as it can not be separated in the mouth, on being swallowed irritates the mucous membrane….
Of food itself, bear in mind that hot meat is more digestible than cold; the flesh of full-grown animals than that of young ones; that land birds are more digestible than waterfowl; wild animals than domestic ones; and that in game, newly killed birds are easier of digestion than those which have been kept a long time.—Hints to Dyspeptics, Chambers's Journal.
HOW FOOD DEVELOPS ENERGY (p. 173).—It may appear strange that the small amount of food we eat should suffice to carry our large and bulky bodies through all the varied movement of the day. But this difficulty disappears at once, when we recollect how large an amount of dormant energy can be laid by in a very small piece of matter. A lump of coal no bigger than one's fist, if judiciously employed, will suffice to keep a small toy engine at work for a considerable time. Now, our food is matter containing large amounts of dormant energy, and our bodies are engines so constructed as to utilize all the energy to the best advantage. A single gramme of beef fat if completely burned (that is, if every atom unites with oxygen), is capable of developing more than 9,000 heat units; and each heat unit, if employed to perform mechanical work, is capable of lifting a weight of one gramme to a height of 424 meters; or, what comes to the same thing, 424 grammes to a height of one meter. Accordingly, the energy contained in one gramme of beef, and the oxygen with which it unites, would be sufficient to raise the little bit of fat itself to a height of 3,816 kilometers, or almost as high as the distance from London to New York.— GRANT ALLEN in "Why do we Eat our Dinner?"
Danger of Too High Pressure.—A prudent fire engineer, when his water hose is old and weak, would not try to force as much water as he could into it. No; to prevent a rupture he would work it at a low pressure. But men seldom think of carrying out the same simple mechanical principle when there is reason to believe that the vessels of the brain are getting weak and brittle. They eat and drink just as much as they feel inclined to, and sometimes a little more. With a good digestion, nearly all they consume is converted into blood, to the yet further distention of vessels already over-distended. This high-pressure style of living produces high-pressure results. Its effects were painfully illustrated by the death of Charles Dickens. The brain work he performed was immense; he lived generously, taking his wine as he did his meat, with a liberal hand. He disregarded the signs of structural decay, forcing his reluctant brain to do what it had once done with spontaneous ease, until all at once, under a greater tension than ordinary, a weak vessel gave way, flooding the brain with blood.—J. R. BLACK, M.D., in "Apoplexy," Popular Science Monthly, April, 1875.
Evils of Gluttony.—"Is it not strange," says Dr. Hunt, "how people, even the most considerate, will trifle with their stomachs? Many a person seems to prefer taking medicine to avoiding it by a proper regulation of the appetite. You may stuff the stomach to the full, year after year, but as sure as effects follow causes, so sure will you reap the accumulating penalty." A physician of extensive practice declares that he has never lived through a Christmas or Thanksgiving without frequently being consulted for ailments produced by excessive eating. He says: "It would seem as if multitudes thought they had a gluttonous license once a year, and that the most appropriate method of expressing gratitude, was by stuffing the stomach. Excessive eating produces scrofula. Surfeiting among children results in mental stupidity and unmanageable temper….I am acquainted with a family, in which about the average amount of stuffing is indulged. To my expostulations, the mother has replied: "I may not be able to give my children as much education as some folks, and I may not be able to give them any property, but as long as we can get it, they shall have what they want to eat. I have spoken of their black teeth, bad breath, eruptions, and frequent sickness. "Yes," she has replied, "I know all that, but would you have me stop them before their appetites are half satisfied, and tell them, 'there, that is all you can have'? No; as long as I can get it, my children shall have enough to eat; it never shall be said that I have starved them." This indulgence of children to the full extent of their undiscriminating appetites is extreme folly and genuine unkindness. Pampered with a variety of dishes, they eat enormously, which engenders a craving for another large meal, and so on—their youthful and elastic constitutions enabling them to bear the excess without immediate serious injury. Let them be confined to one or two plain dishes at a meal, and the quantity be determined for them; it will then be found that a growing child does not need to be stuffed, and that his appetite will soon become reasonable; and if the food be plain, and mostly or entirely vegetable, it will soon be observed that the child's teeth are whiter, its breath sweeter, its skin clearer, its tongue cleaner, its eyes brighter, its sleep quieter, its brains sharper, and its temper more amiable. There are few changes in the management of children which would prove so beneficial as that from the present mode of cramming with a multitude of rich foods, to a plain vegetable diet, eaten in regular and moderate quantities.—DIO LEWIS, in Weak Lungs, and How to Make them Strong.
REGULAR PHYSICAL HABITS (p. 177).—Constipation lies at the root of a host of chronic ailments, which seem especially to beset American women. Impaired blood, nervous excitability, sick headaches, mental depression, sleeplessness, and a long train of untold sufferings may be directly traced to this physical sin. We say sin, for in the large majority of instances this habit may be prevented; or, if already formed, may, by proper attention, be cured. The principal causes which lead to this deplorable state of the system are:
1. Errors in Food.
2. Errors in Exercise.
3. Inattention to Nature's laws.
Errors in Food have much to do with the evil in question. Our diet is, in general, too concentrated. We indulge ourselves with animal food two or three times a day, accompanying it with spices, condiments, greasy gravies, fine wheat bread, and a sparse amount of vegetables. We wind up our dinners with rich and heavy pastry, and our luncheons or our suppers with sugared sweetmeats and that indigestible compound often offered under the name of cake. A few cups of strong tea intensify the error. Coffee has a less astringent effect, and therefore can not be so severely arraigned for this particular consequence. When we think what delicious meals can be enjoyed from any of the cereals, well cooked, and taken with milk or cream, bread from unbolted flour, plenty of unsugared fruit, and pure rain or spring water, filtered and cooled or taken hot, with or without milk, we wonder that so many people consent day after day to use greasy pork, fried steaks, fried potatoes, hot biscuit, and in many cases poorly made coffee and tea. These are the people who make up the grand army of sallow- faced sufferers upon which the venders of patent pills and nauseous compounds thrive.
A wise mother will not allow mere culinary convenience to take precedence of the requirements of health. She will study the peculiar physical needs of each one of her children, that she may provide for each the food best suited to his or her constitution. This is not a difficult matter. "Water, not only by itself, but in some of its combinations," says Dr. Oswald, "is an effective aperient; in watermelons, and whey, for instance, but still more in conjunction with a dish of peas, or beans. No constipation can long withstand the suasion of a dose of pea soup, or baked beans, flavored with a modicum of brown butter, and glorified with a cup of cold spring water. Moreover, the aperient effect thus produced is not followed by an astringent reaction, as in the case of drugs,—the cure, once effected, is permanent."
Errors in Exercise may lie in two directions, and overexertion, viz., exercise carried to the point of nervous exhaustion, is as mischievous in its effect as is the other extreme. A too long walk, for instance, may cause the very evil it is intended to cure.
As a rule, however, sedentary habits are chargeable with the greater share of influence in this unhappy state of the system. Light gymnastics within doors, a brisk walk or horseback ride without, both taken in garments suspended from the shoulders, and devoid of all constriction so that the abdominal viscera can partake in the general movement of the body, are advisable. For invalids or those incapacitated for active exercise, friction or massage treatment daily, including a vigorous kneading of the abdomen, or a relaxation of the entire muscles of the body with especial thought directed to the desired result, are often of great service.
Inattention to Physical Laws is perhaps the prime culprit. Nature always inclines to regularity, and when we do not respect her dictates, we invite the retribution which, sooner or later, she invariably inflicts. The elimination of waste from the system is an imperative necessity, and whenever it is thwarted, evil must and will follow. Aside from the avoidance of positive discomforts, suffering, and disease, there is the not unimportant consideration of bodily elasticity and a fine complexion. Let every young woman who would possess and retain a fair, delicate complexion, remember that the most important factor in its formation and retention is a clean system.
Proper diet, plenty of fruits, plenty of wholesome drink, enough exercise to send the blood pleasurably bounding through the veins, followed up and enforced by prompt recognition of the immutable laws of Health in this as well as all other organic functions, will soon work a reform that could not be so successfully effected by all the drugs in Christendom.—E. B. S.