DIET.
The other, and, unfortunately, most numerous class, know how sadly they have fallen from their first estate. There was a time with them when they never dreamed that their stomachs were not as strong as a cider-mill, and could grind anything and everything which their greedy natures and careless habits desired. There is no other living animal, except it be the hog, that can eat and tolerate just the same variety of materials, cooked and raw, as man. Their tastes and habits are strikingly alike, it must be confessed, and their ends are not unlike; both die untimely deaths, with this difference, one is in due time killed, while the other, in equally due time, usually kills himself, the advantage being in favor of the porker, since his career, if brief, is, also, to the limit, blissful.
The habits of men are a curious mixture of sense and the want of it. Endowed with some of the highest attributes, and yet forgetting that they are anything beyond the veriest machines. They who leap from docks and bridges are not the only suicides. These shock the world, and are not uncommonly denied the last kindly offices of the church, while the slower suicides are borne triumphantly from the chancel within to that without—all turning on methods, and that is, indeed, important. Method in living should receive our earliest and best attention. All need to become good methodists, especially in some senses of that word.
The English men and women are the most systematic in their habits of living; and, as a natural result, they are remarkably robust. They take ample time in which to eat. An hour at dinner is as little time as they customarily allow, while those who can, often devote much more. They eat slowly, and talk a great deal, and laugh much, and by the time they have done they are fairly red in the face, and keep so pretty much all the time; and it is as healthy a sign as one can hang out. Good digestion waits on appetite with them, and they grow stout and formidable. They not only eat slow, but they know what to eat and what makes good blood. Suppose every Englishman could be sent into France and obliged to live on French cooking; does any one suppose they would remain the same people they now are? Not a bit of it. Take from John Bull his roast beef, and mode of eating it, and you change the character of the race inside of a century. They must have their favorite dish, and about as often as a friend of ours, Dr. M——, who, by the way, is a good type of an Englishman, and enjoys the things of this world much more than is common with Americans. On asking M—— how often he indulged in roast beef, he replied, that about three hundred and sixty-five times in the year was his rule! Invalids may be assured it was not a bad one. Of course, he took a great deal of active exercise, seldom using a horse while engaged in the practice of his profession.
Consumptives, and those who are generally debilitated and who need a fresh stock of good blood, cannot do better than confine themselves, so far as meats are concerned, to beef and mutton. The latter should be well cooked, while the former ought to be eaten rare done. If it is at first distasteful in this manner, proceed by degrees, and by-and-by it will grow in favor; but commence with it rare at the outset, when possible. Whether roasted or broiled, beef should not be cooked as to destroy all its natural color. Let the inside show some of the blood, the more the better, and the quicker it is assimilated to the needs of the system. General Rawlins, the late secretary of war, died of consumption, but his life was prolonged many months by the use of rare and even raw beef. He came to like it better raw than in any other way. Once a day is, perhaps, as often as may be required; much, however, depends on the amount of exercise taken. Wild game is likewise good, especially venison, and where that can be had, beef and mutton may be dispensed with. Fish and eggs furnish a variety to the invalid's diet, and such vegetables as are liked may be indulged, of course. Never eat but of one kind of meat at any one meal, and not over two kinds of vegetables, with wholesome, fresh bread (Graham preferred), and the coarser the better. Insist on having coarse bread; let it be made of unbolted meal. As for drinks, a single cup of very weak tea or coffee, diluted chiefly with milk, will not harm. A glass of milk is better in warm weather, if it agrees. Let water alone, except it is that which the system has become familiarized with; then, half a glass is preferable to a larger quantity at meals. Sousing the stomach at meal-time with a cold douche is only harmful. After the food has had time to digest and pass out of the stomach, then, if one is a great water-drinker, take a glass, or so much of a glass as you think is required, and it will be of benefit. Make the heartiest meal come at noon, and eat a light supper at night, using bread and butter for the most part.
Things to be remembered and observed in eating, are slowness and thorough mastication; never wash your food down with any drink. Talk and laugh, taking as much time to do this as you do to eat. A noted humorist says that "every time a man laughs he takes a kink out of the chain of life, and thus lengthens it." That is true philosophy, and it is little understood by our nervous, rushing people. We grin and snicker enough, at ourselves and others, but downright hearty laughter is a stranger to the most of us. It should be cultivated till, in an honest way, it supplants, at least, the universal snicker. There is both comfort and health in rousing peals of laughter.
Things to be avoided in eating, are hot, fresh baked breads of all kinds; also avoid all manner of pies as you would a pestilence, likewise cakes, of every description; they are the crowning curse. Women will make it and children will cry for it, probably, for all the generations to come, as they have in the past. But more truthful epitaphs should be inscribed over them than is now done. It is strange how fashion rules in diet as in dress. Why, the Koohinoor diamond of Victoria is not more valued than is a steady supply of poundcake by most of women and children. We know of a family who make it a boast that they, when young, had all they wanted; which either implies their mother to have been unwisely indulgent, or else the children to have been over-clamorous. It certainly does not imply wealth, and, least of all, culture, for the poorest families have usually the largest display of these things, while those with enlarged means and sense dispense with them out of good judgment.
Travelling on the cars, a short time since, we had for a companion a shrewd Yankee who had the honor to be postmaster of his city, and at the same time was engaged in the boot and shoe trade; one of those stirring men who, if he did not possess genius, had its nearest kin—activity, and illustrated the fact that a man might do two things well at one and the same time. He gave us samples of human nature which is quite apropos to the general subject. In discussing the eccentricities of merchandising, he said that usually wealthy customers entering his store would ask to see his cheaper class of boots, such as would do service, "honest material, but not the most expensive," and from that class would make their selections; but, whenever parties entered whose means were known to him to be limited, and yet whose "pride of family" and personal vanity were in increased ratio to their decreased capital, he never ventured even to suggest the class of goods taken by the wealthy, lest offense be given. His rule was to show to such his very best goods first. They wished to display "a notch above their betters." And so with the cake question. Some of even the poorest families of New Englanders doubtless eat more of this material than does the Royal family of England, if it could but be known.
There remains yet another article of food to be proscribed. We refer to the pork question. All ought to be good Jews on this subject. Their prohibition is, we believe, founded on the intrinsic unhealthfulness of the thing itself. Its use is universal in this country, and in the South it forms the chief meat diet. This latter fact comes of their mode of agriculture more than original preference. They devoted all labor to cotton growing, and had their meat and grain to buy. The question with the planter in laying in his supplies was what would go farthest, at a given price, as food for his slaves. Bacon and flour were always found to answer the economic query best. The West furnished bountiful supplies, and readily floated these products to a market, where competition was not only not thought of, but entirely out of the question. Cattle and sheep raising (outside of Texas) had no growth or encouragement among them. The planters soon fell into the habit of using bacon on their own tables, and the result is, it has continued to form the staple article for all classes there for several generations. The darkies have rather flourished upon it, while the whites have suffered greatly in consequence.
Its use undeniably produces scrofula, salt-rheum, tetter, ringworm, humors in the blood, rheumed eyes, enlarged glands, sore eyes, and lastly, cancer. Almost any community in the South will afford several examples of one or all of these diseases, and all directly traceable to the excessive use of salt pork. In a somewhat sparsely settled neighborhood near Central Georgia, known as Social Circle, a dozen cases of cancer alone can, in one form or another, be found, and that is one of the most salubrious sections in all the southern country.
They have become so enamored of "hog and hominy," that they are fairly superstitious or foolish regarding the use of some other kinds of meat. For instance, mutton, in any form, they are disgusted with as a rule. We tried to get at the reason while sojourning there, but never fairly succeeded, though the impression was, plainly, that they did not think it proper food for white people anyway, and then the "odor was so disgusting," and altogether it was only fit for "trash folks." We scarce hope to be believed when we state, that we have seen young ladies refuse to sit at the table where this dish was served, and served, too, out of compliment to their guests from the North.
This same feeling was largely shared by the colored people, and, while it was no infrequent thing for the "smoke-house"—where the bacon was kept—to be broken open in ante-war times, taking the risk of detection and dogs, it was almost an unheard-of occurrence that a sheep was stolen. They roamed, what few there were, at will and unharmed, except by dogs and wild beasts—the special benefit accruing to their owners being simply the wool. During and since the war, matters have been undergoing a change, and sheep raising is receiving more attention, and beginning to be valued as an article of food. Still, during weeks last winter, the Atlanta markets did not show a single carcass of mutton, notwithstanding the great extent of country tributary to it by means of her railways.
This change above referred to, while of slow growth, is, in part, owing to the example our troops set, the experience of their prisoners, their straitened circumstances, and lastly, to the infusion of Northern society among them.
While there are undoubtedly tenfold more of those diseases in the South consequent on the use of pork, than what there is at the North, yet its consumption is vastly in excess with us of what it should be. There is no doubt of this. Scrofula, salt-rheum, and ophthalmia, are among the chief developments at the North. At the North greater and better variety of food among all classes is in use, to say nothing of better cooking, which wards off some of the worst results.
The natural tendency is to greater use of pork in the more northern than in the Southern States, since the climate would seem to call for it; but we have shown its use at the South to be the result of circumstances more than of original preference and probable inclination, since all peoples of low latitudes, of a high standard of civilization, elect a lighter diet than those of cooler climates.
There are some who declaim against the use of any and all kinds of meat for food, and advocate a purely vegetable diet. There is much that can be said in its favor, and it ought, with fruits, to form at least two of the three daily meals. The system would be in better tone, and the mind as well. But there are extremes in all things, and these sometimes govern the conduct of men. A happy medium is usually the best, and for our climate, we believe the use of the right kinds of meat to be not only healthful but eminently proper. The natural law aids to this conclusion. We see the people of the tropics indulging largely in fruit, which an allwise Providence has placed there and adapted to their wants; again, at the poles the inhabitants live almost wholly on the fat of animals—a half-dozen tallow candles being eaten at a meal, when supplied by strangers. The intense cold requires this heavy fuel to supply the needed heat and comfort. What would an exclusive vegetable diet be worth to them, exposed as they are? With us, lying between the two extremes, with a climate and country abounding in both fruits and animals, with seasons of cold and heat in nearly equal extremes, it seems quite rational that a mixed diet, regulated by common-sense rules, is the best. Certainly the highest civilization to which man has yet attained is found in the temperate zones, where neither the one nor the other extreme in diet has obtained.
A manifest advantage and improvement in general health can, however, be effected by paying a more enlightened regard to those things whereof we dine. People with gluttonish inclinations can easily and do make themselves sick while subsisting on an entirely fruit diet; hence, if discretion is needed in the use of the simplest articles of food, of course it cannot be dispensed with while indulging in other sorts.
But, in a volume of this character, we cannot amplify the details of this very interesting and important topic to that extent we could wish. Suffice it to say, that so far as pork is concerned, we abjure all to leave it severely alone. There is a variety of other meats great enough, from which all may choose, and there are no good elements inherent in pork which cannot be supplied in other meats, or by the free use of good fresh butter, which is at all times a much better fuel for the system than pork.
Regularity in eating is highly essential, and too much stress cannot be placed upon this injunction to the sick. It is quite as important to those in health who would remain so; but then, few in health believe that, or if they do, their habits do not conform to their belief. The duties of life should conform to the laws of health, and where there is any conflict, shove duties overboard always.
Indigestion is the result of irregular, hasty, or unwholesome meals, and likewise meals in quantity beyond that required by genuine hunger and health. It is the mother of many evils, some one of which will be sure to visit, in time, all who violate themselves as above indicated.
Many there are who, troubled with a cough, sore throat, and general debility, think they have the consumption, whereas it is, at the outset, nothing but indigestion. They will go on eating heartily, and continue their pie and cake, these being so pleasant to the palate; they say, "one piece will not do harm," "one swallow never made a summer," and thus they continue till complete prostration takes possession of them.
The use of stimulants at or after a meal may be done with advantage in some cases, but it should only be taken when the physician so advises. We have heard of consumption being cured by the free use of whisky; but should the habit of using it become an uncontrolled one, we question whether the life of the individual is worth the saving at this cost to community and friends. Some of the most eminent among the faculty recommend it, while others do not. When cod-liver oil is freely used, a spoonful of whisky ought, perhaps, to accompany it. If cream, butter, or the fat of mutton or beef be freely eaten at the noon or morning meal, and they are about as useful as the oil itself, stimulants are not so much needed, except that of