I think that poor people lay out more, in proportion, than the rich, for the purchase of animal food. They often buy extravagantly, on the credit system, purchasing on Saturday nights, when there is a rush at the stalls, and less opportunities for good bargains than when there is more time. Again, the lower classes fry their meats, losing much of their flavor and substance, by its going up chimney; or by boiling, and throwing away much of the nutriment with the water, which stewing in a covered dish would obviate.
I have been into various markets, and observed the poor as they made their purchases. I have seen them count into the butcher’s hand their last penny for a rib roast, a piece of pork to fry, a hind quarter of lamb to bake, or beef to boil, when a piece to stew, with nourishing vegetables, would cost far less, and return double the nutritive principle.
Beefsteak, which contains seventy-five per cent. of water, is poor economy of both money and health. The flank and neck pieces are better. The more fatty and nutritive fore quarters are better than the hind quarters. Ask the Jews. Coarse vegetables, as carrots, cabbages, turnips, and potatoes, contain more nourishment than beef, though far less than the cereals, as wheat, barley, corn, and buckwheat. Beans, peas, rice, cracked wheat or hominy, cooked with meat, make a most wholesome and nourishing diet for laborers, for the sedentary, and for invalids. Meat should never be given to toothless infants. Milk, or bread and milk, is all they require until they have teeth.
A cheap, innutritious regimen is scarcely conducive to longevity, any more than a stimulating and high living is contributive to that end. A great quantity of hot roast meats is objectionable. Also hot fine flour bread. Let those particularly interested in the matter see our article on bread, etc., in chapter on Adulterations. Also, as respects coarse sugar against the refined. See, also, Nutriment for Consumptives, in next chapter.
XXXIII.
CONSUMPTION (PHTHISIS PULMONALIS).
CONSUMPTION A MONSTER!—UNIVERSAL REIGN.—SIGNS OF HIS APPROACH.—WARNINGS.—BAD POSITIONS.—SCHOOL-HOUSES.—ENGLISH THEORY.—PREVENTIVES.—AIR AND SUNSHINE.—SCROFULA.—A JOLLY FAT GRANDMOTHER.—“WASP WAISTS.”—CHANGE OF CLIMATE.—“TOO LATE!”—WHAT TO AVOID.—HUMBUGS.—COD-LIVER OIL.—STRYCHNINE WHISKEY.—A MATTER-OF-FACT PATIENT.—SWALLOWING A PRESCRIPTION.—SIT AND LIE STRAIGHT.—FEATHERS OR CURLED HAIR.—A YANKEE DISEASE.—CATARRH AND COLD FEET, HOW TO REMEDY.—“GIVE US SOME SNUFF, DOCTOR.”—OTHER THINGS TO AVOID.—A TENDER POINT.
Phthisis Pulmonalis is consumption of the lungs, which is the common acceptation of the term consumption. Phthisis is from the Greek, meaning to consume. This fearful disease, from the earliest period in the history of medicine to the present day, has proved more destructive of human life than any other in the entire catalogue of ills to which frail humanity is heir. In Great Britain, one in every four dies of consumption; in France, one in five. In the United States, especially in New England, the number who die annually by this fearful disease is truly startling! One in every three! One reason for this fatality is because of the prevailing and erroneous idea that it is inevitably a fatal disease.