DIET FOR DIARRHEA.
A period marked by constipation, biliousness or poisons generated within or taken into the intestinal canal is often followed by diarrhea. Mental excitement will induce it in some persons. More often man's early and most common malady, proctitis, is the direct or indirect cause. Some forms of ulceration of the lower bowel induce diarrhea. Chronic cases of diarrhea usually follow the decline of vitality marked by the symptom of Costiveness, which means the interruption of all the functions of nutrition. The intestinal canal is then like a rubber tube with the contents hurried through it. The whole system is irritable as the result of an accumulation of secondary symptoms expressed by the word auto-intoxication.
The food should be nutritious and non-irritating to the intestinal canal.
Reliance must be placed, in severe cases, on liquid foods and beverages.
The more solid foods may be taken in limited quantity as the recovery progresses. In more acute cases it is well to stop all food for twelve or twenty-four hours.
You may take:
Liquid Food and Beverages: Drink, if possible, pure spring water. If this cannot be obtained, sterilize the water, or distil and aërate it; it must be pure and soft. Better still: drink toast- or rice-water; kefyr, four days old; koumiss; lactic-acid water; zoolak; egg lemonade; sterilized milk with one third lime-water; whortleberry wine; acorn cocoa; unfermented grape-juice.
Soup: chicken; mutton; clam; oyster broth; Doxsee's clam-juice; bouillon; Milkine; Horlick's and Mellin's food.
Meat: minced chicken; scraped beef; roast fowl; beef steak; fillet of beef; raw beef; sweetbread; raw oysters.
Eggs: lightly boiled, poached.