No one has a stronger sense of the injury done to society by the wide departure from the laws of Nature by which its present arrangements are characterized, and no one is more willing to contribute all that is within his power to reform them, than the writer of these pages; but let the whole system be amended, and do not limit the reform simply to altering the hour of dinner, while the conditions which have led to the existing arrangement are left unchanged.
In the country, even among the higher classes, a greater approximation to the order of Nature is observable than in towns. The inducements to sleep away the day and to be awake during the night are diminished; bodily exercise and exposure to the open air are more indulged in; the appetite becomes keener, and digestion more vigorous; and, as a necessary result, meals are taken an hour or two earlier. But, throughout all these changes, the general feature of having some kind of refreshment, either luncheon or dinner, within four, five, or six hours after breakfast, may be pretty accurately traced.
If business admits of it, and the person can then command two hours of relaxation, the best plan, unquestionably, is to dine about five or six hours after breakfast. But if this be impossible, and active exertion of mind or body must be continued for several hours longer, it will be far better to eat some light refreshment in the forenoon, and to postpone dinner not only till business is over, but till half an hour or an hour’s repose has allowed its attendant excitement or fatigue to subside. By this means the stomach will enter upon its duties with vigour, and the dinner be digested with greater comfort and dispatch than if we sit down to table the moment our work is finished. In this way the tedious quarter of an hour, preceding the announcement of “dinner,” is far from being lost to the subsequent digestion.
Very few people indeed can eat a good dinner and return immediately to bodily or intellectual labour with continued impunity. On this account, actors, for example, whose vocation requires exertion of both mind and body, almost all either dine very early, or take their chief meal at night on their return home, the latter being the more common practice. Students, literary men, and persons intently engaged in business, are very apt to damage themselves by neglecting relaxation at and after meals.
The time for dinner ought, then, to vary according to the constitution, occupations, and mode of life of the individual; and the nearer the whole of these can be made to approximate to the intentions of Nature, the more vigorous will be the powers of digestion, and the more complete the nutrition of the body; and, consequently, the more easily will the stomach recover the tone which it may have lost from previous mismanagement. In attempting to cure indigestion, notwithstanding the most scrupulous adherence to the rules given for the proper selection of food, if we set at defiance all the other conditions of healthy digestion, our adherence will be of little avail. Whereas, if we fulfil the laws of our constitution, by rising from bed in the morning, obtaining a healthy appetite and lively circulation by the regular exercise of the various functions of mind and body in a free and pure atmosphere, eating moderately, and enjoying social relaxation after our meals,—digestion will be so far strengthened, that no very rigid observance of any particular kind of diet will be necessary; it being always understood, however, that we shall not exceed in quantity what the wants of the system require.
It would be a waste of time to discuss gravely whether tea and coffee ought to be allowed in the evening. Custom has already decided the point, and experience has shewn that, taken in moderation, they rather promote than impede digestion. When the dinner is early—say at one, two, or three o’clock—a light meal of tea and bread in the evening is very suitable, as it saves the necessity of eating a heavier supper. If the individual be accustomed to much active exertion in the afternoon, so as to cause considerable waste in the system, and especially if he be young, a small addition of animal food may be made with great propriety to the evening meal. But on the other hand, when the dinner is late, or little exertion is incurred after it, tea or coffee ought to be used more as a diluent than as a meal.
The French drink a single cup of strong coffee without cream immediately after dinner, and find digestion go on all the better for it. It acts as a strong stimulant, and certainly increases the feeling of comfort for the time. Like all other stimulants, however, its use is attended with the disadvantage of exhausting the sensibility of the part on which it acts, and inducing weakness. This inconvenience is not felt to the same extent indeed after coffee as after spirits, but still it exists; and it is infinitely better that the stomach should be brought up to do its own work ungrudgingly, than taught to depend upon assistance from without; and therefore such assistance ought to be reserved for the relief of occasional exhaustion, instead of being resorted to as a regular indulgence. The French partake of a much greater variety of dishes at one meal than we are accustomed to do, and may thus require the aid of coffee to keep the stomach from actual rebellion. But the way to obviate this necessity, is obviously to eat a more simple and more moderate meal.
A great deal has been said and written about the properties of tea and coffee as articles of diet. At present, however, we have to do with them only as elements of a third meal, and must reserve the discussion of the other branch of the subject to a future opportunity.
In determining whether a third meal ought to be taken either as tea or as supper, the general principle already laid down will be very useful. If dinner be sufficiently early to admit of digestion being completed and the stomach afterwards recruited by repose, and if the mode of life be active, so as to occasion a natural return of appetite before the day is done, the propriety of a third meal cannot be questioned. But if dinner be late, and there be too short an interval between it and bedtime to admit of digestion being finished and the appetite renewed, then every additional mouthful swallowed is sure to do mischief. The farmer who dines at two o’clock, for example, and, after walking about his fields for three or four hours in the afternoon, comes home in the evening with a genuine and undeniable appetite, has a legitimate right to an additional supply of wholesome food before betaking himself to his couch; because a sufficient interval has elapsed to allow the stomach to recover itself from the labour of digesting his dinner, and the continued waste of the system requires to be replaced. In like manner, the man of fashion who dines at seven o’clock, and frequents assemblies till three or four in the morning, is well entitled to some kind of supper about one or two o’clock, and could scarcely get through his laborious duties without farther sustenance from either food or wine, or both. Even in his case, six hours may thus intervene betwixt dinner and supper; and we know that, on an average, the digestion of a moderate meal is finished in four or five hours. The chief difference between him and the farmer is, that the farmer reaps health and sound digestion from adhering in his hours to the institutions of the Creator, and that the man of fashion impairs his constitution and enfeebles his digestion—less by the improper intervals at which he eats, than by his wide departure from the order of Nature in the hours which he observes.