“Why don’t you see, doctor, you have shut out all the sunshine and air, and of course it could not stand it.”
“Of course not, my dear,” said Dr. Lewis, “and no more can you.” Turning to the astonished mother, he said, “Do you see, my friend, what you have been doing for your little girl, and do you now see what is the matter with her? The child can no more live without a proper amount of sunshine and air than can the rosebush. Take off half the clothes she has been wearing, put on lighter and looser things, give her a sun-bath daily in a warm room, and allow her only simple meals at regular hours, put her to bed at seven o’clock every night, and you will hardly know her in six months.”
The advice was followed and the child became healthy and vigorous.
The old text from “The Book,” “as a man thinketh in his heart so is he,” suggests another as true. As a man eateth so is he. “The man who swallows spices, condiments, pickles, or other irritating, hot substances, is almost certain to think irritating, hot thoughts, and to speak hot words.”
Plain, simple food, well cooked and daintily served, will be as happily received by our families, (if they have not been pampered until their tastes are vitiated and bad habits formed), as the multitude of dishes which are called food, but have no right to the name, which are daily set before many growing boys and girls. The temptation into which many mothers fall of concocting, or allowing to be concocted, “fine” dishes with long sounding names, and which are good for little in nutrition, has much to do in creating depraved appetites which are averse to plain, substantial food, which really builds bodies that are worth the having.
We can sympathize heartily with the plain old farmer, whose lament is given in rhyme in a Southern medical journal:
“We have a lot of salad things, with dressing mayonnaise:
In place of oysters, blue points, fricaseed a dozen ways,
And orange roly-poly, float, and peach meringue, alas—
Enough to wreck a stomach that is made of plated brass: