It is an error shared almost universally by both medical men and the laity that fruits and raw foods are wholesome. Everyone is familiar with the fact that fruits produce intestinal disturbances in children,—not only when they are very young, but after their digestive apparatus is fully developed. Rather curiously, however, instead of ascribing the disturbances that follow to the real cause, we generally dismiss the matter with the assertion that “early fruits are unhealthy,” or trace the resulting ill effects to some other equally imaginary factor. In reality the reason why diarrhœa and other intestinal troubles so often occur after eating fruits in the early spring is that the boy or girl after a winter's fast greedily devours enormous quantities of them when they first ripen, and disturbances follow in proportion to the amount and character of these substances taken.
There can be no question that fruits, while extremely palatable, usually produce trouble in dyspeptics, and even in those who still possess unimpaired digestive organs ill effects quite constantly follow on the heels of the taking of food of this character. Unfortunately, however, the great majority of dyspeptics have symptoms that in no way outwardly point toward digestive errors; as common examples, we might refer to the blackheads, pimples and small boils, so frequently observed on the faces of young boys and girls, or the rheumatic pains, and, at a later time, the “Bright's disease,” that occur in older people. When you tell such patients that their trouble is indigestion, they are often mildly indignant, and loudly protest that they can eat anything with impunity; that they never have heart-burn, feelings of heaviness after eating, pains in the abdomen, or other symptoms referable to the stomach and intestines. We are rather disposed to be proud of our digestive powers, just as we are of our bodily strength, and nothing is more common than for chronic dyspeptics to maintain that they have never had indigestion in their lives, and to resent any insinuation to the contrary.
Another popular error, almost universally accepted, is that fruits are highly nutritious; as a matter of fact they consist almost wholly of water, and of materials that are utterly indigestible. The latter substances pass through the alimentary tract, therefore, in much the same condition that they enter and serve no better purpose than to promote, somewhat, activity in the bowels. Nevertheless the writer does not wish to be misunderstood as advocating total abstinence from such a palatable class of foods; no harm results in most people if they only take perfectly ripe and fresh fruits in moderation now and then; and these should be always eaten after meals rather than before.
The fruits that contain comparatively little acid are, as a rule, more wholesome than those that are rich in substance of this kind. For example, perfectly fresh and ripe figs or peaches may be taken by most persons with impunity if they be eaten after meals, and at intervals of at least two or three days. Acid fruits, particularly lemons, seem to be peculiarly unwholesome; apples are prone to cause trouble and can rarely be eaten without ill effects, however mellow and palatable they may be. It sometimes happens that persons take grape-fruit with less harm than others.
Closely akin to fruits in their deleterious action on the digestive apparatus are sours in any form whatever. Women, especially, indulge freely and at irregular hours in foods containing much vinegar, lemon-juice, etc.,—usually in the form of pickles or salads. In healthy persons, in moderation, foods of this character perhaps produce no appreciable trouble, but nothing is more thoroughly established than that they act harmfully on the general run of dyspeptics, such as most of us are to a greater or less degree after thirty years of age. This leads to the remark that here, as in everything else, we must regard individual peculiarities—it being true that one person can eat without ill effects what may produce decided disturbances in others, or suffer from excess when moderation would entail no ill-effects.
CHAPTER X
DRINKS—PROPER AND HARMFUL
An immense amount of rubbish has been written during the last few decades concerning the supposed good effect of excessive water-drinking on the human economy. Something like a quarter of a century ago a London physician by the name of Haig brought forward and strenuously advocated the view that a large number of minor ailments were the result of the presence in the body of excessive quantities of uric acid; applying the well known fact that the substance just mentioned requires a large amount of water to dissolve it he conceived the idea that the proper remedy was to flood the body with enormous quantities of liquids, and thus, as it were, wash the offending substance out of the system. So plausible did he make this theory appear that it was accepted very largely by medical men, who in turn taught it to the general public. Within recent times it has been fortunately shown that Haig's theory was wholly chimerical, and that quantities of uric acid greatly in excess of the normal amount could collect in the body, or might be injected into the blood-vessels, without the least harm resulting; thus, at one blow, this widely accepted theory was annihilated, and there now remains no sort of reason for attempting to remove uric acid by excessive water-drinking, or by other means.