An American quick-lunch
There is one more of his observations to which superlative importance attaches. One of his experiments on dogs showed that if food was given gradually in small quantities, it led to the secretion of much stronger gastric juice than when the animal was allowed to eat the whole ration at once.
This was a laboratory demonstration of the wisdom of the best medical treatment of a weak stomach; "and such a regulation of diet," continues the professor, "is all the more necessary, since, in the commonest disorders of the stomach, only the surface layers of the mucous membrane are affected. It may, consequently, happen that the sensory surface of the stomach, which should take up the stimulus of the chemical excitant, is not able to fulfil its duty, and the period of chemical secretion, which ordinarily lasts for a long time, is for the most part disturbed, or even wholly absent. A strong psychic excitation, a keen feeling of appetite, may evoke the secretory impulse in the central nervous system and send it unhindered to the glands which lie in the deeper as yet unaffected layers of mucous membrane."
Doubtless the very interesting physiological detail here pointed out by the eminent Russian professor, explains the dietetic as well as gastronomic wisdom of the old fashioned table d'hôte of the European hotels. Half a dozen or more courses follow one another leisurely in course of an hour or more during which the pleasant Flavor of one dish after another keeps the appetite on edge and gives plenty of time for the deeper as well as the surface layers of the glands to secrete their beneficent and comforting digestive juices.
From such a leisurely dinner, with courses skilfully made up of contrasting flavors to prevent the appetite from flagging, we rise cheerful and at peace with all the world, whereas an American quick-lunch, or a railroad dinner gulped down in ten minutes makes us feel like swearing off eating for all time.
AN AMAZING BLUNDER.
How far we have traveled away from that foolish, nay, criminal Puritan notion that enjoyment of the pleasures of the table is a reprehensible form of sensual indulgence—the notion which made Walter Scott's father pour hot water into the soup because the boy liked it!
That attitude was a blunder, a huge blunder, as the preceding pages prove.
A still bigger blunder, and one equally deplorable and mischievous, now claims our attention—a blunder so amazing, so incomprehensible that it seems almost incredible: the universal belief, among men of science as well as the laity, that the pleasures of the table come to us through the sense of taste.
How I happened to discover that this notion is a blunder, I now beg the reader's permission to relate briefly.