After the meal, lie down on the right side for half an hour, resting, and so directing all available nerve-energy to getting digestion well under way.
Indifferent appetites must be tempted by wholesome dishes made up in a variety of enticing ways. Fats are good, but must be taken in a tasty form. Eat fruit deluged with cream.
The crux of digestion is to
"Chew! CHEW!! and KEEP ON CHEWING!!!" for until food is thoroughly masticated there will be no relief. The only part of the whole digestive process placed under the control of consciousness is mastication, and, paradoxically, it is the only part that consciousness usually ignores.
A healthy man never knows he has a stomach; a dyspeptic never knows he has anything else, because he will not eat his food, but throws it into his stomach as the average bachelor throws his belongings into a trunk.
A varied, tasty diet, thoroughly chewed and salivated, with rest before and after meals, is the only means of curing dyspepsia, for no medicine can supply and properly distribute nerve-energy.
Digestive pills are all purgatives, with a bitter to increase appetite, and occasionally a stomachic, bound together with syrup or soap. Practically all contain aloes, and very rarely a minute quantity of a digestive ferment like pepsin. Taken occasionally as purges, most digestive pills would be useful, but none are suited to continuous use, and the price is, as a rule, out of all proportion to the primary cost, while one or two are, frankly, barefaced swindles.
The analyses of the British Medical Association give the following as the probable formulæ for some well-known preparations:
| Beecham's Pills | Aloes; ginger. |
| Holloway's Pills | Aloes; ginger. |
| Page Woodcock's | Aloes; ginger; capsicum; cinnamon and oil of peppermint. |
| Carter's Little Liver Pills | Aloes; podophyllin; liquorice. |
| Burgess' Lion Pills | Aloes; ipecacuanha; rhubarb; jalap; peppermint. |
| Cockle's Pills | Aloes; colocynth; jalap. |
| Barclay's Pills | Aloes; colocynth; jalap. |
| Whelpton's Pills | Ginger; colocynth; gentian. |
| Bile Beans | Cascara; rhubarb; liquorice; peppermint. |
| Cicfa | Cascara; capsicum; pepsin; diastase; maltose. |