As modern research has proved that bad or imperfect food when digested surely makes bad or imperfect blood, incapable of performing its appointed work of upbuilding and of reparation, so has science demonstrated that perfect food is one of the most potent among remedies for the relief of many diseased conditions. Since the blood is the life, and since blood is merely food emulsified, mingled with certain digestive fluids and colored by the oxygen with which it is brought in contact in the lungs—it is easy to understand how perfect food may create perfect blood, which shall presently supplant that which is feeble, that which is lacking in waste-repairing power, that which fails to give strength to the muscles or vigor to the brain, and may thus become the most effective medicine. A perusal of recent professional medical literature evinces the great stress which is now laid upon dietetics in the treatment of all diseases. The approach to this high altitude has been gradual, but sure. At first foods were made the vehicles for drugs; and cod-liver oil and malt-extracts, which are only concentrated foods of the hydro-carbon varieties, were loaded with lime and iron and strychnine and phosphorous and scores of other drugs. But perfect results were secured by the use of these foods without the drug additions, and so the foods were at last given the credit which all along belonged to them. And so it has come to pass that with advanced medical men, in a vast majority of cases of sickness, the support of the life-powers by proper nutrients is the foremost thought, the best food proving to be the best medicine.
The kind of food a man eats, and the time and manner of his eating it, are not merely a question of medicine, but one of the first questions of morals. The effects of food on the passions and feelings are thus described by Prior:
“Observe the various operations
Of food and drink in several nations;
Was ever Tartar fierce and cruel
Upon the strength of water gruel?
But who shall stand his rage and force
When first he rides, then eats, his horse?
Salads and eggs and lighter fare,
Tune the Italian spark’s guitar;