"Stimulants (drink most healthful).—Milk heated to much above 100 degrees Fahrenheit loses for a time a degree of its sweetness and density. No one who, fatigued by over-exertion of body or mind, has ever experienced the reviving influence of a tumbler of this beverage, heated as warm as it can be sipped, will willingly forego a resort to it because of its being rendered somewhat less acceptable to the palate. The promptness with which its cordial influence is felt is indeed surprising. Some portion of it seems to be digested and appropriated almost immediately, and many who now fancy they need alcoholic stimulants when exhausted by fatigue will find in this simple draught an equivalent that will be abundantly satisfying and far more enduring in its effects. There is many an ignorant overworked woman who fancies she could not keep up without her beer; she mistakes its momentary exhilaration for strength, and applies the whip instead of nourishment to her poor, exhausted frame. Any honest, intelligent physician will tell her that there is more real strength and nourishment in a slice of bread than in a quart of beer; but if she loves stimulants it would be a very useless piece of information. It is claimed that some of the lady clerks in our own city, and those too who are employed in respectable business houses, are in the habit of ordering ale or beer at the restaurants. They probably claim that they are 'tired,' and no one who sees their faithful devotion to customers all day will doubt their assertions. But they should not mistake beer for a blessing or stimulus for strength. A careful examination of statistics will prove that men and women who do not drink can endure more hardships, and do more work, and live longer, than those less temperate."
If you must eat meat for breakfast, have your steak rare, mutton chops well done; if fish, always well done; and if each are fried, use butter, not lard—the same applies to everything else that has to be fried. All meats are sweeter and more healthful broiled than fried. Of bread, for health, natural graham comes first; and, in order of nutrition, corn, corn and wheat mixed, rye, and wheat. They should be taken cold and at least twenty-four hours after baking. If the midday meal is a lunch, all dishes should be cold. It can be made up largely from dishes left over from the morning meal, such as cold cracked wheat with milk, natural fruit; add nuts, sauces, jellies, and prepared fruit.
If dinner is taken at noon instead of lunch at that hour, any one of the score of vegetable soups are first in value; all other kinds are secondary; let there be from three to six kinds of vegetables cooked; any of the drinks mentioned for breakfast may be used, but none of them iced; cold bread, and no pastry unless an open pie with unshortened undercrust. An excellent morsel for dyspeptics is sea biscuit dipped in cold water and then placed in a hot oven from three to five minutes. If meat is to be a portion of this meal, you can have beef, mutton, or venison, roasted or broiled, the former rare, and the two latter well done. Provided dinner is enjoyed at the close of the day, it should occur before 5:30 p. m.; if at midday, then the lunch meal can be renamed supper, and can be partaken of as late as 6 or 7 p. m. Let there be no eating two meals for Sundays and holidays, and three for other days, or indulging in them at later hours in the morning and earlier in the evening; for this irregularity will detriment more than many kinds of improper food.
Do not eat fresh pork, for this and every other kind of swine flesh is an abomination. Eat no kidney, liver, or tripe; deal sparingly with fowl and all the bird family. Outside impure water and uncleanliness, there can be but one cause for skin diseases, eczema, boils, and the dread leprosy, which is the eating of pork, kidney, liver, duck, etc. If the lion indiscriminately kills and eats all kinds of flesh, and thereby is made ferocious, if the lamb is rendered passive and inoffensive by grasses and grains, then what the swine or different domestic fowls eat must have something to do with the make-up of the flesh of their bodies. The hog is the most filthy animal of that nature, while chicken and duck are the most so in the line of fowls used by man for food. It is offensive but true that they will not only eat but relish both their own and man's excrement.
We cannot use space foolishly, if we show plainly why pork should be abandoned. Did you ever stop to think on what most swine live? Swill is the most common term for it. Anything and everything that is the refuse of a boarding-house will they eagerly devour. Give them rotten apples and potatoes, full of innumerable microbes, and they will relish the repast. Place them in a dung heap—they will root, and eat much of what they find. Now all meat, all flesh and tissue, is made from what an animal or person eats—if he doesn't eat he grows thin and starves. Then the hog's flesh is made from elements derived from swill, decayed substances, and everything either cooked, uncooked, or even digested, that man is through with or has cast off. You who eat pork relish that which once you have refused to eat—only in another form. Can you enjoy this meat when you consider all this? Surely its use means bad health and contamination. Skin diseases and poor complexions are found almost entirely among those who live on these improper foods. Again, even if you feed swine on clean corn, milk, and water, we ascertain by careful experiment and examination that pork is most susceptible to bacteria of almost any meat. Better boycott it altogether. Leprosy and skin troubles are found largely among pork-eating people—such as the inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands, where there are 749 lepers. On the other hand, Jews, who everywhere are marked with clear skins, avoid pork. In Constantinople there are 250 lepers, in Crete upwards of 3,000, and quantities in the islands of eastern Mediterranean Sea, and 1,000 in Norway. These places are all characterized by the great amount of pork, and duck too, that they consume.
Other things not good for invalids, and will make strong persons invalids, are: Fried potatoes, hot cakes, warm bread, pound cake, green cucumbers, and rich pie-crust. Eat only those things that will excite the salivary glands to assist digestion. The walls, not the center of the alimentary canal, need attention.
Have your soup cool enough so that it will not cause tears in your eyes when you swallow—same with your coffee, tea, and other warm drinks; take no ice drinks; if you are used to having water only with your meals, drink it warm with sugar and milk, and not hot. If you are obliged to live in a second-class boarding-house or restaurant, and are obliged to take one of three meals each day at such a place, insist on having a napkin. Use it first to wipe your glass for water, then follow by polishing every utensil set before you for use at your meal. If note is taken of the napkin before and after each meal, you will be able by a mathematical calculation to tell just how much real estate did not belong to you.
How you should eat: Begin with one swallow of cool water. Eat slowly; take full 20 minutes for a hurried meal, and 45 minutes when you have the time. If you eat beefsteak, have it rare; if mutton chops, have them well done; if fish, well done and brown; if potatoes, first choice, baked; second, boiled; third, stewed or mashed. Never eat decayed vegetables or fruit; have them fresh or do without them. At table, see that the conversation is pleasant and mirthful. Should any of the younger members of the family insist, at each meal, in changing this order of things, cause them for a short season to sit at a separate table in the kitchen, until this sort of disease—for disease it is—may be cured. Nothing retards digestion, brings dyspepsia, or creates neuralgia, to such extent as a sullen disposition. We will end this chapter with a remarkably bright paraphrase on the ten commandments, which we recently ran across:—
THE TEN HEALTH COMMANDMENTS.
"1. Thou shalt have no other food than at meal-time.