88. How often we hear a delicate lady declare that she can only eat one meal a day, and that is a hearty meat supper the last thing at night; and who, moreover, affirms that she can neither sleep at night, nor can she have the slightest appetite for any other meal but her supper, and that she should really starve if she could not have food when she could eat it! The fact is, the oppressed stomach oppresses the brain, and drives away sleep, and appetite, and health. The habit is utterly wrong, and oftentimes demands professional means to correct it.
89. How is it that sometimes a lady who has an excellent appetite is, notwithstanding, almost as thin as a rake? It is not what she eats, but what she digests, that makes her fat. Some people would fatten on bread and water, while others would, on the fat of the land, be as thin as Pharaoh’s lean kine. Our happiness and our longevity much depend on the weakness or on the soundness of our stomachs: it is the stomach, as a rule, that both gauges our happiness and that determines the span of the life of both men and women. How necessary it is, then, that due regard should be paid to such an important organ, and that everything should be done to conduce to the stomach’s welfare,—not by overloading the stomach with rich food; not by a scanty and meager diet; but by adopting a middle course, betwixt and between high living and low living—the juste milieu. We should all of us remember that glorious saying—those immortal words of St. Paul—“Be temperate in all things.”
90. Where a lady is very thin, good fresh milk (if it agree) should form an important item of her diet. Milk is both fattening and nourishing, more so than any other article of food known; but it should never be taken at the same meal (except it be in the form of pudding) with either beer or wine: they are incompatibles, and may cause disarrangement of the stomach and bowels. Milk would often agree with an adult, where it now disagrees, if the admixture of milk with either beer or wine were never allowed.
91. Let me advise my fair reader to take plenty of time over her meals, and to chew her food well; as nothing is more conducive to digestion than thoroughly masticated food. No interruptions should be allowed to interfere with the meals; the mind, at such times, should be kept calm, cheerful, and unruffled, for “unquiet meals make ill digestions.”
92. Many persons bolt their food! When they do, they are drawing bills on their constitutions which must inevitably be paid! The teeth act as a mill to grind and prepare the food for the stomach; if they do not do their proper work, the stomach has double labor to perform, and being unable to do it efficiently, the stomach and the whole body in consequence suffer.
93. The teeth being so essential to health, the greatest care should be taken of them: they should be esteemed among one’s most precious possessions.[[19]]
94. With regard to beverage, there is, as a rule, nothing better for dinner than either toast and water, or, if it be preferred, plain spring water—
“Naught like the simple element dilutes;”[[20]]
and after dinner, one or two glasses of sherry. A lady sometimes, until she has had a glass of wine, cannot eat her dinner; when such be the case, by all means let a glass of wine be taken,—that is to say, let her have it either just before or during dinner, instead of after dinner; or let her have one glass of sherry before or during dinner, and one glass after dinner.
95. A young wife sometimes has a languid circulation, a weak digestion, and constipated bowels; then, a glass of sherry during dinner and another glass after dinner is beneficial; and however much she might dislike wine, she should be induced to take it, as the wine will improve her circulation, will strengthen her digestion, and will tend to open her bowels. But let me urge her never, unless ordered by a medical man, to exceed the two glasses of wine daily.