Besides, these sacrifices are much less than it is commonly imagined they are. I could quote many witnesses, to whom, after just the first days, it no longer cost them any pain to renounce the variety and savoriness of rich viands, for the sake of a simplicity of regimen: which is what nature points out, and is the most pleasing to well constituted organs. A healthy palate, which has all the sensibility that it ought to have, can have no relish but for plain meats; made dishes and high sauces are insupportable to it, while, in the least savory aliments, it finds a relish, and a variety of relish, which escape the depraved, worn out, or furred organs of taste: so that those who return to the simplicity of nature in their aliments, whether it is for their health, or from convinced reason, or from a contracted distaste to high eating, may be assured, that so fast as they shall recover their health, they will find in plain aliments a delight of the palate which they did not suspect in them. A fine ear discerns the slight difference between two notes, which will have escaped a less sensible ear: just so it is with the nerves of the organs of taste; when they are in exquisite order, they perceive the slightest varieties of savors, and are sensible to them; the water-drinkers meet with waters as flattering to their taste as the most exquisite Falernian could be to drinkers of wine, and others as disagreeable to them, as to those the pricked wines of Brie.
But even were there not rational hopes of pleasure in the plain regimen, and I am sure it is not hard to accommodate one’s self to that which I have indicated, the satisfaction one must feel, the consideration that, in submitting to it, one is fulfilling a duty to one’s self, must be a greatly pressing motive, as well as a justly flattering reward, for those who can know all the value of the being well with one’s self.
The liquid part of aliments, or the drink, is an article of the regimen almost as important as the solid, or eating.
All liquids should be forbidden that can augment the weakness or relaxation, that can diminish the little that remains of the digestive powers, that can convey any acridity into the humors, or dispose the nervous system, already too irritable, to a greater mobility. All hot waters have the first defect, of weakening or relaxing. Tea, with that, has also all the others: coffee has the two last; so that one ought rigorously to abstain from them. The author of a work superior to all encomiums, and of which those who interest themselves in the progress of the medical art, wait with the greatest impatience for the continuation, has presented such an account of the danger of these two liquids, as might very well disgust or deter from the use of them those who find the greatest pleasure in them[110].
Spirituous liquors, which, at the first view might appear serviceable, for that they operate precisely the contrary of hot water, of which they really diminish the danger, if added to it in a small quantity, are, however, attended with other inconveniences that authorise their rejection, or at least restrain them to an extremely rare recourse. Their action is too violent, too transient; they irritate more than they strengthen, and if they sometimes strengthen, the weakness which succeeds is greater than before a recourse to them: besides, they give to the papillæ of the stomach a hardness that robs them of that degree of sensibility necessary to the creation of an appetite, and take from the liquids that degree of fluidity which they ought to have in aid of that sensation; and, indeed, the great drinkers of spirituous liquors are strangers to it. “Those (says the illustrious author whom I have just now quoted) who every day drink strong liquors after their meals, by way of remedying the defects of digestion, could hardly find a more likely method for accomplishing just the contrary to what they propose, and to destroy the powers of digestion.”
The best drink is water from the purest spring, mixed, equal parts, with a wine neither too heady nor too acid: the heady kinds sensibly irritate the nervous system, and produce in the humors a transient rarefaction, of which the effect is an extension of the vessels, that leaves them afterwards the laxer for it, and to augment the dissolution of the humors: the acid kinds weaken the digestions, irritate, and procure over-copious urines, which exhaust the patients. The best are those which have the least of spirit and of salt, the most of terrestrial and oily, which constitutes what is called racy, generous wines: such are the red wines of Burgundy, of the Rhône, of Neufchâtel, and a few kinds in this country, (Lausanne,) the old white wines of Grave, the choice ones of Pontac, the wines of Spain, Portugal, the Canaries, and, where procurable, those of Tockay, superior perhaps to those of all the world besides, both for salubrity and deliciousness to the taste. As to common use there are none preferable to those of Neufchâtel.
In places where good water is not to be come at, it may be corrected by filtration, by a hot iron, or an infusion of some agreeable aromatics, such as cinnamon, aniseed, lemon-peel.
Common beer is noxious. Mum which is properly an extract from grain, both nourishing and strengthening, may be of great use: rich of spirit, it enlivens as much as wine, and is more nutritious; it may serve for meat and drink.
Among the useful drinks, may be ranked chocolate, which belongs perhaps more properly to the class of solid aliments; the cocoa contains a great deal of nutritious substance, and the mixture with it of sugar and aromatics corrects any detriment from its oiliness. “Chocolate made with milk (says M. Lewis) in such quantities as to pass easy off the stomach, is an excellent breakfast for a tabid constitution. I knew a child twelve years old who was in the last stage of a consumption, when given over by a Physician, recovered by the mother’s giving her chocolate only, in small quantities, often repeated. Indeed it is an aliment that for weak constitutions cannot be too much recommended[111].” Be it, however, remarked, that there are some to whom it might prove very pernicious.