HYGIENIC INFORMATION.
How to Keep Young.Old age is accompanied by the accumulation in the body of certain earthy salts which tend to produce ossification. The deposit of these in the walls of the arteries impedes the circulation, and produces senility and decrepitude. Flesh-food accelerates this process, but the juices of fruits, and distilled or soft water, dissolve out these deposits. The older one becomes the more freely should one partake of fruit and soft water.
The more juicy fruit we consume, the less drink of any kind we require, and the water contained in fruit is of Nature's purest and best production.
Frequent bathing and the occasional use of the vapour bath also help to eliminate these deposits, and those whose skins are never made to perspire by wholesome exercise in the open air must cause this healthful operation to take place by other means—or pay the penalty which Nature exacts.
Food and Climate.Vegetable oils and fats produce heat and build up the nerves. We require a much larger amount of food containing fat in cold weather and in cold climates than in warm weather and in warm climates. By producing fruits in profusion in the summer-time Nature provides for the satisfaction of our instinctive desire for such simple and cooling diet when the temperature is high. But in winter-time more cheese, butter, olive oil, or nuts, should be eaten every day.
Cancer and Flesh-eating. The latest declarations of some of the principal British medical authorities on 'Cancer' are to the effect that people become afflicted with this disease through the excessive consumption of animal flesh. The alimentary canal becomes obstructed with decomposing matter, toxic elements are generated and absorbed in the system, and cancerous cellular proliferation ensues. It is noteworthy that fruitarians are scarcely ever afflicted with this disease, and that a strict fruitarian dietary (uncooked) has often proved curative. See pages [133] and [166].
How to avoid Dyspepsia.If the digestive process is unduly delayed by overloading the stomach, or by drinking much at meal-times so as to dilute the gastric juice, fermentation, flatulence and impaired health are likely to result. Raw sugar if taken very freely with starch foods is also apt to produce fermentation.
It is a mistake to mix acid fruits and vegetables by eating them together at the same meal. Fermentation is often thus caused, as vegetables take a long time to digest. A very safe rule to observe, and one which would save many from physical discomfort and suffering, is this—only eat fruits which are palatable in the natural uncooked state. Before Man invented the art of cooking, he must have followed this rule.
Those who suffer from dyspepsia will, in most instances, derive benefit by taking two meals a day instead of three—or at any rate by substituting a cup of coffee or of hot skimmed milk and a few brown biscuits for the third meal. Hard workers are the only persons who can really get hungry three times a day, and we ought not to take our meals without "hunger sauce." Fruit alone, for the third meal is better still.