The better medical colleges, recognizing the importance of proper food in health and disease, have in the last few years broadened their curriculum to include the subject of dietetics. Educated physical culturists and food specialists, for the correction of deranged conditions of the system, due to poor circulation and abnormal nerve and blood conditions, are doing much of the corrective work, due to the fact that instruction has not been given in the medical colleges.
Diets for the reduction of an abnormal amount of fat must also be governed according to the individual condition.
In the early stages of various diseases, when toxins are being produced, as a rule the system is not properly eliminating the waste, and it is often advisable to abstain from food for from one to three days, according to conditions. Brisk exercise, deep breathing, and a free use of water are desirable. A laxative is often recommended.
The diets given here for abnormal conditions are to enable those in charge of an invalid to gain an intelligent understanding of the needs of the system and to supply those needs through the proper foods. In serious cases, however, special diets will be ordered by the medical attendant to suit the needs of the individual.
A chemical analysis of the blood and the excretions is often the only method of determining just the diet in the individual case.
Government chemical laboratories in charge of efficient chemists should be so located as to be accessible to every physician.
The system readily excretes an excess of vegetable products, and, as a rule, no acute difficulties result from such an excess. Such chronic difficulties as constipation, torpid liver, and indigestion, however, frequently result when an excess of starch is taken above that consumed in energy.
On account of the readiness with which putrefaction occurs in protein products, care should be taken not to consume these in too great proportion.
A study of the physical ailments of thousands of women has shown, by the constituents in the blood and the condition of the different organs of the digestive system, the habitual taste for foods. One can usually determine which food the individual has formed a habit of eating, because the system will show a lack of the elements which that patient has denied herself on account of her likes and dislikes.
It is necessary to change the mental attitude toward certain foods before the system will readily assimilate them; thus, as stated, a taste for foods which the body requires should be cultivated.