Miss S.L.P. writes:—I should like a little help as to diet. I have just had an attack of epidemic influenza with throat trouble, so that I feel very much run down and unfit for a diet too depleting in character. For over four years I have adopted a non-flesh diet on account of a tendency to chronic catarrh of the whole alimentary tract, due to rheumatic tendencies which affect me internally rather than externally. The continuous damp weather has produced much gastric irritation, and frequent acidity.
I cannot discover a diet that is convenient and at the same time sufficiently nourishing. I lose flesh on what I take, and I have none to spare, though at one time I was inclined to be stout. My age is forty-eight.
I take three meals a day. A light breakfast either of “Maltweat” bread or “P.R.” Cracker biscuits and butter, with tomato or fresh fruit or occasionally an egg. For midday meal an egg or milled cheese, or nuts or cream cheese, with a baked potato and a conservatively cooked vegetable. Occasionally I have a little salad and grated carrot, but unless I am better than usual I cannot digest these. The evening meal consists of “Maltweat” bread or “P.R.” Cracker biscuits or Granose flakes, with cream cheese. As a child I suffered constantly from colds in the head, but now my troubles are oftener internal.
The action of the bowels is irregular. I depend chiefly upon an enema of warm water when constipation is present.
I never drink tea, only hot water, or Emprote and water, or occasionally vegetable juices or fruit juices. I find I am better without much fluid.
So far as it is possible to judge from this letter, this correspondent is suffering not only from stomach and bowel catarrh, but her condition as a whole is unsatisfactory. The vital force is depleted and the nervous system is not doing efficient work.
She needs suitable treatment to remove the acid and toxins with which the system is evidently clogged. This is not an easy task, for as soon as elimination begins trouble arises in the form of influenza or other similar derangements. These are probably little else but attempts on the part of nature to rouse the vital force of the body into action with a view to clearing out the clogging poisons.
Waste clearing should be done gradually. The skin should be made to act better by means of home Turkish baths, or by wet-sheet packs. Then mustard poultices can be applied along the course of the spine and massage with suitable manipulations can be applied to the muscles and bones which make up the spine. The daily practising of the excellent and simple breathing and bending exercises described in Müller's My System for Ladies[5] will be very helpful. By means such as these the body will be gradually cleared of its poisons, and so the nervous system will be made to do better work.
The diet specified can be continued.
H. Valentine Knaggs.
[5] 2s. 8d. post free from the office of The Healthy Life, 3 Amen Corner, London, E.C.
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