STARVING OUT DISEASE.
Dr. Johnson, one of the best British writers on dyspepsia, advises his medical brethren to starve out the disease, as the surest way of getting rid of it. He says he has by far the best success with those patients who submit to this course. It is not starvation, exactly, though it savors of it. He says, keep them on just two pints of Indian-meal gruel—by which he appears to mean thin hasty pudding—a day, and no more. If they are really afraid of starving, after the trial of a few weeks, let them eat a few times of something else; but they must soon return to the starvation plan.
I have usually preferred cakes of Indian meal, or wheat meal unbolted and baked very hard, to gruel or pudding. The reason is, that I consider mastication very essential to good digestion, especially in the case of dyspeptics. I believe the small quantity of Indian meal that goes into two pints of gruel, or even of pudding, were it firmly baked, would hold out and sustain the health and strength of an individual much longer than gruel; and it will, by most persons, be preferred.
One of my dyspeptic patients, a young man of great resolution, was put upon ten ounces a day of thin Indian-meal cake, or johnny cake; and it wrought wonders. The prescription was made about twenty years ago, and no young man under forty years of age, in Massachusetts, is more efficient, at the present time, than he.
To another young man, similarly afflicted, I recommended eight ounces of the same kind of food. He was from a family that had long known me, and that appeared to confide in me. I have never heard from him since. My conjecture is that he refused to follow the directions, and hence did not wish to communicate with me any farther. He may be still a dyspeptic, as the consequence, though it is certainly possible he may have obeyed the prescription, to the saving of his health.
Some have supposed that a quantity of food so small, is not sufficient to keep alive an ordinary adult; but they are mistaken. Much smaller quantities than eight ounces have proved sufficient for this purpose, in a great many instances. Three or four ounces have been found adequate to every want, in these circumstances.
As I regard this as a highly important point, I will endeavor to establish it by two or three facts, which have come, in part, under my own observation. The first appeared in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, for 1851, and in several other papers. The other is from a Philadelphia paper, and is as reliable as the former. It is, however, of much later date; viz., December, 1853.
Jervis Robinson,[K] of Nantucket, was a ship-master, born in 1800. In 1832, he became a most miserable dyspeptic. For three or four years he relied on the popular remedy of beef-steak three times a day, and with the usual consequences. It made him worse rather than better.
In the year 1836, a friend of his who had heard lectures on dyspepsia, or had read on the subject, suggested a new remedy. It was three Graham crackers daily, one at each meal, without any drink at the time of eating. This, it was said, if persevered in long enough, would certainly effect a radical cure.
But I prefer to let Mr. Robinson tell his own story, which he does in the following manner:—