DIET AND DIGESTION.
“No digest of law’s like the law of digestion.”—Moore.
Our good neighbours the French, or rather, the philosophers among them, have asserted that the perfecting of man and his species depends upon attention to diet and digestion; and, in a material point of view, they are not far wrong; and, indeed, in a non-material point of view, it may be said that the spirit, without judgment, is very likely to be exposed to indigestion; and perhaps ignorance complete is to be preferred to an ill-digested erudition. With diet and patience, Walpole thought all the diseases of man might be easily cured. Montesquieu, on the other hand, held that health purchased by rigorously watching over diet, was but a tedious disease. But Walpole was nearly correct, while Montesquieu was not very distant from the truth. Dieting, like other things, must be undertaken on common-sense principles; for, though there be multitudes of mad people in the world, society generally is not to be put upon therégimeof “Bedlam.”
We live, not by what we eat, but by what we digest; and what one man may digest, another would die of attempting. Rules on this subject are almost useless. Each man may soon learn the powers of his stomach, in health or disease, in this respect; and this ascertained, he has no more business to bring on indigestion than he has to get intoxicated or fall into debt. He who offends onthese three points, deserves to forfeit stomach, head, and his electoral franchise!
Generally speaking, fat and spices resist the digestive power; and too much nutritious food is the next evil to too little. Good cookery, by developing flavour, increases the nutritiousness of food, which bad cookery would perhaps render indigestible. Hence a good cook rises to the dignity of “artist.” He may rank with the chemists, if not with the physicians.
Animal food, of mild quality, is more digestible than vegetable, and fresh meats are preferable to salted. In the latter the salt is a different composition from that which is taken at meals, and which is indispensable to health. Fish fills rather than feeds; but there are exceptions to this. Vegetables are accounted as doing little to maintain stamina; but there have been races and classes of men who have been heroes upon bread, fruit, and vegetables. The poor cannot live upon “curry,” it is true; but in England, with less drink and more vegetable food, they would be an improved race. Not that they could live like a Lazzaroni on maccaroni and the open air. Layard says the Bedouin owes his health and strength to his spare diet. But even a Bedouin swallows lumps of butter till he becomes bilious; and were he to live in England instead of the desert, he would not keep up his strength by living on the dishes which support him in Arabia Felix. The golden rule is “moderation and regularity.” He who transgresses the rule, will pay for it by present suffering and a “check” after Christmas.
A false hunger ought not to be soothed, nor a false thirst to be satisfied; for satisfaction here is only adding fuel to a fire that would otherwise go out. On the other hand, the bilious and sedentary man need not be afraid of beer; it is a better stomachic than wine. For him, and for all lords of that heritage of woe, a weak stomach, thecommon-sense system of cookery, as it is called, is most required. It is something between the hard crude system of the English, and the juice-extracting method of the French; with a leaning, however, towards the latter, (with whom it is common to reduce food to a condition of pulp,) but uniting with it so much of the English custom as allows the gelatinous matter to be retained, especially in the meats. “Festina lente,” is “Latin de cuisine,” for “Eat slowly,” and it is of first-rate value. He who does so, gives best chance for healthy chyle; and that wanting, I should like to know where thepost-prandialenjoyment would be. Without it, digestion is not; and when digestion is away, Death is always peering about to profit by his absence. “See to it!” as the Chinese “chop” says.
There are upwards of seventeen hundred works extant on the subject of diet and digestion. Sufferers may study the question till they are driven mad by doubt and dyspepsia, and difference of opinions among the doctors. Fordyce saw no use in the saliva, and Paris maintains that without it digestion is not. “Quot homines, tot sententiæ,” is as applicable here as in every other vexed question. But Paris’s book on Diet is the safest guide I know for a man who, being dyspeptic, wants to cure himself, or simply to discover the definement of his degree of suffering. On the other hand, every man may find comfort in the reflection, that with early hours, abundant exercise, generous diet, but not too much of it, and occupation,—without which a worse devil than the former enters on possession of the victim,—dyspepsia cannot assume a chronic form. It may be a casual visitor, but it will be the easiest thing possible to get rid of him. But philosophy has said as much from the beginning, and yet dyspepsia prevails and physicians ride in carriages. Exactly! and why? Because philosophers themselves,like the Stoic gentleman in Marmontel, after praising simplicity of living, sink to sleep, on heavy suppers and beds of down, with the suicidal remark, that “Le Luxe est une jolie chose.”
We must neither act unreservedly on thedictumof books, nor copy slavishly the examples of others, if we would have the digestion in a healthy condition. There is a self-monitor that may safely be consulted. Of his existence there can be no doubt; for every man who wakes with a headache most ungratefully blames that same monitory “self.”
If any class may fairly complain of others in this respect, rather than of themselves, it is the “babies.” The Rajpoots do not slay half so many of their infants out of pride, as we do by indiscreet dieting; or, to speak plainly, over-feeding. The New Zealand mother is not more foolish, who thrusts stones down the throat of her babe, in order to make him a stern and fearless warrior, and only mars him for a healthy man. And Christian matrons have been quite as savage without intending it. Brantome’s uncle, Chastargnerage, was no sooner weaned than, by the advice of a Neapolitan physician, he took gold, steel, and iron, (in powders,) mixed up with all he ate and drank. This regimen he followed until he was twelve years old, by which time (we are asked to believe) it had so strengthened him that he could stop a wild bull in full course. This diet, however, seems little likely to have produced such an effect. As soon might one expect that the Bolton ass, which chewed tobacco and took snuff, was made swift as a race-horse by so doing. I think that it is of Dean Nowell it is said, that he grew strong by drinking ale. He was the accidental inventor of bottled ale. He was out fishing with a bottle of the freshly-drawn beverage at his side, when intelligence reached him touching the peril his life was in, under Mary, whichmade him fly, after flinging away his rod, and thrusting his bottle of ale under the grass. When he could again safely resort to the same spot, he looked for his bottle, which, on being disturbed, drove out the cork like a pellet from a gun, and contained so creamy a fluid, that the Dean, noting the fact, and rejoicing therein, took care to be well provided with the same thenceforward. As Henry II. was the first King who acted as sewer, and placed the boar’s head on the table of his young son, just crowned, so Dean Nowell was the first church dignitary who laid the foundation of red noses, by bringing bottled ale to the notice of the clergy. There is an old tradition, that what this ale used to do for churchmen, cider used to effect for Africans.
As we have said, “moderation” is the first principle of digestion; and as, according to the Latin proverb, “water gives moderation,” it behoves us to look for a few minutes into the much praised, and little appreciated,aqua pura.