Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/87

Rh of meals is pernicious, for the human stomach was unquestionably intended to have intervals of rest. The organ should be allowed to act on its contents en masse; to eat constantly like a ruminant animal is altogether unnatural. The health of any individual would speedily break down, were even the proper amount of food taken in equally divided portions at very short intervals.

Continual alteration of the time of meals is another great mistake. Every hour of the day for dinner, from one to eight, will sometimes be ranged through in the course of a single week. Such irregularities may long be endured by the robust stomach, but are very injurious to the weakened organ. In relation to time, all our functions are singularly influenced by habit. Digestion, therefore, will be best performed at the period when the stomach, from habit, expects employment. The kind and quality of food are essential considerations; and these subjects will be considered elsewhere. Adulteration of food is with out doubt a cause of dyspepsia. Inferior articles of diet, such as tough meat or coarse fish, may, in those unaccustomed to them, produce serious inconvenience; and the impurities of water are well known to disorder digestion.

Man inhabits every part of the globe where external influences can be successfully resisted, and, in effecting this, food is an important element. The colder the climate the more animal food and oily substances are requisite; the warmer, the more vegetable diet is suitable. Whale blubber to the warmly clothed Esquimaux, and rice to the naked Negro, are not more necessities of locality than they would be matters of choice. The same indications exist even within European limits. Thus, diet in England and in Italy is essentially different.

The effects of universal communication are nowhere more obvious than on the luxurious table. To furnish the refined cuisine, all climates, both sea and land, are laid under contribution; and the stomach is expected to digest every thing that is put into it. Huddling together such various products, and neglect of the relation between climate and food, are active causes of dyspepsia. The substantial dishes of this country accord badly with the thermometer at ninety degrees; thus, among the English in India, inflexibility in regulating the kind and quantity of food taken is the cause of much ill health.

Under the head of the relation of food to the organs may be placed the effects of insufficient mastication. It is a fruitful source of dyspepsia, and is more frequently caused by haste or carelessness, than inevitable from the want of teeth. The great prevalence of dyspepsia in the United States has been attributed to the rapid and characteristic manner in which meals are there dispatched. In some employments the insufficient time allowed for meals is, for the same reason, a cause of disturbed digestion, and too often gives rise to permanent disease. Besides actual loss, soreness of the teeth or of the gums, sometimes attended by fetid secretions, greatly interferes with