Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/88

78. It is most important that solid food should be duly prepared, by chewing, for the action of the stomach; and it is also important that the starchy elements of food be sufficiently submitted to the action of pure saliva.

There are numerous other causes which affect the digestive organs less directly, but no less injuriously. It has been assumed by some writers that the conditions of civilization are incompatible with the highest degree of health. But there is every reason to believe that dyspepsia affects all races. The Laplander is especially subject to water brash; the Maories of New Zealand suffer much from dyspepsia; and the use of bitter substances to promote digestion is known to many savage tribes. The extremes of abstinence and repletion common with savages, their precarious mode of existence, their fits of complete indolence, followed by exhausting fatigue, must cause them a full share of digestive trouble.

The relative superiority in physical strength of civilized over savage nations has been sufficiently proved. Refined and settled habits are not necessarily attended by any physical disadvantages. But it is observable that those who live in towns are most affected by dyspepsia. There it is that the mental powers are most overtasked; and the relation between mind and body, as well as their mutual reactions, disregarded or forgotten. Too large a share of the nervous energy, so necessary for digestion, is expended in mental toil or business anxieties. In many cases, attention to the commonest physical wants is neglected in monotonous pursuits; the appetite for food is disregarded until it no longer exists; exercise is either not taken at all, or is fitful and unseasonable; ventilation is neglected, and a close and polluted atmosphere is breathed. Such is no overdrawn picture of the town life of vast numbers who suffer, more or less, from dyspepsia.

Two habits, smoking and taking snuff, require special notice as causes of dyspepsia. Excessive smoking produces a depressed condition of the system, and a great waste of saliva if the habit of spitting is encouraged. I have met some severe cases of dyspepsia clearly resulting from these causes. Some individuals are unable to acquire the habit of smoking even moderately. Deadly paleness, nausea, vomiting, intermittency of pulse, with great depression of the circulation, come on whenever it is attempted. But this incapacity is exceptional, and so universal is the desire for tobacco, that it seems as if some want of the system is supplied by its use. Smoking has been attacked and defended with much zeal. Its adversaries have strongly urged that the practice is a potent cause of dyspepsia. The late Sir Benjamin Brodie was a great enemy to tobacco. But, as one of his biographers has observed, he appeared in this instance to have departed from the rule by which he was generally guided, to weigh impartially all the facts bearing on an argument. Other names of eminence might be cited in the ranks of those who are strong opponents of smoking. On