Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/744

724 from the effects of vicious diet; and it seems that there is a peptic stimulus in mountain air and the climate of a high latitude."

The kitchen-reformers of England and North America seem united on the question of alcohol only, but contradict each other and sometimes themselves in their food-theories and general toxicology. The hygienic system of Dio Lewis embraces the vegetarian, total abstinence, and hydropathic dogmas, but in consistent logic and ingenuity is far surpassed by that of Schrodt, the Swiss dietist.

In his "Natur-Heilkunde," Schrodt distinguishes between natural, artificially adapted, and unnatural or wholly injurious articles of food. "Our natural food," he says (like Pythagoras), "are such vegetable and semi-animal products as either are or can he eaten and relished raw, and without the preliminaries of cooking and spicing. Such are milk, honey, eggs, nuts, cereals, a few roots, legumina, and gums, and the countless variety of fruit, which are man-food par excellence. Our various kinds of bread, though artificially prepared, as well as other farinaceous dishes, are derived from an edible grain which is neither repulsive nor indigestible in its original state.

"To the second or adapted edibles belong different vegetables which are rendered palatable only by the process of cooking, as cabbage, beans, peas and lentils, and various roots and leaves. Flesh, also, I will add to this list, though some would place it in the third class. Injurious, without a redeeming quality, are all narcotic and alcoholic drinks, and all ardent spices, such as pepper, mustard, and acid fluids; also those partly decayed and acid substances whose properties are more stimulating than nourishing: strong cheese, sauerkraut, and pickles."

This system is based on the idea that an unvitiated taste is a sufficient criterion of healthfulness in food, and that to the palate of a child all wholesome substances are agreeable, all injurious ones repulsive. "A taste for the so-called articles of diet embraced in my third class," says Herr Schrodt, "is always artificially and painfully acquired. No man of veracity or memory will tell me that he liked cheese or brandy at first." In accounting for the prevalence of stimulation and intemperance among seemingly healthy nations, he too falls back on vicarious atonement by otherwise salutary habits.

Viewed in the light of Dr. Boerhaave's theory, the gastronomic exploits of ancient and modern savages may gain an additional interest. How desirable it would be to know by which vicarious virtue his Majesty the Emperor Vitellius could atone for the often-repeated sin of devouring three brace of peacocks at a sitting, which Suetonius assures us did not prevent him from appearing in the palestra an hour afterward and joining in the games which were prolonged by torchlight toward the morning hour! Vendôme, the champion of France and the one strategic peer ever opposed to Marlborough, was as formidable at the mess-table as on the battle-field. He would gorge himself till his joints