Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/533

Rh scolded by anxious mothers until the habit of eating it is acquired. Adopting the insular creed, which regards beef and mutton as necessary to health and strength, the mother often suffers from groundless forebodings about the future of a child who rejects flesh, and manifests what is regarded as an unfortunate partiality for bread and butter and pudding. Nevertheless, I am satisfied, if the children followed their own instinct in that matter, the result would be a gain in more ways than one. Certainly, if meat did not appear in the nursery until the children sent for it, it would be rarely seen there, and the young ones would as a rule thrive better on milk and eggs, with the varied produce of the vegetable kingdom.

A brief allusion must be made to the well-known and obvious fact that the surrounding temperature influences the demand for food, which therefore should be determined as regards quantity or kind according to the climate inhabited, or the season of the year as it affects each climate. In hot weather, the dietary should be lighter, in the understood sense of the term, than in cold weather. The sultry period of our summer, although comparatively slight and of short duration, is nevertheless felt by some persons to be extremely oppressive; but this is mainly due to the practice of eating much animal food or fatty matters, conjoined as it often is with the habit of drinking freely of fluids containing a small quantity of alcohol. Living on cereals, vegetables, and fruits, with some proportion of fish, and abstaining from alcoholic drinks, the same person would probably enjoy the high temperature, and be free from the thirst which is the natural result of consuming needlessly substantial and heating food.

There is a very common term, familiar by daily use, conveying unmistakably to every one painful impressions regarding those who manifest the discomforts indicated by it—I mean the term indigestion. The first sign of what is so called may appear even in childhood; not being the consequence of any stomach disorder, but solely of some error in diet, mostly the result of eating too freely of rich compounds in which sugar and fatty matters are largely present. These elements would not be objectionable if they formed part of a regular meal, instead of being consumed as they mostly are between meals, already abounding in every necessary constituent.

Sugar and fat are elements of value in children's food, and naturally form a considerable portion of it, entering largely into the composition of milk, which Nature supplies for the young and growing animal. The indigestion of the child mostly terminates rapidly by ejection of the offending matter. But the indigestion of the adult is less acutely felt and is less readily disposed of. Uneasiness and incapacity for action, persisting for some time after an ordinary meal, indicate that the stomach is acting imperfectly on the materials which have been put into it. These signs manifest themselves frequently, and, if Nature's hints that the food is inappropriate are not taken, they