Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/536

518 him, or too much of it. The food may be "wholesome enough in itself," a popular phrase permitted to appear here, first, because it conveys a meaning perceived by every one, although the idea is loosely expressed; but, secondly and chiefly, for the purpose of pointing out the fallacy which underlies it. There is no food "wholesome in itself," and there is no fact which people in general are more slow to comprehend. That food only is wholesome which is so to the individual, and no food can be wholesome to any given number of persons. Milk, for example, may agree admirably with me, and may as certainly invariably provoke an indigestion from my neighbor; and the same may be said of almost every article of our ordinary dietary. The wholesomeness of a food consists solely in its adaptability to the individual, and this relation is governed mainly by the influences of his age, activity, surroundings and temperament or personal peculiarities.

Indigestion, therefore, does not necessarily, or indeed often, require medicine for its removal. Drugs, and especially small portions of alcoholic spirit, are often used for the purpose of stimulating the stomach temporarily to perform a larger share of work than by nature it is qualified to undertake; a course which is disadvantageous for the individual if persisted in. The effect on the stomach is that of the spur on the horse: it accelerates the pace, but "it takes it out" of the animal, and, if the practice is long continued, shortens his natural term of efficiency.

It is an erroneous idea that a simple form of dietary, such as the vegetable kingdom in the largest sense of the term furnishes, in conjunction with a moderate proportion of the most easily digested forms of animal food, may not be appetizing and agreeable to the palate. On the contrary, I am prepared to maintain that it may be easily served in forms highly attractive, not only to the general but to a cultivated taste. A preference for the high flavors and stimulating scents peculiar to the flesh of vertebrate animals mostly subsides after a fair trial of milder foods when supplied in variety. And it is an experience almost universally avowed, that the desire for food is keener, that the satisfaction in gratifying appetite is greater and more enjoyable, on the part of the general light feeder than with the almost exclusively flesh-feeder. For this designation is applicable to almost all those who compose the middle-class population of this country. They consume little bread and few vegetables; all the savory dishes are of flesh, with decoctions of flesh alone for soup. The sweets are compounds of suet, lard, butter, eggs and milk, with very small quantities of flour, rice, arrowroot, etc., which comprise all the vegetable constituents besides some fruit and sugar. Three fourths at least of the nutrient matters consumed are from the animal kingdom. A reversal of the proportions named, that is, a fourth only from the latter source with three fourths of vegetable produce, would furnish greater variety for the table, tend to maintain a cleaner palate, increased zest