Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/696

680 in the world are given in all sorts of compounds. Let the man of drugs go aboard that ship in mid ocean, with its crew suffering from all these ailments; let the man with his artificially made fruit salts have his trial at their bowels and liver; let the man of mercury and podophyllum, and all the so-called liver doctors try their best; call in the tribes of tonics, and give iron, quinine, arsenic, strychnia, and all the rest of the family; then try your stomachics for his digestion, but in spite of all these the scurvy fiend will sit aloft and laugh you to scorn. In fact, all these drugs have been tried over and over again, and Dr. Buzzard, perhaps the greatest authority in the world, tells us they have all proved miserable failures. But bring in your fruit and the whole scene changes. Can not we show the world that what is applicable to these men in their extreme condition is more or less applicable to the millions of sufferers on land who now persist in looking upon fruit as a thing they can very well do without? Dr. Buzzard advises the scorbutic to take fruit morning, noon, and night. "Fresh lemon juice in the form of lemonade is to be his ordinary drink; the existence of diarrhœa should be no reason for withholding it. Give oranges, lemons, apples, potatoes, cabbage, salads," and if this advice is good for those aboard, and there is no doubt about that, it is equally good for the millions who are spending millions annually in drugs which will never cure them. The first symptoms of scurvy are a change in the color of the skin, which becomes sallow or of a greenish tint. Then follows an aversion for all exercise. Bloodshot eyes, weak heart, bad digestion, and constipation follow on. Dr. Ballard says many of the most serious and fatal cases of scurvy he has seen have only presented as symptoms the pallid face, general listlessness, and bloodshot eyes. If we go through the back streets of our large towns how many pallid faced, listless-looking people and children swarm around us, and they have, as a rule, plenty of food! Within the last few weeks two of my own children have given me a good example of what fruit will do. Two months ago I decided to let these two boys, aged six and eight, go to my farm among the apple-packers. They were not actually ill when they went out, neither had they been at all shut up, but they were pale-looking, would not eat their food, etc. During the last two months they make their boast they eat a dozen apples a day each, and as soon as they began eating these apples their appetite for other foods about doubled, and during the eight weeks they have grown stout and robust, skin clear and healthy, with the glow of health on their cheeks, and bodily strength equal to any amount of exertion.

As a medicine, I look upon fruit as a most valuable ally. As previously shown, when the body is in that breaking-up condition