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Classic
Cook Books
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page 405
Drinks at meals should be taken at the close, and not too strong or hot.
Dyspeptics especially should drink sparingly. Children need more than adults,
but too much is injurious.
Adults need to eat at regular intervals two or three times a day, allowing time
for each meal to be fully digested before another is taken. It would spoil a
loaf of bread, half baked, to poke a lump of cold dough into the middle of it.
Use good palatable food, not highly seasoned; vary in quantity and quality
according to age, climate, weather, and occupation. Unbolted or partially bolted
grains are good and sufficient food for men; but nature craves variety. As a
rule, the flesh of meat-eating animals is not wholesome food. Hot soft bread
digests slowly.
Don't eat too fast; the digestive organs are something like a stove, which if
choked up and out of order, burns slowly, and if you keep piling in fuel, grows
more and more choked. The wiser course is to let it burn down and put in fuel
only when needed. It is a foolish notion that food always keeps up the strength.
Only what we digest helps us; all beyond that is a tax upon the system, and
exhausts the strength instead of increasing it.
Masticate well; five minutes more at dinner may give you better use of an hour
afterward. Drink little at meals and never a full glass of very hot or very cold
liquid. Never wash down a mouthful. Avoid waste of saliva.
Avoid tobacco, alcohol in all forms, and all stimulants. Every healthy man is
better, stronger, has a clearer head, more endurance, and better chances for a
long life, if free from the habitual use of stimulants. The boy who begins the
use of tobacco or liquors early is physically ruined.
Avoid colds and break up as soon as possible when taken. As soon as conscious
that the pores are closed, keep warm within doors, drink warm ginger tea, relax
the bowels, and take a vapor bath. Breaking a cold up early, often saves a
severe attack of congestion, pneumonia, often even a fever.
Panaceas are prima facie humbugs; their makers and takers, their vendors and
recommenders are knaves or fools, or both. Nature cures most diseases, if let
alone or aided by diet and proper care. There are no miracles in medicine;
remember that to keep or to get health generally requires only a recognition of
Nature's powers, with knowledge of anatomy and physiology, experience, and
common sense.
Never sleep in clothing worn during the day, and let that worn at night be
exposed to the air by day. Three pints of moisture, filled with the waste of the
body, are given off every twenty-four hours, and mostly absorbed by clothing.
Exposure to air and sunlight purifies the clothing and bedding of the poisons
which nature is trying to get rid of, and which would otherwise be brought again
into contact with the body.
The lungs should be trained to free, full, and vigorous action. "The breath is
the life." A man will exist for days without food, but when the breath is cut
off life ceases. If breathing is imperfect, all the functions of
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