FRUIT AS A FOOD AND MEDICINE. 677 



FRUIT AS A FOOD AND MEDICINE.* 



By HARRY BENJAFIELD, M. B. 



And Eve saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight 

 to the eyes. Genesis. 



Stay me with raisins, comfort me with apples. Solomon. 



SUCH was the opinion of people who lived six thousand years 

 ago, and all down through the succeeding ages poets have 

 sung the praises of the luscious grape and peach, and painters 

 have sought to outvie each other in depicting the attractions of 

 the apple and plum, and away deep down below all this we see 

 throughout the whole animal creation a developed instinct which 

 teaches all to long after these beautiful fruits. Is this instinct 

 wrong ? Is Nature a fool thus to make her creatures voice their 

 needs ? When you see the whole insect family swarming over 

 and voraciously devouring our choicest fruits, shall we say that 

 they do not know what is good for them ? When we see pigs, 

 horses, cows, and sheep breaking down our fences, need we ask 

 how they learned to love fruit ? Ay, more, note the baby in 

 arms who screams for the rosy apple, and bites away at it even 

 with toothless gums, and as the baby grows into the boy how he 

 will defy canes, and even police, so that he can get what he loves 

 and longs for. The Creator is so anxious that this very necessary 

 food shall be eaten by his creatures that he makes it beautiful to 

 look upon, sweet and attractive in smell, and gives to it such 

 varieties of flavors that the most fastidious can be satisfied. 

 And yet in spite of all this the great mass of the people look upon 

 fruit as a luxury upon which they can only spend odd pennies 

 for the amusement of their children. Many parents will more 

 readily spend money on injurious or even poisonous sweets than 

 they will on good healthy fruit, and fashionable society will 

 spend pounds on cakes, wines, and brandies, while they spend as 

 many shillings on the very thing they need to keep them healthy 

 fruit. And as for the amount of drugs swallowed which should 

 be replaced in great measure by fruit it is beyond my powers to 

 calculate. Millions upon millions of pounds are spent annually 

 upon mercurial and other purgatives, most of which would be 

 quite unnecessary if the people would but look upon fruit as a 

 necessary article of diet. The fruit grower of the future must try 

 to so educate the public mind that this state of things will be 



* From advance sheets of a lecture delivered before the Australasian Federated Fruit- 

 growers' Association at the Tasmanian Exhibition Building, Queen's Domain, Hobart, 

 April 26, 1895. 



