3o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



All kinds of fat (" non-nitrogenous " aliments), including butter and 

 cream, are more digestible in winter than in summer time. Cold air 

 is a peptic stimulant, and neutralizes the calorific effect of a non-nitro- 

 genous diet, while fresh tree-fruits and berries counteract an excess of 

 atmospheric heat, and thus, by an admirable provision of Nature, the 

 seasons themselves furnish us the food most adapted to the preserva- 

 tion of the right medium temperature of the system. Preserved fruits 

 (raisins, dried figs and apples, etc) lose much of their acidity, and 

 thus become less refreshing, but not less nutritive, at the very time 

 when the latter property is the more important one. Cow's- milk, on 

 the other hand, grows richer .in winter-time, and this self -adaptation of 

 their food to the varying demands of the seasons enables the inhabi- 

 tants of such countries as Italy and Mexico to subsist all the year round 

 on an almost uniform diet. But in a climate of such thermal extremes 

 as ours it would be the best plan to vary our regimen with the weather, 

 and, above all, to adopt a special summer diet, since the consequences 

 of our present culinary abuses are far less baneful in January than in 

 July, Even in mid-winter our compounds of steaming and greasy 

 viands with hot spices severely strain the tolerance of a youthful 

 stomach ; but, when the dog-star adds its fervid influence, the demand 

 for refrigerating food becomes so imperative that no forensic eloquence 

 would persuade me to convict a city lad for hooking watermelons. 

 Where fruit is cheap the paterfamilias should keep a storeroom full of 

 summer apples, and leave the key in the door it will obviate costive- 

 ness and midnight excursions. From May to September fresh fruit 

 ought to form the staple of our diet, and the noonday meal at least 

 should consist of cold dishes, cold apple-pudding with sweet milk and 

 whipped eggs, or strawberries with bread, cream, and sugar. The 

 Romans of the republican age broke their fast with a biscuit and a fig 

 or two, and took their j^rincipal meal in the cool of the evening. In 

 their application of the word, a frugal diet meant quite literally a diet 

 of tree-fruits, and that our primogenitor was a frugivorous creature is 

 the one point in which the Darwinian genesis agrees with the Mosaic 

 version. 



Dr. Alcott holds that a man might live and thrive on an exclusive 

 diet of well-selected fruits, and I agree Avith him if he includes olives 

 and oily nuts, for no assumption in dietetics is more gratuitous than 

 the idea that a frequent use of flesh-food is indispensable to the preser- 

 vation of human health. Meat is certainly not our natural food. The 

 structure of our teeth, our digestive apparatus, and our hands, proves 

 a priori that the physical organization of man is that of a frugivorous 

 animal. So do our instincts. Accustom a child to a diet of milk, 

 bread, and meat ; never let him see a fruit, nor mention the existence 

 of such a thing ; then take him to an orchard, and see how quick his 

 instinct will tell him what apples are good for. Turn him loose among 

 a herd of lambs and kids : he will play with them as a fellow-vege- 



