460 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a giant, two pounds of dates his hunger after a two days' fast. But 

 the beer-drinker swills till he runs over, and the glutton stuflfs himself 

 till the oppression of his chest threatens him with suffocation. Their 

 unnatural appetite has no limits but those of their abdominal ca- 

 pacity. Poison-hunger would be a better word than appetite. What 

 they really want is alcohol and hot spices, and, being unable to swallow 

 them " straight," the one takes a bucketful of swill, the other a pot- 

 ful of grease into the bargain. 



But gluttony has one other cause involuntary cramming. Fond 

 mothers often surfeit their babies till they sputter and spew, and it is 

 not less wrong to force a child to eat any particular kind of food 

 against his grain in disregard of a natural antipathy. Such aversions 

 are allied to the feeling of repletion by which Nature warns the eater 

 to desist, and, if this warning is persistently disregarded, the monitory 

 instinct finally suspends its function ; overeating becomes a morbid 

 habit, our system has adapted itself to the abnormal condition, and 

 every deviation from the new routine produces the same feeling of 

 distress which shackles the rum-drinker to his unnatural practice. 

 Avoid pungent spices, do not cram your children against their will, 

 and never fear that natural aliments will tempt them to excess. But 

 I should add here that of absolutely innocuous food ripe food and 

 simple farinaceous preparations a larger quantity than is commonly 

 imagined can be habitually taken with perfect freedom from injurious 

 consequences. On the Upper Rhine they have Trauben- Curen sani- 

 taria where people are fed almost exclusively on ripe grapes in order 

 to pui'ify their blood. The grapes generally used for this purpose are 

 of the variety known as Muskateller, with big, honey-sweet berries of 

 a most enticing flavor. " Doesn't such physic tempt your patients ? " 

 I asked the manager of a famous Trauben-Cure ; " don't they dose them- 

 selves to a damaging extent ? " His answer surprised me, " Damag- 

 ing ? Yes, sir," said he, " they damage my pocket, some of them do, 

 though I charge them three florins a day, lodgers five. They can not 

 damage themselves by eating Muskateller." 



Never stint the supply of fresh drinking-water. The danger of 

 water-drinking in warm weather has been grossly exaggerated. Cold 

 water and cold air are the two scapegoats that have to bear the burden 

 of our besetting sins. There is, indeed, something preposterous in 

 the idea that Nature would punish us for indulging a natural appetite 

 to its full extent. Sheep that have been fed on dry corn-husks all 

 winter sometimes break into a clover-field and eat till they burst ; but 

 who ever heard of a dyspeptic bear, or of an elk prostrated by a fit of 

 gastric spasms ? And yet we need not doubt that wild animals eat 

 while their appetite lasts. If we lock them up and deprive them of 

 their wonted exercise, their appetite, too, diminishes. In short, as 

 long as we confine ourselves to our proper diet, our stomachs never call 

 for more than we can digest. There are things that have to be eaten 



