PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 461 



in homoeopathic doses to prevent surfeit, but respecting such stuff 

 (Liraburger, caviare, etc., I would say, as of spices and alcohol), ab- 

 stinence is better than temperance. In convivial neighborhoods spo- 

 radic cases of surfeit are almost as unavoidable as Christmas dinners 

 and school picnics ; but their effects are as transient as their causes. 

 For children, a nearly infallible peptic corrective is a fast day passed 

 in cheerful out-door exercise. By a curious law of periodicity, the 

 mind will stray to the dining-room when the wonted meal-time comes 

 around, even if genuine ajDpetite does not return with that hour, but 

 fishing, hunting, and ball-playing divert our thoughts from such 

 channels, and, returning late in the evening from a good day's sport, 

 the periodicity of bedroom-thoughts, aided by fatigue, overcomes the 

 latent craving for food without the least effort. Try the experiment. 



Want of appetite is not always a morbid symptom, nor even a 

 sign of imperfect digestion. Nature may have found it necessary to 

 muster all the energies of our system for some special purpose, mo- 

 mentarily of paramount importance. Organic changes and repairs, 

 teething, pleuritic ej^urations, and the external elimination of bad 

 humors (boils, etc.), are often attended with a temporary suspension 

 of the alimentary process. The instinct of domestic animals thus 

 generally counteracts the influence of abnormal circumstances. As a 

 rule, it is always the safest plan to give Nature her own way, and was 

 thus proved even in the extreme cases of more than one honci fide 

 fasting girl, whose system, for recondite reasons of its own, preferred 

 to subsist on air for weeks and months together. 



In regard to the quality of food, too, there are intuitive dislikes 

 which should not be disregarded, because they can not always be ac- 

 counted for. I do not say lilxes and dislikes ; a child's whimsical de- 

 sire to treat innutritions or injurious substances as comestibles should 

 certainly not be encouraged as long as its hunger can be appeased with 

 less suspicious aliments. For it is a curious fact that all unnatural 

 practices the eating of indigestible matter as well as of poisons are 

 apt to excite a morbid appetency akin to the stimulant habit. The 

 human stomach can be accustomed to the most j^reposterous things. 

 The Otomacs, of South America, whose forefathers in times of scarcity 

 may have filled their bellies with loam, are now afflicted with a na- 

 tional penchant for swallowing inorganic substances. In New Cale- 

 donia, habitues often eat as much as two pounds of ferruginous clay 

 a day, and a similar stuff is sold in the markets of Bolivia, and finds 

 eager purchasers, even when better comestibles are cheaper. Profes- 

 sor Ehrenberg procured a sample of this clay which was supposed to 

 contain organic admixtures or some kind of fat ; but his analysis 

 proved that it consists of talc, mica, and a little oxide of iron. Accord- 

 ing to Malte-Brun, the Lisbon lazzaroni chew all day long the insipid, 

 leathery kernels of the carob-bean {3Ii)nosa silica), and the most pojj- 

 ular " chewing-gum " is said to be composed chiefly (not entirely, I 



