THE REMEDIES OF NATURE. 



35 



But their descendants finally solved that problem. To the alco- 

 holic stimulants of the ancients we have added tea, coffee, tobacco, 

 absinthe, chloral, opium, and pungent spices. Every year increases the 

 number of our elaborately unwholesome-made dishes, and decreases our 

 devotion to the field-sports that helped our forefathers to digest their 

 boar-steaks. We have no time to masticate our food ; we bolt it, and 

 grumble if we can not bolt it smoking hot. The competition of our 

 domestic and public kitchens tempts us to eat three full meals a day, 

 and two of them at a time when the exigencies of our business-routine 

 leave us no leisure for digestion. At night, when the opportunity for 

 that leisure arrives, we counteract the efforts of the digestive apparatus 

 by hot stove-fires and stifling bedrooms. Since the beginning of the 

 commercial-epicurean age of the nineteenth century the votaries of 

 fashion have persistently vied in compelling their stomachs to dispose 

 of the largest possible amount of the most indigestible food under the 

 least favorable circumstances. 



That persistence has at last exhausted the self-regulating resources 

 of our digestive organs. But even after such provocations the stomach 

 does not strike work without repeated warning's. The first omen of 

 the wrath to come is the morning languor, the hollow-eyed lassitude 

 which proves that the arduous labor of the assimilative organs has 

 made the night the most fatiguing part of the twenty-four hours. 

 The expression of the face becomes haggard and sallow. The tongue 

 feels gritty, the palate parched, in spite of the restless activity of the 

 salivary glands, which every now and then try to respond to the ap- 

 peals of the distressed stomach. Gastric acidity betrays itself by 

 many disagreeable symptoms ; loss of appetite, however, marks a later 

 stage of the malady. For years the infinite patience of Nature labors 

 every night to undo the mischief of every day, and before noon the 

 surfeited organs again report ready for duty. Habitual excess in eat- 

 ing and drinking sometimes begets an unnatural appetency that ena- 

 bles the glutton to indulge his penchant to the last, only with this 

 difference, that the relish for special kinds of food has changed into a 

 vague craving for repletion, just as the fondness for a special stimu- 

 lant is apt to turn into a chronic poison-hunger. This craving after 

 engorgement forms a distinctive symptom of plethoric dyspepsia, but 

 even in the first stage of asthenic or nervous dyspepsia the hankering 

 after food is not hunger proper, but a nervous uneasiness, suggesting 

 the idea that a good meal would, somehow, supply the means of relief. 

 The first full meal, however, entails penalties which the sufferer would 

 gladly exchange for the less positive discomfort of the morning. In- 

 stinct fails to keep its promise, as a proof that Nature has been sup- 

 planted by a deceptive second-nature. Headache, heart-burn, eructa- 

 tions, humming in the ears, nausea, vertigo, and gastric spasms, make 

 the after-dinner hour " the saddest of the sad twenty-four " : a dull mist 

 of discontent broods over the whole afternoon, and yields only to tea 



VOL. XXIII. 20 



