THE REMEDIES OF NATURE. 311 



ing, or (about three hours after the last meal) in the cool of the 



evening. 



Dietetic eefoems should begin with the prescription of a strictly 

 non-stimulating diet. A spoonful of mustard, a glass of small-beer or 

 claret, may seem a mere trifle ; but the trouble is that all stimulant- 

 habits are progressive : the pungent spices are apt to slide into pun- 

 gent tobacco, and the claret into port, or something worse. Fresh 

 apple- vinegar, with a fruity flavor, can perhaps not do much more 

 harm than sweet cider, but salt is not quite above suspicion, and the 

 safest plan is to stick to comestibles that can be eaten without it. 

 Cream, for that and other reasons, is better than fat meat, a whortle- 

 berry-soup better than a gravy-soup, and a raspberry-pudding prefer- 

 able to a blood-pudding. All fried and broiled viands, all pickles, all 

 rancid cheese, butter, and sausages, all smoked meats, are suspicious. 

 Catchup-vials harbor the bottled-up demon of indigestion. But, withal? 

 the diet should not be insipid. Ultra-vegetarians denounce all kinds 

 of fat. Ultra-Grahamites suspect all sorts of sweetmeats. " Let your 

 cook distinctly understand," says one peptic philosopher, "that, on 

 peril of her life, she is to set nothing savory before you." Many 

 hygienic institutes feed their dyspeptics on stale bran-bread, water- 

 gruel, and watery vegetables. Man has a right to decline existence on 

 such terms. Not the naturally palatable, but the unnaturally stimu- 

 lating, qualities of a dish tempt the dyspeptic to eat to excess. For 

 one man who surfeits himself with sweet grapes or pancakes, a thou- 

 sand, at least, derange their digestion with strong cheese, or hot-pep- 

 pered ragouts. Alcoholic stimulants kill hundreds every year ; how 

 many intemperate drinkers have ever killed themselves with fresh milk 

 or lemonade ? And can not fruits, flour, milk, eggs, sugar, and orange- 

 juice, furnish the ingredients of a very tolerable meal ? not to men- 

 tion berries, tubers, and dozens of harmless vegetables that can be 

 creamed and sugared into tidbits to rival the entrees of the Freres 

 Provencaux in everything except virulence, alias pungency. It is 

 better to improve the digestion than to spoil the appetite, for no man 

 can thrive on a naturally distasteful diet. Nature intended us to be 

 vegetarians ; but I can not help thinking that the word is misleading 

 by its popular association with the idea of kitchen-vegetables. Our 

 next relatives in the animal kingdom do not live on pot-herbs, but on 

 fruit. The victims of plethoric dyspepsia, the chronic gluttons who 

 gorge for the sake of repletion, would stuff themselves with a potful 

 of watery spinach as quick as with an eel-pie ; and theirs is a rare, 

 but indeed rather embarrassing predicament : they seem as unable to 

 stop eating as to begin digesting. They are evermore esurient, though 

 as cachectic as a starved Silesian weaver ; I have seen gouty gluttons, 

 to whom the sight of a restaurant-window was as tempting as a tavern- 

 sign to a toper. Certain drugs would abridge their penchant, but, with 

 it, also, the last traces of a digestive function ; and, instead of reduc- 



