3 i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ing their appetite, it is better to reduce its capacity for mischief, by- 

 limiting the number of their daily meals. For, after all, that capacity 

 is circumscribed by the caliber of the stomach, and, if the quality of 

 the food is unexceptionable, there is no serious danger of a man's eat- 

 ing more at one meal than his system, under otherwise favorable cir- 

 cumstances, can dispose of in the course of the next twenty-three hours. 

 The apprehension in such cases as to the insufficiency of one meal a 

 day is wholly gratuitous. For more than a thousand years the one- 

 meal system was the rule in two countries that could raise armies of 

 men every one of whom would have made his fortune as a modern 

 athlete men who marched for days under a load of iron (besides 

 clothes and provisions) that would stagger a modern porter. Even 

 here, abstinence is easier than temperance ; for twenty-three hours of 

 each day it is far easier to abstain from food (though, of course, not 

 from water) than to begin eating and stop in time. Not one glutton 

 in a thousand will do it. Dio Lewis recommends a limited number of 

 dishes "never put mpre on the table than you intend to eat" ; but 

 the first mouthful reawakens the passion of Polyphemus, and for those 

 who can not govern their appetite it is just about as easy to call for 

 another dish as to reach for another plateful. But it is an excellent 

 rule to prolong the pauses between the several dishes of a full meal, in 

 order to give the stomach time to indicate the real wants of the sys- 

 tem. " The ingestion of food," says Dr. Carpenter, " can not at once 

 produce the effect of diminishing the feeling of hunger, though it will 

 do so after a short time, so that, if we eat with undue rapidity, we 

 may continue swallowing food long after we have taken as much as 

 the wants of the body require." 



The origin of the glutton-habit can often be traced to the mistaken 

 liberality of a host who constantly urges the conviviality of his young 

 guests, or even to the fatuous tenderness of nursing mothers, who so 

 frequently think it their duty, as Dr. Page expresses it, to make a baby 

 " guzzle till it is ready to die with fatty degeneration." 



Begin with reducing the number of daily meals, and exercise, a 

 change of climate and of habits will by-and-by help to subdue the bane- 

 ful penchant. Occasional relapses can not be avoided ; but the pro- 

 gressive relief from a number of the worst gastric afflictions will at 

 last induce the veriest cormorant to stick to the one-meal plan. 



The best time for that one meal is the end of the working-day 

 4 or 5 p. m. when business-cares can be laid aside for the rest of the 

 evening. Asthenic dyspeptics, too all, at least, who are not com- 

 pletely masters of their own time had better choose that hour for 

 their principal meal. No other hygienic mistake, not even the stimu- 

 lant-fallacy, has done so much to make ours a dyspeptic generation as 

 the fatal habit of after-dinner head-work severe mental labor in the 

 study, the school-room, or the counting-house, at a time when the 

 whole strength of the system is claimed by the digestion of a heavy 



