GOFIO: FOOD AND PHYSIQUE. . 227 



eating it for breakfast, as I had done before, the acidity immediately- 

 disappeared and has not returned. 



In this connection I would say that I had previously observed the 

 same phenomenon of complete exemption from acid stomach while 

 using Carlsbad Zwieback, as the sole farinaceous food at breakfast. 

 Zwieback, as most persons already know, is bread cut in thick slices 

 and baked a second time. In Carlsbad the second baking is carried 

 so far that the slice is browned through its entire thickness. If there 

 remains a white central portion it is not good, and will undergo acid 

 decomposition in the dyspeptic stomach when the properly made Zwie- 

 back will remain for a long time unchanged except by gastric fluids. 

 But, while useful as a temporary expedient, Zwieback has not much 

 nutrition after undergoing the three processes of raising, baking, and 

 rebaking to incipient carbonizing. It is incapable of being used alone 

 as a sufficient aliment. To gofio there is no such objection. The 

 roasting is the first and only cooking of the food. Gofio is a food dry 

 cooked, no fluid coming to it till the very moment of eating it ; and 

 we know that dry heat produces changes in the structure and compo- 

 sition of cereals different from those produced by moist heat. The 

 roasting process is essentially different from the steaming, baking, or 

 boiling process, and, for one thing, converts starchy particles into 

 more soluble and more friable forms. Moderately browned bread- 

 crust illustrates the change produced. 



Perhaps the roasting process has a protecting efficacy against the 

 action of the ferments which are always present in the alimentary 

 tract, ready to effect some form of decomposition should digestion be 

 long enough delayed to allow them to act. In fact, there is no doubt 

 that, in many cases, the stomach actually becomes a receptacle for the 

 cultivation of microbes. As one meal after the other is taken into 

 the stomach, each succeeding mass of fermentable material is affected 

 by the ferment-germs developed and energized by those which have 

 preceded it, till a high degree of potency is reached as in the usual 

 method of bacteria cultivation. In such a case normal digestion is 

 anticipated by fermentation, the wholesomeness of the food is impaired 

 by antecedent decomposition, the gastric power is lessened by contact 

 with noxious acids and gases, and we have the confirmed dyspeptic. 

 The worst of it is, that such a condition is self-propagating, all ordi- 

 nary means failing to energize digestion or to de-energize the ferment 

 that the former may precede the latter in the usual way. Even the 

 useful and often indispensable stomach-pump sometimes fails to pre- 

 vent prompt fermentation of the first food taken after its careful use 

 for cleansing purposes. In all my previous personal and professional 

 experience, I found, when once the rapid acidulation of the food dem- 

 onstrated the potentialization of the microbic ferment, there was no 

 so sure way to overcome it as, in turn, to energize the digestive action 

 by prolonged abstinence from food. In that case the ferment becomes 



