DIET IN RELATION TO AGE AND ACTIVITY. 333 



nutritious. Is it bread that we are conjured to buy? Then it is 

 warranted to contain some chemical element ; let it be, for example, 

 " the phosphates in large proportion " a mysterious term which the 

 advertising tradesman has for some time past employed to signify a 

 precious element, the very elixir of life, which somehow or other he 

 has led the public to associate with the nutriment of the brain and 

 nervous system, and vaunts accordingly. He has evidently caught 

 the notion from the advertising druggist, who loudly declares his 

 special forms of half-food, half-physic, or his medicated preparations 

 of beef and mutton, to contain the elements of nutrition in the highest 

 form of concentration, among which have mostly figured the aforesaid 

 ' phosphates " as if they were not among the most common and 

 generally prevalent of the earthy constituents of all our food ! Then, 

 lest haply a stomach, unaccustomed to the new and highly concen- 

 trated materials, should, as is not improbable, find itself unequal to 

 the task of digesting and absorbing them, a portion of gastric juice, 

 borrowed for the occasion, mostly from the pig, is associated therewith 

 to meet, if possible, that difficulty, and so to introduce the nourish- 

 ment by hook or by crook into the system. I don't say the method 

 described may not be useful in certain cases, and on the advice of the 

 experienced physician, for a patient exhausted by disease, whose sal- 

 vation may depend upon the happy combination referred to. But it 

 is the popular belief in the impossibility of having too much of that 

 or of any such good thing, provided only it consists of nutritious food, 

 that the advertiser appeals to, and appeals successfully, and with such 

 effect that the credulous public is being gulled to an enormous extent. 

 Then even our drink must now be nutritious ! Most persons 

 might naturally be aware that the primary object of drink is to satisfy 

 thirst, which means a craving for the supply of water to the tissues 

 the only fluid they demand and utilize when the sensation in question 

 is felt. Water is a solvent of solids, and is more powerful to this end 

 when employed free from admixture with any other solid material. 

 It may be flavored, as in tea and otherwise, without impairing its 

 solvent power, but when mixed with any concrete matter, as in choco- 

 late, thick cocoa, or even with milk, its capacity for dissolving 

 the very quality for which it was demanded is in great part lost. So 

 plentiful is nutriment in solid food, that the very last place where we 

 should seek that quality is the drink which accompanies the ordinary 

 meal. Here at least we might hoj>e to be free from an exhortation 

 to nourish ourselves, when desirous only to allay thirst or moisten our 

 solid morsels with a draught of fluid. Not so ; there are even some 

 persons who must wash down their ample slices of roast beef with 

 draughts of new milk ! an unwisely devised combination even for 

 those of active habit, but for men and women whose lives are little 

 occupied by exercise it is one of the greatest dietary blunders which 

 can be perpetrated. 



