460 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
warm water, will overcome the trouble, and will put the matter 
right pretty soon. Sir William MacEwen, of the Charing Cross 
Hospital, now teaches that the human appendix is also “the 
home of a troglodyte microbe that wages the fiercest war 
against undigested food.” 
Old persons bear a spare diet best, then adults; whereas 
youths tolerate it less easily, particularly children. In persons 
who are ill-nourished the tubercle bacillus seems to find a 
specially favourable soil ; so that the association between bad 
feeding, and such diseases as lung consumption, and scrofula, 
is well established, while an improvement in nutrition is not 
infrequently followed by their cure. This is the probable reason 
why diabetic patients (who are kept too often in a chronic state 
‘of partial starvation) become so liable to tubercular disease of 
the lungs, or of some other organ; and why tall men who take 
only as much food as their fellows of lower stature, fall short of 
full health, and develop a tendency to consumption. Again, that 
“‘a hungry man is an angry man ” has grown to be a recognized 
truth. On the other hand, the theory has been mooted, with 
no small show of reason, that persons with large appetites, and 
good digestions, who eat more of highly organized foods than 
they require, or can use up, are particularly prone to cancer. 
There is a natural tendency for healthy persons beyond middle 
age to consume more food than they actually need. Dr. 
Rabagliati, of Bradford, puts it among his Aphorisms that 
“** taking a cold,’ as it is called, far more often depends on wrong 
feeding than on exposure to a chill, or than on climatic changes ; 
whereby it follows that the best way for avoiding any such 
catarrhal attacks (often contracted more severely in hot weather 
than in winter, and yet no one speaks of them as ‘ taking heat, 
their chilly shiver being then rather the first stage of feverishness) 
is not merely to wrap up well, but, as a more important point, 
to eat properly ; certainly not more often than at three daily 
meals, indeed only at two by preference, and then not taking 
more than from twelve to twenty-four ounces of ordinary food, 
according to age, and occupation followed. If in six months, 
or so, the person still finds himself catching cold too readily, or 
too often, he should eat only in the morning and evening, taking 
moderate meals ; and if again after another time of six months 
the same trouble persists, he should reduce the quantity of food 
to eight ounces at one meal, and four ounces at the other. Still 
