LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 528 



coffee and lean meat were dispensed with. These should come later in the 

 day. 



Stop eating when you have satisfied the demands of nature. There is a 

 class of people who think that the great and only sin of intemperance is in 

 drinking. Sir Henry Thompson says : ' ' I have, for some years past, been com- 

 pelled, by facts which are constantly coming before me, to accept the con- 

 clusion that more mischief, in the form of actual disease, of impaired vigor, 

 and of shortened life, accrues to civilized man, so far as I have observed, in 

 our own country and throughout western and central Europe, from erroneous 

 habits in eating, than from the habitual use of alcoholic drink, considerable 

 as I know the evil of that to be." 1 



There has been one thing established in England, and that is that cancer 

 of the stomach attacks the higher classes and those who live well. And the 

 poor, half-starved beggar, eking out a miserable existence on a crust and 

 water, can congratulate himself that his enforced abstinence saves him from 

 many horrible diseases from which his more fortunate and well-fed neighbor 

 suffers. The very ability of the rich man to procure and devour so many 

 of the "good things of this life," proves a dangerous power. 



Now I would not have you become one of that class of health-book read- 

 ing, always talking, forever dieting people who never eat half enough, and 

 whose lack of health is a perpetual agony and wonder to themselves. Neither 

 would I have you belong to that still larger class who are anaconda-like in 

 their table habits. They forget that the sense of taste lies only in the 

 mouth, and that it may call for more long after the stomach cries enough. 

 "With this as with many things else there is the happy golden mean. 



A great many Americans suffer from the effect of bad cooking. It may 

 not sound well, but the fact remains that a great many young ladies consider 

 it beneath them to learn to cook and especially to practice the art after they 

 are married. It is easier to hire a kitchen girl; but from the fact that the 

 kitchen girl is a hireling she shuns the work as much as possible, and is 

 simply concerned in getting something on the table, no matter in what con- 

 dition, and specimens of very inferior cooking disgrace the table. 



Every wife should be capable of superintending the culinary department. 

 (Did you ever know a man to succeed in business who could not lead, and 

 who did not spend his time superintending his business?) Give us more 

 good cooks and there will be fewer children with stomach aches, fewer people 

 with torpid livers, less demand for bitters to tone up the stomach, fewer men 

 seeking saloons to drown their dyspepsia, and doctors and undertakers will 

 grow poor. Americans grow old eariy and die young, and one of the prime 

 causes is that their home cooking is not fit for man or beast. Using statis- 

 tics in the rough, we say one-half of the children born, die before the fifth 

 year. We find among the chief diseases causing this frightful mortality are 

 bowel troubles and convulsons from bad food. 



" DOCTORING." 



Do not resort to patent medicines and all sorts of nostrums. I can boldly 

 express the opinion that communities are over-dosed. The best proof of it 

 is that no families take so little medicine as those of the doctors and drug- 



1 Popular Science Monthly, vol. 27, page 333. 



