SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 395 



Medicinal Qualities of Fruits — The Journal of Health is authority for the 

 following : • 



Of all the fruits with which we are blessed, the peach is the most delicious 

 and digestible. There is nothing more palatable, wholesome and medicinal 

 than good ripe peaches. It is a mistaken idea that no fruit should be eaten at 

 breakfast. It would be far better if our people would eat less bacon and 

 grease and more fruit. In the morning there is an acrid state of the secre- 

 tions, and nothing is so well calculated to correct this as cooling sub-acid fruits,, 

 such as peaches, apples, etc. The apple is one of the best of fruits. Baked 

 or stewed apples will generally agree with the most delicate stomach, and are 

 an excellent medicine in many cases. Green or half-ripe apples stewed and 

 sweetened are pleasant to the taste, cooling, nourishing, laxative, far superior, 

 in many cases, to the abominable doses of salts and oil usually given in fever 

 and other diseases. Raw apples stewed are better for constipation than some 

 pills. Oranges are very acceptable to most stomachs, having all the advantages 

 of the acid alluded to ; but the orange juice alone should be taken, rejecting 

 the pulp. The same may be said of lemons, pomegranates and all that class. 

 Lemonade is the best drink in fevers, and when thickened with sugar it is 

 better than syrup of squills and other nauseants in many cases of cough. 

 Tomatoes act on the liver and bowels, and are much more pleasant and safe 

 than blue mass. The juice should be used alone, rejecting the skins. The 

 smallest seeded fruits, such as blackberries, figs, currants and strawberries, may 

 be classed among the best fruits and medicines. The sugar in them is nutri- 

 tious, the acid is cooling and purifying, the seeds are laxative. We would be 

 much the gainer if we would look more to our orchards and gardens for our 

 medicines and less to drug stores. To cure fever or act on the kidneys, no feb- 

 rifuge or diuretic is superior to watermelon, which may, with very few excep- 

 tions, be taken in sickness and in health in almost unlimited quantities, with 

 positive benefit. But in using them, juice should be taken, excluding the pulp \ 

 and then the melon should be fresh and ripe. 



Fruit Diet. — The Lancet, an excellent authority, says : 



One of the most salutary tendencies of domestic management in our day is 

 that which aims at assigning to fruit a favored place in our ordinary diet. 

 The nutrient value of such food, in virtue of its component starches and saccha- 

 rine materials, is generally admitted; and while these substances cannot be 

 said to equal in accumulated force the more solid ingredients of meat and ani- 

 mal fat, they are similarly useful in their own degree, and, have, moreover, 

 the advantage of greater digestibility. Their conversion within the tissues is 

 also attended with less friction and pressure on the constructive machinery. 

 The locally stimulant action of many sub-acid fruits on the mucous mem- 

 branes deserves mention. Its control of a too active peptic secretion, and its 

 influence of attraction exercised upon the alkaline and aperient intestinal 

 juice, are points of more than superficial importance. To this action further 

 effects, which aid the maintenance of a pure and vigorous circulation, are 

 indirectly due. 



Dyspeptic stomachs, on the other hand, are usualy benefited by a moderate 

 allowance of this light and stimulating fare. It must be remembered, more- 

 over, that every fruit is not equally wholesome, let the digestion be as powerful 

 as it may. Nuts, for example — consisting as they do, for the most part of 

 condensed albuminoid and fatty matters — cannot compare in acceptance, either 



