THE HYGIENE OF APPLES 267 



on the tree. But even a perfectly matured apple has some starch and 

 cellulose in it, and so our second conclusion is that when the weak 

 stomached man eats apples he should masticate and masticate until the 

 pulp is practically converted into saliva. It will then be admitted that 

 such apples so eaten will not give any one indigestion. Thank heaven 

 that most of us have stomachs which never rebel at any kind of an apple. 



The case is illustrated by a high colored Northern Spy which matured 

 on the sunny side of an open branched tree, standing on a hill top. It 

 lived and grew in a full flood of sunshine and air current. Then con- 

 sider a green livered, under-colored specimen that grew in the shade on 

 one of the under branches. Its parent tree may have stood tucked away 

 under a hill where it got little sunshine and no air movement. Moreover, 

 maybe the grower took no chances with frost and wind and picked it in 

 its youth. It is suggestive of quinine. We don't have to recall what 

 the flavor and bouquet of the high colored, ripened apple suggests. We 

 remember that. 



Having disposed of the matter of indigestion, we come to the matter 

 of the acid. That is easy. We have only to produce the medical authority 

 for the statement that the gastric juices of the stomach convert the citric 

 and malic acids, found in all apples, into the salts of potassium, and 

 that potassium salts are a corrective of uric acid. That statement, when 

 once appreciated, should banish all fear that uric acid may be produced 

 by eating apples. We are fast coming to an understanding of these 

 things in modern days. For instance, the matter of diet is a matter of 

 life or death in case of typhoid. But it is good medical practice now- 

 adays to give the patient baked apple or scraped raw apple. The 

 insane have no power of selection in the matter of their diet, but the 

 state of New York, as well as other states, lays in a season's supply of 

 apples for the patients in its asylum hospitals, considering the fruit just 

 as much a necessity of diet as eggs, butter, or flour. 



We are creatures of habit, and there are few of us who can not 

 habituate ourselves to whatever is proper and good for us. If one has 

 not been accustomed to eating apples it might be well to commence with 

 half of one at a time. Better still commence with a right baked apple. 

 That means the right variety rightly baked. The York Imperial is a 

 right variety and it bakes right. It has the right degree of acidity. It 

 doesn't collapse and run all over the cooking utensil and come out of 

 the oven neither baked apple nor apple sauce. Snip out the calix. Take 

 out the core from the stem side without cutting clean through, and fill 

 the hole with sugar. Don't peel off the jacket. Bake in a fairly hot 

 oven. The York Imperial then comes from the oven done through yet 

 retaining its natural shape, unshapely though that be. You know it is 

 a baked apple by the golden, juicy cracks, where the flesh comes bursting 

 out. The skin is almost as tender as the flesh. It is safe to recommend 

 the York because it comes from the Southland where there is always 

 enough sunshine to ripen the fruit on the tree. In the time of Charles 

 Lamb they did not have such baked apples. Otherwise subsequent gen- 

 erations might have enjoyed an essay on roast apple instead of roast pig. 



