CHAPTER XX. 



ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, AND MINERAL FOOD. 



Nothing so ranch to do with our discomforts as Food. The body a 

 machine. Professor Lyon Flayfair on Food. Liebig's classes of 

 food. Flesh formers. Heat givers, and mineral ingredients. 

 Knows nothing of the action of the last class. Contradictions. 

 Experiments by scientific men always conducted too loosely. 

 Animal food only concentrated vegetable matter. English Navviet 

 and Arabs. Sepoys and Ghoorkas. How much an Esquimaux eats, 

 according to Sir John Ross. Canadian Indians and salt. Criminals 

 in Holland. The Scotch and Indigestion. The action of minerals 

 in the body. 



ONE of the most important matters connected with health 

 and comfort, is the food we eat. Nothing else has so much to 

 do with the trifling little annoyances to which we are subject, 

 and those irritations of temper, lassitudes, and headaches, which 

 worry and annoy us. The body is like a machine, which is 

 almost wholly sustained, repaired, and kept in thorough work- 

 ing order or injured and destroyed by that which we put into 

 it. Any one who desires to prove this can easily do so. Let 

 him starve himself for a short time, and he will soon find his 

 flesh reduced, and his bones showing their form. Or let him 

 eat but one kind of food for a few days, such as plum pudding, 

 and see how miserable he will feel. Or let him drink a bottle of 

 champagne in the evening, and see how incapable cf work he 



