KEGtTLATION OF DIET. 265 



latter requires more care in selection, more special attention in 

 preparation, more delicacy in serving, than the former. For in- 

 stance, how much good meat has been wasted, and how many pa- 

 tients have been troubled, because cooks instead of making beef -tea 

 made soup? 



Dietetic Rules Important Good health can be main- 

 tained, and when disturbed can be restored, only by the adoption of 

 rules of diet which insure a due supply of healthy blood to the sys- 

 tem. The waste constantly resulting from the common duties of 

 life must be repaired, and if the quality of the blood be deteriorated 

 in disease it must be improved. But the blood is what the food 

 makes it. As the supply of food, then, is increased or decreased, or 

 its quality altered, so the blood is affected and the health is main- 

 tained or lowered. Hence the necessity for observing dietetic rules, 

 as in consequence of their infraction many diseases arise. The 

 badly cooked, poor food of the working classes is often innutritious 

 and causes various disorders, the best cure for which is not medicine, 

 but sufficient, suitable and properly prepared food. Any one who 

 has been much among the poor, visitors who have tended the sick, 

 practitioners who prescribe in dispensaries, know full well how im- 

 portant a part sufficiency of appropriate diet plays in the condition 

 of those to whom they minister. 



The digestibility of food and its subsequent assimilation 

 depend as much upon the mode of its preparation as upon the con- 

 dition of the person who eats it. If this be true of the healthy, it 

 is much more true of the sick. Not infrequently a change in the 

 method in which food is cooked is the simple means whereby it may 

 be rendered acceptable and easily digested by the individual who 

 had previously suffered from taking it. Such change may afford 

 marked relief in some functional bowel disorder. In chronic dis- 

 eases of the digestive organs, in which the appetite remains 

 unimpaired, or is inordinately increased, attention to dietetic regu- 

 lations becomes of great importance, since in such cases there is 

 considerable danger lest the boundaries of prudence should be 

 overstepped, in yielding to the urgent claims of appetite, demanding 

 excessive or unsuitable food. 



It is impossible to lay down regulations for the rational and 

 methodical use of food in health and disease; for in this as in other 

 matters, each case must be dealt with on its own merits. Sex, age, 

 employment, condition of life, physical form, idiosyncrasies, circum- 

 stances all are elements in the solution of this problem, " What to 

 eat and what to avoid." The father must consider the wants of the 

 family, the mother the special needs of a frail child, the physician 

 the peculiar requirements of his patient, in making arrangements 

 for suitable dieting; no precise hard and fast rules can be laid down. 

 General principles alone can be enunciated, known scientific facts 

 can be promulgated ; well tried common experience can be recorded ; 

 then, out of the materials thus supplied, what is the most fitting for 



