354 ANIMAL FOOD Ab A DIET. 



four hours. Food taken into the stomach before this organ has got 

 rid of the preceding meal must, of course, to a greater or less extent, 

 mix with that already digested and is liable to be hurried along into 

 the intestines undigested, there to ferment and lead to diarrhea, 

 flatulence, colic, etc. Many of these troubles among children, as 

 well as adults, originate from nursing or feeding them every hour 

 or two. Some people breakfast in the morning from eight to nine 

 o'clock, lunch from twelve to one, and dine from four to five in the 

 afternoon, thus bringing their three meals within about eight hours 

 and taking nothing during the remaining fifteen or sixteen hours. 

 In some places in the United States this custom is very common. 



Kegular Eating Half of all ordinary diseases would be 

 banished from civilized life if everybody would eat but three times 

 a day at regular times and not an atom between meals, the interval 

 being five hours, four of w'hich are required to digest a full meal 

 and pass it out of the stomach. If a person eat between meals, the 

 process of digestion of the food already in the stomach is arrested 

 until the last which has been eaten is brought into the condition of 

 the former meal ; just as if water is boiling and ice is put in, the 

 whole ceases to boil until the ice has been melted and brought to 

 the point, and then the whole boils together. But it is a law of 

 nature that all food begins to decay after exposure to heat and mois- 

 ture for a certain time. If a meal is eaten, and in two hours 

 another, the whole remains undigested for seven hours, before 

 which time the rotting process commences and the man has his 

 stomach full of carrion the very idea of which is horribly dis- 

 gusting. As then all the food in the stomach is in a state of fer- 

 mentative decay, it becomes unfit for the purposes of nutrition and 

 for making good, pure blood. . 



The hands and feet must have rest and so with the muscles of 

 the stomach; they can only rest when there is no work for them to 

 do no food in the stomach to digest. Even at five hours' interval 

 and eating three times a day, they are kept sufficiently at work from 

 breakfast until the last meal is disposed of, usually ten o'clock at 

 night. But multitudes eat heartily within an hour or bedtime ; thus, 

 while the other portions of the body are at rest, the stomach is kept 

 laboring until almost daylight and made to begin again at breakfast- 

 time. No wonder it is that the stomach is worn out has lost its 

 power of action. Many girls become dyspeptic before they are out 

 of their teens in consequence of being about the house and nibbling 

 at everything they lay their eyes on that is good to eat. 



ANIMAL. FOOD AS A DIET. 



It is probable that the time has been, in the far distant past, 

 when man did not use meat. And men exist, who, from their 





