DIGESTION AND FOOD. 59 



120. The supper is usually a lighter meal, and is needed 

 for all who have not already eaten three times. It is the 

 almost universal custom of the civilized nations to eat three 

 times a day. Remembering the rule before stated, ( 110, 

 p. 55,) that not more than six or seven hours of active 

 life should elapse before the refreshment of food, and that it 

 should not usually be taken oftener than this, it is easy to 

 determine whether any supper should be taken after dinner 

 or not. If the dinner be as late as six or seven o'clock, and 

 there has been a lunch taken in the forenoon or at noon, the 

 fourth meal will be unnecessary. When the dinner is at or 

 near night, so late that there will be not more than four or 

 five hours between this meal and bed-time, then the supper, 

 if taken before sleeping, would be not only needless, but inju- 

 rious. It is not then wanted for nutrition, ad the stomach 

 is not in a condition to digest it. The supper, therefore, 

 should depend upon the distance of the sleeping hours from 

 the dinner. So that he who dines at twelve and retires at 

 nine, and he who dines at seven and retires at four, both 

 equally need the evening or the night meal. 



121. But supper should be eaten usually about three 

 hours or more before sleeping. Sleep is the rest of all the 

 voluntary powers; then nothing but the lungs and the heart 

 keep in motion ; all the others are still. The mind, the 

 feelings and the affections, the brain, the muscular and 

 digestive organs, all need and enjoy this rest. If any of the 

 organs or powers are riot permitted to repose, the sleep is 

 not profound; the rest is not entire. If, then, we eat so late 

 that the food be not digested before we retire to our beds, the 

 digestion is still going on while we attempt to sleep, and the 

 sleep is disturbed by it; then dreams sometimes distressing 

 dreams oppress and weary us, and the body and mind are 

 not refreshed completely for the following day's labor. 

 Second suppers are therefore injurious. 



122. The general custom of three meals a day a good 

 breakfast soon after rising in the mornino-, a fuller and more 



o rt* 



nutritious meal near the middle of the active part of the^day, 



