FOOD AND FEEDING 205 



(whom one always sets up for the express purpose of 

 promptly knocking him down again), ' if it be the business 

 of the fore part of the tongue to warn us against pungent 

 and acrid substances, how comes it that we purposely 

 use such things as mustard, pepper, curry-powder, and 

 vinegar ? ' Well, in themselves all these things are, strictly 

 speaking, bad for us ; but in small quantities they act as 

 agreeable stimulants ; and we take care in preparing most 

 of them to get rid of the most objectionable properties. 

 Moreover, we use them, not as foods, but merely as condi- 

 ments. One drop of oil of capsicums is enough to kill a 

 man, if taken undiluted ; but in actual practice we buy it in 

 such a very diluted form that comparatively little harm 

 arises from using it. Still, very young children dislike all 

 these violent stimulants, even in small quantities ; they 

 won't touch mustard, pepper, or vinegar, and they recoil at 

 once from wine or spirits. It is only by slow degrees that 

 we learn these unnatural tastes, as our nerves get blunted and 

 our palates jaded ; and we all know that the old Indian who 

 can eat nothing but dry curries, devilled biscuits, anchovy 

 paste, pepper-pot, mulligatawny soup, Worcestershire sauce, 

 preserved ginger, hot pickles, fiery sherry, and neat cognac, 

 is also a person with no digestion, a fragmentary liver, and 

 very little chance of getting himself accepted by any safe 

 and solvent insurance office. Throughout, the warning in 

 itself is a useful one ; it is we who foolishly and persistently 

 disregard it. Alcohol, for example, tells us at once that it 

 is bad for us ; yet we manage so to dress it up with flavour- 

 ing matters and dilute it with water that we overlook the 

 fiery character of the spirit itself. But that alcohol is in 

 itself a bad thing (when freely indulged in) has been so 

 abundantly demonstrated in the history of mankind that it 

 hardly needs any further proof. 



The middle region of the tongue is the part with which 



