182 ALCOHOL AS AN ARTICLE OF DIET. 



thousand nameless sensations of discomfort which we charge to variable 

 weather, afiiict and hamper poor humanity. To-day the fog depresses our 

 vital forces, te-morrow the brain is pierced with blinding sunshaft ; and so 

 each day's external is made responsible for internal shortcomings. The 

 litterateur, in atrabilious humor, afflicts the world with morbid philosophy. 

 The pastor sees weak humanity more than ever siuful, and his Lenten 

 homilies are unconsciously tinctured with a deeper dye for the pangs of his 

 own mortality. The housewife, in overheated rooms, with a monotone of 

 circumscribed care and too little outside diversion, finds dirt and despair 

 in the kitchen, chaos in the nursery, a forlorn hope in her mending baskets. 



Among other remedies for people who say, "I always have a bilious at- 

 tack in the spring," the following seems the most potent: 



On rising sponge the body lightly and quickly with cold water, briskly 

 toweling after. It is not necessary that this be a long or laborious opera- 

 tion ; the more rapidly the better, with sufficient friction to bring aglow to 

 the skin. If you cannot secure time to go over the whole bodily surface, at 

 least make a point to daily sponge the trunk and arms. Eousing and 

 stimulating the whole system, clearing and opening the pores, it imparts an 

 indescribable freshness and exhilaration, amply repaying the effort. Ee- 

 habilitated, you are now ready for your morning bitters, namely, the clear 

 juice of a fresh lemon in a wineglass of water, without sugar. This is a 

 bomb straight at the enemy, for a more potent solvent of bile is not in the 

 materia medica. Searching out rheumatic tendency, attacking those insid- 

 ious foes which are storing up anguish against our later days — calculi — it 

 pervades the system like a fine moral sense, rectifying incipient error. It 

 is needful, perhaps, to begin with two lemons daily, the second at night just 

 before retiring. 



A primitive but most efficacious prescription, which corrected the physi- 

 cal reaction after a pork-eating winter for our ancestors, was a wineglass 

 full of very hard cider, made effervescent by a crumb of sal soda. More 

 potent and palatable is the concentric force of the pure lemon acid. 



We venture to claim for this self-treatment alone, faithfully applied, 

 more relief for the body and stimulus to the mind than from a battery of 

 pills or a quarts of herb decoction. 



Alcohol as an Article of Diet. — Dr. T. Edes, Professor of Materia 

 Medica in Harvard University, read a paper on this subject at the last 

 meeting of the American Social Science Asssociation, in which he comes to 

 certain conclusions, which are summarized in the Boston Medical and Surgi- 

 cal Journal as follows : — 



1. Under some circumstances alcohol may be a food. These are : — 



(a.) The deprivation of nourishing and sufficiently varied and abund- 

 ant rations, as in the case of soldiers, sailors, laborers, etc. 



(6.) When for any reason ordinary food is not well assimilated, or the 



