14 FBUITS AND HOW TO USE THEM. 



much, of other food. Fruits should be ripe when eaten 

 on an empty stomach and for their laxative effect should 

 be eaten before anything else. In this way constipation 

 may, with many individuals, be avoided, especially when 

 the quantity of ot'ier articles of the meaj is within reason- 

 able limits." 



Dr. Seeger continues: 



"If our bilious friends would throw aside their liver 

 piUa and study nature in her most smiling and bounteous 

 mocd, would allow her to tempt them as Eve tempted old 

 Adam, they would take to fruit, and by pleanant, natural 

 and healthful methods, free themselves of the thick biUous 

 impurities which make them a nuisance to themselves as 

 well as to all around tbem. Bihousness is one of those 

 demons that can be pretty well exorcised by proper diet 

 and due amount of exercise. Acid and astringent frnit 

 being rather a medicine than food, is less hurtful to the 

 healthy, and to children, than is commonly supposed. In- 

 stead of being noxious, as some imagine, in inflammatory 

 diporders, it is of the greatest service. Persons of a thick 

 and languid blood cannot eat anything morn conducive to 

 health than fruit, as it possesses the property of attenu- 

 ating and putting such blood in motion." 



In " Eating for Strength " Dr. Holbrooke quotes from a 

 physician as follows: - 



"There is scarcely a disease to which the human family 

 is heir, but the sufferings therefrom would be greatly re- 

 lieved or entirelj' prevented by the use of fruits which are 

 now so generally forbidden." He relates that during the 

 war many of the troops who were sick with diarrhoea and 

 dysentery cured those disorders by .stoaling from the 

 hospitals into the fields and eating fruits, blackberries es- 

 pecially. Children suffering with cholera infantum were 

 sent to the peach orchards of Delaware with the most 

 gratifying results; and in typhoid fever, that dread disease 

 pften takes a more favorable course where the free use of 



