STATE BOARD OF HEALTH, 
313 
results follow the practice of eating too fast. The food enters the 
stomach imperfectly masticated, the digestive forces are overtaxed, 
and if persisted in, such a course must lead to such derangement of 
health and the proper nutrition of the body as follow a dyspeptic 
habit of the system. I say habit^ because a long experience has 
taught me that most dyspeptics can be restored to health by estab¬ 
lishing a proper time and manner of taking their daily food. This 
haste in eating should be guarded against at all times, and no por¬ 
tion of food, of whatever kind, should ever enter the stomach until 
it is perfectly masticated. 
Many, nay, most, people eat too much. The hasty eater is espe¬ 
cially liable to fall into this error. The sensation of hunger does 
not depend on any peculiar condition of the digestive organs, as 
was formerly supposed, but by the demand of the whole animal or¬ 
ganism, when its supply of nutrition is exhausted. The hasty eater 
entirely ignores this fact, practically, and by rapidly filling the 
stomach with improperly masticated food, arises often from the 
table with a feeling of oppression and fullness of the stomach, 
which distress would have been avoided if he had spfent a few more 
minutes in taking his meal. Dr. Benj. Franklin, who was, when 
young, a great bustler, and placed an exaggerated value on time, 
says a man should arise from the dinner table with a good appetite, 
a rule applicable to most cases, but not to all. I would not be 
thought as encouraging a needless waste of time in eating or in 
anything else, but that man must but poorly improve his hours of 
business or labor who cannot spare half an hour in which to take 
his everv meal. 
•/ 
The common practice for adult persons in health is to take food 
three times each day — morning, noon and evening. This division 
of the periods of taking food is probably as good as any that can be 
suggested. But this stated period should be the only time of tak¬ 
ing food. The pernicious practice of eating between meals, so 
common to most people, is greatly to be deplored. It leads to over¬ 
taxing the digestive forces, and brings on eventually much suffer¬ 
ing and derangement of health. All food, of whatever kind, should 
be taken at the regular-periods of eating — even fruits, pastries 
and sweetmeats. Any healthy stomach will contain and digest 
enough food to nourish the body, if taken at the ordinary periods — 
beyond this, all is useless and productive of harm. It should ever 
