Part 12 (1/2)
Further rules are:--
Avoid all sudden changes between light and darkness.
Never begin to read, write, or sew for several minutes after coming from darkness to a bright light.
Never read by twilight or moonlight, or on dark, cloudy days.
When reading, it is best to let the light fall from above obliquely over the left shoulder.
Do not use the eye-sight by light so scant that it requires an effort to discriminate.
The moment you are instinctively prompted to rub your eyes that moment stop using them.
If the eyelids are glued together on waking up do not forcibly open them, but apply saliva with the finger. It is the speediest diluent in the world; then wash your eyes and face in warm water.
In the selection of books or pamphlets see that the paper is of a slight orange tint; this shade is the most pleasant for the eye to look upon.
The following is recommended as an efficient means of removing particles from the eye: Make a loop by doubling a horse hair; raise the lid of the eye in which is the foreign particle; slip the loop over it, and placing the lid in contact with the eyeball, withdraw the loop, and the particle will be drawn out with it.
An old locomotive engineer gives the following as an infallible method to eradicate any foreign substance from the eye, viz., close the eyes, and rub gently from right to left with a circular motion the well eye.
=Food.=--Of all the fruits we are blest with, the peach is the most digestible. There is nothing more palatable, wholesome, and medicinal than good, ripe peaches. They should be ripe but not overripe and half rotten; and of this kind they may make a part of either meal, or be eaten between meals; but it is better to make them a part of the regular meals, says _Hall's Journal of Health_, a medical authority. It is a mistaken idea that no fruit should be eaten at breakfast. It would be far better if our people would eat less bacon and grease at breakfast and more fruit. In the morning there is an arid state of the secretions, and nothing is so well calculated to correct this as cooling, subacid fruits, such as peaches, apples, etc. The apple is one of the best of fruits. Baked or stewed apples will generally agree with the most delicate stomach, and are an excellent medicine in many cases of sickness. Green or half-ripe apples stewed and sweetened are pleasant to the taste, cooling, nouris.h.i.+ng, and laxative, far superior, in many cases, to the abominable doses of salts and oil usually given in fever and other diseases. Raw apples and dried apples stewed are better for constipation than liver pills. Oranges are very acceptable to most stomachs, having all the advantages of the acid alluded to; but the orange juice alone should be taken, rejecting the pulp. The same may be said of lemonade, pomegranates, and all that cla.s.s. Lemonade is the best drink in fevers, and when thickened with sugar is better than syrup of squills and other nauseants in many cases of cough. Tomatoes act on the liver and bowels, and are much more pleasant and safe than blue ma.s.s and ”liver regulators.” The juice should be used alone, rejecting the skins.
The small-seeded fruits, such as blackberries, figs, raspberries, currants, and strawberries, may be cla.s.sed among the best foods and medicines. The sugar in them is nutritious, the acid is cooling and purifying, and the seeds are laxative. We would be much the gainers if we would look more to our orchards and gardens for our medicines and less to our drug stores. To cure fever or act on the kidneys no febrifuge or diuretic is superior to water-melon, which may, with very few exceptions, be taken in sickness and health in almost unlimited quant.i.ties, not only without injury but with positive benefit. But in using them the water or juice should be taken, excluding the pulp, and the melon should be ripe and fresh, but not overripe and stale. While, undeniably, a mixed diet is the best for man, there is a mistaken notion, which prevails to a great extent, that meat should largely enter into the same. As a consequence, much more is eaten than is needed or can properly be disposed of in the system. Never eat meat oftener than once a day, and very sparingly in summer. Men of sedentary habits might with safety for several days at a time during that season live on vegetables, fruits, milk, breadstuffs, and foods of like character, which are easy of digestion. For those who have good reason to believe that their ”kidneys are weak,” a diet largely made up of meat is ill-advised. Those organs are intimately concerned in its disposal in the system, and hence are overtasked if it is taken in too great a quant.i.ty.
_Reasons Why a Strictly Vegetable Diet Is to Be Preferred to Animal Food._--The food which is most enjoyed, says a writer in _Longman's Magazine_, is the food we call bread and fruit. In my long medical career, I have rarely known an instance in which a child has not preferred fruit to animal food. I have been many times called upon to treat children for stomachic disorders induced by pressing upon them animal to the exclusion of fruit diet, and have seen the best results occur from the practice of reverting to the use of fruit in the dietary.
I say it without the least prejudice, as a lesson learned from simple experience, that the most natural diet for the young, after the natural milk diet, is fruit and whole-meal bread, with milk and water for drink.
The desire for this same mode of sustenance is often continued into after years, as if the resort to flesh were a forced and artificial feeding, which required long and persistent habit to establish as a permanency as a part of the system of every-day life. How strongly this preference taste for fruit over animal food prevails is shown by the simple fact of the retention of those foods in the mouth. Fruit is retained, to be tasted and relished. Animal food, to use a common phrase, is ”bolted.” There is a natural desire to retain the delicious fruit for full mastication; there is no such desire, except in the trained gormand, for the retention of animal substance. One further fact which I have observed--and that too often to discard it--as a fact of great moment, is that when a person of mature years has for a time given up voluntarily the use of animal food in favor of vegetable, the sense of repugnance to animal food is soon so markedly developed that a return to it is overcome with the utmost difficulty. Neither is this a mere fancy or fad peculiar to sensitive men or oversentimental women. I have been surprised to see it manifested in men who are the very reverse of sentimental, and who were, in fact, quite ashamed to admit themselves guilty of any such weakness. I have heard those who have gone over from a mixed diet of animal and vegetable food to a poor vegetable diet speak of feeling low under the new system, and declare that they must needs give it up in consequence; but I have found even these (without exception) declare that they infinitely preferred the simpler, purer, and, as it seemed to them, more natural food plucked from the prime source of food, untainted by its pa.s.sage through another animal body.
There are thirty vegetarian restaurants in London, and a vegetarian hotel is the latest move in the right direction.
The time required to digest different kinds of food:--
Hours.
Roasted pork 5.15 Salt beef (boil'd) 4.15 Veal (boiled) 4.00 Boiled hens 4.00 Roasted mutton 3.15 Boiled beef 3.30 Roasted beef 3.00 Raw oysters 2.45 Roasted turkey 2.30 Boiled milk 2.00 Boiled codfish 2.00 Venison steak 1.35 Trout (broiled) 1.30 Tripe 1.00 Pig's feet 1.00 Eggs (hard boil'd) 3.30 to 5.30 Eggs (soft boil'd) 3.00
The above is taken from Beaumont's ”Experiments on Digestion.” Dalton comments on these observations as follows: ”These results would not always be precisely the same for different persons, since there are variations in this respect according to age and temperament. Thus, in most instances, mutton would probably be equally digestible with beef, or perhaps more so; and milk, which in some persons is easily digested, in others is disposed of with considerable difficulty. But as a general rule, the comparative digestibility of different substances is no doubt correctly expressed by the above list.”
_To Ascertain Pure Milk._--Take an extra quart of milk any day from your milkman and put it in a gla.s.s jar, an ordinary fruit-jar will do; set it away and await results. The proportion of cream on top shows the richness of the milk. Let it alone until it turns to clabber, and if there is any water in it, it will appear between the cream and the clabber. After fermentation sets in, the water will sink to the bottom.
If there has been no water put into the milk, none will show. By trying milk from different milkmen, you can readily see which is the best.
We will add under food that eggs should be kept in oak or porcelain receptacles, not in pine boxes, as they partake of the odor of the pine.
=Freckles.=--A young lady of St. Louis says: ”I accidentally discovered a sovereign remedy a couple of years ago, which costs next to nothing.
One day the plumber shut our water off, and I could get none in which to wash my face. I was fearfully soiled, and, looking out of the window just then, I saw a friend approaching to call on me. Glancing about me, I noticed half a water-melon from which the meat had been removed some time before. It was partly filled with juice, and I hastily washed my face in it. The result was so soothing that I repeatedly washed my face in that manner. Judge of my astonishment a few days later on seeing that there was not a freckle left on my face.”
=Gargle.=--An excellent gargle for general use is:--
Chloras Pota.s.s., 3 ounces.
Tannin, 2 drachms.