Part 104 (1/2)
”How did them old _anti-delusion_ fellows live?” once asked an honest old farmer of the writer. ”They must have lived differently than we live, or they would not have told so many years as they did.”
True, true. The difference between ancient and modern diet is remarkable.
The ancient Greeks and Romans used no tea, coffee, tobacco, chocolate, sugar, lard, or b.u.t.ter. They had but few spices, no ”nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, or cloves,” no Cayenne pepper, no sage, sweet marjoram, spinach, tapioca, Irish moss, arrow-root, potato, corn starch, common beans; no oranges, tamarinds, or candies, or the Yankee invention, ”buckwheat cakes and mola.s.ses.” What would our modern cooks do without the above enumerated articles in the culinary department? And the b.u.t.ter! Down to the Saviour's time b.u.t.ter was unknown. Dr. Galen (130-218, A. D.) saw the first b.u.t.ter only a short time before his death. Tea is comparatively a modern introduction.
THE GREEN GROCERY OF THE CLa.s.sICS.
The cabbage has had a singular destiny--in one country an object of wors.h.i.+p, in another of contempt. The Egyptians made of it a G.o.d, and it was the first dish they touched at their repasts. The Greeks and Romans took it as a remedy for the languor following inebriation. Cato said that in the cabbage was a panacea for the ills of man. Erasistratus recommended it as a specific in paralysis. Hippocrates accounted it a sovereign remedy, boiled with salt, for the colic. And Athenian medical men prescribed it to young nursing mothers, who wished to see l.u.s.ty babies lying in their arms. Diphilus preferred the beet to the cabbage, both as food and as medicine,--in the latter case, as a vermifuge. (Horace Greeley prefers the latter, for he says that ”a cabbage will beat a beet if the cabbage gets a-head.”) The same physician extols mallows, not for fomentation, but as a good edible vegetable, appeasing hunger and curing the sore throat at the same time. The asparagus, as we are accustomed to see it, has derogated from its ancient magnificence. The original ”gra.s.s”
was from twelve to twenty feet high; and a dish of them could only have been served to the Brobdignagians. Under the Romans, stems of asparagus were raised of three pounds' weight, heavy enough to knock down a slave in waiting with. The Greeks ate them of more moderate dimensions, or would have eaten them, but that the publis.h.i.+ng doctors of their day denounced asparagus as injurious to the sight. But then it was also said that a slice or two of boiled pumpkin would reinvigorate the sight which had been deteriorated by asparagus! ”Do that as quickly as you should asparagus!”
is a proverb descended to us from Augustus, and ill.u.s.trative of the mode in which the vegetable was prepared for the table.
A still more favorite dish, at Athens, was turnips from Thebes. Carrots, too, formed a distinguished dish at Greek and Roman tables. Purslain was rather honored as a cure against poisons, whether in the blood by wounds, or in the stomach from beverage. I have heard it a.s.serted in France, that if you briskly rub a gla.s.s with fingers which have been previously rubbed with purslain or parsley, the gla.s.s will certainly break. I have tried the experiment, but only to find that the gla.s.s resisted the pretended charm.
Broccoli was the favorite vegetable food of Drusus. He ate greedily thereof; and as his father, Tiberius, was as fond of it as he, the master of the Roman world and his ill.u.s.trious heir were constantly quarrelling, like two clowns, when a dish of broccoli stood between them. Artichokes grew less rapidly into aristocratic favor; the _dictum_ of Galen was against them, and for a long time they were only used by drinkers against headache, and by singers to strengthen their voice. Pliny p.r.o.nounced artichokes excellent food for poor people and donkeys. For n.o.bler stomachs he preferred the cuc.u.mber--the Nemesis of vegetables. But people were at issue touching the merits of the cuc.u.mber. Not so regarding the lettuce, which has been universally honored. It was the most highly esteemed dish of the beautiful Adonis. It was prescribed as provocative to sleep; and it cured Augustus of the malady which sits so heavily on the soul of Leopold of Belgium--hypochondriasis. Science and rank eulogized the lettuce, and philosophy sanctioned the eulogy in the person of Aristoxenus, who not only grew lettuces as the pride of his garden, but irrigated them with wine, in order to increase their flavor.
But we must not place too much trust in the stories, either of sages or apothecaries. These pagans recommended the seductive but indigestible endive as good against the headache, and young onions and honey as admirable preservers of health, when taken fasting; but this was a prescription for rustic swains and nymphs. The higher cla.s.ses, in town or country, would hardly venture on it. And yet the mother of Apollo ate raw leeks, and loved them of gigantic dimensions. For this reason, perhaps, was the leek accounted not only as salubrious, but as a beautifier. The love for melons was derived, in similar fas.h.i.+on probably, from Tiberius, who cared for them even more than he did for broccoli. The German Caesars inherited the taste of their Roman predecessor, carrying it, indeed, to excess; for more than one of them submitted to die after eating melons, rather than live by renouncing them.
I have spoken of gigantic asparagus: the Jews had radishes that could vie with them, if it be true that a fox and cubs could burrow in the hollow of one, and that it was not uncommon to grow them of a hundred pounds in weight. It must have been such radishes as those that were employed by seditious mobs of old, as weapons in insurrections. In such case, a rebellious people were always well victualled, and had peculiar facilities, not only to beat their adversaries, but _to eat their own arms_! The horseradish is probably a descendant of this gigantic ancestor.
It had at one period a gigantic reputation. Dipped in poison, it rendered the draught innocuous, and rubbed on the hands, it made an encounter with venomed serpents mere play. In short, it was celebrated as being a cure for every evil in life, the only exception being that it destroyed the teeth. There was far more difference of opinion touching garlic than there was touching the radish. The Egyptians deified it, as they did the leek and the cabbage; the Greeks devoted it to Gehenna, and to soldiers, sailors, and c.o.c.ks that were not ”game.” Medicinally, it was held to be useful in many diseases, if the root used were originally sown when the moon was below the horizon. No one who had eaten of it, however, could presume to enter the temple of Cybele. Alphonso of Castile was as particular as this G.o.ddess; and a knight of Castile, ”detected as being guilty of garlic,” suffered banishment from the royal presence during the entire month.
It is long since the above instructive article on the ”Green Groceries of the Cla.s.sics,” by Dr. Doran, was in print, and I think it will be new to most of my readers. I hope it will prove interesting as well as instructive.
ANIMAL OR VEGETABLE DIET?
Both, if considered in regard to health. With an eye to economy only, I should recommend vegetable diet.
I think that poor people lay out more, in proportion, than the rich, for the purchase of animal food. They often buy extravagantly, on the credit system, purchasing on Sat.u.r.day nights, when there is a rush at the stalls, and less opportunities for good bargains than when there is more time. Again, the lower cla.s.ses fry their meats, losing much of their flavor and substance, by its going up chimney; or by boiling, and throwing away much of the nutriment with the water, which stewing in a covered dish would obviate.
I have been into various markets, and observed the poor as they made their purchases. I have seen them count into the butcher's hand their last penny for a rib roast, a piece of pork to fry, a hind quarter of lamb to bake, or beef to boil, when a piece to stew, with nouris.h.i.+ng vegetables, would cost far less, and return double the nutritive principle.
Beefsteak, which contains seventy-five per cent. of water, is poor economy of both money and health. The flank and neck pieces are better. The more fatty and nutritive fore quarters are better than the hind quarters. Ask the Jews. Coa.r.s.e vegetables, as carrots, cabbages, turnips, and potatoes, contain more nourishment than beef, though far less than the cereals, as wheat, barley, corn, and buckwheat. Beans, peas, rice, cracked wheat or hominy, cooked with meat, make a most wholesome and nouris.h.i.+ng diet for laborers, for the sedentary, and for invalids. Meat should never be given to toothless infants. Milk, or bread and milk, is all they require until they have teeth.
A cheap, innutritious regimen is scarcely conducive to longevity, any more than a stimulating and high living is contributive to that end. A great quant.i.ty of hot roast meats is objectionable. Also hot fine flour bread.
Let those particularly interested in the matter see our article on bread, etc., in chapter on Adulterations. Also, as respects coa.r.s.e sugar against the refined. See, also, Nutriment for Consumptives, in next chapter.
x.x.xIII.
CONSUMPTION (PHTHISIS PULMONALIS).
CONSUMPTION A MONSTER!--UNIVERSAL REIGN.--SIGNS OF HIS APPROACH.--WARNINGS.--BAD POSITIONS.--SCHOOL-HOUSES.--ENGLISH THEORY.--PREVENTIVES.--AIR AND SUNs.h.i.+NE.--SCROFULA.--A JOLLY FAT GRANDMOTHER.--”WASP WAISTS.”--CHANGE OF CLIMATE.--”TOO LATE!”--WHAT TO AVOID.--HUMBUGS.--COD-LIVER OIL.--STRYCHNINE WHISKEY.--A MATTER-OF-FACT PATIENT.--SWALLOWING A PRESCRIPTION.--SIT AND LIE STRAIGHT.--FEATHERS OR CURLED HAIR.--A YANKEE DISEASE.--CATARRH AND COLD FEET, HOW TO REMEDY.--”GIVE US SOME SNUFF, DOCTOR.”--OTHER THINGS TO AVOID.--A TENDER POINT.
Phthisis Pulmonalis is consumption of the lungs, which is the common acceptation of the term consumption. _Phthisis_ is from the Greek, meaning _to consume_. This fearful disease, from the earliest period in the history of medicine to the present day, has proved more destructive of human life than any other in the entire catalogue of ills to which frail humanity is heir. In Great Britain, one in every four dies of consumption; in France, one in five. In the United States, especially in New England, the number who die annually by this fearful disease is truly startling!
One in every three! One reason for this fatality is because of the prevailing and erroneous idea that it is inevitably a fatal disease.
Consumption is a relentless monster, and insidious in his approaches. He spares not the high or the low. Oftener known in the hovel, he fails not to visit dwellers in palaces. He paints the cheek of the infant, youth, maiden, the middle-aged, and the aged with the false glow of health. The delicate and beautiful are his common subjects.