Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1872-09-06
When to Eat.

THE instinct, observation, and expert.
ence of civilized society have led to the
practice of eating three times day
morning, noon, and night. Circumstances,
habit, necessity, have caused the appoint
ment of different hours for eating in some
cases without demonstrably hurtful re.
suits; but the great general rule, as to
those who work, is as above stated, and
for them the best time for breakfast is the
early part of the morning, before they go
out to their daily labor. A habitual com
pliance with this single, simple rule would
almost exterminate the greatest scourge
of the western hemisphere, fever and
ague; and this would of itself be a bless
ing of inconceivable value. Any reader
who was in the habit of spending a night
now and then with the hOspltable old
Dutch farmers around New York forty
years ago will remember it was custom
among many of them to breakfast by day
light, especially in the winter time. and
very early in the morning in summer.
Who were healthier and lived longer than
the old Knickerbockers?
The longer the interval between eating,
the weaker does the body, as a whole,
become; and so with each individual
member and organ. Five or six hours is
the usual average between breakfast
and dinner and between dinner and
supper; and the reader is conscious of a
weakness or faintness commonly preced-
ing the eating hour, especially ii work OF
body or brain has been done.
Another observation has been made,
that after a meal in health, we feel better,
stronger, more vigorous. But from sup
per to breakfast there is an interval of ten
or twelve hours, about double that be-
tween the other meals; and although there
may not have been as much thought or
work as between the others, still there has
been enough to leave the body more or
less faint or languid, as witness our own
sensations, when we are about getting up
in the morning; witness, too, our lndls-
position to activity or labor for some time
after rising.
Men have been able to discover the laws
of action of the poisonous ingredient of
the early morning air upon the debilitated
body and the unresisting stomach; but
every effort has hitherto failed to discover
any of the physical properties of that
ingredient. 1t has been so subtle that a
bottle of the air has been taken and ana
lyzed by the chemical tests known, and
the air so taken has not been found to
contain any other ingredient than portions
of air of the healthiest regions. This
proved, not that there was not an addi-
tional element in this disease-producing
morning air, but that human skill and in
genuity could not detect it, at the same
time, the laws of it's action were deter
mined, and also the agencies by which
that action could be antagonized with uni
formity and certainty. Here it only
concerns us to know that in tenn
perate and tropical latitudes the i'll effects
of early morning air on the human sys-
tenn are measurably avoided by taking an
early breakfast, warm and nourishing;
the theory being that food, or whatever
drink causes a healthful stimulus or
stimulating action in the stomach, does,
at the same time, give the system power
to resist the i'll effects of the agencies in
question. Hail.