The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1877-10-18

HEAVEN help the manIwho begins to
We say it with all duereverence, for
we do believe he needs help.
1--WE are not talking Of sick PEOPLE,
whose regimen has to be attende0 to,
but Of well people who are trying hard
to be sick.
The man to whom we now especially
refer can be found in every community.
We will call him Mr.. Black.
A year ago he could not eat beans.
Beans were so much poison mixed up
with pork fat and molasses. They
'laid like lead'' in his stomach, and
beans were banished from the house.
hold of the Blacks. His next edist of
expulsion was issued upon potatoes.
They were full Of starch, and starch
dries up the blood. No potatoes for
Black! He accidentally found out that
pepper is liable to irritate the coats of
the stomach, so pepper was prohibited
Apples sOured the stomach-exit ap
pies. Blacks stomach was a very sen
sitive affair, and it would almost seem
as if he would be better of without it.
He took to eating Graham bread and
rye fritters. No butter, for butter
makes bad blood; no sugar, for sugar
brings on biliousness; no salt in any
thing, because salt makes a person
:" HUNGRY" So on through the whole
catalogue of eatables.
Now, Black, from q kind and indul-
gent husband and father, has been
transformed, through the agency of
dieting, into the nightmare of his FAM
lily, and the bette m0ir of the friends at
whose table he chances to sit. ~
For what good housewife, with q
moderate degree of pride, could pre-
serve her equanimity when q guest
glances over her well-appointed table,
refuses each dish offered him, and says,
in sepulchral tones:
''In take very small piece of cold
bread, if you have no Graham
Now, man is not obliged to make
an ostrich of himself, and swallow old
horse-shoes or oyster-shells whole; but
there is no reason why moderately
healthy person, who works as much as
he ought, cannot eat what he likes, and
as much as he likes. And, if he is dis
tressed by it, let him saw his own wood,
and get in his coal, and scrub his Office
steps, and he will not hear much from
dyspepsia.
How things have changed since the
times of our grandfathers! They did
not know there was such thing as
dieting. We doubt if many of them
had ever heard the word. Graham
flour, Farina, Patent food, and scores
of other healthful'' compounds, were
yet to be discovered. Extracts of Buchu
and Plantation Bitters were myths of
the future, and nobody ever dreamed
that corn-bread and salt beef were too
heavy for the stomach of a well
working man or woman.
Our grandfathers and grandmothers
ate whatever they chose, and as much
as they wanted; and after hard days
work at wood-chopping and spinning
linen, they would ride twenty miles
over drifted road to some old corner
tavern, and dance till daylight, and
then ride back again, and take up the
ak and the distaff as if nothing had
happened.
And the women brought up ten or a
dozen children apiece, and lived to be
a hundred, and the men were hale at
ninety, and only died when their chill
dren and neutrality-suspicious. had
no longer need of them.
Then, paralysis, and apoplexy, and
catarrh, and diphtheria, and neuralgia,
and any number of other diseases now
SO common, were unknown, and if a
person did die of consumption, it took
the destroyer thirty or forty years to
complete the job.
Why is it that we are not SO strong
as the people of olden times? Why do
we fail to live out half our days, when
we claim to be so wise in all sanitary
matters! Why are we, in comparison
with those ignorant gourmands of a
hundred years ago, a Nation of en-
feebled dyspeptics, in spite of increased
facilities for health and long life?-in
spite of the fact that we are continually
dieting?"-Katc Thorn, in N. Y. Weekly.