The Cincinnati daily star. [volume] ([Cincinnati, Ohio]) 1875-1880, 1879-10-06
SHALL WE CONTINUE TO EAT AND
DRINK

SHALL WE CONTINUE TO EAT AND
DRINK!
The dangers to life and health that
scientific inquiry proves assail man in
the fluids he imbibes or the solid food
that he undertakes to assimilate to the
natural uses of the corporeal body are
such that intelligent minds are led to in
quire whether eating and drinking will
not have to be wholly dispensed with in
the future lest death more or less sudden
be the inevitable result. There exists, in
fact, scarcely an article of food or any
description Of drink that some person
either of real or pretended scientific at
tainments will tell you is next to
death to partake of. A strict vegetarian
will show you by incontestable
proof that meats of all kind are
breeders of disease, engender humors,
breed scrofula, promote fevers and are in
every way hurtful to the healthy natural
system. The lover of animal diet will on
the other hand say that strength and
muscular force as well as mental vigor
absolutely demand animal food; that the
molar and bicuspid teeth in the human
mouth show incontestably, to say moth
ing of mans natural appetite, that
mixed diet of flesh and vegetables is pro-
vided for in mans natural economy.
That when the sands of life from loss of
blood or the ravages of disease is nearly
spent and the vital fame is Pickering,
that meat extracts are the only
means of sustaining or prolonging
life. And so in our drinks. The
prohibitionist will declare moral and
physical ruin to come from the use of
wine, while the believers of this beverage
will point to the sturdy peasants of
France and Germany who make it their
almost sole beverage and to a great ex-
tent their substitute for meat. One man
declares coffee next to suicide, and an
other requires it morning and evening
daily. One will find tea promotive of
dyspepsia, scandal, nervousness, head
ache, and another the antidote for all
those ills. One will recommend cold wa
ter the first thing on rising in the morn
ing, and another declares it promotive of
hatulence, heartburn, diarrbea, and
countless other Affections. This physi-
clan suggests oatmeal, cracked wheat
and corn grits as best for delicate, dys
peptic stomachs; another will not allow
patients to touch it as surely lead
ing to dyspepsia. One eschews sweets as
little less than poison, another will point
to the negroes employed on the Southern
sugar plantations, fat and sleek specimens
of perfect health and contentment. One
believes tomatoes are productive of can
GERS, and will array whole columns of
statistics to prove their theory, while 9th
ers who have used them freely all their
lives are sound to-day, and can cite you a
number Of cancerous persons who never
made use of them.s Here is one physi-
clan who forbids potatoes to his patients
as too starchy for promiscuous use, and
another declares them the simplest and
most wholesome of diet, as witness their
universal use by the healthy Irish peas
ants. One recommends bathing and an
other objects One says new milk, fresh
from the COW, and the other says it should
invariably be skinned. One advises fruit,
another none, and so on to the end of the
| chapter. There is poison in our carpets,
/ and sweeping them endangers our lives
by inhaling; there is arsenic in our wall
t paper, and we court death by reason
: thereof. There is poisonous mildew in
the paste with which innocuous papers are
a affixed to our walls. There is damp in
our beds that is scarcely less deadly thar
the cholera and yellow fever; there are
poisonous animalcule in the water W.
drink; diphtheria and fever in thu
0 city sewers; malaria in country dis
+ tricts, and, in short, death every
e where, until timid people who are cred
h ulous enough to believe all the croakin,
f one hears might about as we'll lie dowl
}. and peaceably yield up the ghost as t.
t attempt to escape the haunting horror
that environ those silly enough to regar'