The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-10-12
DTETETIC "cRANKS. -

on the necessity of observance of dietetic and
other rules of health. Not the rules man
might construct from his own experience or
that of others with which he was familiar, but
the rules deduced by logical processes from
certain facts ascertained by chemical analysis,
applied, after the fashion of ''the bed of
Procustes," to all stomachs, and appetites, and
physical conditions alike. 1t seems, though,
from a recent item, that he has changed his
notions and abandoned his dietetic fancies.
The paragraph says:
at is said that Dio Lewis has got over his
cranky notions about the diet of the human
race. AS a matter of fact, he was eating
chicken pot-pie when he advised the rest Of
mankind to fill up on turnips."
DR.. Dio Lewis has published more rubbish
on the subject of dietetics than all the other
hygienic "cranks" together. Taking his the
cries as rules of life, man would have had to
count his beans, measure his milk, and weigh
his bread and look for an attack of dyspepsia
if any neglect or accident made a variation
from the rule He does not seem to know
that the human organism is anything but
machine, to be regulated, and worked, and fed
like an engine. He allows nothing for that
mysterious, but most potent infuence-vital-
ity. All men, in his view, must live, and eat,
and sleep alike. The old proverb was very
close to the truth-for it was the fruit of the
experience of many generations What is
one mans meat is another mans poison" DIR.
bio Lewis's notions are very far from the
truth, for they are speculations on certain sci
entific assumptions that allow nothing for
the wisdom Of experience or the power Of vital
force to modify or nullify dietetic rules.
Lewis Comaro, at forty, abandoned a de-
bauched for an ascetic life, weighed and meas
ured every mouthful of bread, and meat, and
and some wholesome, and he lived to be
hundred. So DR.. Dio Lewis generalizes, on
the basis of one fact and several assumptions,
that the man who measures his food carefully,
selects the heterogeneous or carbonaceous, ac-
cording to his hygienic condition, will live
almost at will, while he will surely die early
and in agony if he eats whenever he is hun
cry and whatever he thinks he would like.
And up come our old backwoods grandfathers,
who took their nip" with tansy three times
day, ate fried fat pork with 'johnny-cake"
loaded with butter, and lived out their three
score and ten five times to the careful city
regulators once, and could do whole mans
work every day from seventeen to seventy.
Rev. Sir Henry Moncreif, Lord Cockburn
tells us, had every night at midnight roast
to ninety. According to DR.. Lewis, he should
have died of dyspepsia, or as lean as Calvin Ed
son, at twenty-five. One man lives healthily
on what another can't eat at all. One strong
mans careless habits would break another
down in five years. There is a difference in
vital force in strength of organism, in elias
ITCHY of constitution, that makes all the diff
ference between health and long disease under
the same conditions. Dietetic "cranks' like
Lewis take no account of this. Each
human machine must grind so much
starchy matter to make muscle, and so much
fatty matter to make heat, or break down.
The invariable contradiction of facts does not
disturb his logical serenity any more than it
does that of the free-trader who rivets a con-
clusion to his soul with a syllogism and laughs
at facts $50 much the worse for the facts,
they both say in effect The truth, evolved by
ages of eating, and living and dying is that
it matters precious little what man eats, it,
as Abernethy said, he ''likes it and it agrees
with him" He may live ON bread half wheat
and half chestnut meal, like the peasantry of
Tyrol; or he may make his bread of oat meal
and hemlock saw-dust, like the peasantry of
the Baltic coast; or he may eat walrus blub-
Der and drink rancid train oil, like the Eski-
mo of Smiths sound; or he may let his meat
decay till the buzzards come for it, like the
Abyssinians; or hang it up till it gets 'high"
and tender, as the epicures of Europe do their
oitolans and pheasants; he may do what he
will, but if the food likes him and he likes it
he will live soundly on it. Dietetic rules, in
the main are fudge to well man with
sound stomach, and as long as he does not
overload it, it is not going to revolt and set
up a dyspepsia or liver complaint against