Thomas County cat. [volume] (Colby, Kan.) 1885-1891, 1889-04-11

his affections flow readily and gener0s-
ity is natural If his nerves are ir-
ritable he is compelled to think of
himself and is selfish. The best
cure for unpleasant behavior and a
passionate character is decent diet
Try it on your children and see. Love
and tenderness too often leads to in.
diligence. 1t is thought to be small
thing if only the stomach is over
loaded or falsely fed. But it is a very
great matter when we consider that
on the digestion and nutrition depend
also character. The foundation for
the use of stimulants and narcotics,
tobacco and whisky, is often laid in
the earliest years by the irritation
caused by unwholesome food.
The amount of food devoured is i'm.
mensely beyond any needs or demands
of the physical system. Growth and
repair are the two demands in early
life, and repair alone is the require
ment of our later years; and these re-.
quire no such engagements of food
as are INDUCED in by the masses. The
heat of the body must always be sus-
tanned at nearly one hundred degrees.
In summer we have only to combat a
few degrees of lower temperature; but
in winter, by food and clothing. we
must raise the body heat from zero
outside of us to one hundred degrees
above zero inside of us. It plainly
will not do to eat in summer as we do
in winter, as much, or of the same
kind of food-if we consider heat
alone. But in summer we live, as q
rule, more active lives, and pass of
superfuous heat with great ease and
rapidity, while the surface of the body
is cooled by perspiration. Besides,
in winter. we live ON the average, far
more sedentary lives, rendering it
much more difficult to get rid of SUI
perfluous food 1t is probable that
most people digest and assimi-
late and dispose of waste so much
better in theowarm season that they
eat more than in winter-and ought
to do so. The kind of foods used
should, however, be very unlike. It 10
almost impossible in summer to eat
too much of ripe fruits, while of meats
very few care to eat in large amounts.
There is remarkable revolution going
on in this matter of diet Twenty-Five
years ago the consumption of fruit per
capita in the United States could not
have exceeded one-half the present
consumption, for the simple reason
that it was not procurable. The in
creased growth of small fruits is enor-
nous, but the demand is said to fully
keep up with the supply. One of the
most wholesome of all foods is the
grape. The enormous increase in its
cultivation is to be welcomed by all
who desire to see healthy people. 1t
is one of those fruits that can be in
dulged in almost without limit. A
surfeit of grapes is hardly a possibili.
ty. Thousands of tons are now con-
sumed where one ton was eaten thirty
years ago.
Rules for diet are as common as
snowflakes. 1t is impossible, how
ever, for one to prescribe absolutely
for another. The physician is never
more severely taxed than when called
on to resuscitate an enfeebled stomach.
Vegetarians, Grahamites and a thou
sand other ties have their nOstrums
and prescribe with great confidence.
The real necessity is to discover some
preventive rather than a cure. Some
one has said that dyspepsia is killing
more people than rum. 1t certainly is
undermining the National constitution
and Herewith the National character
quite as fast as drunkenness Intern
perance is altogether the same vice
whether it affects food or drink. Hor-
ace Mann sounded the note of warning
to young men forty years ago in his
famous lectures. They should be re-
printed and re-read. mo glutton or
dyspeptic can stand up alongside a
man with a sound stomach and clear
head" Mature abhors two things
a vacuum and foul stomach" Who
ever fails to eat wisely carries decay
in his stomach. His breath is the
smoke of the charnel house. Every
faculty of mind and every function of
body are affected. and degeneration is
the result.
The most unpleasant feature Of this
intemperance of eating is that it is
quite as easily added to heredity as
the intemperance of drinking. We
have to suffer for the sins of diet of
our grandfathers. Can the natural
selfishness of human nature be over
come sufficiently to reverse this
tendency, and make it law that each
generation shall have little better
chance than the last? If 1 am not mis-.
taken, it can be so reversed and there
are pretty sure signs that our next
generation will show the chan ge.
The boys and girls who in ten years
will constitute the working world
will have firmer nerves and better di-