The Opelousas courier., 1899-09-30
FoLLIEs Of THE FRUIT EATING FAB
Queer and Valuable information to che
Large Army OF Dietary Cranks.

Queer and Valuable information to che
Large Army OF Dietary Cranks.
The Alienist and N~eurologist, of
which DR.. Charles Hamilton Hughes
is the editor, finds some amusement
ct the expense of the dietary crank
It says: "a sect has lately arisen
which has. evolved q theory which is
truly p%onderous in the way in which
it tramples down the joys of the table.
The Ralston Club has solved the
mystery of arterion-scler osis. = Then
logic is. simple. The arteries calcify;
the lime-salts cause Qualification; all
foods except fruits and all natural
waters contain slime-salts; ergo: eat
nothing but fruit; drink nothing but
distilled water. They apparently as.
sumo that with this one mighty BRAIN
throb they have solved the problem
OF life, and that they have left men NO
shadow of an excuse for dying under
two hundred years of age. The
monkey, the nearest Of kin to the
hairy p%rogenitor of man, is appealed
to as a touching instance of plain liv-
ing 1--WE wish we could add high think
ing, but though the apostles of Rails
ton may believe it, they do not ex-
p~ressively say SOY. The monkey, they
tell US, eats only fruits, and never
drinks water with his meals. Pre-
sumably the reason why he fails Of
the double-century mark in respect Of
age is because he does not drink dit.-
titled water. The Ralstonites pause
in their consideration of the animal
kingdom with the monkey. This was
unfortunate. The raven, for instance,
lives to be one hundred years old. He
lives On carrion. The next army Of
cranks may be induced to follow his
example.
'The fruit-esting craze is possibly
the most degenerate of the many re-
cent fads. The f%ruit-eating natives of
the tropics and their next lower rela-
tives, the apes, are truly inspiring OBJ
jects of imitation by civilized man
not even their outdoor and afboreal
lives say them from the consequences
Of a meagre and irritant regimen. II
is truly pitiful to see the army OF
Inconsistencies, dyspeptics and rheu-
MATES, starving their tissues and
calculating their blood at the beck of
a few, to put it charitably, hair
Drained enthusiasts. It Is fair to
suppose that a troop Of rickety chill
dren will later rise up and call them
anything but blessed, O fate from
which the ape saves himself by abun.
dant rotations of river water. The
fact with regard to fruit is that al
though it contains little nourishment
it agrees we'll with mauy people en-
dowed with a vigorous gastric mucosa
and fairly alkaline blood. To them it
brings looseness and joy. In many
dyspeptic states it is the first food
stuff to disagree, and to the ill-nour-
ished neurasthenic it is a miserable
substitute for the better tissue build
ers. An appeal to the facts of evolu-
ton gives little comfort to the cranks
of n dietary idea. Primitive man
has IS hunter and herdsman thriven
on an animal dietary. Nuts and
fruits has ser we'd his turn as we'll, and
encouraged him to the cultivation OF
the cereals. There is no evidence to
show that the people of any nation
have become the longer lived or shorter
lived on account of an exclusively
vegetable dietary. or that any associa.
ton of cranks has increased the long
evity of its members by any exclusive
whatever:."-Food and Santa.