The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-07-19
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tclE punt OL lDLAy NAbN'N--NS' Aol ClIllCLl3 let us look into this matter of eating It is common a thing, practised alike in the tenements and the palace, though theme thods and manners diff fer. Let us shed the cover of conyen- tionality and get at the true inward ness of this tri-daily stoking of the physical furnace.
 Eating, as practised by the average human being, is the most dangerous amusement and pastime ever invented by man. It is the greatest menace to mental growth and physical health that has survive dthe ancient practice of head hattening. The sport of eating kills more than the sport of war; it mains more than football and balloon ing together, and it is a more general life shorterner than the use of opium. Man has advanced to what may be considered a cQmmendable de- gree of civilization, and finds himself at the beginning of this new century with the promise of greater achieve ments in the next 100 years than has been made during all the thousands that are passed. But he has raised himself very little above the brutes in the matter of eating. The rudiment- ary thing in life has been neglected. There are thousands of cooks highly paid and much respected, who con- coct foods in ways that appeal to even the most jaded palate. There are thou sands of doctors who compound un- holy draughts to remove the effects of that cooking. There are untold mill | lions invested in food producing, and weath without end invested in the pur- IVeyance of the same. This is an age when 5S varieties of every continent are within the purse possibilities of lnearly all. The ubsiness of eating has come to be such an involved and com- plicated one that when somebody dis covers a food that is really non-injur- ious he patents it, and men form clubs and present medals to celebrate the daring of so brilliant g mind. We have gone a long way in the matter 'of titillating the palate. But the rudimen- tary facts of eating we have forgotten. It is not so much what we eat as it is how much It is not so much the necessity for pure food as it is the need of less food that Is filling the grave yeards. Consider if you like, man with fine new furnace and boiler built to burn ton of coal a day. He stokes that furance until 1t is red hot using five tons a day. and dragging out the ashes to make way for more coal, using forced draft and all the other unnatural thing that make a fire burn furiously. First thing he knows his furance is burned out; he has a lot of split tubes in his boiler, and the plant is laid up for repairs. He calls the doctors of such things, and they patch it up. In business, there is the advantage that the man can buy q new boiler. He repeats the process, and in another little while the crown sheet of the boiler stumps, the steam blows the whole thing up, and the man, oh! where is he? The remains go to the scrap pile, and his friends say it serY- ed him right for having no more sense. Transpose this story into physical terms, and the friends who are doing the same thing themselves erect a monument and hail his memory as a man "cut down in his prime by the hand of Providence" The hand of Providence gets the blame for more things than the foot of time, which lis saying plenty,
 Mankind will never be great until it learns that a hungry man is the no- best work of God, The human animal performs his feats of mentality on an empty stomach. There Is just so much blood in the system If is is kept busy all the time digesting food, it has no chance to rise to nobler labors for the brain Napo1eons conquering armies won their victories on empty stomachs. It Newton had been considering apples merely as articles to satisfy the appe- tite, we might have waited longer for the discovery of the law of gravitatton lJenny Linds sweetest songs and Patt's richest notes were sung with a fast unbroken. The man of letters, of commerce, of science, of discoveries; of conquest, of any line of accomplish meut, learned his lessons and perfect ed his plans when he was hungry. The reason that genius takes root in the garret and brilliancy thrives in the tenement is because in the garret and tenement the food is plain and scarce The stupid sons of the brilliant fath- CTS might have had the brains of their sires if they had had their stomaehs,
 It is not too much whiskey that is sapping the strength of humanity. Il
 is too much meat, cake and mince pie. A man with a biz stomach, caused by over-eating, is branded with his sin where all may see. The human digestive organs arc the most economical creation of divine Providence. A little food, eaten decent l1y, is all that is needed. Over eating is the prime reason for over-smoking. A man does not desire pipe, cigar or ci- garete on an empty stomach. The hardened smoker eats that he may smoke. Others eat for other reasons Few eat because they are hungry Three meals a day served as the meals of even the middle classes are served is more than any one stomach can cart for. We seem to think that if we ski luncheon we are i'll. If we are no hungry for dinner, we need tonic I we lack enthusiasm for breakfast, WI are over working Overfeeding is re
 sponsible for much more than over working. The human mind is most nor nal when it is active. It was made t, work. The greatest joy of which tn