re, in much the same
condition that they enter and serve no better purpose than to promote,
somewhat, activity in the bowels. Nevertheless the writer does not wish
to be misunderstood as advocating total abstinence from such a palatable
class of foods; no harm results in most people if they only take
perfectly ripe and fresh fruits in moderation now and then; and these
should be always eaten after meals rather than before.

The fruits that contain comparatively little acid are, as a rule, more
wholesome than those that are rich in substance of this kind. For
example, perfectly fresh and ripe figs or peaches may be taken by most
persons with impunity if they be eaten after meals, and at intervals of
at least two or three days. Acid fruits, particularly lemons, seem to be
peculiarly unwholesome; apples are prone to cause trouble and can rarely
be eaten without ill effects, however mellow and palatable they may be.
It sometimes happens that persons take grape-fruit with less harm than
others.

Closely akin to fruits in their deleterious action on the digestive
apparatus are sours in any form whatever. Women, especially, indulge
freely and at irregular hours in foods containing much vinegar,
lemon-juice, etc.,--usually in the form of pickles or salads. In healthy
persons, in moderation, foods of this character perhaps produce no
appreciable trouble, but nothing is more thoroughly established than that
they act harmfully on the general run of dyspeptics, such as most of us
are to a greater or less degree after thirty years of age. This leads to
the remark that here, as in everything else, we must regard individual
peculiarities--it being true that one person can eat without ill effects
what may produce decided disturbances in others, or suffer from excess
when moderation would entail no ill-effects.

CHAPTER X

DRINKS--PROPER AND HARMFUL

An immense amount of rubbish has been written during the last few decades
concerning the supposed good effect of excessive water-drinking on the
human economy. Something like a quarter of a century ago a London
physician by the name of Haig brought forward and strenuously advocated
the view that a large number of minor ailments were the result of the
presence in the body of excessive quantities of uric acid; applying the
well known fact that the substance just mentioned requires a large amount
of water to dissolve it he conceived the idea that the proper remedy was
to flood th