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54
food only into his body as experience has shown
best to agree with it; and adhering to this course,
without panic as to particular accustomed articles,
and without abrupt discontinuance of old harmless
habits. Apart from personal peculiarities, the chief
dangers of diet appear to lie as follows: first,
in those excesses of meat and drink, which (especially
under circumstances of fatigue) occasion
sickness to the stomach, or an increased labour of
digestion; secondly, in taking food, solid or fluid,
which is midway in some process of chemical transition—half-fermented
beer and wine, water containing
organic matters, meat and game and venison
no longer fresh and not completely cooked, fish and
shell-fish, in any state but the most perfect freshness,
fruit or vegetables long-gathered or badly
kept, and the like; thirdly, in a profusion of cold
sour drink; fourthly, in partaking largely of those
articles of diet which habitually, or by reason of
imperfect cooking, pass unchanged through the
intestinal canal; and fifthly, in the indiscreet use of
purgative medicines, or in taking any article of diet
which is likely to produce the same effect.
In short, if care be taken under all these heads
to avoid occasions of intestinal disturbance; if the
diet, while generous, be simple and strictly temperate;
if regular hours be given to sleep, to meals,
to industry, to recreation; if a fair proportion of
out-door exercise be taken; if damp and extremes
of temperature be guarded against; and all practical
pains be given to avoid the sources of bodily and