HOW TO MAINTAIN GOOD DIGESTION.
OBSERVANCE of four things is required to keep the organs of digestion in good condition: first, the kind of food eaten; second, the amount eaten; third, the manner in which it is taken; and fourth, the state of the system at the time of eating. The quantity and quality of the food taken should vary with age, occupation, temperament, temperature, and habit. When persons contemplate making extraordinary effort, either mental or physical, less food than usual should be eaten. After full growth is reached, if the same amount of food be taken as during the growing age, without increase in regular labor, the digestive organs will become diseased. Little drink should be allowed at meals to weaken the digestive fluids. These are the saliva, gastric juice, and bile. Bile is not found in a healthy stomach; if it is ejected in vomiting, it shows that the action of the stomach is inverted. Knowledge of this would save many from swallowing emetics and cathartics to rid the stomach of bile. Copious draughts of water should be taken between meals, to furnish the stomach material for the necessary digestive fluids. Water-drinking an hour before meals should constitute a habit from infancy to old age. Its quantity must be regulated by the condition of each person. Lean people usually drink very little and are large eaters, while fat persons are apt to eat little and drink much. If the order be changed, it will, in most cases, make the lean grow fat, and the fat people will have the comfort of seeing their own shadows grow less. If one meal follows another too quickly, before the stomach has time to rest, the gastric cells will not be well filled, and digestion will not be well done. Of all the organs in the body, none requires such absolute rest as the stomach. The feebler the person, the more carefully should this be observed. Food should never be taken immediately after severe exertion of mind or body. At such times there is too much blood in some parts of the body, and too little in others. Rest restores this equilibrium. From thirty to sixty minutes is required at such times to restore to the stomach the power for complete digestion. The Spanish fashion of lounging after eating is far better than the habit of our Anglo-Saxon race, of rushing to and from meals as if life depended upon the small amount of time used in eating.—Demorest's Monthly.