p. 253 | Overeating by J. Mortimer Granville

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 22, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 16.

Overeating.

By J. Mortimer Granville

It is the fashion of the day to ascribe all, or nearly all, the diseases of the body to an excessive use of alcohol. This is a prejudiced view of the matter, and not a very rational one either. It is the result of a hasty or biased judgment. For one disease really due to “drink,” there are probably two or three which are the direct effects of overfeeding. The organism readily falls into morbid habits of feeding; and important parts become thickened, enlarged, and consolidated; or they degenerate, and their proper elements are replaced by fatty matter when food is ruthlessly forced upon them.

In some organisms there is an inherited tendency to special kinds of overfeeding, which only needs the opportunity and the material to carry on a process destructive to the integrity of the organs, and, in the end, inimical to life itself. It does not often happen that any one organism is morbidly omnivorous; but there are few individuals who, if they could form a rigidly practical view of their own inner requirements, would not find it prudent to stint the supply of some special element of food with a view to organic health and efficiency.

It is not necessary to make ourselves slaves to any manner of living; nor is it desirable to devote too much thought to the subject; but the general maxim to live moderately and to restrain the appetite rather than gratify it, would be found conducive to health and happiness in the majority of instances, the harm likely to be done by underfeeding being as nothing compared with the mischief those work in their constitutions who feed too often and eat too much.—J. Mortimer Granville, M. D., in “How to Make the Best of Life.”