A Plea for an Overworked Organ.
SOME men wonder why they are ill. If they would pause for a few moments before a meal, and consider that the stomach is after all a sensitive organ, and not a mere receptacle into which we may dump anything and everything, possibly they would make such a change in their combinations of foods as would save them many aches and pains. In conversation with a portly looking gentleman one day on the question of diet, we elicited the fact that he had partaken of the following items that day for dinner. This is not a copy of a menu, but a list of the items selected from a menu by one individual: Anchovies and oil, macaroni soup, whiting fillet, grilled chicken and mushrooms, peas and potatoes, stewed pears and jelly, four wines, cheese and salad, fruit, cup of coffee, and a cigar. This was not an extraordinary meal, but a fair, average sample of his every-day dinner, and from personal observation we have no hesitation in saying that such a program forms the average dinner of thousands of city men, who wonder why they suffer so much torture from dyspepsia. Is it any wonder a poor stomach rebels when it is forced to receive such an incompatible mass of ingredients? The simpler the diet, and the smaller the variety of dishes, the greater will be the happiness and health of the individual.—Selected.