Simple and Effective Means for Purifying the Blood — Errors of Diet Responsible for Many of the Ailments So Common in Springtime
By DAVID PAULSON, M. D.
Medical Superintendent of Hinsdale Sanitarium, Hinsdale, Illinois
MOST of us who were blessed with thoughtful mothers can remember how we were regularly compelled each spring to take various blood purifiers. Time has led us to question the efficacy of the blood remedies, but it has by no means discounted their necessity.
A "TOUCH OF SCURVY"
Dr. Evans, formerly health commissioner for Chicago, writes, "This is the season of the year for scurvy." He does not mean the fully developed type, such as sailors used to suffer of when they were absolutely deprived of fresh vegetables and lived largely on salted meat, but rather the A B C of the same thing. As Dr. Evans expresses it: "A large part of the population will have 'a touch of scurvy' between now and May. With some it will go no further than repeated spells of bad breath; with others a multitude of vague aches and pains variously called rheumatism, sciatica, lumbago, gout; with others there will be attacks of sore gums; with others the face will be pale and a little bloated, with dark circles and slight bloats around the eyes; with others there will be patches of skin eruption."
HOG, HOMINY, AND "SPRING FEVER"
This is also the time of year for those popular disorders known as "spring fever." The breaking of winter's icy fetters has set free a multitude of vicious germs, but that in itself would be of little consequence except for the fact that the winter diet of the majority of our population has been such as to break down resistance to disease and thus to encourage the activity of the deadly microbe. As Dr. Evans well expresses it: "The reason is plain. For several months we have lived on 'hog and hominy,' or what is equivalent to it. Certain needs of the body have not been met."
THEY MAKE ACIDITY OF THE BLOOD
Gautier, the eminent French dietetic authority, says: "Bread and meat suffice to nourish man, but they can not maintain him indefinitely in health. They both, as has been seen, have a tendency to acidify the blood. Should vegetables be wanting at any time, the humors will become less and less alkaline, and symptoms of a scorbutic [scurvy] nature will appear."
During winter, people are likely to substitute sugars and various sweets for the deficiency in vegetables, fruits, and green garden truck. This excess of cane-sugar and its preparations tends to increase still further this "touch of scurvy." Coffee and tea, both of which are really "drug drinks," and should therefore be purchased from the druggist instead of the grocer, tend still further to aggravate this same condition.
WHAT COFFEE WILL DO
On this point Gautier says: "Coffee, as every one knows, produces a nervous excitement, which, if abused, may lead to insomnia, hallucinations, troubles of the circulation, and muscular innervation, to precordial [heart] distress, and to dyspnoea [breathlessness]. One may become caffeic just as one can become alcoholic or a morphia maniac. Some people, nevertheless, do not readily suffer from the abuse of it. But it ought to be especially forbidden to arthritics, to uratics [uric acid conditions] — amongst whom it often causes gravel — to gastralgics, to dyspeptics, and to those suffering from Bright's disease."
NATURE'S IDEAL BLOOD PURIFIERS
Fruits, vegetables, and especially such green things as lettuce, raw chopped cabbage, and spinach, contain just exactly the mineral salts that nature needs as her ideal blood purifier; and that is the reason most people instinctively crave something of that sort this time of the year.
But those who live naturally during the winter have neither this craving, nor the "spring fever," nor the "touch of scurvy." On this point I again quote the following vital question and sensible answer from Dr. Evans:
"How can I get through this winter and early spring without skin eruptions, rheumatic pains, puffy face, and the other signs of a touch of scurvy? — The first requisite is to eat fruit for breakfast. Especially should the Southern people substitute fruit for some of the meat in their heavy biscuit-steak-waffles breakfast. Two fruits should be eaten each morning — one raw and one cooked.
"The best raw fruits are oranges, limes, lemons, grapefruit, pineapples, and apples. In addition, cooked apricots, apples, peaches, pears, baked apples, or other fruit should be eaten. As soon as the berries come in the spring, scurvy goes out. This is the season of the year when raw carrots are good for the complexion. Raw carrots, by preventing and curing spring touches of scurvy, may prevent some muddiness, some puffiness, and may cure up some spring blotches."
"Raw vegetables are better than cooked from the scurvy standpoint. There is some reason for thinking there are ferments — delicate chemical substances — present in raw vegetables and essential for health, and that these are destroyed at the cooking temperature."
Potatoes are extremely rich in mineral salts; and Gautier advises, in acid conditions, to replace bread partly by stewed potatoes, on account of their well-known ability to alkalinize the blood.
HE PAYS THREE TIMES
The man who daily eats a large amount of flesh food will generally discover that sooner or later he is paying for it thrice, — first to the butcher, and then to the doctor and the druggist; for as Gautier expresses it:
"A meat diet acidifies the blood and diminishes oxidation. It charges the humors of the system with a superabundance of nitrogenous wastes, uric acid in particular; it increases the urinary alkaloids; it congests the liver; it brings on an obstinate constipation, and causes dyspepsia, gastric difficulties, and enteritis; it leads to psoriasis, eczema, etc; it develops rheumatic, arthritic, gouty, and nervous tendencies."
While vegetables and fruits for the most part contain but a small amount of actual nourishment, the large amount of cellulose they have furnishes bulk that serves to encourage the activity of the alimentary canal; and at the same time their valuable salts not only cleanse the blood, but actually stimulate nutrition. Hence it is advisable always to make them an important part of the regular dietary.
