HEALTH WITHOUT MEDICINE.

Cheerfulness.

I place cheerfulness next, in the catalogue of essentials to long life and happiness; before “diet,” for, unless a man eats cheerfully, nothing will agree with him; and if he be constantly cheerful, nothing that he eats will injure him.

“How shall I be cheerful when all the world goes wrong with me?” asks the diseased and despondent man or woman.

Put on cheerfulness as a garment. Assume it. Try my suggestion. Use a little hypocrisy with yourself. Go before your glass, if necessary, and assume a cheerful countenance. Keep it up, and before long you will be astonished to find that Mr. Melancholy don’t like it, and begins to withdraw his sombre person. Keep on “keeping it up,” and the most happy results will soon follow your exertions.

Try the reverse, and melancholy will return. This is cheap medicine. “?—A cheerful face, taken daily, feasting.”

Christian Cheerfulness.

The following prize essay was written by Rev. Francis J. Collier:—

“Cheerfulness as a Medicine.—Perhaps nothing has a greater tendency to cast gloom over the spirit than disease. The mind sympathizes with the body as much as the body with the mind. Their union is so intimate, so delicate, so sensitive, that what affects the one necessarily affects the other. Each to a certain degree determines the other’s condition. If the mind is joyful, its emotion is betrayed by the expression of the body. ‘A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance.’ But if the body is injured, or the physical system deranged, the mind at once suffers, and forthwith droops into sadness. It becomes, therefore, your Christian duty, if you have health, to study the laws of your physical being; to compel yourself both to labor and to rest; to avoid unnecessary risks or exposure; to abstain from injurious indulgences; to be prudent, temperate, chaste, and, by every proper means, to try to preserve what is so essential to your spiritual comfort. If you have lost this boon, strive to regain it. Think not, speak not, all the while about your malady. Suppress moans and complaints. They are always disagreeable to others; they can never be beneficial to you. Count your mercies, and not your miseries. Try upon your body the stimulus of a cheerful spirit. It may not insure your recovery, but it will certainly produce a pleasant alleviation. ‘A merry heart doeth good like a medicine; but a broken spirit dryeth the bones.’“Borrowing Trouble.—Forebodings of evil rob the mind of cheerfulness. ‘Ills that never happened have mostly made men wretched,’ says Tupper. Casting our glance ahead, we see ‘lions’ in the way; difficulties which we are sure we can never overcome; griefs under whose heavy weight we shall be utterly crushed. Not satisfied with our present troubles, we borrow misery from the future. The Holy Scripture instructs us to do otherwise. ‘Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.’—Prov. xxvii. 1. ‘Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’—Matt. vi. 34. And then it gives us a golden promise, ‘As thy days, so shall thy strength be.’

“The life of many Christians is a life of constant sadness and gloom. They seem to be entire strangers to all the happiness of earth and all the hopes of heaven. Their faces commonly appear as sombre as the stones which mark the dwelling-places of the dead. Their feelings are better expressed in sighs than in songs. Unhappy themselves, they make others unhappy. They come and go like clouds, shutting out the sunshine from cheerful hearts, and for a while casting upon them shadows cold and dark.

“Arise, O, desponding one! Quit your tearful abode in the valley of gloom, and come and make your dwelling on the bright hill-top of cheerfulness. Look up! look up! and behold the sun shining through the clouds, and the stars through the darkness.”

Whining.

This is a habit opposed to cheerfulness, and producing contrary results. It is half-sister to scolding, and equally as obnoxious. Don’t fret and whine. It makes you look old and cross. The disease soon becomes chronic if indulged in. It is a disease that not only the doctors know at sight, but every one can read it in the face of those thus afflicted. “O, what a cross face that lady has got!” I heard another female exclaim but yesterday, as they passed on the street. You cannot hide it; then don’t induce such a look.

Somebody has written the following, which so completely expresses my ideas of the matter, that I quote the item verbatim:—

“There is a class of persons in this world, by no means small, whose prominent peculiarity is whining. They whine because they are poor; or, if rich, because they have no health to enjoy their riches; they whine because it is too shiny; they whine because it is too rainy; they whine because they have ‘no luck,’ and others’ prosperity exceeds theirs; they whine because some friends have died, and they are still living; they whine because they have aches and pains, and they have aches and pains because they whine, no one can tell why.

“Now, we would like to say a word to these whining persons. Stop whining. It’s of no use, this everlasting complaining, fretting, fault-finding, scolding, and whining. Why, you are the most deluded set of creatures that ever lived.

“Do you not know that it is a well-settled principle of physiology and common sense that these habits are more exhausting to nervous vitality than almost any other violation of physiological law? And do you not know that life is pretty much what you make it and take it? You can make it bright and sunshiny, or you can make it dark and shadowy. This life is only meant to discipline us, to fit us for a higher and nobler state of being. Then stop whining and fretting, and go on your way rejoicing.”

Love.

“Well, what has that to do with health and long life?” ask the cynic, the bachelor, the old maid possibly, and the plodders.Everything, I reply.

The man, woman, or child who loves well and wisely, who loves the most, is the happiest, healthiest, and will live the longest.

“That is a bold assertion,” says my quizzer.

Yes, and true as bold. Now listen in silence to my statement.

Who loves, what loves, and what is the result?

“God is love.” Here is the first, the fundamental principle.

He is the oldest of all beings. To be like him is to love,—to love all things which he has created. This is Godlike. If you are not thus, you are like the ungodly, who “shall not live out half their days.” “Love God, and keep his commandments.”

“Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Is there not more happiness and health in the obeying of this command, than in disobedience to it? Whatever is conducive to happiness is healthful. Whatever produces unhappiness is injurious to health. Love is undefinable.

“There is a fragrant blossom that maketh glad the garden of the heart.

Its root lieth deep; it is delicate, yet lasting as the lilac-crocus of autumn.

········

I saw, and asked not its name; I knew no language was so wealthy.

Though every heart of every clime findeth its echo within.

And yet, what shall I say? Is a sordid man capable of love?

Hath a seducer known it? Can an adulterer perceive it?

········

Chaste, and looking up to God, as the fountain of tenderness and joy.

Quiet, yet flowing deep, as the Rhine among rivers.Lasting, and knowing not change, it walketh in truth and sincerity.

Love never grows old, love never perisheth.”

Affection and Perfection.

Love is so closely connected with our lives, and all that makes or mars our peace and pleasure, health and beauty, that I should feel guilty of a sin of omission by excluding this item from my chapter on health and happiness.

To be unloved is to be unhappy. Do not forget the connection between health and happiness. They are all but synonymous terms.

You may know the unloved and unlovely by the lines of care, dissipation, or crime that are furrowed upon their brows. Go into the highways, and you may readily pick out the unloved child by its unsatisfied expression of countenance. It lifts its great, hungry eyes to yours instinctively, and asks for love and sympathy as plainly by that searching look, as the child of penury, the bread-starveling asks for alms when it presents its scrawny hand, and in pitiful tones says, “Please give me a penny, for God’s sake.”

O, give the child “love,” for God’s sake; for he so loved the world that he gave us his only begotten Son, who only in turn taught us to love.

Physical perfection is never found in the unloved.

The unloved wife is not long beautiful, nor the child of such. There is a marked difference between them and the wife and child that the husband and father cherishes and caresses with unrestrained affection. In sickness love divides the burden, as in the common toils of life.

Disguise or deny the truth of the assertion if you will, woman must love somebody or some thing. She were not otherwise a true woman, nor made in the image of her Maker. If the husband denies her that affection which truly belongs to her nature, he must not blame her, but himself, if she loves another. She will cling to something. If she has no children upon whom to lavish her affections, she will love some other’s, or a pet canary, or even a cat, or lapdog; but love she will.

Separating the Sheep and Goats.

I place cheerfulness before love, because angry and melancholy people are unlovable. If you wish to be loved and happy, be lovable. Strive to please, to make those about you happy, and then you will be lovable. Cheerfulness is the first step.

A very sensible writer in the Phrenological Journal says,—

“There is not enough thought, and time, and consideration devoted to this inevitable requisite, love. It is kept too much in the background. How many years are given to preparing young people for professions, trades, and occupations; how much counsel and advice are heaped around these topics; and yet how little importance is attached to the very influence which will probably be the turning-point of their lives. No wonder there are so many unhappy marriages. If we could only remember that boys and girls are not to be educated for lawyers, merchants, school-teachers, or housekeepers alone, but for husbands and wives, as well.”

Those girls are the most chaste and ladylike who have been brought up with a family, or neighborhood, or school of boys; and on the other hand, those boys who have from their earliest days been accustomed to female restraint and girlhood’s influences, make the best men, and most faithful, loving husbands and fathers.

What shall I say of those demoralizing institutions where the “young ladies” are taught algebra, languages, and ill manners? Where they are forbidden to recognize a gentleman in the school-room, prayer-room, or street? Can you, honest reader, believe there are such institutions in our enlightened land? Yet there are; where the sexes are denied not only the association with, but are forbidden the common courtesies of life; where, if a friend or brother lifts his hat to the young lady, while belonging to that institution, she is forbidden to acknowledge the courtesy.

I remember Mrs. Brandyball, in one of Theodore Hook’s novels of society, boasting of her seminary for young ladies as one of the safest in the world, being entirely surrounded by a dense wall, eight feet high, surmounted by sharp spikes and broken glass bottles. I reckon all the virtue preserved in this way was not worth the cost of its defences.

Fences broken down.

The writer passed some time in a town where these discourtesies were promulgated. I boarded with a pious family, where a large number of male students boarded also. There was one class of influences and passions pervading that place. All female influence and restraint were withdrawn. And what was the result? The boys were forbidden to smoke, or chew tobacco, or play at cards. They reckoned me as a “right jolly good fellow,” because I could be induced to play a game of euchre with them; but they occasionally smoked me out of their rooms, and I was repeatedly compelled to check their wonted flow of licentious conversation. Cards, as an innocent amusement, I could stand, but the “accomplishments” referred to I could not endure. Shall I, as a physician, mention the positive evidence, the pathognomonic indications which were revealed to me in the faces of many of those young men; of vulgar habits, which are less often or seldom revealed in those who customarily associate in pure female society? They had little or no respect for the opposite sex. Their ideas of them, thoughts and conversations, were most gross. If some now and then, as they occasionally would, took a stolen interview, a walk at night, when “Old Prof.” was asleep, it was with no more exalted views of purity than any other midnight criminal prowlers are supposed to cherish.

And the girls? Alas! they were ready to flirt with every strange man, drummer, or else, who came into the village. The aforesaid pious landlord assured me further, what my eyes did not see, that he knew of girls climbing out of the windows at night, and partaking of stolen rides and interviews as late as midnight; and he pointed out to me one coy, plump little miss, who he knew “had been out as late as one or two A. M., taking a ride with a gentleman scholar.”

The scholars all met in the “chapel” for prayers. Are sly glances, winks, or billets-doux prayers? If so, they prayed fervently.

Any well read, observing physician will tell you of the ruined healths of the majority of females educated at such exclusive seminaries.

And what is the reverse of this exclusiveness?

Bring the sexes up together. Teach them together, as much as is consistent. They will each have better manners, be more graceful, and possess clearer ideas of propriety, more beauty and better health, than by the plan of a separate education.

We all dread to grow old. Don’t talk of second childhood. Keep the first youthfulness fresh till the last. Love will do much towards continuing this desirable state. Says the Phrenological Journal, beauty comes and goes with health. The bad habits and false conditions which destroy the latter, render the former impossible. Youthfulness of form and features depends on youthfulness of feeling.

“Spring still makes spring in the mind,
When sixty years are told;
Love wakes anew the throbbing heart,
And we are never old.”

If, then, we would retain youthful looks, we must do nothing that will make us feel old.O, the folly of parents in some things! The nonsense of sixty is the sweetest kind of sense to sixteen; and the father and mother who renew their own youths in that of their children may be said to experience a second blossoming of their lives. Teach them to talk to you of their friends and companions. Let the girls chat freely about gentlemen if they wish. It is far better to control the subject than to forbid it. Don’t make fun of your boy’s shamefaced first love, but help him to judge the article properly. You would hardly send him by himself to select a coat or a hat—has he not equal need of your counsel and assistance in selecting that much more uncertain piece of goods, a sweetheart?

There is a great deal of popular nonsense talked and written about the folly of our girls contracting early marriages. It is not the early marriage that is in fault, it is the premature choice of a husband. Only take time enough about selecting the proper person, and it is not of much consequence how soon the minister is called in. Keep him on trial a little while, girls; look at him from every possible point of view, domestic or foreign. Don’t be deluded by the hollow glitter of handsome features and prepossessing manners. A Greek nose or a graceful brow will not insure conjugal happiness by any means. A husband ought to be like a watertight roof, equally serviceable in sunny or rainy weather.

Action and Idleness.

While action is surely essential to our physical and moral being, all extremes should be avoided. Excessive labor, even out of door, in the air and sunshine, may be injurious. On this point I quote the Scientific American:—

“It has oftentimes been asserted that those exposed to severe labor in the open atmosphere were the least subject to sickness. This has been proven a fallacy. Of persons engaged at heavy labor in outdoor exposure, the percentage of sickness in the year is 28.05. Of those engaged at heavy labor in-doors, such as blacksmiths, etc., the percentage of sickness is 26.54—not much to be sure; but of those engaged at light occupations in-doors and out, the percentage of sickness is only 20.80-21.58. For every three cases of sickness in those engaged in light labor, there are four cases among those whose lot is heavy labor. The mortality, however, is greater among those engaged in light toil, and in-door labor is less favorable to longevity than laboring in the open atmosphere. It is established clearly that the quantum of sickness annually falling to the lot of man is in direct proportion to demands on his muscular power.

“How true this makes the assertion,—‘Every inventor who abridges labor, and relieves man from the drudgery of severe toil, is a benefactor of his race.’ There were many who looked upon labor-saving machines as great evils, because they supplanted the hand toil of many operatives. We have helped to cure the laboring and toiling classes of such absurd notions. A more enlightened spirit is now abroad, for all experience proves that labor-saving machines do not destroy the occupations of men, but merely change them.”

Idleness induces Crime.

This fact cannot be too strongly or repeatedly impressed upon parents and children.

Warden Haynes, of the Massachusetts State Prison, lately uttered these emphatic and significant words, which are worthy to be written in letters of gold: “Eight out of every ten come here by liquor; and a great curse is, not learning a trade. Young men get the notion that it is not genteel to learn a trade; they idle away their time, get into saloons, acquire the habits of drinking, and then gambling, and then they are ready for any crime.” How many young men we see every day who are in the pathway to this end. Fathers and mothers who hold the dangerous view that it is not genteel for their children to learn a trade, can see where such ideas lead. The words of wisdom quoted above are full of weighty import for both parents and children.

Beauty and Development.

Activity of body and mind are conducive to health.

Everybody ought to know that moderate exercise develops the muscular and nervous power, hence the vitality of all creatures. Is the active, prancing steed, or the inactive, sluggish swine, the better representative of beauty, strength, and long life?

“The horse,” answers everybody. Then avoid the habits of the other, and you will be very unlike that indolent, unclean, and gluttonous animal. When you see a man who reminds you of a hog, be assured he has swinish habits.

Mental activity, unless it is excessive, is conducive to beauty, to strength, and health. A writer in the American Odd Fellow has some good ideas illustrative of my argument, that I may be pardoned for quoting him:—

“We were speaking of handsome men the other evening, and I was wondering why K. had so lost the beauty for which five years ago he was so famous. ‘O, it’s because he never did anything,’ said B.; ‘he never worked, thought, or suffered. You must have the mind chiselling away at the features, if you want handsome middle-aged men.’ Since hearing that remark, I have been on the watch to see whether it is generally true—and it is. A handsome man who does nothing but eat and drink grows flabby, and the fine lines of his features are lost; but the hard thinker has an admirable sculptor at work, keeping his fine lines in repair, and constantly going over his face to improve, if possible, the original design.”

Therefore, we infer that this moderate (outdoor) exercise is conducive to beauty, health, and longevity. Moderate activity of the mind the same.Idleness begets licentious thoughts and deeds. Activity of body and mind in honorable pursuits calls away the nervous power from the lower to the higher organs. A lively, cheerful, clean man or woman, is seldom wicked or licentious.

Sleep.

By the assistance of John G. Saxe, we have already given those

“Early to bed, and early to rise,
Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,”

fellows a touch of our opinion on too early rising. I base my judgment upon careful and continued observation during many years.

The Scriptures teach that the day is for work, and night for sleep. This turning day into night, sitting up till near midnight, is all wrong. It is ruinous to health and beauty. This other extreme, of rising at four or five o’clock and pitching into hard labor, is wearing and tearing to the constitution; and though nature for a while adapts herself to the necessity, by browning and unnaturally developing the exposed parts of such deluded or unfortunate persons, it does it at the expense of his length of days. He will not live so long for his over-doing.

Begin by retiring earlier, at the first indication after nightfall of fatigue and sleepiness. If sweaty, wash the skin quickly, as previously directed, with warm water, rubbing dry and warm, and cover up. Lie on one side. Do not sleep on your back. You are more liable to dream laborious or frightful dreams, snore, or have nightmare. Do not sleep in clothes worn during the day.

Unfortunate is the man or woman, who, from necessity, arises before six or seven in winter, or five to seven in summer.

Literary persons require more sleep than laborers. Children require more than adults. Do not lie in bed long after awaking at morning. Open your window wide as soon as you arise—it is supposed to be partially open at the top all night.

In inhaling air at night or morning, do it only through the nostrils. Night air is not injurious any more than day air if so inhaled. Sleep when sleepy—this is a good rule, unless disease induces unnatural sleep.

What shall we eat?

Eat what relishes well, and agrees with you afterwards. This is the best general rule I have been able to adopt for eating.

There has been so much ridiculous stuff written upon “diet” that most sensible people have given up trying to follow the prescribed rules of writers, if not their physician’s directions on that score.

Take the following, by one celebrated Dr. Brown, of England, for an example, although we may find others quite as ridiculous nearer home:—

“For breakfast, toast and rich soup made on a slow fire, a walk before breakfast, and a good deal after it; a glass of wine in the forenoon, from time to time; good broth or soup to dinner, with meat of any kind he likes, but always the most nourishing; several glasses of port or punch to be taken after dinner, till some enlivening effect is perceived from them, and a dram after everything heavy; one hour and a half after dinner another walk; between tea-time and supper a game with cheerful company at cards or any other play, never too prolonged; a little light reading; jocose, humorous company, avoiding that of popular Presbyterian ministers and their admirers, and all hypocrites and thieves of every description.... Lastly, the company of amiable, handsome, and delightful young women and an enlivening glass.”

Dr. Russell, to whom we are indebted for the quotation, might well say that “John Brown’s prescriptions seem a caricature of his system.”

A “Stomach-mill” and a “Stewing-pot.”

There have been many speculations about the nature of the digestive process, and in relation to them the celebrated Hunter remarked, playfully, “To account for digestion, some have made the stomach a mill; some would have it to be a stewing-pot, and some a brewing-trough; yet all the while one would have thought that it must have been very evident that the stomach was neither a mill, nor a stewing-pot, nor a brewing-trough, nor anything but a stomach.” All that can be said is, that digestion is a chemical process, the mechanical agency spoken of being of service only in thoroughly mixing the gastric juice with the food.

“Five Minutes for Refreshments.”

“Murder! murder!” the conductor might as well cry to passengers, as “Five minutes for refreshments.”

Now it makes less difference what we eat than how we eat. Cold hash, eaten slowly, therefore, well masticated, and mixed with the saliva, is more likely to “set well” than a light cake or a cracker, though it be “Bond’s best,” if hurried down the throat.

What the English call the “blarsted Yankee style” of gulping down the food half masticated, washing it down with drinks, will ruin anything but a sheet-iron stomach in a cast-iron constitution. Talk about “mills.” Why, that most excellently contrived mill in the mouth is not suffered to perform its duty. The hopper is too crammed; it clogs the whole machinery.

Eating between meals destroys the regular periods naturally established by the stomach for digestion. Three meals should be sufficient for twenty-four hours.

“Much has been said about exercising after eating, and the truth has been often over-stated. The famous experiment with the two dogs is cited to show that exercise after eating interferes with the process of digestion. Observe just how much was proved by the experiment. Two dogs were fed to the full, and while one was left to lie still, the other was made to run about very briskly. In an hour or two both dogs were killed, and it was found that the food was well digested in the dog that remained quiet, but not in the other. (I have seen it stated the reverse.) This proves simply that violent exercise, taken immediately after eating, interferes with digestion. Other facts show that light exercise rather promotes than impedes the process, and that even very strong exercise does not interfere with it if a short interval of rest be allowed, so that the process may be fairly commenced.

“The same is to some extent true of exercise of mind. It seems to be necessary that there should be some measure of concentration of energy in the stomach for the due performance of digestion, and any very decided exercise, bodily or mental, tends to prevent this. In the dyspeptic, even a slight amount of effort, either of body or mind, often suffices to do it.

“It is very commonly said that it is wrong to eat just before going to bed. Is this true? Cattle are apt to go to sleep after eating fully. Do sleep and digestion agree well in their case, and not so in the case of man? In some seasons of the year the farmer takes his heartiest meal at the close of the labors of the day, and soon retires. Is this a bad custom? Our opinion is that food may be taken properly at a late hour, provided, first, that the individual has not already eaten enough for the twenty-four hours,—that he has done so being true, probably, in most cases; and provided, secondly, that he is in such a state of health that digestion will not so act upon his nerves as to disturb his sleep. If it will thus act, it is clear that he had better be disturbed when awake, for he can bear the disturbance then with less of injury to his system.”

Ancient Diet.

“How did them old anti-delusion fellows live?” once asked an honest old farmer of the writer. “They must have lived differently than we live, or they would not have told so many years as they did.”

True, true. The difference between ancient and modern diet is remarkable. The ancient Greeks and Romans used no tea, coffee, tobacco, chocolate, sugar, lard, or butter. They had but few spices, no “nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, or cloves,” no Cayenne pepper, no sage, sweet marjoram, spinach, tapioca, Irish moss, arrow-root, potato, corn starch, common beans; no oranges, tamarinds, or candies, or the Yankee invention, “buckwheat cakes and molasses.” What would our modern cooks do without the above enumerated articles in the culinary department? And the butter! Down to the Saviour’s time butter was unknown. Dr. Galen (130-218, A. D.) saw the first butter only a short time before his death. Tea is comparatively a modern introduction.

The Green Grocery of the Classics.

The cabbage has had a singular destiny—in one country an object of worship, in another of contempt. The Egyptians made of it a god, and it was the first dish they touched at their repasts. The Greeks and Romans took it as a remedy for the languor following inebriation. Cato said that in the cabbage was a panacea for the ills of man. Erasistratus recommended it as a specific in paralysis. Hippocrates accounted it a sovereign remedy, boiled with salt, for the colic. And Athenian medical men prescribed it to young nursing mothers, who wished to see lusty babies lying in their arms. Diphilus preferred the beet to the cabbage, both as food and as medicine,—in the latter case, as a vermifuge. (Horace Greeley prefers the latter, for he says that “a cabbage will beat a beet if the cabbage gets a-head.”) The same physician extols mallows, not for fomentation, but as a good edible vegetable, appeasing hunger and curing the sore throat at the same time. The asparagus, as we are accustomed to see it, has derogated from its ancient magnificence. The original “grass” was from twelve to twenty feet high; and a dish of them could only have been served to the Brobdignagians. Under the Romans, stems of asparagus were raised of three pounds’ weight, heavy enough to knock down a slave in waiting with. The Greeks ate them of more moderate dimensions, or would have eaten them, but that the publishing doctors of their day denounced asparagus as injurious to the sight. But then it was also said that a slice or two of boiled pumpkin would reinvigorate the sight which had been deteriorated by asparagus! “Do that as quickly as you should asparagus!” is a proverb descended to us from Augustus, and illustrative of the mode in which the vegetable was prepared for the table.

A still more favorite dish, at Athens, was turnips from Thebes. Carrots, too, formed a distinguished dish at Greek and Roman tables. Purslain was rather honored as a cure against poisons, whether in the blood by wounds, or in the stomach from beverage. I have heard it asserted in France, that if you briskly rub a glass with fingers which have been previously rubbed with purslain or parsley, the glass will certainly break. I have tried the experiment, but only to find that the glass resisted the pretended charm.

Broccoli was the favorite vegetable food of Drusus. He ate greedily thereof; and as his father, Tiberius, was as fond of it as he, the master of the Roman world and his illustrious heir were constantly quarrelling, like two clowns, when a dish of broccoli stood between them. Artichokes grew less rapidly into aristocratic favor; the dictum of Galen was against them, and for a long time they were only used by drinkers against headache, and by singers to strengthen their voice. Pliny pronounced artichokes excellent food for poor people and donkeys. For nobler stomachs he preferred the cucumber—the Nemesis of vegetables. But people were at issue touching the merits of the cucumber. Not so regarding the lettuce, which has been universally honored. It was the most highly esteemed dish of the beautiful Adonis. It was prescribed as provocative to sleep; and it cured Augustus of the malady which sits so heavily on the soul of Leopold of Belgium—hypochondriasis. Science and rank eulogized the lettuce, and philosophy sanctioned the eulogy in the person of Aristoxenus, who not only grew lettuces as the pride of his garden, but irrigated them with wine, in order to increase their flavor.

But we must not place too much trust in the stories, either of sages or apothecaries. These pagans recommended the seductive but indigestible endive as good against the headache, and young onions and honey as admirable preservers of health, when taken fasting; but this was a prescription for rustic swains and nymphs. The higher classes, in town or country, would hardly venture on it. And yet the mother of Apollo ate raw leeks, and loved them of gigantic dimensions. For this reason, perhaps, was the leek accounted not only as salubrious, but as a beautifier. The love for melons was derived, in similar fashion probably, from Tiberius, who cared for them even more than he did for broccoli. The German CÆsars inherited the taste of their Roman predecessor, carrying it, indeed, to excess; for more than one of them submitted to die after eating melons, rather than live by renouncing them.

I have spoken of gigantic asparagus: the Jews had radishes that could vie with them, if it be true that a fox and cubs could burrow in the hollow of one, and that it was not uncommon to grow them of a hundred pounds in weight. It must have been such radishes as those that were employed by seditious mobs of old, as weapons in insurrections. In such case, a rebellious people were always well victualled, and had peculiar facilities, not only to beat their adversaries, but to eat their own arms! The horseradish is probably a descendant of this gigantic ancestor. It had at one period a gigantic reputation. Dipped in poison, it rendered the draught innocuous, and rubbed on the hands, it made an encounter with venomed serpents mere play. In short, it was celebrated as being a cure for every evil in life, the only exception being that it destroyed the teeth. There was far more difference of opinion touching garlic than there was touching the radish. The Egyptians deified it, as they did the leek and the cabbage; the Greeks devoted it to Gehenna, and to soldiers, sailors, and cocks that were not “game.” Medicinally, it was held to be useful in many diseases, if the root used were originally sown when the moon was below the horizon. No one who had eaten of it, however, could presume to enter the temple of Cybele. Alphonso of Castile was as particular as this goddess; and a knight of Castile, “detected as being guilty of garlic,” suffered banishment from the royal presence during the entire month.

It is long since the above instructive article on the “Green Groceries of the Classics,” by Dr. Doran, was in print, and I think it will be new to most of my readers. I hope it will prove interesting as well as instructive.

Animal or Vegetable Diet?

Both, if considered in regard to health. With an eye to economy only, I should recommend vegetable diet.

I think that poor people lay out more, in proportion, than the rich, for the purchase of animal food. They often buy extravagantly, on the credit system, purchasing on Saturday nights, when there is a rush at the stalls, and less opportunities for good bargains than when there is more time. Again, the lower classes fry their meats, losing much of their flavor and substance, by its going up chimney; or by boiling, and throwing away much of the nutriment with the water, which stewing in a covered dish would obviate.

I have been into various markets, and observed the poor as they made their purchases. I have seen them count into the butcher’s hand their last penny for a rib roast, a piece of pork to fry, a hind quarter of lamb to bake, or beef to boil, when a piece to stew, with nourishing vegetables, would cost far less, and return double the nutritive principle.

Beefsteak, which contains seventy-five per cent. of water, is poor economy of both money and health. The flank and neck pieces are better. The more fatty and nutritive fore quarters are better than the hind quarters. Ask the Jews. Coarse vegetables, as carrots, cabbages, turnips, and potatoes, contain more nourishment than beef, though far less than the cereals, as wheat, barley, corn, and buckwheat. Beans, peas, rice, cracked wheat or hominy, cooked with meat, make a most wholesome and nourishing diet for laborers, for the sedentary, and for invalids. Meat should never be given to toothless infants. Milk, or bread and milk, is all they require until they have teeth.

A cheap, innutritious regimen is scarcely conducive to longevity, any more than a stimulating and high living is contributive to that end. A great quantity of hot roast meats is objectionable. Also hot fine flour bread. Let those particularly interested in the matter see our article on bread, etc., in chapter on Adulterations. Also, as respects coarse sugar against the refined. See, also, Nutriment for Consumptives, in next chapter.