It is with difficulty that one who comprehends the question can restrain his impatience when people talk about the danger of indulging in fruit in summer or at any other season. “Better leave an order on the doctor’s slate,” says the would-be wit, when his friend passes with a watermelon or some early apples or peaches. As spring and summer come along, fruit is altogether natural, even if it does come from a little further South. That is one of the advantages of having railroads. These unwise people who dare not eat fruit, or eat it sparingly, while they stick to their winter diet of meat, grease, pastry, coffee, etc., are the ones who have the cholera morbus and other equally ridiculous things. It sometimes happens that these good people have had a “scare” in this fashion: one eats an excessive meal of fat and lean meats, old vegetables, with plenty of gravy, etc., all hot and heating, and calculated to create a febrile condition of the system, and insure an “attack” of indigestion. He has also eaten a piece of watermelon or other fruit—the only pure, natural substance appropriate for the time he has swallowed for the day. If, under these circumstances, he is routed at midnight, he declares he will never eat another piece of melon as long as he lives! It may be that the fruit, if he ate liberally of it, was the exciting cause of the clearing out that otherwise might not have taken place just then; if so, he should congratulate himself that he has been saved a later attack that might have cost him his life. Had he eaten double the quantity of fruit on an empty stomach, providing his system was in decent condition, there would have been no startling consequences. The stomach which refuses to accept raw fruit, or with which it does not “agree,” is like that of the drunkard which rebels against pure water. When anyone has become diseased to that degree the sooner he begins to reform his habits the better. In 1863 I was captured by the Confederates and marched out of Brazier City, La., and taken to Shreveport. When captured, I had diarrhoea—the result of a flesh-food diet, wine, and all the “good things of life.” The disease became chronic, and I was near dying. The melon season was on (it was in July), and in sheer desperation, ignorant of the benefits to result from it, rather expecting disaster, I ate freely of watermelon. For eight or ten days I took no other food or drink, but with this I filled myself twice a day, and a return to perfect health was the result; all trace of bowel trouble had disappeared. I have since had many opportunities for observing the benefit arising from the use of watermelon and nothing else, in diarrhoea, upon various persons, young and old, and I have never observed any harmful results from its use; though it is often made the scapegoat, as indicated above.

In a certain little borough in a neighboring State there was little or no fruit, not even apples, to any amount. There was a great deal of sickness every summer—diarrhoea, dysentery, fevers, etc. One enterprising resident planted an orchard—a generous one in size—and its owner was generous also. He didn’t watch the neighbors’ children very closely—not as closely as he did his own—and true to boys’ instincts they hooked apples, green apples, little bits of apples, hard and sour, and they ate them freely. The children of the owner of that orchard did not eat green apples, for their father, although believing in fruit, thought it must be ripe to be “healthy.” His children had the regularly recurring summer complaints, but the little apple-stealers did not. Without doubt fruit is more truly wholesome ripe than green; and I would here remark, that the craving for vegetable acids which these boys had, and which most children experience, would not be felt if they were properly fed at home. Still, one may eat too much even of fruit: “gold in the morning, silver at noon, and lead at night,” might better be changed to diamonds, gold, and silver; and but for other considerations, unappreciated by those who fancy that it is “heavy” at eve, there would be a restriction in almost anything at the last meal sooner than in fruit. Careful observers have remarked that fruit is a prophylactic, and is also curative, taken on an empty stomach, but is likely to promote indigestion if added to a hearty meal of mixed food.[63] This is one way of saying: after having already over-eaten, or having eaten enough, eat nothing more. Surely any kind of fruit added would be less injurious than to swallow another plate of the soup, fish, or meat. The old Roman gluttons used to take an emetic after dinner; and in this country it has been the custom in times past with some, and it is not altogether obsolete even now, to take a “dinner-pill” before or after the principal meal. The morning draught of “seltzer” or other laxative, so common at the present day, serves the same purpose; and those people who, after obstinate constipation, feel comparatively happy over a violent purging from some form of artificial physic, are the ones who warn against using much fruit, because, upon some occasion, it may have performed a similar service, though without any of the injurious effects of the drugs. In warm weather the diet may well consist largely of fruit and succulent vegetables. Scrofulous children, especially, might live solely on fruit for days together, with great advantage. Such children should live in the open air as much as possible, and their sleeping-rooms should have the most thorough ventilation. If their noses and ears run in consequence of “exposure,” never forget that these poisonous matters are better out than in, and that whatever aids in their elimination is curative. A simpler and purer diet will prevent the formation of catarrhal or scrofulous matters. Any degree of restriction in the matter of air and exercise can only be counteracted by a corresponding restriction in diet; but a generous allowance of all three is the safest rule. Sedentary persons, loiterers at the mountains or by the sea, can not easily make the proportion of fruit too large, even if during a torrid wave they eat little else. It should be taken at the regular meal hour only, to insure the greatest degree of health and comfort, should be thoroughly masticated, and the quantity may be just short of causing pressure at the kidneys, or flatulency, yet enough to prevent thirst. Three meals might then be indulged in with safety. The heavy dishes—meats, gravies, greasy articles, hot condiments, pastry, hot stimulating drinks—things that even in winter, in this climate, are only tolerated, and that but poorly, are deadly now, as the mortality reports, and lists of those who are said to have succumbed to the heat, attest. Moreover, for every one who pays the penalty with his life, tens of thousands are lying or sitting about, suffering the tortures of the damned, often; and all for a few minutes extra palate-tickling, or unnatural indulgences, rather,—for, leaving out the really unseasonable articles and condiments, they might revel in ripe fruits with comparative impunity. He is a poor student in dietetics, a thoughtless observer, even, who can not so regulate his eating as to regard summer as the most agreeable season of the year,—the most comfortable,—who can not bid defiance to the heated term and laugh at the danger of “sunstroke” though running a foot-race under the noonday sun. Calorific food, superadded to the predisposition already existing, is the real source of these strokes in every instance, the external heat furnishing, to be sure, the “last straw.”