Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 January 1875 — A Recipe for Good Digestion. [ARTICLE]

A Recipe for Good Digestion.

Dr. Bellows remarks, in his new work, “ How To Be Sick”: Nothing is better understood than that there is connection between cheerfulness and good digestion; and the trite expression, “ to laugh and grow fat,” undoubtedly has its origin in observation if not in philosophy. What an astonishing amount and variety of food can be disposed of and perfectly digested at one sitting of cheerful and happy, not to say jolly and merry, old friends, and that without alcohol or other unnatural stimulus to help digestion. I venture to say more than three times as much as the same individuals could eat and digest in the same time if each took his meals by himself. And this one fact is worth mure than all else I can write to show the dependence of the digestive powers on the state of the mind, and to prove that he must be lean and haggard who, keeping his mind constantly on his business, bolts his meals in silence and solitude, even in the presence of his family. I commend it to the careful consideration of uncomfortable mortals who never properly digest their food' and whose bones are too poorly clothed with flesh and too poorly protected even to allow them quiet rest, and who, therefore, envy “ fat, sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights.”