Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1883 — A Chapter on Fruits. [ARTICLE]

A Chapter on Fruits.

“Fniit being palatable and easily obtained, and jess lieat-producing than meat and bread, should be largely used as a food, in summer,” so says the" British Medical Journal. All the best medical authorities agree upon this statement. No one disputes that fruit is more easily obtained in the summer than in the whiter. Very few boys go out, in this climate, to rob water-melon patches on Christmas eve. And the cases in which people take the cholera by lounging about in the grass, eating green apples in 'January, are very should be used largely ns a food. Borne people may prefer to use it as a raiment, but this is not right. The banana is sometimes very successfully used as a roller-skate, but this use of that escu■•laatyis- -lmptoperand forced. The onion may also be diverted from its use as a food and employed as a weapon of offense. And the hucksters make sales of apples and lemons. But we are all agreed that the best use to which food can be applied is as a food. The best way to obtain food, perhaps, is to wait until the farmer has gone to bed. Then a thunder-storm can't weaken him. The enthusiastic fruit-seeker should not neglect to take along a can of chloroform for the dogs, as they are passionately fond of it. A farm-dog does not often have the opportunity of inhaling the chloroform that does not cheer one-half so much as it inebriates twice as quick. Give him all he wants of it; lie will feel the better for its digestive properties. 'lt is just what the dog needs, especially after a hurried repast of human veal. Fruit, the doctors tell us, may be taken with a meal or upon au. empty gtomacli. It has, they say,, a gentlyirritating effect oh the mucous membrane of the stomach. A long lumber hedge switch in the hands off tile man who owns the orchard, has also been found to have a gently-irritating effect upon the epidermis of the back, which has, in some instances, been sensibly noticed through two coats, a Vest, a hickory shirt and an atlas back. “A succulent and pleasantly-acid variety is best for the purpose of an arperient. v And, perhaps, although we ate not a medical expect, yet we say it boldly, perhaps there is no fruit quite so succulent as new cider, eaten through a straw. As it grows riper and riper, the cider loses ibis succulent quality, and is to be eaten rapidly, in large doses, with most astonishingly exhileratiug effects. Tliiß vigorous and

hardy fruit, gathered from the suniiy side of a New Jersey “stone fence,” will put the spring into' the heels of an old man, until he will weigh a ton. “Cooking,” says the Medical Journal, “removes much of the acidity from crude fruit and readers it lighted and more palatable,” but we believe this kind of an apple is usually eaten cold., “It is a fundamental principle that whatever fruit is eaten uncooked, must be fully ripe.” And all people cannot eat all kinds of fruit. For instance, a boy 12 years old should only be allowed to eat the following fruit, in various stages of maturity: Apples ten days from the blossom, pears, as soon as they can be scratched with a piece of glass, gooseberries in the bud, peaches when the pith becomes too hard to bite, grapes, melons in the pith, squash, potatoes, turnips, cucumbers, onions, bananas, gourds, cranberries, crabapples, acorns, pig-nuts, new persimmons and oak-balls. But it is difficult, even with The utmost vigilance, for the parent to restrict the bov to even this liberal fruit diet, although it is dangerous even for the healthy boy to go hovond this limit. Still, he will do it sometimes. About twice a day.— Burlington Haxckeije. * .*