Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1886 — Some Fads About Slippers. [ARTICLE]

Some Fads About Slippers.

About suppers then; only those who dine early require anything of the -sort* As I believe and trust that most of my readers are early diners,the few remarks I have to make al>ont the evening meal mav not be thrown away. Well,, then, it is a fact, which no one would attempt to gainsay, that the stomach must have an interval of rest between each meal. The period of rest ahould be granted to it gratuitously. It should not require to take it. But mark me: it wilt do so if weary. If we might personify the stomach, we could imagine it saying to the owner: “That mid-day meal was far too heavy —it was more than I could manage; I have worked away for four hours, and 1 have not yet completed digestion; there is still food here that needs to be reduced to ch vme, but my jucies are expended ; my nervous and muscular energies are exhausted; I can do no more. ” And what is the result ? Why, that a portion of indigestible food remains in ithe stomach, or passes through the pylorio opening, unreduced to chyme, fermenting and causing acidity, flatulence, eructations, and many indescribable feelings of discomfort. * But the mischief does not end heTe, for by-and-bv comes supper time. The

mistaken notion that it is the correct thing to eat at regular times, whether hungry or not, prevails, and more food finds its way into that unhappy stomach. Everybody knows what a ferment is. Well, in eating before the stomach is quite unloaded, you are mixing good food with that which is digesting. Can you wonder if a restless night follows —or a night of lethargy rather than sound sleep—that you toss and tumble, or either wake too soon, without the capability of going to sleep again, or doze longer than usual, and get up at last with a heavy head afid an irritable temper ?

But stay, though; perhaps you have an appetite for supper. Have you? What! despite the hearty dinner you discussed? Very well; if after that dinner you took a good spell of exercise in theopen air, or if you had some •lengthened pleasurable excitement, such as enjoying the conversation and company of friends, then this appetite of yours may be a wholesome one. But, on the other hand, if you enjoy yourself doing positively nothing after dinner; if you have never left the house, nor breathed a gallon of pure fresh air, then I say ten to one your appetite is a false one— a bullimic one— bora of a slight degree of nervous irritation, not to sav fever.

“Bullimic” is a technical word, I know, and lam going to explain it. “Bullimia,” then, is an unnatural craving for food. One may suffer from a slight attack of it now and then, or it may become chronic, and is then known to the profession as “bullimic dyspepsia. ” The patients suffer from hunger; and unless they eat immediately after the desire for food comes on, they get faint and low-spirited, and especially complain of a painful sense of sinking about the region of the heart and stomach. The desire for food returns almost immediately after a good meal (Dr. Guipon). I may say parenthetically that the most useful remedies for this kind of dyspepsia are minced raw beef, charcoal, cod-liver oil, and pepsine, with occasional mild aperients if the system cannot be kept free by the matutinal tub, open-air exercise, and fruit eaten in the morning. It but remains for me to say that I consider it a nervous affection, and that occasional attacks of it are brought on by errors in diet and dieting. The question is asked constantly of medical men: “What shall I take for

supper?” ’ The truth is that too much belief is placed in that usually nonsensical saying, “The system must be supported.” Nervous invalids or that class of persons whom I called in a former article “only middlings,” are constantly engaged “supporting their systems”; therefore, and in consequence, they give themselves no chance to get well: their whole lives are spent in one continued ferment of fever. Were they only to reduce the diet for even a week-or fortnight, and to eat and live by rule, they would be simply astonished at the change, and would ask our editor to thank the “Family Doctor” for his suggestions.— Family Doctor, in Cassell’s Magazine.