HURRIED DINNERS.

Evening Post, Volume XXII, Issue 143, 17 December 1881, Page 4

HURRIED DINNERS.

? It is a mistake to eat qaickly. Mastication performed in haste mutt be imperfect even with the beet of teeth, and due mixture of tho Balivary eecretion with the food cannot take plaoe. When a crude mass of inade-quately-crashed muscular fibre, or undivided solid material of any description, is thrown into the stomach, it acts as a mechanical irritant, and sets up a condition in the mucous membrane lining that organ which greatly impedes, if it does not altogether prevent, the process of digestion. When the practice ot eating quickly and filling tho stomach with unprepared iood is habitual, the digestive organ ia rendered incapable of performing its proper functions. Either a much larger quantity of food than would be necessary under natural conditions is required, or the system Buffers from lack of nourishment. Those animals which were intended to feed hurriedly wore either gifted with the power of rumination or provided with gizzards. Man is not so furnished, aud it is fair to assume that he was intended to eat slowly. We must apologise for reminding our readers of facts so familiar; but we do thia in the hope that any who may chance to have influence with tho managers of large hotels where dinners a la table A' hole are in vogue will take measures to bring about a muoh needed reform in the manner in which these entertainments are conducted. At tho best and most frequented establishment!! in places of fashionable ro3ort, where at this season multitudes of health-seekers are wont to congregate, the hurried dinners aro not only causes of annoyance, but actually go to prevent the benefit which should bo derived from a ohangs. No sooner is one course served than another ia introduced, without giring tho gueat time to digest or even to swallow tha first. The eagerness to secure good dividends takes a particularly mischievous form when it pile 3 food on tho plate of a customer, and coapels him to conßume it breath' essly. The matter may seem a small one, but it is not so. Just as a man may go on for years with defective teeth, imperfectly mastigating hia food, and _ wondering why he suffers from indigestion, so a man may habitually live under an infliction of hurried dinners, a^d endure the consequent loss of health, without knowing why ho_ is not well, or how easily tho cause of hiß illness might be remedied. — Lancet.