A Good Digestion

Otago Witness, Issue 2691, 11 October 1905, Page 68

A Good Digestion

The Germans (says a medical writer) have an old saying which means that you must walk more tban 1000 paces after eating.

The J German proverb is old, but it is young indeed compared to The teachings of the Talmud, all of whose doctors were agreed on the importance of a waik after a meal to aid digestion. If you ask how it happensi that a baby can fill its stomach and immediately go to sleep with positive benefit, the answer is eimple. A baby with a stomach full of milk, or a wolf with a stomach full of meat, can digest and sleep eimuitantoudv, for two reasons. First, because the m'Jk and tho meat taken by tliemselves are very essily digested. They almost digest themselves. And, eecond, because the very simple mental organism of the wolf and the baby makes it possible for digestive processes to go on vluring sleep. The ol.ild's Hver is abnormally big in infancy, and that helps also. The adult human being, with all kinds of food in his stomach, must be awake to digest, because he needs fo~ digestion the full action of the heart and nervoas system. H© needs rest, repose for digestion, but he also needs consciousness.

The French are a very healthy nation. Dyspepsia is practically unknown among those who live in the typical French manner. They eat little, and they eat slowly. During their meals they talk a great deal, which ensures slow eating and a gentle, but not excessive, mental exhilaration conducive to good digestion. When the meal is finished they sit still and talk for a little while longer, settling th© affairs of the nation carefully. They arc not dyspeptic. They do not draw away the blood from the stomach by working after eating, either with brain or muscle. And they don't by going to sleep arrest th© vital functions necessary to digestion. Those husbands who dose from dinner to bedtime would have a better digestion were their time employed in amusing the patient partners of their bosom.

A Cure for Sciatica.— The following cure for this painful disease has ntany testimonies as to its efficiency. Place a towel wrung out in cold water on the affected part. Change it for another towel as coon as it gets- warm. Continue for at least half an hour. Then rub well with soap lather, and finish with hot olive oil, your hand being as Hot as possible. Dry off well, and cover with new flannel. This will relieve tha pain at once. Should it return, rereat Ihe rubbing 1 with soap lather and hot oil again. It will not need more than two or three ltibbings to effect a complete cure.

The ImiDortanee of Flesh Foods. — In the building up of the body flesh foodsi — by which (writes Dr Andrew Wilson, in an interesting article in the Illustrated London News, entitled "About Food and Feeding") I mean nitrogenous diet — are of exceeding importance. The fact ia that vegetarian diet-3 will not and cannot supply us with such foods in quantities of an easily digested nature. Our bodies are composed of nitrogenous and of non-nitrogenous substances, and it is clear tha 1 ; both classes of foods are required for the due support of our frames. Now : the real question at. issue is how the requisite combination of these foods can b& most cheaply and satisfactorily obtamecl. My opinion is that, given _ a limitation of flesh foods — <nol a cessation of them — our ordinary diet, representing the lesults of experience, is all that we require. I admit fully, Tbeeatise there is evidence to that effect, that w© are inclined to consume a larger amount of meats than is necessary, Jsut this fact does nob imply that meats are. of no value. Contrariwise, unless _ all the evidence is wrong, flesh foods give ua our nitrogenous matter in a form which, if it costs i.s dear, is at least easily assimilated, and this last is no jmd§su-ab],e feature in a foo<j,