BEWARE HOW YOU DRINK.

Western Star, Issue 965, 18 July 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

BEWARE HOW YOU DRINK.

What many people, especially children, call thirst, is only a sense of dryness in the throat. This uncomfortable sensation is caused by the general habit of breathing through the mouth. The air taken into the lungs dries the mouth, tongue, and upper part of the throat. To drink for the purpose of relieving the mouth made dry by being open, is frequently to overload the stomach with fluids which are not necessary, and which consequently are detrimental to digestion. It is peculiarly injurious also, for it washes into the stomach all the foul solids which, iu the form of dust, find their way into the mouth and throat. Persons who are compelled to cool and moisten their palates should first rinse the mouth with a sip or two of water. If afterwards they feel that they must drink they should imbibe by single sips. By this method they would be as fully satisfied with a gill o,f water as with a pint swallowed hastily. Iced water is the great American vice, and probably kills more persons than rum. That it is cooling to the entire system cannot be denied, but sudden changes of physical temperature from warmth to coolness are always detrimental to health. Actual thirst is as quickly satisfied with hot as with cold. When only iced water is desired, the probability is that the pesraon drinking it has eaten something which has irritated the stomach. .•

Coffee is nob a good summer drink. Its stimulating property is beneficial to persons with a sense of physical debility ; but coffee arrests, temporarily, all natural process of waste, whereas in hot weather these should be allowed full play. Tea is a far better drink. It is stimulating, and therefore very injurious when taken in large quantities; but over-stimula-tion, with its implied necessity of in some way making good the physical force which it enables to develop too rapidly, are its only bad effects. Taken without sugar at is cooling, but a a heaped teespoonful of sugar will generate as much heat as a quarter of a pound of beefsteak. Sugar is the most heating of all articles of human consumption.