The Rhode Island American, And General Advertiser

From Hare's View of the Structure, Functions, and Disorders of the Stomach, &c.

It was well observed by the late Dr. Saunders, that we are made gluttons from the cradle by the officiousness of our nurses. A child's health is disordered from being overfed. It cries and complains from the effects; and with a view to silence it, more food is given; so that the evil is increased instead of remedied, and the capacity of the stomach gradually extended far beyond the bounds of nature. Both the quantity and quality of our food should be proportioned to our habits of bodily exercise. When we have active exercise in the open air, we may with impunity eat a hearty dinner, taking care, even then, to leave off before the appetite is palled; but on days when persons of weak digestion do not go out of doors, and especially when the mind has not been energetically occupied, it would be well to abstain altogether from solid animal food, and satisfy themselves with simple farinaceous matters, in the composition of which great care should be taken that eggs are as sparingly used as possible. Nothing is a greater blunder than that eggs are eligible for weak digestion, and for the diet of the sick. They never assimilate with the contents of a disordered stomach, but partly coagulate, and form various crudities; and partly generate a noxious vapour, which, under its real character of sulphurated hydrogen, rises from the stomach into the mouth. The colouring material of the yolk of an egg is sulphur, which, combining with the watery contents of the stomach, forms the vapour alluded to. It is the sulphur naturally contained in an egg which tarnishes a silver spoon; it is the sulphurated hydrogen of an impure atmosphere, which tarnishes silver in general. Although anxious to impress the advantages of moderation in eating, and the evils which arise from undue indulgences, I wish also to impress the disadvantages and imprudence to weak stomachs of long fasting. Conceiving that they should never be more than four hours without the accession of some easy kind of food; and that, even in good health, an interval of seven or eight hours is by far too long.