The young practitioner : with practical hints and instructive suggestions as subsidiary aids for his guidance on entering into private practice : being modified selections from, with additions to, "The Physician Himself" / by Jukes de Styrap.

  • De Styrap, Jukes.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The young practitioner : with practical hints and instructive suggestions as subsidiary aids for his guidance on entering into private practice : being modified selections from, with additions to, "The Physician Himself" / by Jukes de Styrap. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    v/'ith a moderate quantity of bread and butter, and half-a-pint of milk, or a cup of cocoa;—or a breakfast-cup of Arrowroot made with milk and slightly sweetened;—or a little light Egg-Pudding made with crumbs of bread, as before mentioned. GENERAL EUIjES to be CAREFULLY OBSERVED.—As a rule, adult dyspeptic patients should not partake of more than three meals in the day. The diet should be light, nutritious, easily digestible, and non- stimulating, and great care taken to eat slowly, and to thoroughly iTiasticate the food before swallowing it. The meals should be taken, as far as practicable, at regular, stated hours—with intervals of from four to six hours between each, according to the nature, quantity and quality of the preceding one: — for example, after animal food at dinner, or other meal, five hours at least should elapse ere taking more food. Moderation and care must be the rule, for any excess in diet will weaken the stomach and retard recovery. [The injurious effect which invariably arises from taking food again too soon after a meal—that is, ere the stomach has completed its work, and rested awhile—is well illustrated in the churning of cream into butter; during which, if, while the butter is forming, more cream is put into the churn, the whole process is marred, and the butter damaged or spoiled. A like ill-effect is produced in the human stomach, when the process of digestion is interfered with by an untimely addition of food; and it cannot be too forcibly impressed upon all—invalids especially—that the strength-giving power of food is not, as too commonly supposed, in direct ratio to the quantity taken, but to that which the stomach can properly digest; and an}- excess beyond that is a source of weakness and discomfort, and of eventual disease, if persisted in. Indeed, the one great cause of indigestion is excess of and improper diet.] It is of no slight importance, moreover, to cultivate sedulously a daily habit, in respect of the time of the alvine dejections : and to avoid as much as possible any accidental breach in an already established habit. Indeed, for dyspeptic persons, the same observ- ance of habitual hours should govern the egress as well as the ingress of their food.