How not to be sick : a sequel to "Philosophy of eating" / by Albert J. Bellows.

  • Bellows, Albert J. (Albert Jones), 1804-1869.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: How not to be sick : a sequel to "Philosophy of eating" / by Albert J. Bellows. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    analyses of the human brain, proving, as they did, that the brains of infants and idiots contain less than half the phosphorus that is found in the brains of men of common intellect, and that the proportion of phospho- rus found was in proportion to the intellect; but for more than a quarter of a century it has remained with- out development or practical application. Meantime it has also been proved by analysis of the secretions, that the more active the brain, the more phosphorus is used up and thrown off by the system, clergymen using up more on Sunday, and lawyers on court days, than at other times. And yet our profes- sional men have lived as other men live, — eating what has come before them, without considering whether the elements they take are adapted to develop stupidity or mental vigor; eating, perchance, such stupefying arti- cles as ham, or fat pork, and white bread and butter, while making or preaching a sermon, and such phos- phatic food as trouts and other fish, with unbolted bread, vegetables, and fruits, when idle and rusticating. But a little observation would show a vast difference in the quality of sermons whether made and preached on car- bonaceous or phosphatic diet; and the estimate of the old divine, of the number of tons of beans and pork preached to in New England every Sunday, while the owners were asleep, might be offset by an estimate of the number of congregations, not only in New England, but in Old England, and all the rest of the fat and starch eating world, who are put asleep by sermons made from stupefying principles extracted from fat pork.