A guide to health : designed for families and others : containing a short and concise mode of treatment for most forms of disease to which man is liable, with sanative agents : together with those to which women and children are particularly liable / by James J. Davis.

  • Davis, James J.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A guide to health : designed for families and others : containing a short and concise mode of treatment for most forms of disease to which man is liable, with sanative agents : together with those to which women and children are particularly liable / by James J. Davis. 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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    ing too much in one instance, and to articles of food not proper in the other. Therefore reason must be connected with the appetite to form a correct guide. Where the appetite is not morbid or otherwise improperly influ- enced, it may be considered in general correct to satisfy the appetite. The best way to prove a morbid appetite is to eat yery slowly and stop occasionally ; if the appetite is mor- bid or unhealthy, it will soon begin to refuse that which it seemed to* desire at first; if healthy, it will increase, though you eat slowly, until nature is satisfied. In pal- atable articles of food, reason and experience must be the main guide. It is of as much importance to observe the quantity of food to be received into the stomach as the quality. The appetite is often equal to this task, when healthy and uninfluenced ; yet it is liable to misguide from three causes: first, by seeing articles of food that are palatable, after the stomach has been satiated with other articles of food ; secondly, by eating too hastily, and thereby crowding the stomach before the natural powers can deliberate and determine what is a sufficient quantity ; and thirdly, by custom in indulg- ing the appetite and forcing the stomach to excessive distention too often, thereby weakening its nervous in- fluence and augmenting and perverting the proper secre- tions of the gastric juice. Reason and experience there- fore unite upon this point: eat slowly, masticate (or chew) the food properly, and never indulge the palate to a second or third dish after the stomach is sufficiently distended, or the first impulse of the appetite satisfied. By strictly observing these rules you may cut off a long list of diseases which otherwise you may have to suffer.