Food and feeding / by Sir Henry Thompson ; with an appendix.

  • Thompson, Henry, Sir, 1820-1904.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Food and feeding / by Sir Henry Thompson ; with an appendix. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    exertion is small, and the digestive faculty sometimes becomes less powerful also. I shall not regard it as within my province here to dilate largely on this topic, but I desire to point out that the system of supporting aged persons, as it is termed, with increased quantities of food and stimulant, is an error of cardinal importance, and, without doubt, tends to shorten, or to embitter life. This erroneous Serious evils practice ignores the important fact that diminishes. The functions by which surplus and effete matters are thrown off from the system are less active than in youth and middle age; and the results of over-feeding, which a robust constitution can get rid of without obvious evil, become a source of dangerous embarrassment to the feebler organiza- tion of one advanced in years. Hence numerous chronic disorders, often regarded as peculiar to the latter third of life, are to a great extent avoidable. So far from continuing to select the strong nourish- ment which may have been necessary during the toil and anxieties of thirty years or more of adult energy and activity throughout the prime of life, the elderly man who desires to preserve fair health, and to attain to longevity, should gradually diminish his use of strong nitrogenous and especially of much fatty food. He should substitute a lighter dietary, as he subsides naturally, and more or less gradually, into the class of the sedentary, and adopts the arise from neglect of this course. as age increases, the ability to eliminate food unnecessarily consumed notably