Health for the million : including hints on the physical training of youth, and the treatment of invalids and old age, with observations on unhealthy employments / by the author of How to make home happy, The accidents of life, etc., etc.

Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health for the million : including hints on the physical training of youth, and the treatment of invalids and old age, with observations on unhealthy employments / by the author of How to make home happy, The accidents of life, etc., etc. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    59/360 (page 27)
    nature of man, the nature of aliments, and the consti- tution of the person who takes them.” Herodotus observes of the Egj-ptians, that, having remai'ked that the greatest number of diseases proceeded from the abuse of food, they took care every month to conse- crate three successive days to piireue and seize health. The present state of lu.xurious living, the refinements of cookerj-, and the delicacy of taste which prevail among our prosperous countrymen, are the most fertile sources of disease that could be found. Hence the calendar of fatal disorders is much increased of late years, and many complaints unknown to our sturdier and less fastidious ance.stors are now rife among us. Indeed, when we consider the immense exercise of art employed in refining our food at the sacrifice of nourishment and vigour, we are surprised that death is not more frequent among us, for we manifestly hasten his approach when we set at defiance, in many cases habitually, the laws that should govern our appetites. We reverse the maxim that we must eat to live by living to eat, or wasting the precious moments of our life in pampering our vitiated bodies. By the term digestion, in the more perfect animal, is generally understood that process by which certain substances called nutritive or alimentaiy are converted into a homogeneous semi-fluid mass, from the cavity containing which white vessels drink up the more elabo- rated portion, and convey it into other larger ones containing blood, with which it is mixed and carried to the heart. The simplest kind of digestion is that per- formed by presenting a watery fluid to a moist surface, which converts it into its own nature. Examjdes of this are seen in the lower orders of animals, the indi- viduals of which consist almost entirely of a closed sack or jaiuch, on the external surface of which the above clmnge is accomplished. On nearly the same lino may be put the spongy extremities of the roots of plants, which absorb or drink up the nutrimental fluid from the soil. In others not quite so simple in their orgnni-