FRUIT.
It is with difficulty that one who comprehends the question can restrain
his impatience when people talk about the danger of indulging in fruit in
summer or at any other season. “Better leave an order on the doctor’s
slate,” says the would-be wit, when his friend passes with a watermelon or
some early apples or peaches. As spring and summer come along, fruit is
altogether natural, even if it does come from a little further South. That
is one of the advantages of having railroads. These unwise people who dare
not eat fruit, or eat it sparingly, while they stick to their winter diet
of meat, grease, pastry, coffee, etc., are the ones who have the cholera
morbus and other equally ridiculous things. It sometimes happens that
these good people have had a “scare” in this fashion: one eats an
excessive meal of fat and lean meats, old vegetables, with _plenty of
gravy_, etc., all hot and heating, and calculated to create a febrile
condition of the system, and insure an “attack” of indigestion. He has
also eaten a piece of watermelon or other fruit——the only pure, natural
substance appropriate for the time he has swallowed for the day. If,
under these circumstances, he is routed at midnight, he declares he will
never eat another piece of melon as long as he lives! It may be that the
fruit, if he ate liberally of it, was the exciting cause of the _clearing
out_ that otherwise might not have taken place just then; if so, he should
congratulate himself that he has been saved a later attack that might have
cost him his life. Had he eaten double the quantity of fruit on an _empty
stomach_, providing his system was in decent condition, there would have
been no startling consequences. The stomach which refuses to accept raw
fruit, or with which it does not “agree,” is like that of the drunkard
which rebels against pure water. When anyone has become diseased to that
degree the sooner he begins to reform his habits the better. In 1863 I was
captured by the Confederates and marched out of Brazier City, La., and
taken to Shreveport. When captured, I had diarrhœa——the result of a
flesh-food diet, wine, and all the “good things of life.” The disease
became chronic, and I was near dying. The melon season was on (it was in
July), and in sheer desperation, ignorant of the benefits to result from
it, rather expecting disaster, I ate freely of watermelon. For eight or
ten days I took no other food or drink, but with this I filled myself
twice a day, and a return to perfect health was the result; all trace of
bowel trouble had disappeared. I have since had many opportunities for
observing the benefit arising from the use of watermelon and _nothing
else_, in diarrhœa, upon various persons, young and old, and I have never
observed any harmful results from its use; though it is often made the
scapegoat, as indicated above.
In a certain little borough in a neighboring State there was little or no
fruit, not even apples, to any amount. There was a great deal of sickness
every summer——diarrhœa, dysentery, fevers, etc. One enterprising resident
planted an orchard——a generous one in size——and its owner was generous
also. He didn’t watch the neighbors’ children very closely——not as closely
as he did his own——and true to boys’ instincts they hooked apples, green
apples, little bits of apples, hard and sour, and they ate them freely.
The children of the owner of that orchard did not eat green apples, for
their father, although believing in fruit, thought it must be ripe to be
“healthy.” His children had the regularly recurring summer complaints, but
the little apple-stealers did not. Without doubt fruit is more truly
wholesome ripe than green; and I would here remark, that the craving for
vegetable acids which these boys had, and which most children experience,
would not be felt if they were properly fed at home. Still, one may eat
too much even of fruit: “gold in the morning, silver at noon, and lead at
night,” might better be changed to diamonds, gold, and silver; and but for
other considerations, unappreciated by those who fancy that it is “heavy”
at eve, there would be a restriction in almost anything at the last meal
sooner than in fruit. Careful observers have remarked that fruit is a
prophylactic, and is also curative, taken on an empty stomach, but is
likely to promote indigestion if added to a hearty meal of mixed
food.[63] This is one way of saying: after having already over-eaten, or
having eaten enough, eat nothing more. Surely any kind of fruit added
would be less injurious than to swallow another plate of the soup, fish,
or meat. The old Roman gluttons used to take an emetic after dinner; and
in this country it has been the custom in times past with some, and it is
not altogether obsolete even now, to take a “dinner-pill” before or after
the principal meal. The morning draught of “seltzer” or other laxative, so
common at the present day, serves the same purpose; and those people who,
after obstinate constipation, feel comparatively happy over a violent
purging from some form of artificial physic, are the ones who warn against
using much fruit, because, upon some occasion, it may have performed a
similar service, though without any of the injurious effects of the drugs.
In warm weather the diet may well consist largely of fruit and succulent
vegetables. Scrofulous children, especially, might live solely on fruit
for days together, with great advantage. Such children should live in the
open air as much as possible, and their sleeping-rooms should have the
most thorough ventilation. If their noses and ears run in consequence of
“exposure,” never forget that these poisonous matters are better out than
in, and that whatever aids in their elimination is curative. A simpler and
purer diet will prevent the formation of catarrhal or scrofulous matters.
Any degree of restriction in the matter of air and exercise can only be
counteracted by a corresponding restriction in diet; but a generous
allowance of all three is the safest rule. Sedentary persons, loiterers at
the mountains or by the sea, can not easily make the proportion of fruit
too large, even if during a torrid wave they eat little else. It should be
taken at the regular meal hour only, to insure the greatest degree of
health and comfort, should be thoroughly masticated, and the quantity may
be just short of causing pressure at the kidneys, or flatulency, yet
enough to prevent thirst. Three meals might then be indulged in with
safety. The heavy dishes——meats, gravies, greasy articles, hot condiments,
pastry, hot stimulating drinks——things that even in winter, in this
climate, are only tolerated, and that but poorly, are deadly now, as the
mortality reports, and lists of those who are said to have succumbed to
the heat, attest. Moreover, for every one who pays the penalty with his
life, tens of thousands are lying or sitting about, suffering the tortures
of the damned, often; and all for a few minutes extra palate-tickling, or
unnatural indulgences, rather,——for, leaving out the really unseasonable
articles and condiments, they might revel in ripe fruits with comparative
impunity. He is a poor student in dietetics, a thoughtless observer, even,
who can not so regulate his eating as to regard summer as the most
agreeable season of the year,——the most comfortable,——who can not bid
defiance to the heated term and laugh at the danger of “sunstroke” though
running a foot-race under the noonday sun. Calorific food, superadded to
the predisposition already existing, is the real source of these strokes
in every instance, the external heat furnishing, to be sure, the “last
straw.”
[Footnote 63: As before intimated, only the stomach disordered and
enervated from the use of hot and stimulating kinds of solid and liquid
food, spices and condiments, refuses to “agree” with pure, ripe fruits.
Such a stomach requires a fast day, followed by the plainest and most
abstemious diet, with a gradually increasing proportion of fruit as the
stomach recovers “tone.” In all cases fruit requires to be thoroughly
masticated, and reduced as nearly as possible to a fluid state before
being swallowed.]