DANGER IN FRUITS AND PICKLES
It is an error shared almost universally by both medical men and the
laity that fruits and raw foods are wholesome. Everyone is familiar with
the fact that fruits produce intestinal disturbances in children,--not
only when they are very young, but after their digestive apparatus is
fully developed. Rather curiously, however, instead of ascribing the
disturbances that follow to the real cause, we generally dismiss the
matter with the assertion that "early fruits are unhealthy," or trace the
resulting ill effects to some other equally imaginary factor. In reality
the reason why diarrhoea and other intestinal troubles so often occur
after eating fruits in the early spring is that the boy or girl after a
winter's fast greedily devours enormous quantities of them when they
first ripen, and disturbances follow in proportion to the amount and
character of these substances taken.
There can be no question that fruits, while extremely palatable, usually
produce trouble in dyspeptics, and even in those who still possess
unimpaired digestive organs ill effects quite constantly follow on the
heels of the taking of food of this character. Unfortunately, however,
the great majority of dyspeptics have symptoms that in no way outwardly
point toward digestive errors; as common examples, we might refer to the
blackheads, pimples and small boils, so frequently observed on the faces
of young boys and girls, or the rheumatic pains, and, at a later time,
the "Bright's disease," that occur in older people. When you tell such
patients that their trouble is indigestion, they are often mildly
indignant, and loudly protest that they can eat anything with impunity;
that they never have heart-burn, feelings of heaviness after eating,
pains in the abdomen, or other symptoms referable to the stomach and
intestines. We are rather disposed to be proud of our digestive powers,
just as we are of our bodily strength, and nothing is more common than
for chronic dyspeptics to maintain that they have never had indigestion
in their lives, and to resent any insinuation to the contrary.
Another popular error, almost universally accepted, is that fruits are
highly nutritious; as a matter of fact they consist almost wholly of
water, and of materials that are utterly indigestible. The latter
substances pass through the alimentary tract, therefore, in much the same
condition that they enter and serve no better purpose than to promote,
somewhat, activity in the bowels. Nevertheless the writer does not wish
to be misunderstood as advocating total abstinence from such a palatable
class of foods; no harm results in most people if they only take
perfectly ripe and fresh fruits in moderation now and then; and these
should be always eaten after meals rather than before.
The fruits that contain comparatively little acid are, as a rule, more
wholesome than those that are rich in substance of this kind. For
example, perfectly fresh and ripe figs or peaches may be taken by most
persons with impunity if they be eaten after meals, and at intervals of
at least two or three days. Acid fruits, particularly lemons, seem to be
peculiarly unwholesome; apples are prone to cause trouble and can rarely
be eaten without ill effects, however mellow and palatable they may be.
It sometimes happens that persons take grape-fruit with less harm than
others.
Closely akin to fruits in their deleterious action on the digestive
apparatus are sours in any form whatever. Women, especially, indulge
freely and at irregular hours in foods containing much vinegar,
lemon-juice, etc.,--usually in the form of pickles or salads. In healthy
persons, in moderation, foods of this character perhaps produce no
appreciable trouble, but nothing is more thoroughly established than that
they act harmfully on the general run of dyspeptics, such as most of us
are to a greater or less degree after thirty years of age. This leads to
the remark that here, as in everything else, we must regard individual
peculiarities--it being true that one person can eat without ill effects
what may produce decided disturbances in others, or suffer from excess
when moderation would entail no ill-effects.