Beef or mutton, roasted, or stewed, with any vegetables you may
like, (though tomatoes should be used very sparingly,) good bread
and butter, and, close the meal with a glass of weak lemonade. Eat
no dessert, unless it be a little fruit, and eat nothing more till
the next morning.
There is no rule in regard to diet about which I am so fixed in my
convictions as, that nothing should be eaten after dinner, and I
think that the dinner should be taken early in the day; not later,
if it can be so managed, than two o'clock. In regard to the precise
hour for the dinner, I am not so clear, though for myself one
o'clock is the best hour; but in reference to the omission of the
third meal, I have, after long observation, _no doubt whatever_.
Hundreds of persons have come to me with indigestion in some of its
many forms, and have experienced such relief in a single week from
omitting the supper, that I have, for a number of years, depended
upon this point in the diet as the best item in my prescriptions for
indigestion. I have never met one person suffering from indigestion,
who was not greatly relieved at once, by omitting the third meal.
Eat nothing between meals, not even an apple or peach. If you eat
fruit, let it be with the breakfast and dinner. Cooked fruit is best
for persons of weak digestion. I have met hundreds of people who
could digest a large beefsteak without a pang, but who could not
manage a single uncooked apple. I think certain dietetic reformers
have somewhat overrated the value of fruit.
_Avoid cake, pie, all sweetmeats, nuts, raisins and candies_.
Manage your stomach as above, and at the end of ten years you will
look back upon these table habits as the source of great advantages,
and happiness.
For thirty years I have been a constant and careful observer, (I
have no hobbies about diet,) and in the light of my own experience
and these long observations, I assure you that the table habits I
have advised, are vital to your health and happiness.
Pimples, blotches, yellow spots, nasal catarrh, biliousness, liver
torpidity, constipation, sleepiness, dullness, low-spirits, and many
other common affections would generally disappear with the adoption
of these rules.