A writer in a European temperance journal calls attention to the value
of fruit as an antidote to the craving for liquor. He says: “In Germany,
a nation greatly in advance of other countries in matters relative to
hygiene, alcoholic disease has been successfully coped with by dieting
and natural curative agencies. I have said that the use of fresh fruit
is an antidote for drink craving, and this is true.
“The explanation is simple. Fruit may be called nature’s medicine. Every
apple, every orange, every plum and every grape is a bottle of medicine.
An orange is three parts water—distilled in nature’s laboratory—but this
water is rich in peculiar fruit acids medicinally balanced, which are
specially cooling to the thirst of the drunkard and soothing to the
diseased state of his stomach. An apple or an orange, eaten when the
desire for ‘a glass’ arises, would generally take it away, and every
victory would make less strong each recurring temptation.
“The function of fresh fruit and succulent vegetables is not so much to
provide solid nourishment as to supply the needful acids of the blood.
Once get the blood pure and every time its pure nutrient stream bathes
the several tissues of the body it will bring away some impurity and
leave behind an atom of healthy tissue, until, in time, the drunkard
shall stand up purified—in his right mind.”