Lean veal sausages, boiled.
Mashed potatoes prepared with milk.
Rice with bouillon or with milk.
Toasted rolls and toast.
_Form V. Light diet, containing meat in more solid form_.
Pigeon, chicken boiled.
Small fish, with little oil, such as brook or lake trout, boiled.
Scraped beefsteak, raw ham, boiled tongue.
As delicacies: small quantities of caviar, frogs' legs, oysters,
sardelle softened in milk.
Potatoes mashed and salted, spinach, young peas mashed, cauliflower,
asparagues tips, mashed chestnuts, mashed turnips, fruit sauces.
Groat or sago puddings.
Rolls, white bread.
_Form VI. Somewhat heavier meat diet. (Gradually returning to ordinary
food.)_
Pigeon, chicken, young deer-meat, hare, everything roasted.
Beef tenderloin, tender roast beef, roast veal.
Boiled pike or carp.
Young turnips.
All dishes to be prepared with very little fat, butter to be used
exclusively. All strong spices to be avoided. Regarding drinks to be
taken with these forms of diet, as a rule good drinking water takes the
first place. This is allowed under all circumstances. Still less
irritating are weak decoctions of cereals, such as barley and rice
water. Other light nutritive non-irritating drinks are bread water and
albumen water.
Only natural waters, such as Vichy, Apollinaris with half milk or the
like are to be used. Drinks containing fruit acid, like lemonade and
fruit juices, are somewhat stimulating; however, in a general way, they
may be given during fever, but not in typhus.
Of alcoholic drinks the best is light wine (bordeaux), first diluted and
later in its natural state. As a rule it should not be used before Form
IV has been followed and Form V commenced. Occasionally, mild white wine
or well fermented beer, may be permitted. Coffee is absolutely forbidden
during any of the foregoing forms of diet, but light teas with milk are
allowed in most cases.
The main point in the different forms of diet as enumerated herein is to
be found in the mechanical gradation of the substances in accordance
with the progressive condition of the patient.
The diet in a certain individual case of the kind will not, however,
always be necessarily identical with one or any of the foregoing forms,
but must depend upon the individual condition.
In the first place, under each form there are easily discernible
gradations, according to relative points of view which are all familiar
to the physician and to which attention must be paid under similar
circumstances. On the other hand, very often one of the items of a later
form may be allowed while, in general, one of the previous forms is
applied. Thus the transition from Form II to the first items of Form
III is hardly perceptible.
Of course every form comprises all previous ones, so that each
consecutive form affords a greater range than the last.
Occasionally other points than those I have mentioned may have to be
taken into consideration. It is obviously impossible as the reader will
observe, to formulate an absolutely uniform scheme applicable to every
case.
Next to the description and quality of food, the quantity to be
introduced into the stomach at one time, is a matter of the utmost vital
importance.