A Handbook of Health
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Title: A Handbook of Health
Author: Woods Hutchinson
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The Woods Hutchinson Health Series
A HANDBOOK OF HEALTH
by
WOODS HUTCHINSON, A. M., M. D.
Sometime Professor of Anatomy, University of Iowa; Professor of
Comparative Pathology and Methods of Science Teaching, University of
Buffalo; Lecturer, London Medical Graduates' College and University of
London; and State Health Officer of Oregon. Author of "Preventable
Diseases," "Conquest of Consumption," "Instinct and Health," etc.
Houghton Mifflin Company
Boston New York Chicago
Copyright, 1911, by Woods Hutchinson
All Rights Reserved
Tenth Impression
PREFACE
Looking upon the human body from the physical point of view as the most
perfect, most ingeniously economical, and most beautiful of living
machines, the author has attempted to write a little handbook of
practical instruction for the running of it.
And seeing that, like other machines, it derives the whole of its energy
from its fuel, the subject of foods--their properties, uses, and methods
of preparation--has been gone into with unusual care. An adequate supply
of clean-burning food-fuel for the human engine is so absolutely
fundamental both for health and for efficiency--we are so literally what
we have eaten--that to be well fed is in very fact two-thirds of the
battle of life from a physiological point of view. The whole discussion
is in accord with the aim, kept in view throughout the book, of making
its suggestion and advice positive instead of negative, pointing out
that, in the language of the old swordsman, "attack is the best
defense." If we actively do those things that make for health and
efficiency, and which, for the most part, are attractive and agreeable
to our natural instincts and unspoiled tastes,--such as exercising in
the open air, eating three square meals a day of real food, getting nine
or ten hours of undisturbed sleep, taking plenty of fresh air and cold
water both inside and out,--this will of itself carry us safely past all
the forbidden side paths without the need of so much as a glance at the
"Don't" and "Must not" with which it has been the custom to border and
fence in the path of right living.
On the other hand, while fully alive to the undesirability, and indeed
wickedness, of putting ideas of dread and suffering into children's
minds unnecessarily, yet so much of the misery in the world is due to
ignorance, and could have been avoided if knowledge of the simplest
character had been given at the proper time, that it has been thought
best to set forth the facts as to the causation and nature of the
commonest diseases, and the methods by which they may be avoided. This
is peculiarly necessary from the fact that most of the gravest enemies
of mankind have come into existence within a comparatively recent period
of the history of life,--only since the beginning of civilization, in
fact,--so that we have as yet developed no natural instincts for their
avoidance.
Nor do we admit that we are adding anything to the stock of fears in the
minds of children--the nurse-maid and the bad boys in the next alley
have been ahead of us in this respect. The child-mind is too often
already filled with fears and superstitions of every sort, passed down
from antiquity. Modern sanitarians have been accused of merely
substituting one fear for another in the mind of the child--bacilli
instead of bogies. But, even if this be true, there are profound and
practical differences between the two terrors. One is real, and the
other imaginary. A child cannot avoid meeting a bacillus; he will never
actually make the acquaintance of a bogie. Children, like savages and
ignorant adults, believe and invent and retail among themselves the most
extraordinary and grotesque theories about the structure and functions
of their bodies, the nature and causation of their illnesses and aches
and pains. A plain and straightforward statement of the actual facts
about these things not only will not shock or repel them, or make them
old before their time, but, on the contrary, will interest them greatly,
relieve their minds of many unfounded dreads, and save them from the
commonest and most hurtful mistakes of humanity--those that are
committed through ignorance.
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. RUNNING THE HUMAN AUTOMOBILE 1
II. WHY WE HAVE A STOMACH 4
What Keeps Us Alive 4
The Digestive System 7
The Journey down the Food Tube 9
III. THE FOOD-FUEL OF THE BODY-ENGINE 21
What Kind of Food should We Eat? 21
The Three Great Classes of Food-Fuel 25
IV. THE COAL FOODS 27
Proteins, or "Meats" 27
V. THE COAL FOODS (_Continued_) 40
Starches 40
Sugars 48
VI. THE COAL FOODS (_Continued_) 51
Animal Fats 51
Nuts 55
VII. KINDLING AND PAPER FOODS--FRUITS AND VEGETABLES 56
VIII. COOKING 62
IX. OUR DRINK 69
Filling the Boiler of the Body-Engine 69
Where our Drinking Water Comes from 72
Causes and Dangers of Polluted Water 75
Methods of Obtaining Pure Water 81
Home Methods of Purifying Water 87
X. BEVERAGES, ALCOHOL, AND TOBACCO 89
Alcohol 93
Tobacco 103
XI. THE HEART-PUMP AND ITS PIPE-LINE SYSTEM 108
The Blood Vessels 108
The Heart 115
XII. THE CARE OF THE HEART-PUMP AND ITS PIPE LINES 120
XIII. HOW AND WHY WE BREATHE 130
XIV. HOW TO KEEP THE LUNG-BELLOWS IN GOOD CONDITION 139
The Need of Pure Air 139
Colds, Consumption, and Pneumonia 152
How to Conquer Consumption 156
Pneumonia 165
XV. THE SKIN 167
Our Wonderful Coat 167
The Glands in the Skin 170
The Nails 172
The Blood-Mesh of the Skin 174
The Nerves in the Skin 177
XVI. HOW TO KEEP THE SKIN HEALTHY 179
Clothing 179
Baths and Bathing 184
Care of the Nails 188
Diseases and Disturbances of the Skin 189
XVII. THE PLUMBING AND SEWERING OF THE BODY 196
XVIII. THE MUSCLES 202
XIX. THE STIFFENING RODS OF THE BODY-MACHINE 210
XX. OUR TELEPHONE EXCHANGE AND ITS CABLES 216
XXI. THE HYGIENE OF BONES, NERVES, AND MUSCLES 228
How to Get and Keep a Good Figure 228
Our Feet 230
Sleep and Rest 232
Disorders of Muscles and Bones 233
Troubles of the Nervous System 235
XXII. EXERCISE AND GROWTH 241
XXIII. THE LOOKOUT DEPARTMENT 252
The Nose 253
The Tongue 257
The Eye 259
The Ear 266
Our Spirit-Levels 269
XXIV. THE SPEECH ORGANS 271
XXV. THE TEETH, THE IVORY KEEPERS OF THE GATE 277
XXVI. INFECTIONS, AND HOW TO AVOID THEM 286
XXVII. ACCIDENTS AND EMERGENCIES 314
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES 331
GLOSSARY AND INDEX 343
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
TO ATTEMPT TO RUN AN AUTOMOBILE WITHOUT KNOWING HOW WOULD BE
REGARDED AS FOOLHARDY 2
WHERE SUN-POWER IS MADE INTO FOOD FOR US 6
THE FOOD ROUTE IN THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM 8
THE SALIVARY GLANDS 10
A SECTION OF THE LINING SURFACE OF THE STOMACH 14
A LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF STOMACH, OR PEPTIC, GLANDS 15
A CHEAP HOME-MADE ICE BOX 23
A BABY-MILK STATION 30
CLEAN, DRY SUNNING YARDS AT A MODEL DAIRY 33
CLEANLINESS BEFORE MILKING 34
THE MILKING HOUR AT A MODEL DAIRY 35
MILKING BY VACUUM PROCESS 36
WASHING THE BOTTLES AT A MODEL DAIRY 37
BACTERIA IN CLEAN AND IN DIRTY MILK 38
DANGER FROM DIPPED MILK 38
MILK INSPECTION AT THE RETAIL STORE 39
A THOROUGH BAKING, AND A VALUABLE CRUST 44
AN IDEAL BAKERY WITH LIGHT, AIR, AND CLEANLINESS 45
A BASEMENT BAKERY--A MENACE TO THE PUBLIC HEALTH 46
CANDY, LIKE OTHER FOODS, SHOULD BE CLEAN 50
A SMALL STORE, CLEANLY AND HONEST 54
THE JOY OF HIS OWN GARDEN PATCH 61
THE KITCHEN SHOULD BE CARED FOR AS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT
ROOMS IN THE HOUSE 63
A KNOWLEDGE OF COOKING IS A VALUABLE PART OF A GOOD EDUCATION 66
BOYS, AS WELL AS GIRLS, SHOULD KNOW HOW TO COOK 67
THE CHAINED CUP 71
THE SPOUTING FOUNTAIN 72
NATURE'S FILTER-BED 74
AN EXAMPLE OF GOOD FARM DRAINAGE 76
THE DANGER SPOT ON THE FARM 78
TYPHOID EPIDEMIC IN THE MOHAWK-HUDSON VALLEY 80
ARTESIAN WELL BORINGS 82
A CITY WATER SUPPLY BROUGHT FROM THE FAR HILLS 84
A RESERVOIR AND COSTLY DAM 86
SCRAPING THE SEDIMENT FROM THE BOTTOM OF A RESERVOIR 87
THE DOMESTIC FILTER IN USE 88
A MILK STATION IN A CITY PARK 92
PROPORTION OF ALCOHOL IN LIGHT WINE, IN BEER, IN WHISKEY 95
A BOARD OF HEALTH EXAMINATION FOR WORKING PAPERS 105
A TEST OF CLEAR HEAD AND STEADY NERVES 106
BLOOD CORPUSCLES 109
SURFACE VEINS AND DEEP-LYING ARTERIES OF INNER SIDE OF RIGHT
ARM AND HAND 112
DIAGRAM OF ARTERY, CAPILLARIES, AND VEIN 114
THE EXTERIOR OF THE HEART 116
DIAGRAM OF VALVES IN THE VEINS AND HEART 117
THE BLOOD-ROUTE TROUGHT THE HEART 118
THE SCHOOL PHYSICIAN EXAMINING HEART AND LUNGS 121
ROWING IS A SPLENDID EXERCISE FOR HEART AND LUNGS 127
THE GREAT ESSENTIAL TO LIFE--AIR 131
DIAGRAM OF THE AIR TUBES AND LUNGS 134
"IMPROVING THEIR WIND" 137
THE "DARK ROOM" DANGER OF THE TENEMENTS 145
VENTILATING THE PUPILS, AS WELL AS THE CLASSROOM 146
A WELL-AIRED CLASSROOM 147
A HEALTHFUL ARRANGEMENT OF WINDOWS AND SHADES 148
A HEALTHFUL BEDROOM 151
DISEASE GERMS 152
A VACUUM CLEANER 153
EXERCISE IN THE COLD IS A GOOD PREVENTIVE OF COLDS 155
A YEAR OF CONSUMPTION ON MANHATTAN ISLAND 156
CONSUMPTION IN CHICAGO 157
A REPORT-FORM FROM A HEALTH DEPARTMENT LABORATORY 159
A SIGN THAT OUGHT NOT TO BE NECESSARY 160
A COMPARATIVE DEATH-RATE FROM CONTAGIOUS DISEASES 161
A TUBERCULOSIS TENT COLONY IN WINTER 163
AN OUTDOOR CLASSROOM FOR TUBERCULOUS CHILDREN 165
THE LAYERS OF THE SKIN 169
THE GLANDS IN THE SKIN 171
RESULTS OF TIGHT CLOTHING 181
A COMFORTABLE DRESS FOR OUTDOOR STUDY IN COLD WEATHER 183
AS A TONIC, SWIMMING IS THE BEST FORM OF BATHING 185
THE URINARY SYSTEM 200
THE MUSCLE-SHEET 205
USE OF MUSCLES IN BOWLING 206
USE OF MUSCLES IN FOOTBALL 207
PATELLA AND MUSCLE 207
THE HUMAN SKELETON 211
THE SPINAL COLUMN 212
A BALL-AND-SOCKET JOINT 213
A HINGE JOINT 213
LENGTHWISE SECTION OF BONE 214
CROSS SECTION OF BONE 214
THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 218
THE POSITION OF THE BODY IS AN INDEX TO ITS HEALTH 229
IMPRINT OF (1) ARCHED FOOT AND (2) FLAT FOOT 230
THE RESULT OF WEARING A FASHIONABLE SHOE 231
CALLUS FORMED AROUND A FRACTURE 234
A TRAINED BODY 242
TUG OF WAR 245
THE GIANT STRIDE 246
SCHOOL GARDENING 248
A WASTED CHANCE FOR PUBLIC HEALTH 249
AN OBSTACLE RACE 250
THE HIGH JUMP 251
ADENOIDS 256
MOUTH-BREATHERS 257
THE APPARATUS OF VISION 260
A SCHOOL EYE-TEST 263
DISINFECTING A BABY'S EYES AT BIRTH 265
THE APPARATUS OF HEARING 267
THE VOCAL CORDS 272
TEETH--A QUESTION OF CARE 278
A TOOTH 279
THE REPLACING OF THE MILK TEETH 282
A TOOTH-BRUSH DRILL 284
THE WINNING FIGHT 290
DEATH-RATE FROM MEASLES 291
DEATH-RATE FROM DIPHTHERIA AND CROUP 294
BILL OF HEALTH 298
GERMS OF MALARIA 301
CULEX 302
ANOPHELES 302
OILING A BREEDING GROUND OF MOSQUITOES 304
AN EDUCATIONAL FLY POSTER 310
A BREEDING PLACE OF FLIES AND FILTH 311
A TOURNIQUET 321
POISON IVY 325
THE NEW METHOD OF ARTIFICIAL BREATHING 328
PLATES IN COLOR
DIAGRAM OF THE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM _facing_ 110
DIAGRAM SHOWING GENERAL PLAN AND POSITION OF
BODY-MACHINERY _facing_ 198
A HANDBOOK OF HEALTH
CHAPTER I
RUNNING THE HUMAN AUTOMOBILE
The Body-Automobile. If you were to start to-morrow morning on a
long-distance ride in an automobile, the first thing that you would do
would be to find out just how that automobile was built; how often it
must have fresh gasoline; how its different speed gears were worked;
what its tires were made of; how to mend them; and how to cure engine
troubles. To attempt to run an automobile, for even a ten-mile ride,
with less information than this, would be regarded as foolhardy.
Yet most of us are willing to set out upon the journey of life in the
most complicated, most ingenious, and most delicate machine ever
made--our body--with no more knowledge of its structure than can be
gained from gazing in the looking-glass; or of its needs, than a
preference for filling up its fuel tank three times a day. More
knowledge than this is often regarded as both unnecessary and
unpleasant. Yet there are few things more important, more vital to our
health, our happiness, and our success in life, than to know how to
steer and how to road-repair our body-automobile. This we can learn only
from physiology and hygiene.
The General Plan of the Human Automobile is Simple. Complicated as our
body-automobile looks to be, there are certain things about the plan
and general build of it which are plain enough. It has a head end, where
fuel supplies are taken in and where its lamps and other look-out
apparatus are carried; a body in which the fuel is stored and turned
into work or speed, and into which air is drawn to help combustion and
to cool the engine pipes. It has a pair of fore-wheels (the arms) and a
pair of hind-wheels (the legs), though these have been reduced to only
one spoke each, and swing only about a quarter of the way around and
back again when running, instead of round and round. It has a steering
gear (the brain), just back of the headlights, and a system of nerve
electric wires connecting all parts of it. It gets warm when it runs,
and stops if it is not fed.
[Illustration: TO ATTEMPT TO RUN AN AUTOMOBILE WITHOUT KNOWING HOW WOULD
BE REGARDED AS FOOLHARDY]
There is not an unnecessary part, or unreasonable "cog," anywhere in the
whole of our bodies. It is true that there are a few little remnants
which are not quite so useful as they once were, and which sometimes
cause trouble. But for the most part, all we have to do is to look long
and carefully enough at any organ or part of our bodies, to be able to
puzzle out just what it is or was intended to do, and why it has the
shape and size it has.
Why the Study of Physiology is Easy. There is one thing that helps to
make the study of physiology quite easy. It is that you already know a
good deal about your body, because you have had to live with it for a
number of years past, and you can hardly have helped becoming somewhat
acquainted with it during this time.
You have, also, another advantage, which will help you in this study.
While your ideas of how to take care of your body are rather vague, and
some of them wrong, most of them are in the main right, or at least lead
you in the right direction. You all know enough to eat when you are
hungry and to drink when you are thirsty, even though you don't always
know when to stop, or just what to eat. You like sunny days better than
cloudy ones, and would much rather breathe fresh air than foul. You like
to go wading and swimming when you are hot and dusty, and you don't need
to be told to go to sleep when you are tired. You would much rather have
sugar than vinegar, sweet milk than sour milk; and you dislike to eat or
drink anything that looks dirty or foul, or smells bad.
These inborn likes and dislikes--which we call _instincts_--are the
forces which have built up this wonderful body-machine of ours in the
past and, if properly understood and trained, can be largely trusted to
run it in the future. How to follow these instincts intelligently, where
to check them, where to encourage them, how to keep the proper balance
between them, how to live long and be useful and happy--this is what the
interesting study of physiology and hygiene will teach you.
CHAPTER II
WHY WE HAVE A STOMACH
WHAT KEEPS US ALIVE
The Energy in Food and Fuel. The first question that arises in our
mind on looking at an engine or machine of any sort is, What makes it
go? If we can succeed in getting an answer to the question, What makes
the human automobile go? we shall have the key to half its secrets at
once. It is fuel, of course; but what kind of fuel? How does the body
take it in, how does it burn it, and how does it use the energy or power
stored up in it to run the body-engine?
Man is a bread-and-butter-motor. The fuel of the automobile is gasoline,
and the fuel of the man-motor we call food. The two kinds of fuel do not
taste or smell much alike; but they are alike in that they both have
what we call _energy_, or power, stored up in them, and will, when set
fire to, burn, or explode, and give off this power in the shape of heat,
or explosions, which will do work.
Food and Fuel are the Result of Life. Fuels and foods are also alike
in another respect; and that is, that, no matter how much they may
differ in appearance and form, they are practically _all the result of
life_. This is clear enough as regards our foods, which are usually the
seeds, fruits, and leaves of plants, and the flesh of animals. It is
also true of the cord-wood and logs that we burn in our stoves and
fireplaces. But what of coal and gasoline? They are minerals, and they
come, as we know, out of the depths of the earth. Yet they too are the
product of life; for the layers of coal, which lie sixty, eighty, one
hundred and fifty feet below the surface of the earth, are the
fossilized remains of great forests and jungles, which were buried
millions of years ago, and whose leaves and branches and trunks have
been pressed and baked into coal. Gasoline comes from coal oil, or
petroleum, and is simply the "juice" which was squeezed out of these
layers of trees and ferns while they were being crushed and pressed into
coal.
How the Sun is Turned into Energy by Plants and Animals. Where did the
flowers and fruits and leaves that we now see, and the trees and ferns
that grew millions of years ago, get this power, part of which made them
grow and part of which was stored away in their leaves and branches and
seeds? From the one place that is the source of all the force and energy
and power in this world, the sun.
That is why plants will, as you know, flourish and grow strong and green
only in the sunlight, and why they wilt and turn pale in the dark. When
the plant grows, it is simply sucking up through the green stuff
(_chlorophyll_) in its leaves the heat and light of the sun and turning
it to its own uses. Then this sunlight, which has been absorbed by
plants and built up into their leaves, branches, and fruits, and stored
away in them as energy or power, is eaten by animals; and they in turn
use it to grow and move about with.
Plants can use this sun-power only to grow with and to carry out a few
very limited movements, such as turning to face the sun, reaching over
toward the light, and so on. But animals, taking this power at
second-hand from plants by eating their leaves or fruits, can use it not
merely to grow with, but also to run, to fight, to climb, to cry out,
and to carry out all those movements and processes which we call life.
Plants, on the other hand, are quite independent of animals; for they
can take up, or drink, this sun-power directly, with the addition of
water from the soil sucked up through their roots, and certain salts[1]
melted in it. Plants can live, as we say, upon non-living foods. But
animals must take their supply of sun-power at second-hand by eating the
leaves and the fruits and the seeds of plants; or at third-hand by
eating other animals.
[Illustration: WHERE SUN-POWER IS MADE INTO FOOD FOR US]
All living things, including ourselves, are simply bundles of sunlight,
done up in the form of cabbages, cows, and kings; and so it is quite
right to say that a healthy, happy child has a "sunny" disposition.
Plants and Animals Differ in their Way of Taking Food. As plants take
in their sun-food and their air directly through their leaves, and their
drink of salty water through their roots, they need no special opening
for the purpose of eating and drinking, like a mouth; or place for
storing food, like a stomach. They have mouths and stomachs all over
them, in the form of tiny pores on their leaves, and hair-like tubes
sticking out from their roots. They can eat with every inch of their
growing surface.
But animals, that have to take their sun-food or nourishment at
second-hand, in the form of solid pieces of seeds, fruits, or leaves of
plants, and must take their drink in gulps, instead of soaking it up all
over their surface, must have some sort of intake opening, or mouth,
somewhere on the surface; and some sort of pouch, or stomach, inside the
body, in which their food can be stored and digested, or melted down. By
this means they also get rid of the necessity of staying rooted in one
place, to suck up moisture and food from the soil. One of the chief and
most striking differences between plants and animals is that animals
have mouths and stomachs, while plants have not.
THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM
How the Food Reaches the Stomach. Our body, then, has an opening,
which we call the _mouth_, through which our food-fuel can be taken in.
A straight delivery tube, called the _gullet_, or _esophagus_, runs down
from the mouth to a bag, or pouch, called the _stomach_, in which the
food is stored until it can be used to give energy to the body, just as
the gasoline is stored in the automobile tank until it can be burned.
The mouth opening is furnished with _lips_ to open and close it and
assist in picking up our food and in sucking up our drink; and, as much
of our food is in solid form, and as the stomach can take care only of
fluid and pulpy materials, nature has provided a mill in the mouth in
the form of two arches, of semicircles, of _teeth_, which grind against
each other and crush the food into a pulp.
[Illustration: THE FOOD ROUTE IN THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM
In this diagram the entire alimentary canal is shown enlarged, and the
small intestine greatly shortened, in order to show distinctly the
course of the food in the process of digestion.]
In the bottom or floor of the mouth, there has grown up a movable bundle
of muscles, called the _tongue_, which acts as a sort of waiter, handing
the food about the mouth, pushing it between the teeth, licking it out
of the pouches of the cheeks to bring it back into the teeth-mill again,
and finally, after it has been reduced to a pulp, gathering it up into a
little ball, or _bolus_, and shooting it back down the throat, through
the gullet, into the stomach.
The Intestines. When the food has been sufficiently melted and
partially digested in the stomach, it is pushed on into a long tube
called the _intestine_, or _bowel_. During its passage through this part
of the food tube, it is taken up into the veins, and carried to the
heart. From here it is pumped all over the body to feed and nourish the
millions of little cells of which the body is built. This bowel tube, or
intestine, which, on account of its length, is arranged in coils,
finally delivers the undigested remains of the food into a somewhat
larger tube called the _large intestine_, in the lower and back part of
the body, where its remaining moisture is sucked out of it, and its
solid waste material passed out of the body through the _rectum_ in the
form of the _feces_.
THE JOURNEY DOWN THE FOOD TUBE
The Flow of Saliva and "Appetite Juice." We are now ready to start
some food-fuel, say a piece of bread, on its journey down our food tube,
or _alimentary canal_. One would naturally suppose that the process of
digestion would not begin until the food got well between our teeth;
but, as a matter of fact, it begins before it enters our lips, or even
before it leaves the table. If bread be toasted or freshly baked, the
mere smell of it will start our mouths to watering; nay, even the mere
sight of food, as in a pastry cook's window, with the glass between us
and it, will start up this preparation for the feast.
This flow of saliva in the mouth is of great assistance in moistening
the bread while we are chewing it; but it goes farther than this. Some
of the saliva is swallowed before we begin to eat; and this goes down
into the stomach and brings word to the juices there to be ready, for
something is coming. As the food approaches the mouth, a message also is
telegraphed down the nerves to the stomach, which at once actively sets
to work pouring out a digestive juice in readiness, called the "appetite
juice." This shows how important are, not merely a good appetite, but
also attractive appearance and flavor in our food; for if this appetite
juice is not secreted, the food may lie in the stomach for hours before
the proper process of digestion, or melting, begins.
The Salivary Glands. Now, where does this saliva in the mouth come
from? It is poured out from the pouches of the cheeks, and from under
the tongue, by some little living sponges, or juice factories, known as
_salivary glands_.[2]
[Illustration: THE SALIVARY GLANDS
In this diagram are shown the three glands (_G_) of the left side. The
duct (_D_) from the parotid gland empties through the lining of the
cheek; those from the lower glands empty at the front of the mouth under
the tongue (_T_). _N_, nerve; _A_, artery; _V_, vein.]
All the juices poured out by these glands, indeed nearly all the fluids
or juices in our bodies, are either _acid_ or _alkaline_. By acid we
mean sour, or sharp, like vinegar, lemon juice, vitriol (_sulphuric
acid_), and _carbonic acid_ (which forms the bubbles in and gives the
sharp taste to plain soda-water). By alkaline we mean "soap-like" or
flat, like soda, lye, lime, and soaps of all sorts. If you pour an acid
and an alkali together--like vinegar and soda--they will "fizz" or
effervesce, and at the same time _neutralize_ or "kill" each other.
The Use of the Saliva. As the chief purpose of digestion is to prepare
the food so that it will dissolve in water, and then be taken up by the
cells lining the food-tube, the saliva, like the rest of the body
juices, consists chiefly of water. Nothing is more disagreeable than to
try to chew some dry food--like a large, crisp soda cracker, for
instance--which takes more moisture than the salivary glands are able to
pour out on such short notice. You soon begin to feel as if you would
choke unless you could get a drink of water. But it is not altogether
advisable to take this short cut to relief, because the salivary juice
contains what the drink of water does not--a _ferment_, or digestive
substance (_ptyalin_), which possesses the power of turning the _starch_
in our food into _sugar_. As starch is only very slowly soluble, or
"meltable," in water, while sugar is very readily so, the saliva is of
great assistance in the process of melting, known as _digestion_. The
changing of the starch to sugar is the reason why bread or cracker,
after it has been well chewed, begins to taste sweetish.
This change in the mouth, however, is not of such great importance as
we at one time thought, because even with careful mastication, a certain
amount of starch will be swallowed unchanged. Nature has provided for
this by causing another gland farther down the canal, just beyond the
stomach, called the _pancreas_, to pour into the food tube a juice which
is far stronger in sugar-making power than the saliva, and this will
readily deal with any starch which may have escaped this change in the
mouth. Moreover, this "sugaring" of starch goes on in the stomach for
twenty to forty minutes after the food has been swallowed.
Starchy foods, like bread, biscuit, crackers, cake, and pastry, are
really the only ones which require such thorough and elaborate chewing
as we sometimes hear urged. Other kinds of food, like meat and
eggs--which contain no _starch_ and consequently are not acted upon by
the saliva--need be chewed only sufficiently long and thoroughly to
break them up and reduce them to a coarse pulp, so that they can be
readily acted upon by the acid juice of the stomach.
Down the Gullet. When the food has been thoroughly moistened and
crushed in the mouth and rolled into a lump, or bolus, at the back of
the tongue, it is started down the elevator shaft which we call the
gullet, or esophagus. It does not fall of its own weight, like coal down
a chute, but each separate swallow is carried down the whole nine inches
of the gullet by a wave of muscular action. So powerful and closely
applied is this muscular pressure that jugglers can train themselves,
with practice, to swallow standing on their heads and even to drink a
glass of water in that position; while a horse or a cow always drinks
"up-hill." This driving power of the food tube extends throughout its
entire length; it is carried out by a series of circular rings of
muscles, which are bound together by other threads of muscle running
lengthwise, together forming the so-called _muscular coat_ of the tube.
By contracting, or squeezing down in rapid succession, one after
another, they move the food along through the tube. The failure of these
little muscles to act properly is one of the causes of constipation and
biliousness. Sometimes the action of the muscles is reversed, and then
we get a gush of acid, or bitter, half-digested food up into the mouth,
which we call "heart-burn" or "water-brash."
The Stomach--its Shape, Position, and Size. By means of muscular
contraction, then, the gullet-elevator carries the food into the
stomach. This is a comparatively simple affair, merely a ballooning out,
or swelling, of the food tube, like the bulb of a syringe, making a
pouch, where the food can be stored between meals, and where it can
undergo a certain kind of melting or dissolving. This pouch is about the
shape of a pear, with its larger end upward and pointing to the left,
and its smaller end tapering down into the intestine, or bowel, on the
right, just under the liver. The middle part of the stomach lies almost
directly under what we call the "pit of the stomach," though far the
larger part of it lies above and to the left of this point, going right
up under the ribs until it almost touches the heart, the diaphragm only
coming between.[3] This is one of the reasons why, when we have an
attack of indigestion, and the stomach is distended with gas, we are
quite likely to have palpitation and shortness of breath as well,
because the gas-swollen left end of the stomach is pressing upward
against the diaphragm and thus upon the heart and the lungs. Most cases
of imagined heart trouble are really due to indigestion.
The Lining Surface of the Stomach. Now let us look more carefully at
the lining surface of the stomach, for it is very wonderful. Like all
other living surfaces, it consists of tiny, living units, or "body
bricks" called _cells_, packed closely side by side like bricks in a
pavement. We speak of the _mucous membrane_, or lining, of our food
tube, as if it were one continuous sheet, like a piece of calico or
silk; but we must never forget that it is made up of living ranks of
millions of tiny cells standing shoulder to shoulder.
These cells are always actively at work picking out the substances they
need, and manufacturing out of them the ferments and acids, or alkalies,
needed for acting upon the food in their particular part of the tube,
whether it be the mouth, the stomach, or the small intestine.
[Illustration: A SECTION OF THE LINING SURFACE OF THE STOMACH
(Greatly magnified)
Showing the mouths of the stomach glands, and the furrows, or folds, of
the lining.]
The Peptic Juice. The cells of the stomach glands manufacture and pour
out a slightly sour, or acid, juice containing a ferment called
_pepsin_. The acid, which is known as _hydrochloric acid_, and the
pepsin together are able to melt down pieces of meat, egg, or curds of
milk, and dissolve them into a clear, jelly-like fluid, or thin soup,
which can readily be absorbed by the cells lining the intestine.[4]
You can see now why you shouldn't take large doses of soda or other
alkalies, just because you feel a little uncomfortable after eating.
They will make your stomach less acid and perhaps relieve the
discomfort, but they stop or slow down digestion. Neither is it well to
swallow large quantities of ice-water, or other very cold drinks, at
meal times, or during the process of digestion. As digestion is largely
getting the food dissolved in water, the drinking of moderate quantities
of water, or other fluids, at meals is not only no hindrance, but rather
a help in the process. The danger comes only when the drink is taken so
cold as to check digestion, or when it is used to wash down the food in
chunks, before it has been properly ground by the teeth.
[Illustration: A LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF STOMACH, OR PEPTIC, GLANDS
(Greatly magnified)
The long duct of each gland is but a deep fold of the stomach lining
(see note, p. 11). Into this duct the ranks of cells around it pour out
the peptic juice.]
Digestion in the Stomach. Although usually a single, pear-shaped
pouch, the stomach, during digestion, is practically divided into two
parts by the shortening, or closing down, of a ring of circular muscle
fibres about four inches from the lower end, throwing it into a large,
rounded pouch on the left, and a small, cone-shaped one on the right.
The gullet, of course, opens into the large left-hand pouch; and here
the food is stored as it is swallowed until it has become sufficiently
melted and acidified (mixed with acid juice) to be ready to pass on into
the smaller pouch. Here more acid juice is poured out into it, and it is
churned by the muscles in the walls of the stomach until it is changed
to a jelly-like substance.
Digestion in the Small Intestine. The food-pulp now passes on into the
_small intestine_, where it is acted upon by two other digestive
juices--the _bile_, which comes from the _liver_, and the _pancreatic
juice_, which is secreted by the pancreas.
The liver and the pancreas are a pair of large glands which have budded
out, one on each side of the food tube, about six inches below where the
food enters the small intestine from the stomach. The liver[5] weighs
nearly three pounds, and the pancreas about a quarter of a pound.
Of these two glands, the pancreas, though the smaller, is far more
important in digestion. In fact, it is the most powerful digestive gland
in the body. Its juice, the pancreatic juice, can do everything that any
other digestive juice can, and do it better. It contains a ferment for
turning starch into sugar, which is far more powerful than that of the
saliva; also another (_trypsin_), which will dissolve meat-stuffs nearly
twice as fast as the pepsin of the stomach can; and still another, not
possessed by either mouth or stomach glands, which will melt fat, so
that it can be sucked up by the lining cells of the intestine.
What does this great combination of powers in the pancreas mean? It
means that we have now reached the real centre and chief seat of
digestion, namely, the small intestine, or upper bowel. This is where
the food is really absorbed, taken up into the blood, and distributed to
the body. All changes before this have been merely preparatory; all
after it are simply a picking up of the pieces that remain.
In general appearance, this division of the food tube is very
simple--merely a tube about twenty feet long and an inch in diameter,
thrown into coils, so as to pack into small space, and slung up to the
backbone by broad loops of a delicate tissue (_mesentery_). It looks not
unlike twenty feet of pink garden hose.
The intestine also is provided with glands that pour out a juice known
as the _intestinal juice_, which, although not very active in digestion,
helps to melt down still further some of the sugars, and helps to
prevent putrefaction, or decay, of the food from the bacteria[6] which
swarm in this part of the tube.
By the time the food has gone a third of the way down the small
intestine, a good share of the starches in it have been turned into
sugar and absorbed by the blood vessels in its wall; and the meats,
milk, eggs, and similar foods have been digested in the same way.
There still remains the bulk of the fats to be disposed of. These fats
are attacked by the pancreatic juice and the bile, and made ready for
digestion. Like other foods, they are then eaten by the cells of the
intestinal wall; but instead of going directly into the blood vessels,
as the sugars and other food substances do, they are passed on into
another set of little tubes or vessels, called the _lymphatics_. In
these they are carried through the _lymph glands_ of the abdomen into
the great _lymph duct_, which finally pours them into one of the great
veins not far from the heart. Tiny, branching lymphatic tubes are found
all over the body, picking up what the cells leave of the fluid which
has seeped out of the arteries for their use and returning it to the
veins through the great lymph duct.
All these different food substances, in the process of digestion, do not
simply soak through the lining cells of the food tube, as through a
blotting paper or straining cloth, but are actually eaten by the cells
and very much changed in the process, and are then passed through the
other side of the cells, either into the blood vessels of the wall of
the intestine or into the lymph vessels, practically ready for use by
the living tissues of the body. It is in the cells then that our food is
turned into blood, and it is there that what we have eaten becomes
really a part of us. It may even be said that we are living upon the
leavings of the little cell citizens that line our food tube; but they
are wonderfully decent, devoted little comrades of the rest of our body
cells, and generous in the amount of food they pass on to the blood
vessels.
As the food-pulp is squeezed on from one coil to another through the
intestine, it naturally has more and more of its nourishing matter
sucked out of it; until, by the time it reaches the last loop of the
twenty feet of the small intestine, it has lost over two-thirds of its
food value.
The Final Stage--the Journey through the Large Intestine. From the
small intestine what remains of the food-pulp is poured into the last
section of the food tube, which enlarges to from two to three inches in
diameter. It is known as the large intestine, or large bowel. This
section is only about five feet long. The first three-fourths of it is
called the _colon_; the last or lowest quarter, the rectum, the
discharge-pipe of the food tube. The principal use of the colon is to
suck out the remaining traces of nourishing matter from the food and the
water in which it is dissolved, thus gradually drying the food-pulp down
to a solid or pasty form, in which condition it collects in a large "S"
shaped loop of the bowel just above the rectum, until discharged.
The Waste Materials. By the time that the remains of the food-pulp
have reached the middle of the large intestine, they have lost all their
nutritive value and most of their water. All the way down from the upper
part of the small intestine they have been receiving solid waste
substances poured out by the glands of the intestines; indeed, the bulk
of the feces is made up of these intestinal secretions, not, as is
generally supposed, of the undigested remains of the food. Ninety-five
per cent of our food is absorbed; the body-engine burns up its fuel very
clean. The next largest part of the feces is bacteria, or germs; and the
third and smallest, the indigestible fragments and remainders of food,
such as vegetable fibres, bran, fruit skins, pits, seeds, etc. Hence the
feces are not only worthless from a food point of view, but full of all
sorts of possibilities for harm; and the principal interest of the body
lies in getting rid of them as promptly and regularly as possible.
It can easily be seen how important it is that a habit should be formed,
which nothing should be allowed to break, of promptly and regularly
getting rid of these waste materials. For most persons, once in
twenty-four hours is normal; for some, twice or even three times in the
day. Whatever interval is natural, it should be attended to, beginning
at a fixed hour every morning.
Constipation, and how to Prevent It. Constipation should not be
treated by the all too common method of swallowing salts, which will
cause a flood of watery matters to be poured through the food tube and
sluice it clean of both poisons and melting food at the same time,
leaving it in an exhausted and disturbed condition afterwards; nor by
taking some irritating vegetable cathartic, generally in the form of
pills, which sets up a violent action of the muscles of the food tube,
driving its contents through at headlong speed; nor by washing out the
lower two or three feet of the bowel with injections of water; although
any or all of these may be resorted to occasionally for temporary
relief. A very large portion of the food eaten is sucked out of the food
tube into the blood vessels, passes through a large area of the body,
and is poured out again as waste through the glands of the lining of the
lower third of the bowel. Constipation, therefore, is caused by
disturbances which interfere with these processes _all over the body_,
not only in the stomach and bowels. Its only real and permanent cure is
through exercise in the open air, sleep, and proper ventilation of
bedrooms, with abundance of nourishing food, including plenty of green
vegetables and fresh fruits.
The Appendix and Appendicitis. The beginning of the large bowel, where
the small bowel empties into it, is the largest part of it, and forms a
curious pouch called the _cecum_, or "blind" pouch. From one side of
this projects a little wormlike tube, twisted and coiled upon itself,
from three to six inches long and of about the size of a slate pencil.
This is the famous _appendix vermiformis_ (meaning, "wormlike tag"),
which is such a frequent source of trouble. It is the shrunken and
shriveled remains of a large pouch of the intestine which once opened
into the cecum, and was used originally as a sort of second stomach for
delaying and digesting the remains of the food. The reason why it gives
rise to so much trouble is that it is so small--scarcely larger than
will admit a knitting-needle--and so twisted upon itself that germs or
other poisonous substances swallowed with the food may get into it,
start a swelling or inflammation, get trapped in there by the closing of
the narrow mouth of the tube, and form an abscess, which leaks through,
or bursts into, the cavity of the body, called the _peritoneum_. This
causes a very serious and often fatal blood poisoning.
Fortunately, _appendicitis_, or inflammation of the appendix, is not a
very common disease, causing only one in one hundred of all deaths that
occur; and these are mostly cases that were not treated promptly. Yet,
if you have a severe, constant pain, rather low down in the right-hand
corner of your abdomen, and if, when you press your hand firmly down in
that corner, it hurts, or you feel a lump, it is decidedly safest to
call a doctor and let him see what the condition really is, and advise
you what to do.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The term _salts_ includes, as will be explained later, a large
number of substances, like ordinary table salt, baking soda, and the
laxative salts.
[2] There are three pairs of these: one just below the ears and behind
the angles of the jaw, known as the _parotid_; one under the middle of
the lower jaw known as the _submaxillary_; and a small pair just under
the tip of the tongue, called the _sublingual_. These glands have grown
up from the very simplest of beginnings. At first there was just a
little pocketing or pouching down of the mucous lining, like the finger
of a glove; then a couple of smaller hollow fingers budded off from the
bottom of the first finger; then four smaller fingers from the bottom of
these; and so on, until a regular little hollow tree or shrub of these
tiny tubes was built up, all discharging through the original hollow
stem, which has now become what we call the _duct_ of the gland. Every
secreting gland in the body--the stomach (or peptic) glands, the
salivary glands, the liver, the pancreas--is built up upon this simple
plan. The saliva and the juice of the pancreas and that of the liver
(bile) are alkaline, as are also the blood and most juices of the body.
The stomach juice is acid, as also are the urine and the perspiration.
[3] It is wonderfully elastic and constantly changing in size,
contracting till it will scarcely hold a quart when empty, and
expanding, as food or drink is put into it, until it will easily hold
two quarts, or even a gallon or more when greatly distended, as by gas.
[4] If you take some pepsin which has been extracted from the stomach of
a pig or a calf, melt it in water in a glass tube, then drop one or two
little pieces of meat or hard-boiled white of egg into it, you can see
them slowly melt away like sugar in a cup of coffee. If you add a few
drops of hydrochloric acid, the melting will go on much faster; and if
you warm up the tube to about the heat of the body, it will proceed
faster still. So nature knew just what she was doing when she provided
pepsin and acid and warmth in the stomach.
[5] The liver and the bile are more fully described in chapter XVII.
[6] Tiny plant cells, known also as _germs_, which cause fermentation,
decay, and many diseases.
CHAPTER III
THE FOOD-FUEL OF THE BODY-ENGINE
WHAT KIND OF FOOD SHOULD WE EAT?
Generally speaking, our Appetites will Guide us. Our whole body is an
ingenious machine for catching food, digesting it, and turning the
energy, or fuel value, which it contains, into life, movement, and
growth.
Naturally, two things follow: first, that the kind and amount of food
which we eat is of great importance; and second, that from the millions
of years of experience that the human body has had in trying all sorts
of foods, it has adapted itself to certain kinds of food and developed
certain likes and dislikes which we call _appetites_. Those who happened
to like unhealthy and unwholesome foods were poisoned, or grew thin and
weak and died off, so that we are descended solely from people who had
sound and reliable food appetites; and, in the main, what our instincts
and appetites tell us about food is to be depended upon.
The main questions which we have to consider are: How much of the
different kinds of food it is best for us to eat, and in what
proportions we should use them. Both men and animals, since the world
began, have been trying to eat and digest almost everything that they
could get into their mouths. And what we now like and prepare as foods
are the things which have stood the test, and proved themselves able to
yield strength and nourishment to the body. So practically every food
that comes upon our tables has some kind of real food value, or it
wouldn't appear there.
The most careful study and analysis have shown that almost every known
food has some peculiar advantage, such as digestibility, or cheapness,
or pleasant taste as flavoring for other more nutritious, but less
interesting, foods. But some foods have much higher degrees of
nutritiousness or digestibility or wholesomeness than others; so that
our problem is to pick out from a number of foods that "taste good" to
us, those which are the most nutritious, the most digestible, and the
most wholesome, and to see that we get plenty of them. It is not that
certain foods, or classes of food, are "good," and should be eaten to
the exclusion of all others; nor that certain foods, or classes of food,
are "bad," and should be excluded from our tables entirely; but that
certain foods are more nutritious, or more wholesome, than others; and
that it is best to see that we get plenty of the former before indulging
our appetites upon the latter.
Beware of Tainted Food. The most dangerous fault that any food can
have is that it shall be tainted, or spoiled, or smell bad. Spoiling, or
tainting, means that the food has become infected by some germs of
putrefaction, generally _bacteria_ or _moulds_ (see chapter XXVI). It is
the poisons--called _ptomaines_, or _toxins_--produced by these germs
which cause the serious disturbances in the stomach, and not either the
amount or the kind of food itself. Even a regular "gorge" upon early
apples or watermelon or cake or ice cream will not give you half so bad,
nor so dangerous, colic as one little piece of tainted meat or fish or
egg, or one cupful of dirty milk, or a single helping of cabbage or
tomatoes that have begun to spoil, or of jam made out of spoiled berries
or other fruit. This spoiling can be prevented by strict cleanliness in
handling foods, especially milk, meat, and fruit; by keeping foods
screened from dust and flies; and by keeping them cool with ice in
summer time, thus checking the growth of these "spoiling" germs. The
refrigerator in the kitchen prevents colic or diarrhea, ice in hot
weather is one of the necessaries of life. Smell every piece of food to
be eaten, in the kitchen before it is cooked, if possible; but if not,
at the table avoid everything that has an unpleasant odor, or tastes
queer, and you will avoid two-thirds of the colic, diarrhea, and bilious
attacks which are so often supposed to be due to eating too much.
[Illustration: A CHEAP HOME-MADE ICE BOX
This should not cost over twenty-five cents. The sketch shows an
ordinary soap box; inside is a tin pail surrounded by a sheet of tin, so
that there is a circular air space between the pail and the sheet of
tin. Sawdust is packed around the tin, and cracked ice (two cents a day)
fills the tin pail around the milk bottle. The newspapers inside the
cover help to keep out the warmth of the outside air. Recommended by the
Boards of Health of New York City and Chicago.]
Variety in Food is Necessary. Man has always lived on, and apparently
required, a great variety of foods, animal and vegetable--fish and
flesh, nuts, fruit, grains, fat, sugar, and vegetables. Indeed, it was
probably because man could live on anything and everything that he was
able to survive in famines and to get so far ahead of all other sorts of
animals.
We still need a great variety of different sorts of food in order to
keep our health; so our tendency to become tired of a certain food,
after we have had it over and over and over again, for breakfast,
dinner, and supper, is a sound and healthy one. There is no "best food";
nor is there any one food on which we can live and work, as an engine
will work all its "life" on one kind of coal, wood, or oil. No one kind
of food contains all the stuffs that our body is made of and needs, in
exactly the right proportions. It takes a dozen or more different kinds
of food to supply these, and the body picks out what it wants, and
throws away the remainder.
Even the best and most nutritious and digestible single food, like meat,
or bread and butter, or sugar, is not sufficient by itself; nor will it
do for every meal in the day, or every day in the week. We must eat
other things with it; and we must from time to time change it for
something which may even be not quite so nutritious, in order to give
our body the opportunity to select from a great variety of foods the
particular things which its wonderful instincts and skill can use to
build it up and keep it healthy. This is why every grocery store, every
butcher shop, every fish market, and every confectioner's shows such a
great variety of different kinds of foods put up and prepared in all
sorts of ways. Although nearly two-thirds of the actual fuel which we
put into our body-boilers is in the form of a dozen or fifteen great
staple foods, like bread, meat, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, potatoes, and
fish, yet all the lighter foods, also, are needed for perfect health.
It is possible, by careful selection, and by taking a great deal of
trouble, to supply all the elements of the body from animal foods alone,
or from vegetable foods alone. But practically, it has everywhere, and
in all ages, been found that the best and most healthful diet is a
proper combination of animal and vegetable foods. Our starches, for
instance, which furnish most of our fuel,--though they give us
_comparatively little_ to _build up_, or _repair_, the body with,--are
found, as we have seen, in the vegetable kingdom, in grains and fruits;
while most of our proteins and fats, which chiefly give us the materials
with which to build up, or repair, the body, are found in the animal
kingdom. There is no advantage whatever in trying to exclude either
animal food or vegetable food from our dietary. Both animal and
vegetable foods are wholesome in their proper place, and their proper
place is on the table together.
Those nations which live solely, or even chiefly, upon one or two kinds
of staple foods, such as rice, potatoes, corn-meal, or yams, do so
solely because they are too poor to afford other kinds of food, or too
lazy, or too uncivilized, to get them; and instead of being healthier
and longer-lived than civilized races, they are much more subject to
disease and live only about half as long.
THE THREE GREAT CLASSES OF FOOD-FUEL
Food is Fuel. Now what is the chief quality which makes one kind of
food preferable to another? As our body machine runs entirely upon the
energy or "strength" which it gets out of its food, _a good food must
have plenty of fuel value_; that is to say, it must be capable of
burning and giving off heat and steaming-power. Other things being
equal, the more it has of this fuel value, the more desirable and
valuable it will be as a food.
From this point of view, foods may be roughly classified, after the
fashion of the materials needed to build a fire in a grate or stove, as
Coal foods, Kindling foods, and Paper foods. Although coal, kindling,
and paper are of very different fuel values, they are all necessary to
start the fire in the grate and to keep it burning properly. Moreover,
any one of them would keep a fire going alone, after a fashion, provided
that you had a grate or furnace large enough to burn it in, and could
shovel it in fast enough; and the same is true, to a certain degree, of
the foods in the body.
How to Judge the Fuel Value of Foods. One of the best ways of roughly
determining whether a given food belongs in the Coal, the Kindling, or
the Paper class, is to take a handful or spoonful of it, dry it
thoroughly by some means,--evaporating, or driving off the water,--and
then throw what is left into a fire and see how it will burn. A piece of
beef, for instance, would shrink a good deal in drying; but about
one-third of it would be left, and this dried beef would burn quite
briskly and would last for some time in the fire. A piece of bread of
the same size would not shrink so much, but would lose about the same
proportion of its weight; and it also would burn with a clear, hot
flame, though not quite so long as the beef. A piece of fat of the same
size would shrink very little in drying and would burn with a bright,
hot flame, nearly twice as long as either the beef or the bread. These
would all be classed as Coal foods.
Then if we were to dry a slice of apple, it would shrink down into a
little leathery shaving; and this, when thrown into the fire, would burn
with a smudgy kind of flame, give off very little heat, and soon
smoulder away. A piece of raw potato of the same size would shrink even
more, but would give a hotter and cleaner flame. A leaf of cabbage, or a
piece of beet-root, or four or five large strawberries would shrivel
away in the drying almost to nothing and, if thoroughly dried, would
disappear in a flash when thrown on the fire. These, then, except the
potato, we should regard as Kindling foods.
But it would take a large handful of lettuce leaves, or a big cup of
beef-tea, or a good-sized bowl of soup, or a big cucumber, or a gallon
of tea or coffee, to leave sufficient solid remains when completely
dried, to make more than a flash when thrown into the fire. These, then,
are Paper foods, with little fuel value.
CHAPTER IV
THE COAL FOODS
Kinds of Coal Foods. There are many different kinds of Coal foods,
such as pork, mutton, beef, bread, corn-cakes, bacon, potatoes, rice,
sugar, cheese, butter, and so on. But when you come to look at them more
closely, and to take them to pieces, or, as we say, analyze them, you
will see that they all fall into three different kinds or classes: (1)
_Proteins_, such as meat, milk, fish, eggs, cheese, etc. (2)
_Starch-sugars_ (_carbohydrates_), found pure as laundry starch and as
white sugar; also found, as starch, making up the bulk of wheat and
other grains, and of potatoes, rice, peas; also found, as sugar, in
honey, beet-roots, sugar cane, and the sap of maple trees. (3) _Fats_,
found in fat meats, butter, oil, nuts, beeswax, etc.
This whole class of Coal foods can be recognized by the fact that
usually some one of them will form the staple, or main dish, of almost
any regular meal, which is generally a combination of all three
classes--a protein in the shape of meat; a starch-sugar in the form of
bread, potatoes, or rice; and a fat in the form of butter in northern
climates, or of olive oil in the tropics.
PROTEINS, OR "MEATS"
Proteins, the "First Foods." There are proteins, or "meats," both
animal and vegetable; and no one can support life without protein in
some form. This is because proteins alone contain sufficient amounts of
the great element called _nitrogen_, which forms a large part of every
portion of our bodies. This is why they are called proteins, meaning
"first foods," or most necessary foods. Whatever we may live on in later
life, we all began on a diet of liquid meat (milk), and could have
survived and grown up on nothing else.
Composition of Proteins. Nearly all our meats are the muscle of
different sorts of animals, made of a soft, reddish, animal pulp called
_myosin_; the other principal proteins being white of egg, curd of milk,
and a gummy, whitish-gray substance called _gluten_, found in wheat
flour. This gluten is the stuff that makes the paste and dough of wheat
flour sticky, so that you can paste things together with it; while that
made from corn meal or oatmeal will fall to pieces when you take it up.
The jelly-like or pulp-like myosin in meat is held together by strings
or threads of tough, fibrous stuff; and the more there is of this
fibrous material in a particular piece or "cut," of meat, the tougher
and less juicy it is. The thick, soft muscles, which lie close under the
backbone in the small of the back, in all animals, have less of this
tough and indigestible fibrous stuff in them, and cuts across them give
us the well-known porter-house, sirloin, or tenderloin steaks, and the
best and tenderest mutton and pork chops.
Fuel Value of Meats. Weight for weight, most of the butcher's
meats--beef, pork, mutton, and veal--have about the same food value,
differing chiefly in the amount of fat that is mixed in with their
fibres, and in certain flavoring substances, which give them, when
roasted, or broiled, their special flavors. The different flavors are
not of any practical importance, except in the case of mutton, which
some people dislike and therefore can take only occasionally, and in
small amounts.
The amount of fat in meats, however, is more important; and depends
largely upon how well the animal has been fed. There is usually the least
amount of fat in mutton, more in beef, and by far the greatest amount
in pork. This fat adds to the fuel value of meat, but makes it a little
slower of digestion; and its presence in large amounts in pork, together
with the fact that it lies, not only in layers and streaks, but also
mixed in between the fibres of the lean as well has caused this meat to
be regarded as richer and more difficult of digestion than either beef
or mutton. This, however is not quite fair to the pork, because smaller
amounts of it will satisfy the appetite and furnish the body with
sufficient fuel and nutrition. If it be eaten in moderate amounts and
thoroughly chewed, it is a wholesome and valuable food.
Veal is slightly less digestible than beef or mutton, on account of the
amount of slippery _gelatin_ in and among its fibres; but if well cooked
and well chewed, it is wholesome.
The other meats--chicken, duck, and other poultry, game, etc.--are of
much less nutritive value than either beef, pork, or mutton, partly
because of the large amount of waste in them, in the form of bones,
skin, and tendons, and partly from the greater amount of water in them.
But their flavors make them an agreeable change from the staple meats.
Fish belongs in the same class as poultry and consists of the same
muscle substance, but, as you can readily see by the way that it shrinks
when dried, contains far more water and has less fuel value. Some of the
richer and more solid fishes, like salmon, halibut, and mackerel,
contain, in addition to their protein, considerable amounts of fat and,
when dried or cured, give a rather high fuel value at moderate cost. But
the peculiar flavor of fish, its large percentage of water, and the
special make-up of its protein, give it a very low food value, and
render it, on the whole, undesirable as a permanent staple food. Races
and classes who live on it as their chief meat-food are not so vigorous
or so healthy as those who eat also the flesh of animals. As a rule, it
is not best to use fish as the main dish of a meal oftener than two or
three times a week.
[Illustration: A BABY-MILK STATION
The milk sold here for a few cents is perfectly clean and pure, and is
variously adapted to the needs of different babies. In many cities such
milk stations have been established.]
Milk. Milk is an interesting food of great value because it combines
in itself all three of the great classes of food-stuffs,--protein,
starch-sugar, and fat. Its protein is a substance called _casein_, which
forms the bulk of curds, and which, when dried and salted, is called
cheese. The fat is present in little tiny globules which give milk its
whitish or milky color. When milk is allowed to stand, these globules of
fat, being lighter, float up to the top and form a layer which is called
cream. When this cream is skimmed off and put into a churn, and shaken
or beaten violently so as to break the little film with which each of
these droplets is coated, they run together and form a yellow mass which
we call butter. In addition to the curd and fat, milk contains also
sugar, called milk-sugar (_lactose_), which gives it its sweetish
taste. And as a considerable part of the casein, or curd, is composed
of another starch-like body, or animal starch, this makes milk quite
rich in the starch-sugar group of food-stuffs.
All these substances, of course, in milk are dissolved in a large amount
of water, so that when milk is evaporated, or dried, it shrinks down to
barely one-sixth of its former bulk. It is, in fact, a liquid meat,
starch-sugar, and fat in one; and that is why babies are able to live
and thrive on it alone for the first six months of their lives. It is
also a very valuable food for older children, though, naturally, it is
not "strong" enough and needs to be combined with bread, puddings, meat,
and fat.
Soups and Broths. Soups, broths, and beef teas are water in which
meats, bones, and other scraps have been boiled. They are about
ninety-eight per cent water, and contain nothing of the meat or bones
except some of their flavor, and a little gelatin. They have little or
no nutritive or fuel value, and are really Paper foods, useful solely as
stimulants to appetite and digestion, enabling us to swallow with relish
large pieces of bread or crackers, or the potatoes, rice, pea-meal,
cheese, or other real foods with which they are thickened. Their food
value has been greatly exaggerated, and many an unfortunate invalid has
literally starved on them. Ninety-five per cent of the food value of the
meat and bones, out of which soups are made, remains at the bottom of
the pot, after the soup has been poured off. The commercial extracts of
meat are little better than frauds, for they contain practically nothing
but flavoring matters.
Protein in Vegetables. Several vegetable substances contain
considerable amounts of protein. One of these has already been
mentioned,--the gluten or sticky part of bread,--and this is what has
given wheat its well-deserved reputation as the best of all grains out
of which to make flour for human food.
There is also another vegetable protein, called _legumin_, found in
quite large amounts in dried beans and peas; but this is of limited food
value, first because it is difficult of digestion, and secondly because
with it, in dried peas and beans, are found a pungent oil and a bitter
substance, which give them their peculiar strong flavor, both of which
are quite irritating to the average person's digestion. So distressing
and disturbing are these flavoring substances to the civilized stomach,
that, after thousands of attempts to use them more largely, it has been
found that a full meal of beans once or twice a week is all that the
comfort and health of the body will stand. This is really a great pity,
for beans and peas are both nourishing and cheap. Nuts also contain much
protein, but are both difficult of digestion and expensive.
Virtues and Drawbacks of Meats. Taken all together, the proteins, or
meats, are the most nutritious and wholesome single class of foods.
Their chief drawback is their expense, which, in proportion to their
fuel value, is greater than that of the starches. Then, on account of
their attractiveness, they may be eaten at times in too large amounts.
They are also somewhat more difficult to keep and preserve than are
either the starches or the fats. The old idea that, when burned up in
the body, they give rise to waste products, which are either more
poisonous or more difficult to get rid of than those of vegetable foods,
is now regarded as having no sufficient foundation. Neither is the
common belief that meats cause _gout_ well founded.
The greatest danger connected with meats is that they may become
tainted, or begin to spoil, or decay, before they are used.
Unfortunately, the ingenious cook has invented a great many ways of
smothering, or disguising, the well-marked bad taste of decayed, or
spoiled, meat by spices, onions, and savory herbs. So, as a general
thing, the safest plan, especially when traveling or living away from
home, is to avoid as far as possible hashes, stews, and other "made"
dishes containing meat. This is one of the ways in which spices and
onions have got such a bad reputation for "heating the blood," or
upsetting the stomach, when it is really the decayed meat which they are
used to disguise that causes the trouble. Highly spiced dishes rob you
of the services of your best guide to the wholesomeness of food--your
nose.
Risks of Dirty Milk. The risks from tainting or spoiling are
particularly great in the case of milk, partly on account of the dusty
and otherwise uncleanly barns and sheds in which it is often handled and
kept, and from which it is loaded with a heavy crop of bacteria at the
very start; and partly because the same delicateness which makes it so
easily digestible for babies, makes it equally easy for germs and
bacteria to grow in it and spoil, or sour, it. You all know how
disagreeable the taste of spoiled milk is; and it is as dangerous as it
is disagreeable. A very large share of the illnesses of babies and young
children, particularly the diseases of stomach and bowels which are so
common in hot weather, are due to the use of spoiled, dirty milk.
[Illustration: CLEAN, DRY SUNNING YARDS AT A MODEL DAIRY]
There is one sure preventive for all these dangers, and that is
_absolute cleanliness_ from cow to customer. All the changes that take
place in milk are caused by germs of various sorts, usually floating in
the air, that get into it. If the milk is so handled and protected, from
cow to breakfast table, that these germs cannot get into it, it will
remain sweet for several days.
[Illustration: Currying the cow
Washing the udders
CLEANLINESS BEFORE MILKING]
Boards of Health all over the world now are insisting upon absolutely
clean barns and cleanly methods of handling, shipping, and selling milk.
In most of our large cities, milk-men are not allowed to sell milk
without a license; and this license is granted only after a thorough
examination of their cattle, barns, and milk-houses. These clean methods
of handling milk cost very little; they take only time and pains.
Nowadays, in the best dairies, it is required that the barns or sheds in
which cows are milked shall have tight walls and roofs and good
flooring; that the walls and roofs shall be kept white-washed; and the
floor be cleaned and washed before each milking, so that no germs from
dust or manure can float into the milk. Then the cows are kept in a
clean pasture, or dry, graveled yard, instead of a muddy barnyard; and
are either brushed, or washed down with a hose before each milking, so
that no dust or dirt will fall from them into the milk. The men who are
to milk wash their hands thoroughly with soap and water, and put on
clean white canvas or cotton overalls, jackets, and caps. As soon as the
milk has been drawn into the pails, it is carried into the milk-room and
cooled down to a temperature of about forty-two degrees--that is, about
ten degrees above freezing point. This is to prevent the growth of such
few germs as may have got into it, in spite of all the care that has
been taken. Then the milk is drawn into bottles; and the bottles are
tightly capped by a water-proof pasteboard disc, or cover, which is not
removed until the milk is brought into the house and poured into the
glass, or cup, for use.
[Illustration: THE MILKING HOUR AT A MODEL DAIRY]
Milk handled like this costs from two to four cents a quart more to
produce than when drawn from a cow smeared with manure, in a dark,
dirty, strong-smelling barn, by a milker with greasy clothing and dirty
hands; and then ladled out into pitchers in the open street, giving all
the dust and flies that happen to be in the neighborhood a chance to get
into it! But it is doubly worth the extra price, because, besides
escaping stomach and bowel troubles, you get more cream and higher food
value. There is one-third more food value in clean milk than in dirty
milk, because its casein and sugar have not been spoiled and eaten by
swarms of bacteria. How great a difference careful cleanliness of this
sort can make in milk is shown by the difference in the number of
bacteria that the two kinds of milk contain. Ordinary milk bought from
the wagons in the open street, or from the cans in the stores, will
contain anywhere from _a million_ to a _million and a half_ bacteria to
the cubic centimeter (about fifteen drops); and samples have actually
been taken and counted, which showed _five_ and _six millions_.
[Illustration: MILKING BY VACUUM PROCESS
This method is used in many large dairies to avoid handling the udders
or the milk. Its chief drawback is that the long tubes are very
difficult to keep clean.]
Such a splendid food for germs is milk, and so rapidly do they grow in
it, that dirty milk will actually contain more of them to the cubic inch
than sewage, as it flows in the sewers. Now see what a difference a
little cleanliness will make! Good, clean, carefully handled milk,
instead of having a million, or a million and a half, bacteria, will
have less than ten thousand; and very clean milk may contain as low as
three or four hundred, and these of harmless sorts. The whole gospel of
the care of milk can be summed up in two sentences: (1) _Keep dirt and
germs out of the milk._ (2) _Keep the milk cool._
[Illustration: WASHING THE BOTTLES AT A MODEL DAIRY
The inside of the bottle is thoroughly cleansed by the revolving brush.]
Besides the germs of the summer diseases of children, which kill more
than fifty thousand babies every year in the United States, dirty milk
may also contain typhoid germs and consumption germs. The typhoid germs
do not come from the body of the cow, but get into the milk through its
being handled by people who have, or have just recovered from, typhoid,
or who are nursing patients sick with typhoid, and who have not properly
washed their hands; or from washing the cans, or from watering the milk
with water taken from a well or stream infected with typhoid. It is
estimated that about one-eighth of all the half million cases of
typhoid that occur in the United States every year are carried through
dirty milk.
[Illustration: BACTERIA IN CLEAN AND IN DIRTY MILK]
[Illustration: DANGER FROM DIPPED MILK
The milk that spills or spatters over the hand drips back into the can
and may seriously infect the main supply.]
The germs of consumption, or _tuberculosis_, that are present in milk
may come from a cow that has the disease; or from consumptive human
beings who handle the milk; or from the dust of streets or houses--which
often contains disease germs. The latter sources are far the more
dangerous; for, as is now pretty generally agreed, although the
tuberculosis of cattle can be given to human beings, it is not very
actively dangerous to them; and probably not more than three or four per
cent of all cases of tuberculosis come from this source. The idea,
however, of allowing the milk of cows diseased from any cause to be used
for human food, is not to be tolerated for a moment. All good dairymen
and energetic Boards of Health now insist upon dairy herds being tested
for tuberculosis, and the killing, or weeding out, of all cows that
show they have the disease.
[Illustration: MILK INSPECTION AT THE RETAIL STORE
It is well to have the quality and purity of the milk tested just before
it goes to the consumer, but it is far more important that it should be
examined by State Inspectors at the dairy farms.]
Cheese. Cheese is the curd of milk squeezed dry of its liquid
(_whey_), salted, pressed into a mould, and allowed to ferment slowly,
or "ripen," in which process a considerable part of its casein is turned
into fat. It is a cheap, concentrated, and very nutritious food, and in
small amounts is quite appetizing. But unfortunately, the acids and
extracts which have formed in the process of fermentation and ripening
are so irritating to the stomach, that it can usually be eaten only in
small amounts, without upsetting the digestion. Its chief value is as a
relish with bread, crackers, potatoes, or macaroni. In moderate amounts,
it is not only appetizing and digestible, but will assist in the
digestion of other foods; hence the custom of eating a small piece of
"ripe" cheese at the end of a heavy meal.
CHAPTER V
THE COAL FOODS (_Continued_)
STARCHES
Sources of Starch. The starches are valuable and wholesome foods. They
form the largest part, both in bulk and in fuel value, of our diet, and
have done so ever since man learned how to cultivate the soil and grow
crops of grain. The reason is clear: One acre of good land will grow
from ten to fifteen times the amount of food in the form of starch in
grains or roots, as of meat in the shape of cattle or sheep.
Consequently, starch is far cheaper, and this is its great advantage.
Our chief supply of starch is obtained from the seed of certain most
useful grasses, which we call wheat, oats, barley, rye, rice, and corn,
and from the so-called "roots" of the potato. Potatoes are really
underground buds packed with starch, and their proper name is tubers.
Starch, when pure or extracted, is a soft, white powder, which you have
often seen as cornstarch, or laundry starch. As found in grains, it is
mixed with a certain amount of vegetable fibre, covered with husks, or
skin, and has the little germ or budlet of the coming plant inside it.
It has been manufactured and laid down by little cells inside their own
bodies, which make up the grains; so that each particular grain of
starch is surrounded by a delicate husk--the wall of the cell that made
it. This means that grains and other starch foods have to be prepared
for eating by grinding and cooking. The grinding crushes the grains into
a powder so that the starch can be sifted out from the husks and
coating of the grain, and the fibres which hold it together; and the
cooking causes the tiny starch grain to swell and burst the cell wall,
or bag, which surrounds it.
Starches as Fuel. The starches contain no nitrogen except a mere trace
in the framework of the grains or roots they grow in. They burn very
clean; that is, almost the whole of them is turned into carbon dioxid
gas and water.[7]
This burning quality makes the starches a capital fuel both in the body
and out of it. You may have heard of how settlers out on the prairies,
who were a long way from a railroad and had no wood or coal, but plenty
of corn, would fill their coal scuttles with corn and burn that in their
stoves; and a very bright, hot fire it made.
One of the chief weaknesses of the starches is that they burn up too
fast, so that you get hungry again much more quickly after a meal made
entirely upon starchy foods, like bread, crackers, potatoes, or rice,
than you do after one which has contained some meat, particularly fat,
which burns and digests more slowly.
How Starch is Changed into Sugar. As we learned in chapter II, the
starches can be digested only after they are turned into sugars in the
body. If you put salt with sugar or starch, although it will mix
perfectly and give its taste to the mixture, neither the salt nor the
starch nor the sugar will have changed at all, but will remain exactly
as it was in the first place, except for being mixed with the other
substances. But if you were to pour water containing an acid over the
starch, and then boil it for a little time, your starch would entirely
disappear, and something quite different take its place. This, when you
tasted it, you would find was sweet; and, when the water was boiled off,
it would turn out to be a sugar called _glucose_. Again, if you should
pour a strong acid over sawdust, it would "char" it, or change it into
another substance, _carbon_. In both of these cases--that of the starch
and of the sawdust--what we call a _chemical change_ would have taken
place between the acid and the starch, and between the strong acid and
the sawdust.
If we looked into the matter more closely, we should find that what has
happened is that the starch and the sawdust have changed into quite
different substances. Starches are _insoluble_ in water; that is,
although they can be softened and changed into a jelly-like substance,
they cannot be completely melted, or dissolved, like salt or sugar.
Sugar, on the other hand, is a perfectly _soluble_ or "meltable"
substance, and can soak or penetrate through any membrane or substance
in the body. Therefore all the starches which we eat--bread, biscuit,
potato, etc.--have to be acted upon by the ferments of our saliva and
our pancreatic juice, and turned into sugar, called glucose, which can
be easily poured into the blood and carried wherever it is needed, all
over the body. Thus we see what a close relation there is between starch
and sugar, and why the group we are studying is sometimes called the
starch-sugars.
Wheat--our Most Valuable Starch Food. The principal forms in which
starch comes upon our tables are meals and flours, and the various
breads, cakes, mushes, and puddings made out of these. Far the most
valuable and important of all is wheat flour, because this grain
contains, as we have seen, not only starch, but a considerable amount of
vegetable "meat," or gluten, which is easily digested in the stomach.
This gluten, however, carries with it one disadvantage--its stickiness,
or gumminess. The dough or paste made by mixing wheat flour with water
is heavy and wet, or, as we say, "soggy," as compared with that made by
mixing oatmeal or corn meal or rice flour with water. If it is baked in
this form, it makes a well-flavored, but rather tough, leathery sort of
crust; so those races that use no _leavening_, or rising-stuff, in their
wheat bread, roll it out into very thin sheets and bake it on griddles
or hot stones.
Most races that have wheat, however, have hit upon a plan for overcoming
this heaviness and sogginess, and that is the rather ingenious one of
mixing some substance in the dough which will give off bubbles of a gas,
_carbon dioxid_, and cause it to puff up and become spongy and light,
or, as we say, "full of air." This is what gives bread its well-known
spongy or porous texture; but the tiny cells and holes in it are filled,
not with air, but with carbon dioxid gas.
Making Bread with Yeast. There are several ways of lightening bread
with carbon dioxid gas. The oldest and commonest is by mixing in with
the flour and water a small amount of the frothy mass made by a germ, or
microbe, known as _yeast_ or the _yeast plant_. Then the dough is set
away in a warm place "to rise," which means that the busy little yeast
cells, eagerly attacking the rich supply of starchy food spread before
them, and encouraged by the heat and moisture, multiply by millions and
billions, and in the process of growing and multiplying, give off, like
all other living cells, the gas, carbon dioxid. This bubbles and spreads
all through the mass, the dough begins to rise, and finally swells right
above the pan or crock in which it was set. If it is allowed to stand
and rise too long, it becomes sour, because the yeast plant is forming,
at the same time, three other substances--alcohol, lactic acid (which
gives an acid taste to the bread), and vinegar. Usually they form in
such trifling amounts as to be quite unnoticeable. When the bread has
become light enough, it is put into the oven to be baked.
The baking serves the double purpose of cooking and thus making the
starch appetizing, and of killing the yeast germs so that they will
carry their fermentation no further. Bread that has not been thoroughly
baked, if it is kept too long, will turn sour, because some of the yeast
germs that have escaped will set to work again.
[Illustration: A THOROUGH BAKING, AND A VALUABLE CRUST
Note the cleanly way of handling the food.]
That part of the dough that lies on the surface of the loaf, and is
exposed to the direct heat of the oven has its starch changed into a
substance somewhat like sugar, known as _dextrin_, which, with the
slight burning of the carbon, gives the outside, or crust, of bread its
brownish color, its crispness, and its delicious taste. The crust is
really the most nourishing part of the loaf, as well as the part that
gives best exercise to the teeth.
Making Bread with Soda or Baking-Powders. Another method of giving
lightness to bread is by mixing an acid like sour milk and an alkali
like soda with the flour, and letting them effervesce[8] and give off
carbon dioxid. This is the mixture used in making the famous "soda
biscuit." Still another method is by the use of _baking-powders_, which
are made of a mixture of some cheap and harmless acid powder with an
alkaline powder--usually some form of soda. As long as these powders
are kept dry, they will not act upon each other; but as soon as they are
moistened in the dough, they begin to give off carbon dioxid gas.
[Illustration: AN IDEAL BAKERY WITH LIGHT, AIR, AND CLEANLINESS]
Neither sour milk and soda nor baking-powder will make as thoroughly
light and spongy and digestible bread as will yeast. If, however,
baking-powders are made of pure and harmless materials, used in proper
proportions so as just to neutralize each other, and thus leave no
excess of acid or alkali, and if the bread is baked very thoroughly,
they make a wholesome and nutritious bread, which has the advantage of
being very quickly and easily made. The chief objection to soda or
baking-powder bread is that, being often made in a hurry, the acid and
the alkali do not get thoroughly mixed all through the flour, and
consequently do not raise or lighten the dough properly, and the loaf or
biscuit is likely to be heavy and soggy in the centre. This heavy, soggy
stuff can be neither properly chewed in the mouth, nor mixed with the
digestive juices, and hence is difficult to digest. If, however, soda
biscuits are made thin and baked thoroughly so as to make them at least
half or two-thirds crust, they are perfectly digestible and wholesome,
and furnish a valuable and appetizing variety for our breakfast and
supper tables.
[Illustration: A BASEMENT BAKERY--A MENACE TO THE PUBLIC HEALTH
Disease germs multiply in the dark and damp of the basement. The
clothing hanging up in this bakery is a very probable source of
infection.]
Bran or Brown Bread. Flour made by grinding the wheat-berry without
sifting the husks, or bran, out of it is called "whole-wheat" meal; and
bread made from it is the brown "bran bread" or "Graham bread." It was
at one time supposed that because brown bread contained more nitrogen
than white bread, it was more wholesome and nutritious, but this has
been found to be a mistake, because the extra nitrogen in the brown
bread is in the form of husks and fibres, which the stomach is quite
unable to digest. Weight for weight, white bread is more nutritious than
brown. The husks and fibres, however, which will not digest, pass on
through the bowels unchanged and stir up the walls of the intestines to
contract; hence they are useful in small quantities in helping to keep
the bowels regular. But, like any other stimulus, too much of it will
irritate and disturb the digestion, and cause diarrhea; so that it is
not best to eat more than one-fifth of our total bread in the form of
brown bread. Dyspeptics who live on brown bread, or on so-called "health
foods," are simply feeding their dyspepsia.
"Breakfast Foods." The same defect exists in most of the breakfast
cereals which flood our tables and decorate our bill-boards. Some of
these are made of the waste of flouring mills, known as "middlings,"
"shorts," or bran, which were formerly used for cow-feed. The claims of
many of them are greatly exaggerated, for they contain no more
nourishment, or in no more digestible form, than the same weight of
bread; and they cost from two to five times as much. As they come on
our tables, they are nearly seven-eighths water; and the cream and sugar
taken with them are of higher food value than they are. They should
never be relied upon as the main part of a meal.
Corn Meal. Corn meal is one of the richest meals in nutritive value
for its price, as it has an abundance of starch and a small amount of
fat. It is, however, poor in nitrogen, and like the other grains, in
countries where wheat will grow, it is chiefly valuable for furnishing
cakes, fritters, and mushes to give variety to the diet, and help to
regulate the bowels.
Oatmeal. Oatmeal comes the nearest to wheat in the amount of nitrogen
or protein, but the digestible part of this is much smaller than in
wheat, and the indigestible portion is decidedly irritating to the
bowels, so that if used in excess of about one-fifth of our total
starch-food required, it is likely to upset the digestion.
Rye. Rye also contains a considerable amount of gluten, but is much
poorer in starch than wheat is; and the bread made out of its flour--the
so-called "black bread" of France and Germany--is dark, sticky, and
inclined to sour readily. Most of the "rye" bread sold in the shops, or
served on our tables, is made of wheat flour with a moderate mixture of
rye to give the sour taste.
Rice. Rice consists chiefly of starch, and makes nutritious puddings
or cakes, and may be used as a vegetable, in the place of potatoes, with
meat and fish. It is, however, lacking in flavor, and when properly
cooked, contains so much water that it has to be eaten in very large
amounts to furnish much nutrition.
Potatoes. The only important starchy food outside of the grains is
potatoes. These contain considerable amounts of starch, but mixed with a
good deal of cellulose, or vegetable fibre, and water, so that, like
rice, large amounts of them must be eaten in order to furnish a good
fuel supply. They, however, make a very necessary article of diet in
connection with meats, fish, and other vegetables.
As a rough illustration of the fuel value of the different starch foods,
it may be said that in order to get the amount of nourishment contained
in an ordinary pound loaf of wheat or white bread, it would be necessary
to eat about seven pounds of cooked rice, as it comes on the table;
about twelve pounds of boiled potatoes; or a bowl of oatmeal porridge
about the size of a wash-basin.
SUGARS
Where Sugar is Obtained. The other great member of the starch, or
carbohydrate, group of foods is sugar. This is a scarcer and more
expensive food than starch because, instead of being found in solid
masses in grains and roots like starch, it is scattered, very thinly,
through the fruits, stems, and roots of a hundred different plants,
seldom being present in greater amounts than two or three per cent. It
is, however, so valuable a food, with so high a fuel value, and is so
rapidly digested and absorbed, that man has always had a very keen
desire for it, or, as we say, a "sweet tooth," and has literally
searched the whole vegetable kingdom the world over to discover plants
from which it could be secured in larger amounts. During the last two
hundred years it has been obtained chiefly from two great sources: the
juicy stem of a tall, coarse reed, or cane, the sugar-cane, growing in
the tropics; and (within the last fifty years) the sweet juice of the
large root of a turnip-like plant, the beet. Another source of sugar, in
the earlier days of this country, was the juice or sap of the sugar
maple, which is still greatly relished as a luxury, chiefly in the form
of syrup.
Honey is nearly pure sugar together with certain ferments and flavoring
extracts, derived in part from the flowers from which it is gathered,
and in part from the stomach, or crop, of the bee.
The Food Value of Sugar. In the early days of its use, sugar, on
account of its expensiveness, was looked upon solely as a luxury, and
used sparingly--either as a flavoring for less attractive foods, or as a
special treat; and like most new foods, it was declared to be
unwholesome and dangerous. But sugar is now recognized as one of our
most useful and valuable foods. In fuel value, it is the equal, indeed
the superior, weight for weight, of starch; and as all starch has to be
changed into it before it can be used by the body, it is evident that
sugar is more easily digested and absorbed than starch, and furnishes
practically a ready-made fuel for our muscles.
How We should Use Sugar. The drawbacks of sugar are that, on account
of its exceedingly attractive taste, we may eat too much of it; and
that, because it is so satisfying, if we do eat too much of it either
between meals or at the beginning of meals, our appetites will be
"killed" before we have really eaten a sufficient supply of nourishing
food. But all we have to do to avoid these dangers is to use common
sense and a little self-control, without which any one of our appetites
may lead us into trouble.
On account of this satisfying property, sugar is best eaten at, or near,
the close of a meal; and taken at that time, there is no objection to
its use nearly pure, as in the form of sweet-meats, or good wholesome
candy. Its alleged injurious effects upon the teeth are largely
imaginary and no greater than those of the starchy foods. The teeth of
various tropical races which live almost entirely on sugar-cane during
certain seasons of the year are among the finest in the world; and any
danger may be entirely avoided by proper brushing and cleaning of the
teeth and gums after eating.
[Illustration: CANDY, LIKE OTHER FOODS, SHOULD BE CLEAN.
Candy sold on the street is always questionable. It should never be
bought from a cart or stand that is not covered with glass.]
If eaten in excess, sugar quickly gives rise to fermentation in the
stomach and bowels; but so do the starches and the fats, if
over-indulged in. Its real value as a food may be judged from the fact
that the German army has made it a part of its field ration in the shape
of cakes of chocolate, and that the United States Government buys pure
candy by the ton, for the use of its soldiers.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] On this account, they are often spoken of as carbohydrates, or
"carbon-water stuffs."
[8] See page 11.
CHAPTER VI
THE COAL FOODS (_Continued_)
ANIMAL FATS
The Digestibility of Fats. We have now come to the last group of the
real Coal foods, namely, the fats. Fats are the "hottest" and most
concentrated fuel that we possess, and might be described as the
"anthracites," or "hard coals" of our Coal foods. They are, also, as
might be expected from their "strength" or concentration, among the
slowest to digest of all our foods, so that, as a rule, we can eat them
only in very moderate amounts, seldom exceeding one-tenth to one-sixth
of our total food-fuel. It is not, however, quite correct to say that
fats are hard to digest, because, although from their solid, oily
character, they take a longer time to become digested and absorbed by
the body than most other foods, yet they are as perfectly and as
completely digested, with the healthy person, as any other kind of food.
Indeed, it is this slowness of digestion which gives them their
well-known staying-power as a food.
Their Place in our Diet. The wholesomeness of fats is well shown by
our appetite for them, which is very keen for small amounts of
them--witness, for instance, how quickly we notice and how keenly we
object to the absence of butter on our bread or potatoes. To have our
"bread well-buttered" is a well known expression for comfort and good
fortune; yet a very little excess will turn our enjoyment into disgust.
Fat, and particularly the cold fat of meat, "gags" us if we try to eat
too much of it.
Fortunately, most of these fat-foods are quite expensive, pound for
pound, and hence we are not often tempted to eat them in excess. Within
proper limits, then, fats are an exceedingly important and useful
food--a valuable member of the great family of Coal foods.
The Advantages of Fat as a Ration. The high fuel value and the small
bulk of fats give them a very great practical advantage whenever
supplies of food have to be carried for long distances, or for
considerable lengths of time, as in sea voyages and hunting and
exploring trips. So that in provisioning ships for a long voyage, or
fitting out an expedition for the Arctic regions, fats, in the shape of
bacon or pork, pemmican,[9] or the richer dried fishes, like salmon,
mackerel, and herring, will be found to play an important part. Fats
also have the great advantage, like the starches, of keeping well for
long periods, especially after they have been melted and sterilized by
boiling, or "rendering," as in the case of lard, or have had moderate
amounts of salt added to them, as in butter.
If you were obliged to pick out a ration which would keep you alive,
give you working power, and fit into the smallest possible bulk, you
would take a protein, a sugar, and a fat in about equal amounts. Indeed,
the German emergency field-ration, intended to keep soldiers in the
field for three or four days without their baggage-wagons, or
cook-trains, is made up of bacon, pea-meal, and chocolate. A small
packet of these, which weighs only a little over two pounds, and which
can be slipped into the knapsack, will, with plenty of water, keep a
soldier in fighting trim for three days.
Butter. The most useful and wholesome single fat is the one which is
in greatest demand--butter. This, as we have seen, is the churned and
concentrated fat of milk, to which a little salt has been added to keep
the milk-acid (_lactic acid_) which cannot be entirely washed out of it,
from "turning it sour" or rancid. The rancid, offensive taste of bad or
"strong" butter is due to the formation of another acid call _butyric_
("buttery") _acid_.
Butter is the best and most wholesome of our common fats because it is
most easily digested, most readily absorbed, and least likely to give
rise to this butyric acid fermentation. We should be particularly
careful, even more so almost than with other foods, to see that it is
perfectly sweet and good, because when we swallow rancid butter, we are
simply swallowing a ready-made attack of indigestion. Most people's
stomachs are strong enough to deal with small amounts of rancid butter
without discomfort; but it is a strain on them that ought to be
avoided, especially when good butter is simply a matter of strict
cleanliness and care in handling and churning the cream, and of keeping
the butter cool after it has been made.
Plenty of sweet butter is one of the most important and necessary
elements in our diet, especially in childhood. And if children are
allowed to eat pretty nearly as much as they want of it on their bread
or potatoes, and plenty of its liquid form, cream, on their berries and
puddings, it will save the necessity of many a dose of cod-liver oil, or
bitter physic. Cream is far superior to either cod-liver or castor oil
for keeping us in health.
Oleomargarine. On account of the expensiveness of butter, there are a
number of substitutes sold, which go under the name of _oleomargarine_.
These are made of the fat, or suet, of beef or mutton, mixed with a
certain amount of cream and real butter, to give them an agreeable
flavor. They are wholesome and useful fats, and for cooking purposes may
very largely be substituted for butter. Owing to the fact that their
fat is freer from the milk acids, they keep better than butter; and
sweet, sound oleomargarine is to be preferred to rank, rancid butter.
But it is not so readily digestible as butter is; is more liable to give
rise to the butyric acid fermentations in the stomach; is not nearly so
appetizing; and its sale as, and under the name of, _butter_ is a fraud
which the law rightly forbids and punishes.
[Illustration: A SMALL STORE, CLEANLY AND HONEST
The milk is well kept, the bread and candies are under glass, and
"butterine" is not sold as butter.]
Lard. The next most useful and generally used pure fat is lard--the
rendered, or boiled-down, fat of pork. It is a useful substitute for
butter in cooking, where butter is scarce. But, even in pastry or cakes,
it has neither the flavor nor the digestibility of butter, and the
latter should always be used when it can be had.
Bacon and Ham. The most useful and digestible fat meats are bacon and
ham, as the dried, salted, and usually smoked, meat of the pig is
called. Like all other fats, they can be eaten only in moderate amounts;
but thus eaten, they are both appetizing, digestible, and very
nutritious. One good slice of breakfast bacon, for instance, contains as
much fuel value as two large saucers of mush or breakfast food, or two
eggs, or two large slices of bread, or three oranges, or two small
glasses of milk, or a quart of berries.
NUTS
How Nuts should be Used. Another form of fat is the "meat" of
different nuts--walnuts, pecans, almonds, etc. These are quite rich in
fats, and also contain a fair amount of proteins, and are, in small
quantities, like other fats, appetizing and useful articles of food. But
they should not be depended upon to furnish more than a small amount of
the whole food supply, or even of its necessary fat, because nearly all
nuts contain pungent or bitter aromatic oils and ferments, which give
them their flavors, but which are likely to upset the digestion. This is
particularly true of the peanut, which is not a true nut at all, but is,
as its name indicates, a kind of pea grown underground. Peanuts, on
account of their large amount of these irritating substances, are among
the most indigestible and undesirable articles of diet in common use. A
certain amount of these irritating substances present in nuts may be
destroyed by careful roasting and salting; but this must be most
carefully done, and it shrinks them in bulk so that the finished product
is far more expensive than butter or fat meat of the same nutritive
value. Good salted almonds, for instance, cost fifty to eighty cents a
pound.
The proper place for nuts is where they usually come on our tables--at
the end of a meal. Those who attempt to cure themselves of dyspepsia by
a nut diet are simply making permanent their disease.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Pemmican is a sort of "canned beef" made originally out of the best
parts of venison and buffalo-meat. This is boiled, and packed into skin
bags; then melted fat is poured in, so as to fill up all the chinks and
form a thick layer over the surface. It is now made of beef packed in
canvas bags, and is much used by polar expeditions and Alaskan miners.
CHAPTER VII
KINDLING AND PAPER FOODS--FRUITS AND VEGETABLES
The Special Uses of Fruits and Vegetables. We come now to the very
much larger but much less important class of foods--the Kindling foods,
which help the Coal foods to burn, and supply certain stuffs and
elements which the body needs and which the coal foods do not contain.
These are the vegetables--other than potatoes and dried peas and
beans--and fruits.
Fruits and vegetables contain certain mineral elements, which are not
present in sufficient proportions in the meats, starches, and fats.
Furthermore, the products of their digestion and burning in the body
help to neutralize, or render harmless, the waste products from meats,
starches, and fats. Thirdly, they have a very beneficial effect upon the
blood, the kidneys, and the skin. In fact, the reputation of fruits and
fresh vegetables for "purifying the blood" and "clearing the complexion"
is really well deserved. The keenness of our liking for fruit at all
times, and our special longing for greens and sour things in the spring,
after their scarcity in our diet all winter, is a true sign of their
wholesomeness.
Not the least of their advantages is that they contain a very large
proportion of water; and this, though diminishing their fuel value,
supplies the body with a naturally filtered and often distilled supply
of this necessary element of life. One of the best ways of avoiding that
burning summer thirst, which leads you to flood your unfortunate stomach
with melted icebergs, in the form of ice water, ice cold lemonade, or
soda water, is to take an abundance of fresh fruits and green
vegetables.
Many of the vegetables contain small amounts of starch, but few of them
enough to count upon as fuel, except potatoes, which we have already
classed with the Coal foods. Most fruits contain a certain amount of
sugar--how much can usually be estimated from their taste, and how
little can be gathered from the statement that even the sweetest of
fruits, like ripe pears or ripe peaches, contain only about eight per
cent of sugar. They are all chiefly useful as flavors for the less
interesting staple foods, particularly the starches. In fact, our
instinctive use of them to help down bread and butter, or rice, or
puddings of various sorts, is a natural and proper one. Like the
vegetables, they contain various salts which are useful in neutralizing
certain acid substances formed in the body. Soldiers in war, or sailors
upon long voyages, who are fed upon a diet consisting chiefly of salted
or preserved meat, with bread or hard biscuit and sugar, but without
either fruits or fresh vegetables, are likely to develop a disease
called scurvy. Little more than a century ago, hundreds of deaths
occurred every year in the British and French navies from this disease,
and the crews of many a long exploring voyage--like Captain Cook's--or
of searchers for the North Pole, have been completely disabled or even
destroyed entirely by scurvy. It was discovered that by adding to the
diet fruit, or fresh vegetables like cabbage or potatoes, scurvy could
be entirely prevented, or cured.[10]
Their Low Fuel Value. How little real fuel value fruits and
vegetables have, may be easily seen from the following table. In order
to get the nourishment contained in a pound loaf of bread, or a pound of
roast beef, you would have to eat: 12 large apples or pears (5 lbs.);
4-1/2 qts. of strawberries; a dozen bananas (3-1/2 lbs.); 7 lbs. of
onions; 2 doz. large cucumbers (18 lbs.); 10 lbs. of cabbage; 1/2 bushel
of lettuce or celery.
Apples, the most Wholesome Fruit. Head and shoulders above all the
other fruits stands that delight of our childhood days, apples. Well
ripened, or properly cooked, they are readily digested by the average
stomach; though some delicate digestions have difficulty with them. They
contain a fair amount of acids, and from five to seven per cent of
sugar. Their general wholesomeness and permanent usefulness may be
gathered from the fact that they are one of the few fruits which you can
eat almost daily the year round, or at very frequent intervals, without
getting tired of them. Food that you don't get tired of is usually food
which is good for you.
Dried apples are much inferior to the fresh fruit, because they become
toughened in drying, and because growers sometimes smoke them with fumes
of sulphur in the process, in order to bleach or whiten them; and this
turns them into a sort of vegetable leather.
Other Fruits--their Advantages and Drawbacks. Next in usefulness
probably come pears, though these have the disadvantage of containing a
woody fibre, which is rather hard to digest, and they are, of course,
poorer "keepers" than apples. Then come peaches, which have one of the
most delicious flavors of all fruits, but which tend to set up
fermentation and irritation in delicate stomachs, though in the average
stomach, when eaten in moderation, they are wholesome and good. Then
come the berries--strawberries, raspberries, blackberries,--all
excellent and wholesome, when fresh in their season, or canned or
preserved.
One warning, however, should be given about these most delicious,
fragrant berries; and as it happens to apply also to several of our most
attractive foods, it is well to mention it here. While perfectly
wholesome and good for the majority of people, strawberries, for
instance, are to a few--perhaps one in twenty--so irritating and
indigestible as to be mildly poisonous. The other foods which may play
this kind of trick with the stomachs of certain persons are oranges,
bananas, melons, clams, lobsters, oysters, cheese, sage, and parsley,
and occasionally, but very rarely, eggs and mutton. This is a matter
which each of you can readily find out by experiment. If strawberries,
melons, and other fruits agree with you, then eat freely of them, in due
moderation. But if, after three or four trials, you find that they do
not agree with you, but make your stomach burn, and perhaps give you an
attack of nettle-rash or hives, or a headache, then let them alone.
The banana is of some food value because it contains not only sugar, but
considerable quantities of starch--about the same amount as potatoes.
But, if bananas are not fully ripe, both their starch and sugar are
highly indigestible; while, if over-ripe, they have developed in them
irritating substances, which are likely to upset the digestion and cause
hives or eczema, especially in children. Bananas should therefore be
regarded rather as a luxury and an agreeable variety than as a
substantial part of the diet.
Food Values of the Different Vegetables. The vegetables depend for
their value almost solely upon the alkaline salts and the water in them,
and upon their flavor, which gives an agreeable variety to the diet.
Parsnips, beets, and carrots are among the most nutritious, as they
contain some starch and sugar; but they so quickly pall upon the taste
that they can be used only in small amounts.
Turnips and cabbages possess the merit of being cheap and very easily
grown. They contain valuable earthy salts, plenty of pure water, and a
trace of starch. But these advantages are offset by their large amount
of tough, woody vegetable fibre; this is incapable of digestion, and
though in moderate amounts it is valuable in helping to regulate the
movements of the bowels, in excess it soon becomes irritating. Both of
them, particularly cabbages, contain, also, certain flavoring extracts,
very rich in sulphur and exceedingly irritating to the stomach, which
cause them to disagree with some persons. If these are got rid of by
brisk boiling in at least two waters, then cabbage is a fairly wholesome
and digestible dish for the average stomach. And because of its
cheapness and "keeping" power, it is often the only vegetable that can
be secured at a reasonable cost at certain seasons of the year.
Onions, especially the milder and larger ones, are an excellent and
wholesome vegetable, containing small amounts of starch, although their
pungent flavor, due to an aromatic oil, makes them so irritating to some
stomachs as to be quite indigestible.
Sweet corn, whether fresh or dried, is wholesome, and has a fair degree
of nutritive value, as it contains fair amounts of both starch and
sugar. It should, however, be very thoroughly chewed and eaten
moderately, on account of the thick, firm indigestible husk which
surrounds the kernel.
Tomatoes are an exceedingly valuable, though rather recent addition to
our dietary. Their fresh, pungent acid is, like the fruit acids,
wholesome and beneficial; and they can be preserved or canned without
losing any of their flavor. They were at one time denounced as being
indigestible, and even as the cause of cancer; but these charges were
due to ignorance and distrust of anything new.
Lighter Vegetables, or Paper Foods. The lighter vegetables such as
lettuce, celery, spinach, cucumbers, and parsley have, in a previous
chapter, been classed with the paper foods. They are all agreeable
additions to the diet on account of their fresh taste and pleasant
flavor, though they contain little or no nutritive matter.
The Advantages of a Vegetable Garden. Notwithstanding their slight
fuel value, there are few more valuable and wholesome elements in the
diet than an abundant supply of fresh green vegetables. Everyone who is
so situated that he can possibly arrange for it, should have a garden,
if only the tiniest patch, and grow them for his own use, both on
account of their greater wholesomeness and freshness when so grown, and
because of the valuable exercise in the open air, and the enjoyment and
interest afforded by their care.
[Illustration: THE JOY OF HIS OWN GARDEN PATCH]
FOOTNOTES:
[10] As vegetables and fruit are bulky and likely to spoil, on the long
voyages of sailing vessels before steamships were invented bottles of
the juice of limes (a small kind of lemon) were added, instead, to the
hard-tack and "salt-horse" of the ship's stores. Because of this custom,
the long-voyage merchantmen who carried cargoes round the Horn or the
Cape were for years nicknamed "Lime-juicers."
CHAPTER VIII
COOKING
Why We Cook our Food. While some of all classes of food may be eaten
raw, yet we have gradually come to submit most of our foods to the heat
of a fire, in various ways; this process is known as _cooking_. While
cooking usually wastes a little, and sometimes a good deal, of the fuel
value of the food and, if carelessly or stupidly done, may make it less
digestible, in the main it makes it both more digestible and safer,
though much more expensive. This it does in three ways: by making it
taste better; by softening it so as to make it more easily masticated;
and by sterilizing it, or destroying any germs or animal parasites which
may be in it.
Cooking Improves the Taste of Food. It may seem almost absurd to
regard changing the taste of a food as of sufficient importance to
justify the expense and trouble of a long process like cooking. Yet this
was probably one of the main reasons why cooking came into use in the
first place; and it is still one of the most important reasons for
continuing it. No one would feel attracted by a plate of slabs of raw
meat, with a handful of flour, a raw potato or two, and some green
apples; but cook these and you immediately have an appetizing and
attractive meal. Any food, to be a thoroughly good food, must "taste
good"; otherwise, part of it will fail to be digested, and will sooner
or later upset the stomach and clog the appetite.
Cooking Makes Food Easier to Chew and Digest. The second important use
of cooking is that it makes food both easier to masticate and easier to
digest. As we have seen, it bursts the little coverings of the starchy
grains, and makes the tough fibres of grains and roots crisp and
brittle, as is well illustrated in the soft, mealy texture of a baked
potato, and in the crispness of parched wheat or corn. It _coagulates_,
or curdles, the jelly-like pulp of meat, and the gummy white of the egg,
and the sticky gluten of wheat flour, so that they can be ground into
tiny pieces between the teeth.
[Illustration: THE KITCHEN SHOULD BE CARED FOR AS ONE OF THE MOST
IMPORTANT ROOMS IN THE HOUSE]
We could hardly eat the different kinds of grains and meals and flours
in proper amounts at all, unless they were cooked; indeed they require
much longer and more thorough baking, or boiling, than meats. The amount
of cooking required should always be borne in mind when counting the
cost of a diet, as the fuel, time, and labor consumed in cooking
vegetable articles of diet often bring up their expense much more nearly
to that of meats than the cost of the raw material in the shops would
lead us to expect.
Cooking Sterilizes Food. A third, and probably on the whole, the most
valuable and important service rendered by cooking is, that it
sterilizes our food and kills any germs, or animal parasites, which may
have been in the body of the animal, or in the leaves of the plant,
from which it came; or, as is far the commoner and greater danger, may
have got on it from dirty or careless handling, or exposure to dust.
While it was undoubtedly the great improvement that cooking makes in the
taste of food that first led our ancestors--and probably chiefly induces
us--to use the process, it is hardly probable that they would have
continued to bear the expense, trouble, and numerous discomforts of
cooking, had they not noticed this significant fact: that those families
and tribes that had the habit of thoroughly cooking their food, suffered
least from diseases of the stomach and intestines, and hence lived
longer and survived in greater numbers than the "raw fooders." We are
perfectly right in spending a good deal of time, care, and thought on
cooking, preparing, and serving our food, for we thus lengthen our lives
and diminish our sicknesses. Civilized man is far healthier than any
known "noble savage," in spite of what poets and story-tellers say to
the contrary.
The Three Methods of Cooking. The three[11] chief methods
of cooking--_baking_, or roasting; _boiling_, or stewing; and
_frying_--have each their advantages as well as disadvantages. No one of
them would be suitable for all kinds of food; and no one of them is to
be condemned as unwholesome in itself, if intelligently done; although
all of them, if carelessly, or stupidly, carried out, will waste food,
and render it less digestible instead of more so. In the main, the
methods that are in common use for each particular kind of food, or
under each special condition, are reasonable and sensible--the result of
hundreds of years of experimenting. The only exceptions are that, on
account of its ease and quickness, frying is resorted to rather more
frequently than is best; while boiling is more popular than it should
be, on account of the small amount of thought and care involved in the
process.
Roasting, or Baking. Roasting, or baking, is probably the highest form
of the art of cooking, developing the finest flavors, causing less waste
of food value, and requiring the greatest skill and care. On general
principles, we may say that almost anything which can be roasted or
baked, should be roasted or baked.
On the other hand, roasting or baking has the disadvantage of taking a
great deal of fuel and of time, and of being exceedingly fatiguing and
annoying for the cook, making the labor cost high; and it cannot be used
where a meal is needed in a hurry. If the process is carelessly done and
carried too far, it may also waste a great deal of the food material,
either by burning or scorching, or by the commoner and almost equally
wasteful process of turning the whole outside of the roast--particularly
in the case of meat--into a hard, tough, leathery substance, which it is
almost impossible either to chew or to digest.
Boiling. The advantages of boiling are that it is the easiest of all
forms of cookery, and within the grasp of the lowest intelligence; that,
on account of keeping the food continually surrounded by water, it leads
to less waste and is far less likely than either baking or frying to
result in destroying part of the food if not carefully watched; and that
it can be used in cooking many cheap, coarse foods, such as the mushes,
graham meal, corn meal, hominy, potatoes, cabbages, turnips, etc., which
furnish the bulk of our food.
On the other hand, from the point of view of fuel used, it is the most
expensive of all forms of cooking; and unless a fire is being kept up
for other purposes, which allows boiling or stewing to go on on the back
of the stove as an "extra," without additional expense, careful
experiments have shown that the prolonged boiling needed by many of
these cheaper and coarser foods, especially such as are recommended by
most diet reformers, brings their total cost up to that of bread, milk,
eggs, sugar, and the cheaper cuts of meat,--all of which are more
wholesome and more appetizing foods.
[Illustration: A KNOWLEDGE OF COOKING IS A VALUABLE PART OF A GOOD
EDUCATION]
The supposed saving in boiling meat, that you get two courses, soup and
meat, out of one joint, is imaginary; for, as we have seen, the soup or
water in which meat has been boiled contains little, or nothing, of the
fuel value, or nourishing part of the meat; and all the flavor that is
saved in this is lost by the boiled meat, rendering it not only much
less appetizing, but also less digestible. You cannot have the flavor of
your food in two places at once. If you save it in the soup, you lose it
from the meat.
Frying. The chief advantages of frying are its marked saving of time,
of fuel, and of discomfort to the cook; it also develops the appetizing
flavors of the food to a very high degree. A wholesome, appetizing meal
can be prepared by frying, much more quickly than by either baking or
boiling, and with less than half the fuel expense.
[Illustration: BOYS, AS WELL AS GIRLS, SHOULD KNOW HOW TO COOK]
The drawbacks of frying come chiefly from unintelligent and careless
methods of applying it. It is somewhat wasteful of food material,
particularly of meats; although, if the fat which is fried out in the
process can be used in other cooking, or turned into a gravy, a good
deal of this waste can be avoided. As, in frying, some form of fat has
to be used to keep the food from burning, this fat is apt to form a
coating over the surface and, if used in excessive amounts, at too low a
temperature, may soak deeply into the food, thus coating over every
particle of it with a thick, water-proof film, which prevents the juices
of the stomach and the upper part of the bowel from attacking and
digesting it. This undesirable result, however, can be entirely avoided
by having both the pan and the melted fat which it contains, _very_
hot, before the steak, chop, potatoes, or buckwheat cakes are put into
the pan. When this is done, the heat of the pan and of the boiling fat
instantly sears over the whole surface of the piece of food, and forms a
coating which prevents the further penetration of the fat. Quick frying
is, as a rule, a safe and wholesome form of cooking. Slow frying, which
means stewing in melted grease for twenty or thirty minutes, is one of
the most effective ways ever invented of spoiling good food and ruining
digestion.
Why Every One should Learn how to Cook. Every boy and every girl ought
to know how to cook. Cooking is a most interesting art, and a knowledge
of it is a valuable part of a good education. Everybody would find such
a knowledge exceedingly useful at some time in his life; and most of us,
all our lives long. As a life-saving accomplishment, it is much more
valuable than knowing how to swim. Every schoolhouse of more than five
rooms should have a kitchen and a lunch room as part of its equipment,
and classes should take turns in cooking and serving lunches for the
rest of the children.[12]
FOOTNOTES:
[11] For meats a fourth method may be used--_broiling_, which for flavor
and wholesomeness is superior to any other, but requires a special and
rather expensive type of clear, hot fire and a high degree of skill.
[12] Whenever lunches are brought by children, or the school-lunch is a
problem, if possible equip a spare room with a gas or a coal stove,
sink, tables, chairs, necessary dishes, etc., and let classes under
direction of teacher take turns in purchasing food supplies for lunch;
cooking and serving lunch; planning dietaries with reference to balanced
nutrition, digestibility, and cheapness; washing pots, pans, and dishes;
cleaning kitchen; protecting and storing foods; finding risks of
spoiling, contamination, infection, fly-visiting; and practicing other
forms of kitchen hygiene.
CHAPTER IX
OUR DRINK
FILLING THE BOILER OF THE BODY-ENGINE
The Need of Water in the Body-Engine. If you have ever taken a long
railway journey, you will remember that, about every two or three hours,
you would stop longer than usual at some station, or switch, for the
engine to take in water. No matter how briskly the fire burns in the
furnace, or how much good coal you may shovel into it, if there be no
water in the boiler above it to expand and make steam, the engine will
do no work. And an abundant supply of water is just as necessary in our
own bodies, although not used in just the same way as in the engine.
The singular thing about water, both in a locomotive and in our own
bodies is that, absolutely necessary as it is, it is neither burned up
nor broken down in any way, in making the machine go; so that it gives
off no energy, as our food does, but simply changes its form slightly.
Exactly the same amount of water, to the ounce, or even the teaspoonful,
that is poured into the boiler of an engine, is given off through its
funnel and escape-pipes in the form of steam; and precisely the same
amount of water which we pour into our stomachs will reappear on the
surface of the body again in the form of the vapor from the lungs, the
perspiration from the skin, and the water from the kidneys. It goes
completely through the engine, or the body, enables the one to work and
the other to live, and yet comes out unchanged.
Just how water works in the engine we know--the heat from the furnace
changes it into steam, which means that heat expands it, or makes it
fill more space. This swelling pushes forward the cylinder that starts
the wheels of the engine. The next puff gives them another whirl, and in
a few minutes the big locomotive is puffing steadily down the track.
Water is Necessary to Life. Just how water works in the body we do not
know, as most of it is not even turned into steam or vapor. But this
much we do know, that life cannot exist in the absence of water. Odd as
it may seem to us at first sight, ninety-five, yes, ninety-nine per cent
of our body cells are water-animals, and can live and grow only when
literally swimming in water.
The scaly cells on the surface of our skin, our hair, and the tips of
our nails are the only parts of us that live in air. In fact, over
five-sixths of the weight and bulk of our bodies is made up of water.
Some one has quaintly, but truthfully, described the human body as
composed of a few pounds of charcoal, a bushel of air, half a peck of
lime, and a couple of handfuls of salt dissolved in four buckets of
water. The reason why nearly all our foods, as we have seen, contain
such large amounts of water is that they, also, are the results of
life--the tissues and products of plants or animals.
Water Frees the Body from Waste Substances. Water in the body, then,
is necessary to life itself. But another most important use is to wash
out all the waste substances from the different organs and tissues and
carry them to the liver, the kidneys, the lungs, and the skin, where
they can be burned up and got rid of. We must keep our bodies well
flushed with water, just as we should keep a free current of water
flowing through our drain-pipes and sewers.
It Keeps the Body from Getting Over-heated. In summer time, or in hot
climates the year round, an abundant supply of water is of great
importance in keeping the body from becoming overheated, by pouring
itself out on the skin in the form of perspiration, and cooling us by
evaporation, as we shall see in the chapter on the skin.
The Meaning of Thirst. None of us who has ever been a mile or more
away from a well, or brook, on a hot summer's day needs to be told how
necessary water is, for comfort as well as for health. The appetite
which we have developed for it--_thirst_, as we call it--is the most
tremendous and powerful craving that we can feel, and the results of
water starvation are as serious and as quick in coming as is the
keenness of our thirst. Men in fairly good condition, if they are at
rest, and not exposed to hardship, and have plenty of water to drink,
can survive without food for from two to four weeks; but if deprived of
water, they will perish in agony in from two to three days.
[Illustration: THE CHAINED CUP
An "Exchange" for disease germs.]
We should Drink Three Pints of Water a Day. Although all our foods,
either as we find them in the state of nature, or as they come on the
table cooked and prepared for eating, contain large quantities of water,
this is not enough for the needs of the body; to keep in good health we
must also drink in some form about three pints, or six glassfuls, of
water in the course of the day. Part of this goes, as you will remember
(p. 16), to dissolve the food so that it can be readily absorbed by our
body cells in the process of digestion.
WHERE OUR DRINKING WATER COMES FROM
Water Contained in our Food is Pure. Seeing that five-sixths of our
food is water, it is clearly of the greatest importance that that water
should be pure. That part of our water supply which we get in and with
our foods is fortunately, for the most part, almost perfectly pure,
having been specially filtered by the plants or animals which originally
drank it, or having been boiled in the process of cooking.
[Illustration: THE SPOUTING FOUNTAIN
Where no lips need touch the cup.]
Water is Always in Motion. The part of our water supply which we take
directly, in the form of drinking water, is, however, unfortunately
anything but free from danger of impurities. The greatest difficulty
with water is that it will not "stay put"--it is continually on the
move. The same perpetual circulation, with change of form, but without
loss of substance, which is taking place in the engine and in our
bodies, is taking place in the world around us. The water from the
ocean, the lakes, and the rivers is continually evaporating under the
heat of the sun and rising in the form of vapor, or invisible steam,
into the air. There it becomes cooler, and forms the clouds; and when
these are cooled a little more, the vapor changes into drops of water
and pours down as rain, or, if the droplets freeze, as snow or hail. The
rain falls upon the leaves of the trees and the spears of the grass, or
the thirsty plowed ground, soaks down into the soil and "seeps" or
drains gradually into the streams and rivers, and down these into the
lakes and oceans, to be again pumped up by the sun. All we can do is to
catch what we need of it, "on the run," somewhere in the earthy part of
its circuit.
Why our Drinking Water is Likely to be Impure. Every drop of water
that we drink or use, fell somewhere on the surface of the earth, in the
form of rain or snow; and if we wish to find out whether it is pure and
safe, we must trace its course through the soil, or the streams, from
the point where it fell. Our drinking water has literally washed "all
outdoors" before it reaches us, and what it may have picked up in that
washing makes the possibilities of its danger.
As it falls from the skies, it is perfectly pure--except in large cities
or manufacturing centres, where rain water contains small amounts of
soot, smoke-acids, and dust, but even these are in such small amounts as
to be practically harmless. But the moment it reaches the ground, it
begins to soak up something out of everything that it touches; and here
our dangers begin.
Risks from Leaf Mould. Practically the whole surface of the earth is
covered with some form of vegetation--grass, trees, or other green
plants. These dying down and decaying year after year, form a layer of
vegetable mould such as you can readily scratch up on the surface of the
ground in a forest or old meadow; this is known as leaf mould, or
_humus_. As the water soaks through this mould, it becomes loaded with
decaying vegetable matter, which it carries with it down into the soil.
Most of this, fortunately, is comparatively harmless to the human
digestion. But some of this vegetable matter, such as we find in the
water from bogs or swamps, or even heavy forests, will sometimes upset
the digestion; hence, the natural dislike that we have for water with a
marshy, or "weedy," taste.
[Illustration: NATURE'S FILTER-BED
The spring water is pure; the brook may gather infection as it goes.]
Nature's Filter-Bed. When, however, this peaty water soaks on down
through the grass, roots, and leaf mold, into the soil, it comes in
contact with Nature's great filter-bed--the second place in the circuit
where the water is again made perfectly pure. This filter-bed consists
of a layer of more or less spongy, porous soil, or earth, swarming with
millions of tiny vegetable germs known as bacteria. These eagerly pick
out all the decaying vegetable substances of the water and feed upon
them, changing them into harmless carbon dioxid water, and small amounts
of _ammonia_. Not only will this filter-bed, or spongy mat of bacteria,
burn up and remove all traces of vegetable decay, but if the rain
happens to have soaked through the decaying body of a bird or animal or
insect, the bacteria will just as eagerly feed upon these animal
substances and change them into harmless gases and salts.[13]
By the time the rain water has reached the deeper layers of the soil,
it is again perfectly pure and has also, in seeping through the soil,
picked up certain mineral salts (such as _calcium_, _sodium_, and
_magnesium_) which are of use in the body; so that in an open or thinly
settled country, the water in streams, rivers, and lakes is usually
fairly pure and quite wholesome. That is why, in ancient times, the
great majority of villages and towns and camps were situated on the bank
of some stream, where a supply of water could easily be obtained.
CAUSES AND DANGERS OF POLLUTED WATER
Wells--the Oldest Method of Supplying Water. It was long ago
discovered that, by digging pits or holes in the ground, the rain water,
in its steady flow toward the streams and lakes, could be caught or
trapped, and that if the pit were made deep enough, a sufficient amount
would accumulate during the winter or spring to last well on into the
summer, unless the season were unusually dry. These pits, or water
traps, are our familiar _wells_, from which most of our water supply,
except in the large cities, is still taken. These wells were naturally
dug, or sunk, as near as might be to the house, so as to shorten the
distance that the water had to be carried; and from this arose their
chief and greatest source of danger.
The Danger to Wells from Household Waste. Every house has, like our
bodies, a certain amount of waste, which must be got rid of. Some of
this material can, of course, be fed to pigs and chickens, and in that
way disposed of. But the simplest and easiest thing to do with the
watery parts of the household waste is to take them to the back door and
throw them out on the ground, while table-scraps and other garbage are
thrown into the long grass, or bushes--a method which is still,
unfortunately, pursued in a great many houses in the country and the
suburbs of towns. If the area over which they are thrown is large
enough, and particularly if the soil is porous and well covered with
vegetation, nature's filter-bed--the soil, the bacteria, and the roots
of the grass and other plants combined--will purify a surprising amount
of waste; but there is always the danger, particularly in the wet
weather of spring and of late fall, that the soil will become charged
with more of these waste matters than the bacteria can destroy, and that
these waste poisons will be washed down in the rain water right into the
pit, or trap, which has been dug for it--the well.
[Illustration: AN EXAMPLE OF GOOD FARM DRAINAGE
Here the farmhouse is set above the barn, pens, and cattle yard, and at
some distance from them. The drainage from these is into the lower
fields, so that a well driven into the high ground not far from the
house is presumably safe.]
The Danger from Outbuildings. This danger is further increased by the
fact that for the same reason--the vital need of plenty of water for all
living creatures--the hen coop, the pig pen, the cow stable, and the
horse barn are all likely to be built clustering around this same well.
If the fertilizer from these places is, as it should be in all
intelligent farming, protected from the rain so as not to have all its
strength washed out of it, and removed and spread on the soil at
frequent intervals, the well may even yet escape contamination; but the
chances are very strongly against it. If you will figure out that a well
drains the surface soil in every direction for a distance from ten to
thirty times its own depth, and that the average well is about
twenty-five feet deep, you can readily see what a risk of contaminating
the well is caused by every barn, outhouse, or pen within from sixty to
a hundred and fifty yards from its mouth.
Every well from which drinking water is taken should be at least fifty,
and better, a hundred and fifty, yards away from any stable, outhouse,
or barn; or set well up-hill from it, so that all drainage runs away
from its basin. This, of course, is possible only in the country, or in
villages or small towns, where houses have plenty of ground about them.
Consequently, the health laws of most cities and states forbid the use
of shallow wells for drinking purposes in cities of over 10,000
population.
Causes which Produce Pure Well Water. Occasionally a well will be
driven through a layer of rock or hard water-proof clay, before the
water-bearing layer of soil, or sand, is struck, so that its water will
be drawn, not from the rain that falls on the surface of the ground
immediately about it, but from that which has fallen somewhere at a
considerable distance and filtered down through the soil. This water, on
account of the many, many layers of soil through which it has filtered,
and the long distance it has come, is usually fairly pure, so far as
animal or vegetable impurities are concerned, though it is apt to have
become too strong in certain salty and mineral substances, which give it
a taste of salt, or iron, or sulphur. If, however, it is free from these
salty substances, it makes a very pure and wholesome drinking water; and
if the upper part of the well shaft be lined with bricks and cement, so
that the surface water cannot leak into it, it may be used with safety
for drinking purposes even in the heart of a city.
[Illustration: THE DANGER SPOT ON THE FARM
The milk inspector on visiting this dairy farm found that the well was
receiving the drainage of both house and privy. The well water was used
for drinking and for washing the milk pails (seen behind the fence).]
The Greatest Single Danger to Well Water. The greatest single danger
to the purity of well water is the privy vault. This is doubly
dangerous, first, because it is dug below the level at which the
bacteria in the soil are most abundant and active, so that they cannot
attack and break up its contents; and the impurities, therefore, are
gradually washed down by the rain water into the soil, unchanged, and
seep directly into the well. The other reason is that its contents may
contain the germs of serious diseases, particularly typhoid fever and
other bowel troubles. These germs and their poisons would usually be
destroyed by the bacteria of the soil, if not poured out in too large
quantities; but in the privy vault they escape their attack, and so are
carried on with the slow leakage of water into the well; then those who
use that water are very liable to have typhoid fever and other serious
diseases.
Early Methods of Prevention. On account of these filth-dangers, it
began, a century or so ago, to be the custom in cleanly and thoughtful
households to provide, first, ditches, and then, lines of pipes, made
out of hollow wood or baked clay, and later of iron, called drains,
through which all the watery parts of household wastes could be carried
away and poured out at some distance from the house. Then toilets, or
flush-closets, were built, and this kind of waste was carried completely
away from the house, and beyond danger of contaminating the wells.
How Streams were Contaminated. For a time this seemed to end the
danger, as the waste was soaked up by the soil, and eaten by its hungry
bacteria and drunk up again by the roots of plants. But when ten or a
dozen houses began to combine and run their drain-pipes together into a
large drain called a sewer, then this could not open upon the surface of
the ground, but had to be run into some stream, or brook, in order to be
carried away. As cities and towns, which had been obliged to give up
their wells, were beginning to collect the water from these same brooks
and streams in reservoirs and deliver it in pipes to all their houses,
it can be easily seen that we had simply exchanged one danger for
another.
The Loss of Life from Typhoid Fever. For a time, indeed, it looked as
if the new danger were the greater of the two, because, when the typhoid
germs were washed into a well, they poisoned or infected only one, or at
most two or three, families who used the water from that well. But when
they were carried into a stream which was dammed to form a reservoir to
supply a town with water, then the whole population of the town might
become infected. A great many epidemics of typhoid fever occurred in
just this way, before people realized how great this danger was. Simply
from the pouring of the wastes from one or two typhoid fever cases into
the streams leading into the water reservoir used by a town, five
hundred, a thousand, or even three or four thousand cases of typhoid
have developed within a few weeks, with from one hundred to five hundred
deaths.
[Illustration: TYPHOID EPIDEMIC IN THE MOHAWK-HUDSON VALLEY, 1891-92
In 1891-92 typhoid fever broke out in Schenectady on the Mohawk River.
Following this, Cohoes and West Troy, which drew their water supply from
the Mohawk below Schenectady, and Albany, which drew its supply from the
Hudson below the mouth of the Mohawk, suffered from typhoid epidemics;
while Waterford and Troy, which drew their supplies from the Hudson
_above_ the mouth of the Mohawk, and the river towns that, like
Lansingburgh, drew from other sources, entirely escaped the infection.]
In fact, even to-day, when these dangers are better understood, and
while most of our big cities are getting fairly clear of typhoid, so
ignorant and careless are the smaller towns, villages, and private
houses all over the United States, that over 35,000 deaths[14] from
typhoid fever occur every year in a country which prides itself upon its
cleanliness and its intelligence. This means, too, that there are at
least half a million people sick of the disease, and in bed or utterly
prevented from working, for from five to fifteen weeks each. All of
which frightful loss of human life and human labor, to say nothing of
the grief, bereavement, and anxiety of the two million or more families
and relatives of these typhoid victims, is due to eating dirt and
drinking filth. Dirt is surely the most expensive thing there is,
instead of the cheapest.
METHODS OF OBTAINING PURE WATER
Wise Planning and Spending of Money is Necessary. If our city wells
are defiled by manure heaps and vault-privies, and our streams by
sewage, where are we to turn for pure water? All that is required is
foresight and a little intelligent planning and wise spending of money.
Of course the community must take hold of the problem, through a Board
of Health, or Health Officer, appointed for the purpose; and this is why
questions of health are coming to play such an important part in
legislation, and even in politics. No matter how fast a city is growing
or how much money its inhabitants are making, if it has an impure water
supply or a bad sewage system, there will be disease and death,
suffering and unhappiness among its people, which no amount of money can
make up for. Cleanliness is not only next to godliness, but one of the
most useful forms of it; and a city can afford to spend money liberally
to secure it--in fact, it is the best investment a city can make.
Artesian and Deep Wells. The earliest, and still the most eagerly
sought-for, source of pure water supply is springs or deep wells, such
as we have referred to. Both of these are fed by rain water which has
fallen somewhere upon the surface of the earth. As the layers of earth
or rock, of which the crust of the earth is made up, do not run level,
or horizontal, but are tilted and tipped in all directions, this rain
water soaks down until it reaches one of these sloping layers that is so
hard, or tough, as to be waterproof, and then runs along over its
surface in a sort of underground stream. If anywhere in the course of
this stream a very deep well shaft is driven right down through the soil
until it strikes the surface of this sloping layer of rock, then the
water will rise in this shaft to the level of the highest point from
which it is running.
[Illustration: ARTESIAN WELL BORINGS
The sketch shows a wide section from northern Illinois to central
Wisconsin, in which the cities have rejected the water supplies afforded
by the rivers, choosing instead to bore down almost to hard rock to
insure the purity of the supply.]
If this highest point of the waterproof layer be many miles away, up in
the hills above the surface of the ground where the well is dug, then
the water will rise to the surface and sometimes even spout twenty,
thirty, or fifty feet above it. This forms what is known as a _gushing_,
or _artesian_, well (from Artois, a province in France, in which such
wells were first commonly used) and furnishes a very pure and valuable
source of water supply. If it rises only twenty, thirty, or fifty feet
in the well-shaft, but keeps flowing in at a sufficient rate, then we
get what is known as a "living," or _permanent_ well, and this also is a
very valuable and pure source of water supply.
Springs. Springs are formed on the same plan as the deep well, but
with the difference that the waterproof layer on top of which the water
is running either crops out on the surface again, lower down the
mountain, or folds upon itself and comes up again to the surface some
distance away from the mountain chain, out on the level. This is why
springs are usually found in or near mountainous or hilly regions. If
the water of a spring has gone deep enough into, or far enough through,
the layers of the earth, it may, like water of some of the artesian
wells, contain certain salts and minerals, particularly soda, sulphur,
and iron. Such springs are often highly valued as mineral water, healing
springs, or baths, partly because of these salts, partly on account of
their peculiar taste. Most of the virtues ascribed to mineral waters or
springs are due, however, to their _pure water_, and its cleansing
effects internally and externally when freely used.
Springs are among the most highly prized sources of water supply,
because they have gone underground sufficiently deep to become well
filtered and cooled to a low temperature, and usually not far enough to
become too heavily loaded with salts or minerals like the waters of the
deep wells. It must, however, be remembered that they also come from
rain-water, and that in hilly or broken regions the source of that rain
water may be the surface of the ground only a few hundred yards up the
hill or mountain, and impurities there may affect it. Much of the
delightful sparkle of spring water is due, as in the case of the popular
soda water, to the presence of carbon dioxid, only in spring water it is
produced by the decomposition of vegetable matter in it. As springs
usually break out in a hollow or at the foot of a hill, unless
carefully closed in they are quite liable to contamination from rain
water from the surrounding surface of the ground. Where springs of a
sufficient size can be reached, or a sufficiently "live" series of deep
wells can be bored, these furnish a safe source of water supply for
cities. But of course not more than one city in five or ten is so
favored.
Mountain Reservoirs. Two other methods of securing a water supply are
now generally adopted. One is to pick out some stream up in the hills or
mountains, within fifteen miles or so of the city, and put in a dam,
thus making a reservoir, or to enlarge some lake which already exists
there. At the same time, the entire valley, or slope of the mountain,
which this stream or lake drains of its surface water, is bought up by
the Government, or turned into a forest reserve, so that no houses can
be built or settlement of any kind permitted upon it. It can still be
used for lumber supply, for pastures, and, within reasonable limits, for
a great public hunting and fishing reserve and camping resort.
[Illustration: A CITY WATER SUPPLY BROUGHT FROM THE FAR HILLS]
Almost every intelligent and farsighted town, which has not springs or
deep wells, is looking toward the acquirement of some such area as this
for its source of pure water. Many great cities go from thirty to fifty
miles, and some even a hundred and fifty miles, in order to reach such a
source, carrying the water into the city in a huge water-pipe, or
_aqueduct_. These cities find that the millions of dollars saved by the
prevention of death and disease amount to many times the cost of such a
system, while the water rents gladly paid by both private houses and
manufacturing establishments give good interest on the investment. Any
town can afford to go a mile for every thousand of its population for
such a source of water supply as this; and secure, _gratis_, a valuable
forest preserve, public park, and beauty spot.[15]
Filtration. The other method, which has to be adopted by cities
situated on level plains, or at the mouths of great rivers, is to take
the water of some lake, or river, as far out in the former, or as high
up the latter, as possible, and purify it by filtration. This can be
done at a moderate expense by preparing great settling-basins and
filter-beds. The first are great pools or small lakes, into which the
water is run and held until most of the mud and coarser dirt has settled
or sunk. Then this clear water above the sediment is run on to great
beds, first of gravel, then of coarse sand, then of fine sand; and if
these beds are large enough, and frequently changed and cleaned, so that
they do not become clogged, and the process is carried out slowly, the
water, when it comes through the last bed, is pure enough to drink
safely.[16]
[Illustration: A RESERVOIR AND COSTLY DAM]
One of these sources of a safe and wholesome water-supply--the deep
flowing well, or spring; the water shut up in the mountains in its lake
or reservoir; or the slow filter-bed--should be used by every
intelligent and progressive town of more than a thousand inhabitants.
Sewage and its Disposal. At the same time, while seeking a source of
water-supply far removed from any possibility of contagion, we must not
neglect the other end of the problem, the protecting of our rivers and
lakes from pollution so far as possible; for the water from these must
necessarily be used by thousands of people along their banks, either
directly, or in the form of shallow wells, sunk not far from the water's
edge. Moreover, so foul are many of our rivers and streams becoming in
thickly settled regions that fish can no longer live in them, and it is
hardly safe to bathe in them.[17] Fortunately, however, a great deal of
the worst contamination can be prevented by using modern methods of
disposing of sewage, such as filter-beds and sewage farms. All of these
methods use the bacteria of the soil, or crops growing in it, to eat up
the waste and thus purify the sewage.
[Illustration: SCRAPING THE SEDIMENT FROM THE BOTTOM OF A RESERVOIR]
HOME METHODS OF PURIFYING WATER
Boiling. Where the water that you are obliged to drink is not known to
be pure, then it can be made quite safe for drinking purposes by the
simple process of boiling it for about ten or fifteen minutes. But this,
except in travelling or in emergencies, is a lazy, slipshod substitute
for pure water, and extremely unsatisfactory as well; for the boiling
drives off all its air and other gases, and throws down most of the
salts, so that boiled water has a flat, insipid taste. These salts,
although sometimes regarded as impurities, are not such in any true
sense; for the lime and soda especially are of considerable value in the
body, so that boiled or sterilized water is neither a pleasant nor a
wholesome permanent drink. Instead of boiling the water, get to work to
protect your own well from filth of all sorts, if you drink well water;
or, if not, to help the Board of Health to agitate, and keep on
agitating, until something is done to compel your selectmen or City
Council to secure a pure supply.
[Illustration: THE DOMESTIC FILTER IN USE
Unless the sand and charcoal in the glass bulb is very frequently
cleaned, it serves merely as a "catch-all" for impurities, through which
the water must flow.]
Domestic Filters. Much the same must be said of _private_ or _domestic
filters_. These are, at best, temporary substitutes, and should not be
depended upon for permanent use. Many of them are made to sell rather
than to purify, and will remove only the larger or mechanical impurities
from the water. Others, while they work well at first, are exceedingly
likely to become clogged, when the tendency is to punch at them to make
them work faster, thus either poking a hole through them or cracking the
filter-shell, so that a stream of water flows steadily through, just as
impure as when it entered. Private filters, like boiling water, are only
temporary ways of meeting conditions _which ought not to be allowed to
exist at all_ in civilized communities, or in your own homes.
A score of court decisions in all parts of the world have now held that
the water company is legally responsible for all avoidable pollution of
public water-supplies, and nine tenths of pollutions _are_ avoidable.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] These gases and salts are eagerly sucked up by the roots of plants,
so that the soil bacteria are our best friends, changing poisonous
decaying things into harmless plant-foods. They are the chief secret of
the fertility of a soil; and the more there are of them the richer a
soil is.
[14] This makes fourteen times as many deaths from typhoid in proportion
to the population as occur in Germany.
[15] New York City, for instance, goes forty miles up into the hills to
the great Croton reservoir for its water supply; and as this is proving
insufficient, is preparing to go ninety-five miles up into the Ramapo
Hills to secure control of a whole country-side for a permanent source
of supply. Portland, Oregon, nearly twenty years ago, with then a
population of some 75,000, built an aqueduct sixty miles up into the
mountains to a lake on the side of Mt. Hood, and has reaped the
advantages of its foresight ever since, in a low death rate and a rapid
growth (200,000 in 1910), as well as a financial profit on its
investment. Los Angeles, California, is preparing to build an aqueduct a
hundred and thirty miles, and tunnel two mountain ranges in order to
reach an inexhaustible supply of water.
[16] Of late, currents of electricity are passed through the water
(setting free _oxygen_ or _ozone_) which make the purifying of it much
more rapid and complete.
It is, however, often considered safer to pass the water through still
another filter bed, consisting of layers of charcoal, which has the
power of gathering oxygen in its pores, to attack and _oxidize_, or burn
up, the remaining impurities in the water. A sort of scum forms over the
surface of the last and finest bed of sand or charcoal, and if this scum
is not too frequently removed, though it makes the filtering slower, the
water comes out purer. On examining this scum, we find it to consist of
a thick mat of our old friends, the purifying bacteria of the soil. So
that the last step of our artificial filtration is simply an imitation
of nature's great filter-bed.
[17] Several streams emptying into the Ohio River from a thickly settled
region are said to be actually pumped out into waterworks systems, used
for drinking, washing, and manufacturing, and run back into the river
again through sewers by the different cities along its banks, at such
frequent intervals that every drop of water in them passes through
waterworks systems and sewers _three times_ before it reaches the mouth
of the stream.
CHAPTER X
BEVERAGES, ALCOHOL, AND TOBACCO
The Popularity of Beverages. For some curious reason, the habit has
grown up of taking a large part of the six glasses of water that we
require daily in the form of mixtures known as beverages. These
beverages are always much more expensive than pure water; are often
quite troublesome to secure and prepare; have little, or no, food value;
are of doubtful value even in small amounts; and injurious in large
ones. Why they should ever have come into such universal use, in all
races and in all ages of the world, is one of the standing puzzles of
human nature. They practically _all consist of from ninety to
ninety-eight per cent_ of water, the food elements that may be added to
them being in such trifling amounts as to be practically of no value.
They serve no known useful purpose in the body, save as a means of
introducing the water which they contain; and yet mankind has used them
ever since the dawn of history.
We Have no Natural Appetite for Beverages. It is a most striking fact
that, although these beverages have been drunk by the race for
centuries, we _have never developed an instinct or natural appetite for
them_! No child ever yet was born with an appetite or natural liking for
beer or whiskey; and very few children really like the taste of tea or
coffee the first time, although they soon learn to drink them on account
of the sugar and cream in them. Thus, nature has clearly marked them off
from all the _real_ foods on our tables, showing that they are not
essential to either life or health; and that they are absolutely
unnecessary, and almost always harmful in childhood and during the
period of growth. If no child ever drank alcohol until he really craved
it, as he craves milk, sugar, and bread and butter, there would be no
drunkards in the world. Our other food-instincts have shown themselves
worthy to be trusted--why not trust this one, and let these beverages,
especially alcohol, absolutely alone?
Statistics from the alcoholic wards of our great hospitals show that of
those who become drunkards, nearly ninety per cent _begin to drink
before they are twenty years old_. Of that ninety per cent, over
two-thirds took their first drink, not because they felt any craving for
it, or even thought it would taste good, but because they saw others
doing it; or thought it would be a "manly" thing to do; or were afraid
that they would be laughed at if they didn't! Whatever vices and bad
habits our natural appetites, and so-called "animal instincts," may lead
us into, drunkenness is not one of them.
This striking hint on the part of nature, that alcoholic beverages are
unnecessary, is fully confirmed by the overwhelming majority of hundreds
of tests which have been made in the laboratory, showing clearly that,
while these beverages may give off trifling amounts of energy in the
body, their real effects and the sole reason for their use are their
stimulating, or their discomfort-deadening (_narcotic_) effect. And the
more carefully we study them, the heavier we find the price that has to
be paid for any temporary relief or enjoyment which they may seem to
give.
Tea, Coffee, and Cocoa. The "weakest" and most commonly used of these
beverages or amusement foods, are tea, coffee, and cocoa. These have an
agreeable taste, mildly stimulate the nervous system, and, when used in
moderation by adults, seldom do much harm. To a small percentage of
individuals, who are specially sensitive to their effects, they seem to
act as mild poison-foods, much in the same way as strawberries, cheese,
or lobsters do to others.
Tea is made from the green leaves of a shrub growing in hilly districts
in China, Japan, and Southern India. The finer and more delicately
flavored brands are from the young leaves, shoots, and flowers of the
plant; while the coarser and cheaper are from the old leaves, stalks,
and even twigs--the latter containing the most _tannin_, which, as we
shall see, is the most injurious element in tea.
Coffee is made from the seeds of a cherry-like berry growing upon a
shrub, or low tree, on tropical hillsides. The bulk of our supply comes
from South America, and is known as "Rio" coffee, from Rio Janeiro, the
port in Brazil from which most of it is shipped. That from the East
Indies is known as Java, and that from Arabia as Mocha; though these
last two are now but little more than trade-names for certain finer
varieties of coffee, no matter where grown.
Cocoa and chocolate are made from the bean-like seeds of a small tree
growing in the tropics and, in cake, or solid, form, contain
considerable amounts of fat, and usually sugar and vanilla, which have
been added to them to improve their flavor. As, however, only a
teaspoonful or so of the powdered cocoa, or chocolate, goes to make a
cupful, the actual food value of cocoa or chocolate, unless made with
milk, is not much greater than that of tea or coffee with cream and
sugar. They contain less _caffein_ than either tea or coffee, but are
liable to clog rather than to increase the appetite for other foods.
Effects of Tea, Coffee, and Cocoa. Though the flavors of tea, coffee,
and cocoa are so different, they all depend for their effect upon a
spicy-tasting substance, called caffein from its having been first
separated out of coffee. The caffein of tea is sometimes called _thein_,
and that of cocoa _theobromin_; but they are all practically the same
substance. Part of the taste of these beverages is due to the caffein,
but the special flavor of each is given by spicy oils and other
substances which it contains. Caffein acts as a mild stimulant both to
the nervous system and brain, and to the heart; as is shown by the way
in which tea or coffee will wake us up or refresh us when tired, or, if
drunk too late at night, keep us from going to sleep. If used in large
amounts, especially if taken as a substitute for food, tea and coffee
upset the nervous system and disturb the heart, and produce an
unwholesome craving for more.
[Illustration: A MILK STATION IN A CITY PARK
Many cities have established such stations, where people can buy, for a
cent or two, a drink that is far better than soda water or any other
beverage.]
Their chief value lies in the hot water they contain, which has been
sterilized by boiling, while its heat assists the process of digestion;
and in the fact that their agreeable taste sometimes gives us an
appetite and enables us to eat more of less highly flavored foods, like
bread, crackers, potatoes, or rice, than we would without them. They
are, also, usually taken with cream, or milk, or sugar, which are real
foods and bring their fuel value up to about half that of skimmed milk.
So far as they stimulate the appetite and increase the amount of food
eaten, they are beneficial; but when taken as a substitute for real
food, they are most injurious. A cup of coffee, for instance, makes a
very poor breakfast to start the day on; for although it gives you a
comforting sense of having eaten something warm and satisfying, it
contains very little real food, and soon leaves you feeling empty and
tired; just as an engine would give out if you put a handful of shavings
into its fire-box, and expected it to do four hours' work on them.
The most disturbing effects of tea and coffee upon the digestion are due
to the tannin which they contain if boiled too long, especially in the
case of tea. This tannin, fortunately, will not dissolve in water except
by prolonged boiling or steeping; so that if tea is made by pouring
boiling water over the tea leaves and pouring it off again as soon as it
has reached the desired strength and flavor, and coffee by being just
brought to a boil and then not allowed to stand more than ten or fifteen
minutes before use, no injurious amounts of tannin will be found in
them. Tea, made by prolonged stewing on the back of the stove, owes its
bitter, puckery taste to tannin, and is better suited for tanning
leather than for putting into the human stomach.
Boys and girls up to fifteen or sixteen years of age are much better off
without tea, coffee, or cocoa; for they need no artificial stimulants to
their appetites, while at the same time their nervous systems are more
liable to injury from the harmful effects of over-stimulation. If the
beverages are taken at all, they should be taken very weak, and with
plenty of milk and cream as well as sugar.
ALCOHOL
How Alcohol is Made. The most dangerous addition that man has ever
made to the water which he drinks is alcohol. It is made by the action
of the yeast plant on wet sugar or starch--a process called
_fermentation_. Usually the sugar or starch is in the form of the juice
of fruits; or is a pulp, or mash, made from crushed grains like barley,
corn, or rye. As the spores of this yeast plant are floating about
almost everywhere in the air, all that is usually necessary is to let
some fruit juice or grain pulp stand at moderate warmth, exposed to the
air, when it will begin to "sour," or ferment.
Wine. When the yeast plant is set to work in a tub or vat of grape
juice, it attacks the fruit sugar contained in the juice, and splits it
up into alcohol and carbon dioxid, so that the juice becomes bubbly and
frothy from the gas. When from seven to fifteen per cent of alcohol has
been produced, the liquid is called wine. It contains, besides alcohol,
some unchanged fruit sugar, fruit acids, and some other products of
fermentation (known as _ethers_ and _aldehydes_), which give each kind
of wine its special flavor.
Beer, Ale, and Cider. If the yeast germ be set to work in a pulp or
mash of crushed barley or wheat, the starch of which has been partly
turned into sugar by malting, it breaks up the sugar into alcohol and
carbon dioxid. When it has brewed enough of the starch to produce
somewhere from four to eight per cent of alcohol, then the liquid, which
still contains about three or four per cent of a starch-sugar called
_maltose_, is called beer, or ale. It is usually flavored with hops to
give it a bitter taste and make it keep better. If the same process be
carried out in apple juice, we get the well known hard cider with its
biting taste.
Whiskey, Brandy, and Rum. When left to itself, the process of
fermentation in most of these sugary or starchy liquids will come to a
standstill after a while, because the alcohol, when it reaches a certain
strength in the liquid, is, like all other toxins, or poisons produced
by germs, a poison also to the germ that produces it. The yeast-bacteria
probably produce alcohol as a poison to kill off other germs which
compete with them for their share of the sugar or starch. So even the
origin of this curious drug-food shows its harmful character. We should
hardly pick out the poison produced by one germ to kill another germ as
likely to make a useful and wholesome food.
[Illustration: PROPORTION OF ALCOHOL
IN LIGHT WINE IN BEER IN WHISKEY
The liquid shows what part of a tumblerful of each is alcohol.]
If man had been content to leave this fermentation process to nature, it
is probable that many of the worst effects of alcohol would never have
been heard of. But these lighter forms of alcoholic drinks did not
satisfy the unnatural cravings which they had themselves created. Some
people never can leave even bad-enough alone. So man, with an ingenuity
which might have been much better used, sought a way of getting a liquor
which would contain more alcohol than nature, unaided, could be made to
brew in it. A little experimenting showed that the alcohol in fermenting
juices was lighter than water; so that by gently heating the fermenting
mass, the alcohol would evaporate and pass off as vapor, with a little
of the steam from the water. Then, by catching this vapor in a closed
vessel and pouring cold water over the outside of the vessel, it could
be condensed again in the form of a clear, brownish fluid of burning
taste, containing nearly fifty per cent of alcohol, instead of the
original five or six.
This evaporated or distilled mixture of alcohol and water, if made from
a mash of corn, wheat, rye, or potatoes, is called whiskey; if from
fruit-juice, brandy. A similar liquor, made out of fermented rice, is
known as _arrack_ in India, or _saké_ in Japan; and the liquor made from
fermented molasses is called rum.
Alcohol not a True Food, but a Drug. The much disputed question as to
whether alcohol is a food or not, is really of little or no practical
importance. It is quite true, as might be expected, from its close
relation to sugar and the readiness, for instance, with which it will
burn in an alcohol lamp or stove, that alcohol, in small amounts, is
capable of being burned in the body, thus giving it energy. This may
give it a certain limited value in some forms of sickness, as, for
instance, in certain fevers and infections, when the stomach does not
seem to be able to digest food. But here it acts as a medicine rather
than as a true food and, like all other medicines, should be used only
under skilled medical advice and control. For practical purposes, any
trifling food value it may have is more than offset by its later
poisonous and disturbing effects and, secondly, by its enormous
expensiveness.
The greatest amount of alcohol that could be consumed in the body at all
safely would barely supply one-tenth of the total fuel value needed; and
if any one were to attempt to supply the body with energy by the use of
alcohol, he would be blind drunk before he had taken one-third of the
amount required. From the point of view of expense alone, to take
alcohol for food is like killing buffalos for their tongues and letting
the rest of the carcass go to waste, as the Indians and pioneer hunters
of the plains used to do. It never has more than a fraction of the food
value of the grain or fruit out of which it was made; and the amount of
nutriment that it contains costs ten times as much as it would in any of
the staple foods.
Moreover, when it is taken with an ordinary supply of food, it is found
that, for every ounce of alcohol burned in the body, a similar amount of
the other food is prevented from being consumed, and probably goes to
waste, owing to the harmful effects of alcohol upon digestion.
Therefore, to talk of alcohol as a food is really absurd.
The Effect of Alcohol on Digestion. It has been urged by some that
alcohol increases the appetite, and enables one to digest larger amounts
of food. The early experiments seemed to support this claim by showing
that alcohol, well diluted, and in moderate amounts, increased appetite
and the flow of the gastric juice. When the experiments were carried a
little further, however, it was clearly shown that its presence in the
stomach and intestines, in such amounts as would result from a glass of
beer, or one or two glasses of claret-wine with a meal, interfered with
the later stages of digestion, so that the later harmful effects
overbalanced any earlier good effects.
Its Effect on the Temperature of the Body. Another claim urged in its
favor was that it warmed the body and protected it against cold. It
ought to have been easy for any one with a sense of humor to judge the
value of this claim by the fact that it was equally highly commended by
its users as a means of keeping them cool in hot weather. Its supposed
effects in the case of both heat and cold were due to the same fact: it
deadened the nerves for a time to whatever sense of discomfort one might
then be suffering from, but made no change whatever in the condition of
the body that caused the discomfort. Any drug which has this deadening
effect on the nerves is called a narcotic; and it is in this class that
alcohol belongs, together with the stronger narcotics, _opium_,
_chloroform_, _ether_, and _chloral_.
In fact, it was quickly found in the bitter school of experience that
alcohol, though producing an apparent glow of warmth for the time,
instead of increasing our power to resist cold, rapidly and markedly
lessens it; so that those who drink heavily are much more likely to die
from cold and exposure than those who let alcohol alone. Nowadays,
Arctic explorers, explorers in the tropics, officers of armies upon
forced marches, and those who have to train themselves for the most
severe strains on their powers of endurance, all bear testimony to the
fact that the use of alcohol is harmful instead of helpful under these
conditions, and that it is not for a moment to be compared to real
foods, like meat, sugar, or fat.
Its Effects on Working Power. Then it was claimed that alcohol
increased the working power of the body; that more work and better work
would be done by men at hard labor, if a little beer, or wine, was taken
with their meals. Indeed, most of those who take alcohol believe that
they work faster and better, and with less effort with it than without
it. But the moment that this _feeling_ of increased power and strength
was submitted to careful tests in the laboratory and in the workshop, it
was found that instead of _more_ being accomplished when alcohol was
taken, even in very moderate amounts, _less_ was accomplished by from
six to twelve per cent. The false sense of increased vigor and power was
due to the narcotic power of alcohol to deaden the sensations of fatigue
and discomfort.
It was discovered long ago, almost as soon as men began to put
themselves into training for athletic feats or contests, that alcohol
was not only useless, but very injurious. Any champion who, on the eve
of a contest, "breaks training" by "taking a drink," knows that he is
endangering his record and giving his competitors an advantage over him.
Its Deadening Effect. In short, we must conclude that the so-called
stimulating effects of alcohol are really due to its power of deadening
us to sensations of discomfort or fatigue. Its boasted power of making
men more "sociable" by loosening their tongues is due to precisely the
same effect: it takes off the balance-wheels of custom, reserve, and
propriety--too often of decency, as well. This is where the greatest
and most serious danger of alcohol comes in, that even in the smallest
doses, it begins to deaden us both mentally and morally, and thus
lessens our power of control. This loss of control steadily increases
with each successive drink until finally the man, completely under the
influence of liquor, reaches a stage when he can neither think
rationally nor speak intelligently, nor even walk straight or stand
upright--making the most humiliating and disgusting spectacle which
humanity can present.
Harmful Effects on the Body. All doctors and scientists and thoughtful
men are now practically agreed: First, that alcohol in excess is
exceedingly dangerous and injurious, and one of the most serious enemies
that modern civilization has to face.
Second, that even in the smallest doses, as a deadener of the sense of
discomfort, it blinds the man who takes it to the harm it is doing and,
as soon as its temporary comforting effects begin to pass off, naturally
leads its victim to resort to it again in increasing doses. In fact,
unlike a true food which quickly satisfies, the use of alcohol too often
creates an appetite that grows by what it feeds on, and is never
satisfied. For every natural appetite or instinct, nature provides a
check; but she provides none for tastes that must be acquired. The last
man to find out that he is taking too much is the drinker himself. Taken
first to relieve discomfort, its own poisonous after-effects create a
new and permanent demand for it.
The third point on which agreement is almost unanimous among scientists
and physicians is that, as will be seen in later chapters, there are a
considerable number of diseases of the liver, of the heart and blood
vessels, of the kidneys, and of the nervous system, which are produced
by, or almost always associated with, alcohol. There are, for instance,
three different kinds of alcoholic insanity. It is true that these
disease-changes most commonly occur in the tissues of those who use
alcohol to excess; and it is also probably true that what the alcoholic
poison is doing in these cases, is picking out the weak spots in the
body and the weaker individuals in the community. Even the strongest and
best of us have our little weaknesses of digestion, of nerves, and of
disposition that we know of, as well as others that we are not
acquainted with. And what is the use of running the risk of having these
picked out and made worse in this dangerous and unpleasant manner, just
for the sake of a little temporary indulgence?
Moreover, while it is admitted that most of these harmful effects of
alcohol are produced by its use in excess, it is daily becoming a more
and more difficult matter to decide just how much is "excess." It
certainly differs widely in different individuals, and in different
organs and parts in the same body. An amount of alcohol which one man
might possibly take without harm may greatly injure another; and its
frequent use, though it does not produce the slightest sign of
intoxication, or even of discomfort, or headache, may be slowly and
fatally damaging the cells of the liver or kidney. In fact, the
conviction is growing among scientists that alcohol does the greatest
harm in this slow, insidious way without its user's realizing it in any
way until too late to break the fearful habit.
It may even be perfectly true that alcohol seriously injures not more
than ten or fifteen per cent of those who take it in small quantities;
but how can you tell whether you, or your liver, or kidney, or nerve
cells, belong in the ten per cent or the ninety per cent class? On
general principles, it would hardly seem worth while making the test
simply for the sake of finding out. You never can _quite_ tell what
alcohol has done to you, until the _post mortem_ (after death)
examination--and then the question will not interest you very much.
Its Effect upon Character. Just as alcohol deadens the body and the
senses, especially the higher ones--so it has a terrible effect upon the
mental and moral sides of our natures. The results of the use of alcohol
are so well known that it is unnecessary here to either describe or
picture them. All that is needed is to keep our eyes open upon the
street, and read the police reports. What good effects upon man's better
nature has alcohol to show as an offset for this dreadful tendency to
bring out the worst and lowest in man?
Increasing Knowledge of the Bad Effects of Alcohol is Decreasing its
Use. It is most impressive that almost everything we have found out
about alcohol in the short time that we have been studying it carefully
has been to its discredit. Fifty years ago beer and wine, all over the
civilized world, were commonly regarded as foods. Now they are not
considered true foods, but harmful beverages. Fifty years ago alcohol
was believed to improve the digestion and increase the appetite. Now we
know that it does neither. It was believed to increase working power,
and has now been clearly shown to diminish it. It was supposed to
increase the thinking power and stimulate the imagination, and now we
know that it dulls and muddles both.
Fifty years ago it was freely used as medicine for all sorts of
illnesses, both by doctor and patient; it was supposed to stimulate the
heart, to sustain the strength, to increase the power of the body to
resist disease, and to sustain and support life in emergencies. Now we
know that practically all these claims are unfounded, and that such
value as it has in medicine is chiefly as a narcotic, as a deadener of
the sense of discomfort. As a result, it is already used in medicine
only about one-fourth as much as it was fifty years ago, and its use is
still steadily decreasing.
Fifty years ago, in this country, in England, and on the continent of
Europe, farm laborers and servants living in the house, expected so many
pints or quarts of ale or beer a day, as part of their regular food
rations, just as they now would expect milk or tea or coffee. It was
only a few years ago that the great steamship companies stopped issuing
_grog_, or raw spirits, to the sailors in their employ, as part of their
daily ration, because they at last came to realize how harmful were its
effects. And a score of similar instances could be mentioned, showing
that the unthinking and general use of alcohol as a beverage at our
tables is steadily and constantly diminishing. Great temperance
societies are springing up in this and other civilized countries and are
having a powerful influence in showing the harm of the use of alcohol
and in inducing people to abstain from using it.
This movement is only fairly started, but is being hastened by such
practical and important influences as the experience of many of the
great business corporations, such as railroads, steamship companies,
insurance companies, banks, and trust companies, which support the
findings of science against alcohol in almost every respect. On account
of the manner in which alcohol unconsciously dulls the senses and blurs
the judgment, these companies began long ago weeding out from their
employ all men who were known to drink to excess; then they began to
reject those who were likely to occasionally over-indulge, or take it
too freely; and now, finally, many of them, particularly the railway and
steamship companies, will not employ--except in the lowest and poorest
paid classes of their service--and will not promote to any position
which puts men in charge of human life and limb, those who use alcohol
in any form or amount.
Nearly all the captains, for instance, of our great trans-atlantic
liners, whose duties in storm or fog keep them on the bridge on
continuous duty for forty-eight, sixty, and even seventy-two hours at a
stretch, with thousands of lives depending upon their courage and their
judgment, are total abstainers. And while twenty-five years ago they
used to think that they could not go through these long sieges of storm
duty without plenty of wine or whiskey, they now find that they are far
better off without any alcoholic drink.
Another powerful force in the same direction is our insurance companies,
practically all of whom now will refuse to insure any man known
habitually to use alcohol to excess, because where lists have been kept
of their policy-holders showing which were users of alcohol and which
total abstainers, their records show that the death rate among the users
of alcohol is some twenty per cent greater than among the total
abstainers. A similar result has also been reached in the companies that
insure against sickness, whose drinking members average nearly twice as
many weeks of sickness during the year as the abstaining ones. So both
of these two great groups of business corporations are becoming powerful
agencies for the promotion of temperance.
Within fifty years from now the habitual use of alcohol will probably
have become quite rare. It is already becoming "good form" among the
best people not to drink; and the fashion will spread, as the bad
effects of alcohol become more generally understood.
TOBACCO
Smoking, a Senseless Habit. Smoking is the curious act of drawing
smoke into the mouth and puffing it out again. Why this custom should
have become so widespread is even a greater puzzle than is the drinking
of alcohol. In civilized countries at least, it is a custom of much more
recent growth than "drinking," as it was introduced into Europe from
America by the early explorers, notably those sent out by Sir Walter
Raleigh. As tobacco-smoke is neither a solid nor a liquid, but only a
gas, no one could even pretend that it is of any value, either as food
or drink. All that can be said of smoking, even by the most inveterate
smoker, is that it is a habit, of no possible use or value to body or
mind, and of great possibilities of harm.
Another singular thing about smoking is that its effects vary so greatly
according to the individual who practices it, that scarcely any two
smokers can agree as to the exact reason why they smoke, except that in
some vague way smoking gives them pleasure. The only thing that they do
agree upon is that they miss it greatly, and crave it keenly whenever
they stop it. The only thing that stands out clearly about smoking is
that while it does no good, and does not even give one definite and
uniform kind of pleasure, it does form a powerful and over-mastering
habit, which is exceedingly difficult to break, and develops a craving
which can be satisfied only by continuing, or returning, to it.
It is Very Difficult to Break the Habit of Smoking. As a matter of
practical experience, not one smoker in fifty who tries to swear off
ever succeeds in doing so permanently. Why then should any one form a
habit, which is of no benefit whatever, which is expensive, unpleasant
to others, and which may become exceedingly injurious, simply for the
sake of saddling one's self with a craving which will probably never be
got rid of all the rest of one's life? The strongest and most positive
thing that a smoker can say about his pipe, or cigar, or cigarette, is
that he could not get along without it; and he will usually add that he
wishes he had never begun to use it. You are better off in every way by
letting tobacco strictly alone, and never teaching yourself to like it.
Tobacco is Not a Natural Taste. As might be expected, in the case of
such an utterly useless drug, we have no natural liking or instinct for
it; and the taste for it has to be acquired just as in the case of
alcohol, only as a rule with greater difficulty and with more painful
experiences of headache, nausea, and other discomforts.
[Illustration: A BOARD OF HEALTH EXAMINATION FOR WORKING PAPERS
The Board of Health of the City of New York requires that all children
between the ages of fourteen and sixteen shall have certificates of good
health before they can be employed in business. Any employer who hires a
child without such a certificate is liable to a heavy fine. This law is
to protect the health of both the worker and the public.]
Nicotine, a Powerful Poison. Tobacco contains and depends largely for
its effects upon considerable amounts of a substance called _nicotine_.
This is a powerful poison, even in very small doses, with only feeble
narcotic, or pain-deadening, powers; but fortunately, the larger part of
it is destroyed in the process of burning. Enough, however, is carried
over in the smoke, or absorbed through the butt of the cigar or
cigarette, or the mouth-piece of the pipe, to injure the nervous system,
especially in youth. As will be seen in the chapter upon the "Care of
the Heart," it especially attacks the nerves supplying the heart, and is
thus most harmful to growing boys.
On account of its injurious effects upon the nerves of the heart,
smoking has long been forbidden by trainers and coachers to all athletes
who are training for a contest or race. In addition to its poisonous
effects upon the nervous system, tobacco also does great harm to boys
and young men by providing them with an attractive means of filling up
their time and keeping themselves amused without either bodily or mental
effort. The boy who smokes habitually will find it much easier to waste
his time in day-dreams and gossip, and tends to become a loafer and an
idler.
The Advantage that Non-Smokers have over Smokers. When both of these
influences are taken together, it is little wonder that the
investigations of Dr. Seaver, the medical director of Yale, showed that
out of the 187 men in the class of 1881, those not using tobacco during
their college course had gained, over the users of tobacco, twenty-two
per cent in weight, twenty-nine per cent in height, nineteen per cent in
growth of chest, and sixty-six per cent in increase of lung capacity.
[Illustration: A TEST OF CLEAR HEAD AND STEADY NERVES
The boy who smokes cigarettes finds it increasingly difficult to obtain
a position in a bank or other large commercial house.]
In the Amherst graduating class for the same year, the non-users of
tobacco had gained twenty-four per cent more in weight, thirty-seven per
cent more in height, and forty-two per cent more in growth of chest than
had the smokers. In lung capacity, the tobacco users had lost two cubic
inches, while the abstainers had gained six cubic inches.
As a wet-blanket upon ambition, a drag upon development, and a handicap
upon success in life, the cigarette has few equals and no superiors. The
stained fingers and sallow complexion of the youthful cigarette smoker
will generally result in his being rejected when applying for a
position. The employer knows that the non-smoking boy is much more
likely to succeed in his work and win his way to a position of trust and
influence than is the "cigarette fiend." Especially in these days of
sharp competition, no boy can afford to contract a habit which will so
handicap him in making his way as will the cigarette habit.
CHAPTER XI
THE HEART-PUMP AND ITS PIPE-LINE SYSTEM
THE BLOOD VESSELS
Where the Body Does its Real Eating. When once the food has been
dissolved in the food-tube and absorbed by the cells of its walls, the
next problem is how it shall be sent all over the body to supply the
different parts that are hungry for it; for we must remember that the
real eating of the food is done by the billions upon billions of tiny
living cells of which the body is made up.
The Pipe Lines of the Body. What do we do when we want to carry water,
or oil, or sewage, quickly and surely from one place to another? We put
down a pipe line. We are wonderfully proud of our systems of water and
gas supply, and of the great pipe lines that carry oil from wells in
Ohio and Indiana clear to the Atlantic coast. But the very first man
that ever laid a pipe to carry water was simply imitating nature--only
about ten or fifteen million years behind her. No sooner has our food
passed through the cells in the wall of the food-tube, than it goes
straight into a set of tiny tubes--the blood-pipes, or _blood
vessels_--which carry it to the heart; and the heart pumps it all over
the body.
Veins and Arteries. These blood-tubes running from the walls of the
food-tube to the heart are called _veins_; and the other tubes through
which the heart pumps the blood all over the body are called _arteries_.
If you will spell this last word "air-teries," it may help you to
remember why the name was given to these tubes ages ago. When the body
was examined after death, they were found to be empty and hence were
not unnaturally supposed to carry air throughout the body, and
"air-teries" they have remained ever since. While absurd in one way, the
name is not so far amiss in another, for an important part of their work
is to carry all over the body swarms of tiny baskets, or sponges, of
oxygen taken from the air.
Why the Blood is Red. The first and main purpose of the blood-pipes
and the heart is to carry the dissolved food from the stomach and
intestines to the cells all over the body. But the cells need air as
well as food; and, to carry this, there are little basket-cells--the
_red corpuscles_. Take a drop of blood and put it under a microscope,
and you will see what they look like. The field will be simply crowded
with tiny, rounded lozenges--the red cells of the blood, which give it
its well-known color.
[Illustration: BLOOD CORPUSCLES (Greatly magnified)
_A_, red blood; _B_, white blood.]
The White Corpuscles or Scavengers of the Blood. As the blood-tubes
are not only supply-pipes but sewers and drainage canals as well, it is
a good thing to have some kind of tiny animals living and moving about
in them, which can act as scavengers and eat up some of the waste and
scraps; and hence your microscope will show you another kind of little
blood corpuscle, known, from the fact that it is not colored, as the
_white corpuscle_. These corpuscles are little cells of the body, which
in shape and behavior are almost exactly like an _ameba_--a tiny "bug,"
seen only under the microscope, that lives in ditch-water. Under the
microscope the white corpuscles look like little round disks, about
one-third larger than the red corpuscles, and with a large kernel, or
_nucleus_, in their centre. They have the same power of changing their
shape, of surrounding and swallowing scraps of food, as has the ameba,
and are a combination of scavengers and sanitary police. When disease
germs get into the blood, they attack and endeavor to eat and digest
them; and whenever inflammation, or trouble of any sort, begins in any
part of the body, they hurry to the scene in thousands, clog the
blood-tubes and squeeze their way out through the walls of the smallest
blood-tubes to attack the invaders or repair the damage. This causes the
well-known swelling and
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