Cornell University Library SB 455.E3 1903 A third pot-pourri, 3 1924 000 403 968 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924000403968 A THIED POT-POUEEI BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Twenty-sixth Edition. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6(Z. POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN, With an Appijndix by Lady Constance Lytton. Dean Hole, in an article upon the work in the Nineteenth Century, says : — ' There is not time for farther enjoyment of this sweet, spicy "Pot-Pourri;" no space for further extracts from this clever and comprehensive book ; only for two more earnest words to the reader — Buy it.' Fifth Impression. Large Crown 8vo. 7s, Qd. MORE POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN, ' This second volume has all the charm of the first. It is just the friendly chat of a lady who has not only read, books, but knows all about her kitchen, and. If possible, more about the garden she loves. On each, sound, useful information is pleasantly conveyed.' PtTNCH. London : SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 "Waterloo Place, S.W. A THIRD POT-POURRI BY MES. C. W. EAELE AUTHOK OF ' POT-POUBRI FBOM A SURREY &ARDEM ' ETC. SECOND EDITION LONDON SMITH, ELDBE & CO., 15 WATEELOO PLACE 1903 [All rights reserTed] Home now your comrades come again, But you come not. For them life's triumphs still remain ; You draw Death's lot. Oh, lying far from home away. Peel not so far ; For, though all come, my heart does stay There where you are. B. Fuller Maitland. June 1902 TO THE MEMOBY OF SYDNEY EABLE I DEDICATE THIS BOOK I WISH to offer my very best thanks to my friend, Miss Adela Curtis, and my niece,. Lady Constance Lytton, for the very material help they have given me with this book. CONTENTS HEALTH PAGE Beasons for more about health — A stranger's letter — En- couragement from Dr. Halg — Details of my diet — Eeason for early breakfast — Asparagus poison — Arguments of opponents — Dulness of diet — Eeason of benefit felt on first going back to mixed foods — Test of underfeeding — Dentist story — Opposition of medical profession — Their indifference to diet — The ordinary man at his breakfast-table— Doctors to be educated by the public — Uses of Plasmon — Necessity for mothers and children to learn physiology — Definition of uric acid — Instincts not safe guides — Difficulties of hos- pitality — Lord Boberts on ' treating ' — List of useful books — Home education of girls : two methods — Hindoo love story ........ HEALTH OF OTHERS Imaginary conversation between two doctors — Advertisements versus Dr. Haig — Eemedies for depression on beginning diet — The old need not fear change of diet — Tea-drinking and the Chinese — The Bible and meat-eating — Pythagoreans and the bean — ' Better Food for Boys,' and the schoolmaster — Difficulties of the diet — Fat and thin women — Mediseval and Greek idea — Individual oases — Maeterlinck's testimony 40 A THIRD POT-POURRI SUPPLEMENT PAGE Home started in Buckinghamshire, under Dr. Eaig, for in- struction and practice in uric-acid-free foods — A second home in Hampshire for fleshless diet, recommended by Mr. Eustace Miles, M.A. — Critical paper, by a patient of Dr. Haig — Dr. Haig's answer to same 76 GOATS Goats at Naples — Possible solution for milk difficulty in rural districts — A toothless generation — Ignorance as to nourish- ing value of separated milk — Mr. Hook on goat-keeping — Personal experiment^Roast kid and agneau-de-lait — Reasons for prejudice against goats — Suggestions for the philanthropic — Immunity of goats from tubercular disease — Day at Guildford — Almonds — The Astolat Press — Mr. Gates' herd of Toggenburg goats — Feeding of goats — Chemistry of food to be taught in elementary schools . WHOLESOME FOOD ON THREE SHILLINGS A WEEK CornhUl ' budgets — Food reformers and lentils — Taste for savoury foods — Nervous appetites — Cabinet Minister and charwoman — The healthy foods — Maeterlinck's appeal against meat and alcohol— Food values — To feed a family of four on 12s. a week— Nut milk — A week's menus, and cost — Ditto, with once-a-week cooking — Advantage of living in country — Goat's milk at a London dairy — Cheapest and healthiest diet at 2s. id. a week — To wean servants from the beef-beer-tea faith — Possible purpose of meat-eating phase in evolution — A philanthropist's experiment Amateur farmers — A pair of Bushey art students — Beeeipts 107 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED A TEAR . . 133 CONTENTS FEBBUAB7 NOTES FROM NINE MONTHS OF A SCRAPPY JOURNAL 1901-1902 PAOE Forcing cut branches — Amygdalus Davidiana — Early spring flowers under glass — Bulbous irises — Epimediums in pots- Letter to ' Westminster Gazette ' on railway carriages and tuberculosis — Congress on tuberculosis in 1901 . . 152 MARCH Valesoure — Tree heath and briar-wood pipes — Fragrant herbs and thyme carpet — Aloes and agaves — Cork-trees — Frfijus — Buins of the Tuileries : De I'Orme and BuUant — Meis- sonier's picture of the burnt Tuileries — Cannes— Eucalyptus- trees — La Mortola — Arrival at Florence— Turban ranun- culus — Mino da Fiesole — Letter about Florence . . 160 APRIL Arrival at Naples — Museum — English Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals at Naples — Slaughter-houses in England — Art objects from Pompeii sometimes echoes of modern Japan — Baias — Coleridge and Harrison on Gibbon — South of Italy less affected by barbaric invasions than other parts — Aquarium — Goats — Dr. Munthe on the housing of the poor — Mrs. Jameson's picnic — Pompeii : smallness of the houses — Mr. Eolfe on Pompeiian pins and matches — Cenotaphs and war memorials — Pompeiian gardens as models for London — Sorrento and Amalfi — Garibaldi on cremation — ' Aurora Leigh ' 175 MAT Apology for more gardening notes — Journey to Ireland — ^New English Art Club— A modern landscape recalling Claude at his best— Spring in the West of Ireland- Glorification of xii A THIRD POT-POURRI P>GE flat garden by old yuccas — Fersian ranunculus — Want of thinning out and pruning a universal fault — An East Coast garden — Cultivation of Sydrangea pamculata — ' The Wild Geese ' — Gardening letter from German friend — Two good spring plants — A sundial — Floating bouquets — The May horticultural show 203 JUNE Cuttings of double gorse and ericas — A gorse hedge — Gerarde on Solomon's seal — Preserving tulip bulbs after flowering — Dictamnus fraximella in Wiltshire — The globe artichoke as food for man and goats — Peace — Glasnevin — Mr. Linden's garden at Brussels — Old wistaria and bignonias grown as shrubs — How to tell a good soil — Mr. G. F. Wilson's wild garden — ^How to grow Portugal laurels in boxes — Tamarisks and sea-buckthorns grown inland — The beauties of Polygonum cojrapociMm— London and the 24th of June — The rose show at Holland House . . . . 224 JVLT An account of lately bought gardening books — A lost poem by Milton — Vegetable gardens and rotation of . crops — How to easily catalogue a garden — More half-hardy plants suitable for large pots — Carnations at Mr. Douglas' — Spanish rush- broom . . ... ... 244 AVOUST Cultivation of various plants — Outdoor fig culture— Ehubarb in France — Effects of Nicotiana syl/oestris alba — Potatoes in succession — Colonial branch of Swanley Horticultural Col- lege for Women — ' Animal life ' — Letter about monkey's food — Hampton Court garden and the old railing — The motor and Bramshill — BuOding a house — Eose planting — Cooking receipts — Autumn work in a German country-house kitchen — Household receipts 266 CONTENTS xiii SEPTEMBEB Visit to Northamptonshire — Peterboro', Fotheringhay, and Kirby Hall — Iris in pans for spring flowering— A last year's autumn letter from Germany — Kew and the smoke curse— Pruning baot of shrubby plants to imitate sub-tropieal gardening — Japanese anemones in shade — Sunflower seeds as a possible farming industry 305 OCTOBEB Solomon's love of nature- An old letter— Zola and fresh air — Old Harwich inn and curious specimen of Clematis Vitalba — Mesembryanthemums for cliff gardens — An old monastery fruit-wall — Three Pergolas — A long-wanted book on trees and shrubs — An old Suffolk breviary — Stories— Wild flowers for garden culture — Wellingtonias on a German hillside — Chrysanthemum culture — Mr. Morley's gift to Cambridge . 326 THE JOURNAL OF A TOUR IN THE NORTH OE EUROPE IN 1825-26 . . .356 THE LAST LETTERS OF CAPTAIN SYDNEY EARLE, COLDSTREAM GUARDS . . 374 INDEX .419 A THIED POT-POUEEI HEALTH Beasons for more about health — A stranger's letter — Encouragement from Dr. Haig — Details of my diet — Beason for early breakfast — Asparagus poison — Arguments of opponents — Dulness of diet — Reason of benefit felt in going back to mixed foods — Test of underfeeding — Dentist story — Opposition of medical profession — Their indifference to diet — The ordinary man at his breakfast- table — Doctors to be educated by the pubUo — Uses of Plasmon — Necessity for mothers and children to learn physiology — De- finition of uric acid— Instincts not safe guides — DifEoulties of hospitality — Lord Eoberts on 'treating' — List of useful books — Home education of girls : two methods — Hindoo love story. I MUST apologise to the public for the apparent poor- ness of idea in again repeating my somewhat tiresome title. I heard Mr. Motley, the historian, once say, a title should be ' telling and selling.' A ' Third Pot-Pourri ' will very likely turn out to be neither of these, but it seemed to me the most honest title I could think of towards those who were kind enough, not only to read, but to like, my former books. They may find the matter in this book better or worse ; the manner is exactly the same as before, and it could hardly be otherwise at my age. I must, perhaps, also apologise for putting the Health chapters prominently forward at the beginning of this book, and I can only ask those who have no interest in B 2 A THIRD POT-POURRI the subject to skip them altogether. They are written for those who asked for them. The chapter headed ' March ' in my second book, ' More Pot-Pourri,' which contained my personal confessions about diet, brought me such a number of touching and appealing letters from people of all sorts in every part of the world, that I cannot help thinking it almost a duty I owe to the readers of that book, to tell them as plainly as I can what I have learnt further about the subject, which for want of a better title we may call Diet, or Food, and its effects on the health of all classes of the community. A great many people will merely laugh and think it very conceited and ridiculous that I should set up my opinion in matters of health against the great majority of the medical profession ; but to anyone who has acquired good health, even late in Ufe, the blessing is so inestimable, that it is only natural to try to help others to attain it. A note received the other day from a complete stranger stimulated me, perhaps, more than any other to feel that the knowledge and experience I have gained in the last three years might really be of some use to a few human beings. In this last of several letters, my un- known correspondent says, ' I am not likely to forget to associate your name with my improvement, and you, on your side, vriU have the satisfaction of knowing you have been the means of brightening and bettering our family's existence.' Now, it seems to me that, however ridiculous it may appear to be very much absorbed in any one subject, if taking the trouble to publish a book upon it can call forth such an expression as this, and benefit, say, half-a-dozen famihes, I am well rewarded. As a further justification of my action in this matter, I should like to quote what T. B. Brown says in one of his delightful ' Letters ' : ' I believe that Jowett, like so many Englishmen, carried HEALTH 3 the principle of not "pinning his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at," so far as to forget that, besides the peeking daws, there are the craving hearts of others . . . craving for the food which, God help us, is not too abundantly spread upon the tables of this world.' Sym- pathy comes naturally to those who have prosperous circumstances, and I, who enjoy life so abundantly, in spite of age and sorrows, on account of my health, cannot help responding to appeals, from those who suffer, for further information as to the means by which I obtained it. I am always being asked what I do myself. So far as I can, I will teU this exactly, first briefly stating that my health, which was good three years ago, has been dis- tinctly improving both as regards endurance and nerve- power, and this in spite of heavy trials and sorrows borne a great deal alone, which to a nature like mine, after a life spent as mine has been, is no small additional suffer- ing. Added to this, late in life I have had thrown upon me the entire management of house, garden, servants, stables, hospitality, which means a great strain on memory, especially after a lifetime with a man who shared all this with me, taking on himself the sole re- sponsibility of much of it, and financially directing the whole. My own conviction is, that though I started by myself on what I consider the right road as regards diet and health, yet without the assistance and support of Dr. Haig I should never have had courage to persevere against all opposition, and so have reached a level of health which has enabled me to withstand all this, and be so much better and stronger than either my mother or most of my aunts and uncles, who, with constitutions strong enough to live to a great old age, did so with much suffering from constant^ailments — loss of hearing, sight, and brain-power. b2 4 A THIRD POT-POURRI A great many people may think that my improved health is a matter of imagination, and I am the last to deny that the mental attitude has an immense effect on the success of diet ; but with due allowance for this, my present increased mental and physical power is a somewhat unusual record, considering my family history, which is one of strong constitution and bad health. To come now to the details of my diet : At breakfast, 8 A.M., I eat a thick slice of home-made brown bread of the kind known as ' Graham,' made without yeast [see receipts in August] (to be bought from Heywood, 42 Queen Anne Street, London, W., but better made at home), with butter and marmalade, and a cup of hot separated milk tinged with coffee. I have reserved to myself the right to continue this self-indulgence of a small amount of coffee in my milk, in spite of Dr. Haig's warnings : first, because I so dislike the taste of milk, and secondly, because it leaves me something tangible to leave off in case advanc- ing years should make me less well. But I have a nephew who looks with horror at an aunt whom he used to think of as a kind of prophetess, who sits down at 8 in the morning in front of a coffee-pot. People often ask me why I breakfast at 8. My general answer is that I like it, and that it gives me a nice long morning ; but the real reason why I recommend it to others is, that if food is taken at all in the morning, it must be taken five hours before the luncheon time, as I think pihng on another meal before the previous one is digested is one of the many causes of ill-health in the present day. At my second meal, 1.30, 1 eat potatoes and vegetables that are in season, experiencing no harm from young peas or beans, but finding asparagus quite a poison to me. Three years ago I wrote to Dr. Haig, saying that I had been less well, and asking if it could be from asparagus, as I had been eating it twice a day for ten days during my HEALTH 5 full spring supply. He answered that, as far as he knew, asparagus was quite harmless, and that he thought I must have taken a chill. Last year, on the same symptoms reappearing, I wrote again. Dr. Haig replied as follows : ' I write a line at once to tell you what I know will interest you — that the asparagus is the cause of all your troubles.' This did not surprise me very much, as I knew that thirty years ago Dr. Garrod, the great gout specialist of that time, used to forbid asparagus to his patients. In winter, for the sake of change, I sometimes eat some well- cooked lentils. At this meal I generally eat salad, with about an ounce of cheese and a good big slice of home- made white bread with butter. If I still feel hungry I eat a milky pudding and some stewed fruit. This is unwise for those who are dyspeptics, as fruit and vegetables are best kept for separate meals (see Dr. Kellogg's ' Science in the Kitchen ') ; fortunately, I have had a good digestion all my life. My great object has always been, within certain health conditions, to keep my feeding as nearly as possible that which wUl fit in with the non-dietists who surround me. For instance, I always serve potatoes with fish, that I may take something and so save the depressing effect of a person sitting so long at table without eating anything ; and once or twice a month I have been known to take a little bit of fish if I fancied it, especially if I have been lunching or dining out, though I have proved conclusively that so simple a food (according to ordinary ideas) as plain boiled fish, if I eat it two or three days running, has a distinctly injurious effect on the rheumatic pain in my hip. This sensitiveness to change of food is one of the strongest arguments used by the opponents of diet, and I confess it has some disadvantages ; but this applies to all forms of abstinence, and I would rather suffer occasionally than submit to an habitually low standard of health. The 6 A THIRD POT-POURRI enemies of dieting — and most doctors to whom I have spoken about it are of the number — declare that the great objection to strict dieting is that it weakens the digestion. This, I think, is quite true of the Salisbury diet — namely, meat and hot water, as that gives the digestion next to nothing to do, and dilutes the gastric juices with quan- tities of hot water ; but Dr. Haig's diet of cereals, cheese, milk, salad, raw fruit, and vegetables, is by no means easy of digestion, and the quickness with which I am now made aware of the harmfulness of many things that I used to take with apparent impunity, is in my opinion due, not to a weakened digestion, but to a return of healthy sensitiveness, induced by living for a long time on the natural food of man. I am quite sure if meat were given to horses, cows, or monkeys, though starvation might force them to eat it, they would be made very ill by such a diet. Eightly or wrongly, this seems to me the attitude to take towards the objection raised against what is called the ' weak digestion ' of the vegetarian. We have always been told that dyspeptics live for ever — this only means that nature is severely kind and sets pain as a sentinel to warn them when they have eaten something which they are unable to assimilate, and ex- perience teaches them what to take and what to avoid ; whereas the person of strong digestion, warned by no suffering, swallows everything and thinks he may do so with impunity. We all know how healthy children and healthy animals show when anything disagrees with them, and some of us well remember how the old nurses used to say, ' The sick baby always thrives,' meaning the baby whose stomach refused to be overloaded. At 5 o'clock, for the meal which I still call ' Tea,' with the same truthfulness that I say ' The sun sets ' though I know it doesn't, I drink one or two teacups of separated milk and hot water in equal proportions, and eat two or HEALTH 7 three pieces of toast made from home-made white bread, with butter, jam or honey, or watercress. The meal at night when I am alone I own I seldom enjoy. I sometimes, besides home-made bread, have melted cheese (see receipts), or macaroni, sometimes rice and onions or other vegetable, with bread and butter and a little dried or fresh fruit, or both. At meals I drink very little indeed, milk being counted as nourishment rather than drink, but if I feel thirsty I take a Uttle water — great thirst I should look upon as a sign of bad health, unless produced by excessive exercise. It is not a necessity, but I constantly drink a tumbler, or half a tumbler, of either moderately hot or cold water on getting up in the morning or on going to bed, or perhaps both. Many people would say, ' So strict a way of diet would make life unbearable,' but after a time this strictness so changes the taste that the simpler foods are really enjoyed, and I distinctly think, that when people have dieted for several years, the amount of harm done by an occasional relapse is so small that the social convenience of it makes it worth while, so long as it is acknowledged as a conces- sion to weakness and not a thing to be continued. It is what is done every day that matters. People often tell me they feel so much better when they leave off the diet. This would only be a proof to me that they had not strictly dieted long enough, or had been under-nourished, and that the return to stimulating food does for them what alcohol does for those who already have too much in their system, and is merely a putting back of ultimate cure. I think all who have tried the diet for some time can always regulate it according to their varying requirements, if they will read the books and give the matter a little consideration. I, for instance, am always being told that I underfeed, and Dr. Haig never sees me without expressing his surprise that I am as well 8 A THIRD POT-POURRI as I am, considering that I live a good deal on vegetables and certainly, as a rule, take much below the correct amount of proteids for my age and weight. My under- feeding cannot be serious, for I sleep my six or seven hours, have not lost or gained flesh, and feel perfectly well. I often have tried to add food of a more nourishing kind, such as curd cheese, Plasmon biscuits, milk, &c., but after a few days I generally find it has a tendency to bring on a slight return of rheumatic stiffness. I am inclined to think that the doctors who preach great moderation, whatever the diet, such as Dr. Keith and Dr. Dewey, have a good deal of truth on their side, as, though the proper standard of strength will never be attained by the under- fed, still the full allowance of food may go to feed the particular weakness or ailment which people of a certain age are almost sure to have, and will thus prevent them reaching the level of health they might have on a lower standard. People seem to assimilate food so differently that, given there is no permanent pallor, especially no very- white gums, or sense of fatigue, each one must judge a little for himself what he requires. Did I not suffer less from fatigue than I have ever done in my life, I should try harder to live up to the standard settled by physiologists as necessary to health, and which would doubtless be essential were I younger. I tried some Grape-nuts in the winter and felt a hot Hercules for a few days, but I beheve them to be distinctly a gout-making food. Two or three years ago I had occasion to go to an oculist to see if my spectacles required strengthening. I begged him to test my eyes thoroughly. At the end of the interview I asked him if in every respect they were up to a good average standard for my age. He said most certainly they were, and in a most healthy condition. I then asked whether he would be surprised to hear that I had for some years been what is called a vegetarian. He HEALTH 9 immediately assumed a serious medical manner and said, ' Up to now it seems to have done you no harm, but, please, don't go on Tvith it too long ! ' the manner implying that terrible things might happen. I smilingly rephed that I promised I would give it up the moment I was less well. I mention this to encourage people to meet the opposition which they must expect from all doctors, nurses, aurists, oculists, and dentists — in fact, all the minds trained on the lines of the regular accepted medical teaching. The study of food in relation to health is a branch of medical science as yet in its infancy, for the best authorities, as may be seen in the standard text-books on Materia Medica, own that they know next to nothing of meta- bolism, or the changes undergone by food in the body. A great many people tell me that diet involves so deep a knowledge of physiology that they cannot possibly undertake it. They cannot risk the responsibiUty of going against their doctor. They say to me, ' How can I fight a man who has given his lifetime to the study of these things, and who must know so much more about them than I can, even if I give my best attention to studying them ? ' But is this the truth ? Has not the doctor been taught to study drugs for the cure of disease rather than food as the basis of health ? He never gives diet much consideration except in the case of over-eating in severe iUness. In giving a mother rules for the health of her children, doctors will constantly recommend fresh air, exercise, and above all sufficient nourishment ; but they rarely give any details as to the best hind of nourish- ment. I have heard of a doctor who recommended a non-flesh diet to one of his patients, and on expressing his surprise at finding he had really followed it, said, 'There are at least 120 of my patients who would be benefited by it, but not one of them would do it.' I think this is only natural, as the moment the patient was lo A THIRD POT-POURRI better he would say, ' Does Dr. practise this diet himself and in his own family ? If not, why am I to do it now I am better ? ' Can anyone think that vaccination would be so universally accepted if doctors and their children were not themselves vaccinated ? Only those people who have strength of character enough to take responsibility against pubUc opinion should attempt the simpler food diet. To begin it hap- hazard with no knowledge and little faith is almost bound to end in failure. The undeniable success of the diet upon myself has caused many people to say, ' There is no doubt this diet suits you,' with an emphasis on the ' you,' intended to convey ' what suits you, would be fatal to me.' With these I go no further. The real fact is an immense number of people are very fairly well, and much enjoy the good things of hfe, including food, between their attacks of illness. They entirely forget the expense of time, strength, and money entailed by these little attacks of colds, bilious headaches, feverishness, &g., the mornings spent in bed, the afternoons on a sofa in a darkened room, the days lost at business from bronchitis and influenza. If people could once be persuaded that the reduction of luxurious food does mean improved health, I think I should hear less about the extreme self-denial involved in . my diet. The man who comes down in the morning and grumbles because he likes neither of the two hot dishes provided for breakfast, would be the last to consider him- self either a luxurious liver or an invalid ; but, having been convinced by the preaching of years that he must ' keep himself up ' by eating well, any change from a three-meal a day meat diet, without considering sand- wiches at 5 o'clock tea, strikes him with horror as a low diet which will result in ' running down ' and losing the strength of mind and body so necessary for work. HEALTH II This ' running down ' does indeed happen not infrequently as a result of the old-fashioned unintelligent vegetarianism. A great obstacle to change of diet is the family doctor. I have known two or three who sadly needed it them- selves, and having tried it more or less for a few months, pronounced it a failure because the good result was not instantaneous. The best results never come under eighteen months or two years. I wish to warn people that if they consult their doctor no diet will be tried. The doctors must be educated by the public. The ma- jority of them have no idea of giving up their own food and social enjoyment, though I have heard of a few of those very men recommending it to their wives ! Doctors are good kind men on their own lines, and devoted to their profession as long as it means curing iUness by drugs ; but a little reflection teaches us that the members of a learned profession are naturally the very persons least disposed to innovation upon the practices which custom and prescription have rendered sacred in their eyes. A lawyer is not the person to consult upon bold reforms in jurisprudence, and a physician can scarcely be expected to own that diet may cure diseases which resist an armament of phials. Every feeling of a doctor must be against a system which does not profess to be a cure of active disease, but a radical reverse of all the pre- conceived ideas of maintaining health, and is also a denial of the principles taught by the College of Surgeons. AU the same there are hopeful signs that a great change is coming about. Dr. Lionel Beale used to tell young practitioners many years ago that they would often come across cases for which starvation was the only cure, but he said, 'Of course, if a patient came to you and you advised him to starve himself, you would never see him again. But there are many ways of inculcating good advice without shocking the nerves of sensitive people 12 A THIRD POT-POURRI who suppose that abstinence from food for a few hours means death. Tell your patient not to take any solid food for a week. Order him a Uttle beef-tea three times a day. Towards evening he may take with it a biscuit, or a little dry toast. ... By a little exercise of ingenuity you may suggest various things to take that will satisfy him, but which altogether will not amount to much.' To-day's post brings me this account of what is called a ' hoUday doctor ' in a neighbouring village. The patient, a strict vegetarian, had caught measles. She writes : ' We had a sensible young doctor who knew nothing of my ordinary way of living. He gave me no medicine, and recommended me to give up lobster and pork. He was much interested because I had rheumatism in the joints, which he said he had heard of in measles, but never seen. As to medicines, he said he never took any himself. As I said I did not like them, he said he would not offer me any till I asked him for some. " But," he added, " most people will have them, even if one only sends them a little coloured water." With high fever I have always before this had headache, but this time I had no headache. The rash rushed out, and vanished suddenly the second day. I have had a most comfortable illness, and really actually feel the better for it.' The recommendation not to eat pork and lobster makes me think of a story of forty years ago. An uncle of mine, Mr. Charles VilUers, returning from one of the German baths, told us he had been much amused by the German doctor in his parting instructions, saying, after a good deal of apologetic attempt to soften the blow, ' There is one thing I really must beg you not to eat, and that is bear's flesh ! ' The oft-repeated injunction of doctors to eat chicken and fish after illness has sometimes amusing results amongst the uneducated classes. A soldier who had been off duty for some days with a severe bilious attack came HEALTH 13 back and said with pride to the inquiring officer that he was much better, and his wife had given him a 'nice dinner of tinned salmon ! ' My last word is, if you want to try the diet on children, you must have both faith and knowledge enough to fight nine doctors out of ten, although in my experience, with adults, they are quite willing to leave all matters of food and even drink to the patients themselves, merely cautiously changing the wine or recommending none at aU. I had one friend, a doctor, who had the honesty to say to me after years of threatening me with every kind of misfortune, ' Mrs. Earle, what would happen to doctors if everybody lived as you do ? ' He also confessed to me, with great generosity, that in consequence of what I had said, no doubt assisted by the way the profession recom- mends Plasmon, he had had great success vrith two inebriate female patients by making them drink dissolved Plasmon, mixed with tea, milk, barley-water, &o. Plasmon should never be used without being first dissolved by boiling it in a little water, and this must be done even when it is introduced into puddings, cakes, biscuits, or any food or drink whatsoever. Plasmon is now being so much used by those who I consider are already suffering from over-feeding, that both Plasmon and Protene, as well as many other concentrated foods, promise to be, in my opinion, a considerable danger in the future. Sir Henry Thompson, in his most practical and temperately written book, ' Diet in Eelation to Age and Activity,' says : ' Eespecting the act of eating itself, it is desirable to add a few words here. Not many persons learn the importance of performing it rightly in youth and middle life. Indeed, it ought to be taught among other elementary lessons in physiology at every school in early life, a short course of which would be much more im- portant and far more interesting than some of the other 14 A THIRD POT-POURRI courses which the existing curriculum contains. I mean by this, a simple description of the chief internal organs connected with digestion and how they act. Every child at eight or ten years of age should know what becomes of his bread and butter, and of his meat, when he gets it. I can scarcely conceive a better subject than this for a simple and entertaining talk to a class of these young people, with a diagram on the wall showing the chief organs contained in the chest and abdomen. Another chat about respiration and the circulation of the blood would follow at a later period. The subject is regarded with suspicion by the public, from the imposing effect of the five-syllabled Greek term ' ' Physiology, ' ' which suggests the idea that I propose to teach young children " science " ! — as if that term, let me remark, whenever it is used, denoted anything more than an "exact knowledge re- specting the matter in hand." ' How many mothers possess this knowledge which Sir Henry Thompson declares should be famihar to 'every chUd of eight or ten ' ? Can it be so very abstruse and difficult if children of this age can begin to learn it through the medium of ' a simple and entertaining talk ' ? A gardener who means to be successful is not content to work on hearsay ; he takes care to acquaint himself with the best books on the chemistry of soils, and by careful experiment builds up for himself a first-hand knowledge of the best foods for his plants ; and the same process is followed by the horse-breeder and the farmer of crops and cattle. The human animal alone, most precious and costly of all, is reared on the traditions of nurses and doctors, the mother apparently not thinking it her business to know anything of its anatomy and physiology, or of the chemistry of the food on which its healthy growth must so largely depend. For want of such knowledge, moreover, she is not really capable of judging of the HEALTH IS fitness of either doctor or nurse. Many of the women who object that this subject is too difficult for them will spend hours every day in reading current works of fiction, history, biography, travel, politics, &e., in order to establish or keep up a reputation for being ' well-read,' ' cultured,' or whatever the phrase may be which conveys the im- pression that they can take intelhgent, if not brUliant, part in dinner-table conversation on the interests of the hour. If part of the time now spent by women in doing as a matter of course the work which contributes towards ' social success ' were to be given to the elements of physiology, hygiene, and the chemistry of food, the health of future generations might be enormously improved. These are not subjects which can give any social brilliance; they merely lay the foundation of physical, mental, and moral well-being in the family and the race. This is my reason for including at the end of this chapter a few of the books which quite clearly explain all that it is de- sirable to know ; Dr. AUinson's books, which are read and understood by thousands of the poorer classes, supply a good deal of instruction in a popular form. Eeturning from London, in February this year, where I had caught a cold in the head which never laid me up for an hour, I fancied I was a little less well. A friend sent me the American Dr. E. H. Dewey's book, ' A New Era for Women' — his text being Herbert Spencer's words: ' If there were no eating without hunger, and no drinking without thirst, then would the system be but seldom out of working order.' The book is full of useful information, his panacea being the abolition of breakfast and eatiag nothing till 12 or 1 o'clock. Out of curiosity I tried this for ten days with the same kind of benefit that I used to feel in old days when I took a tonic that suited me. I did not continue it for the same reasons which prevent my doing several things that I believe would be better for i6 A THIRD POT-POURRI me — the unsociability, and finding that I got too hungry by 1.30, the luncheon hour, which I could not conveniently change. I think a great many people who live on the ordinary food, and have eaten a large dinner the night before, will find benefit from cutting off breakfast alto- gether, or, at any rate, diminishing it. My great difficulty is when I pay visits, but as they seldom last for more than a week or ten days, and I have the courage to ask for servants' cheese even of the swellest butler, and as change of air always gives me an appetite, I generally come home feeling better than I went, whether I have underfed or not. This is the case even if I have eaten fish once or twice — boiled fish, one of my remaining temptations, seeming to me one of the most harmless of uric-acid-containing foods. This term, uric acid, I find is bewilderingly mystifying to most of my friends, who seem to think it is a medical glorification of ordinary acidity. So far as I understand it, it is a necessarily component part of our body, but 75 per cent, of modern human beings have an excess of it. Every bit of flesh food, in- cluding fish and eggs, contains a certain portion of this substance, of which we have already too much ; therefore the very facility with which we digest it adds to its injuriousness, while its tonic properties add to its attrac- tiveness. One of the questions I am constantly asked is, ' Why may we not follow our instincts, and eat light foods in summer and meat in winter ? ' I should answer : Because I believe that many of our eating and drinking instincts, not coming from that actual healthy hunger which finds dry, good bread and plain water a delicious repast, are on the level of the inebriate's desire for alcohol. Given that we are underfeeding, we need more nourishment — i.e., food containing albumen or proteid — in hot weather than in cold, when we lead, as a rule, much more sedentary lives, HEALTH 17 and take much less out of ourselves. What many people call ' natural ' is often most ' artificial,' and generally wrong. All my generation were brought up to think that beef-tea and port-wine were naturally essential to fight the weakness consequent upon illness and fever ; now, except in very remote country districts, beef-tea is never ordered except as a substitute for brandy — i.e., stimulant without nourishment. It is no small compliment to what is expected of diet that many people who have been ill or aihng for years under the ordinary regimen, and with the advice of various physicians, when they visit Dr. Haig, and begin his methods, express great anger if not instantly better, and instead of returning to give him the chance of changing his prescription — viz., readjusting the diet — throw up the whole system in disgust as a failure. This is, of course, most unreasonable. The other cause of anger against Dr. Haig is that he changes the details of the dietary he recommends. At first he had to accept, as all doctors do, the conclusions of others as to the con- stituents of food ; and in consequence he recommended the pulses — peas, beans, and lentils. Further personal experience and first-hand investigation convinced him that these and a few other vegetable substances — as asparagus, tea, coffee, cocoa, and mushrooms — contained a poison differing but slightly from, and in no way less injurious than, the animal poison of uric acid. To me, changes in detail, round a central idea, are the greatest proof of intellectual growth. A vegetarian friend has related to me the explanation of the well-known story which goes the round of London, and is cited by doctors when asked by patients if they shall try Dr. Haig's diet, or consult him for rheumatism. The story is that when Dr. Haig read a paper on flesh-eating as the cause of rheumatism, before a medical congress c 1 8 A THIRD POT-POURRI some years ago, a member present asked a question which ' floored him ' — viz., why rheumatism was prevalent in many countries where no flesh was eaten ? The imme- diate answer did not occur to Dr. Haig, as he had not then carried his researches far enough to know that the pulses — peas, beans, lentils — and other vegetable sub- stances, as tea, coffee, &c., contain even more uric-acid- producing poison than riieat itself. The question, how- ever, set him to work on those foods, with the result that he soon discovered the full answer to the question, and published it. This important point seems to have escaped the notice of those members of the profession who content themselves with telling only the first half of the story, which gives an inaccurate and unfair impression.' I myself have often been asked why horses get rheu- matism. My answer has always been, ' Too many oats ' ; for years ago, from his study of animals while soldiering in wild countries, my husband used to tell me that excess of cereal foods, with their high percentages of acid salts, caused rheumatism in horses unless well balanced by fresh green foods. I have found that my difficulties in wishing to provide my guests with what they like to eat have been immensely increased of late years. As long as one's friends are mixed feeders, a great variety of diet is necessary. The best solution has seemed to me that the invalids should have their meals apart, and that in mixed company there should be three side-tables. On one of these, soup, fish, meat, and vegetables ; on another, farinaceous foods and stewed fruits, Plasmon and other biscuits ; and on another, fresh raw fruits and nuts. The great thing is to reduce courses and to serve dinners more as luncheons or suppers, everything being brought in at the same time This helps to disguise what people eat, and what they don't eat. Cheese is always offered with the salad to HEALTH 19 those who do not eat meat. I have no wish to be ex- travagant and give dainties which no one will eat, and a whole dinner of soup, fish, two meats and a sweet, for one or two people, while the rest eat only some vegetarian food, is rather obviously uncomfortable not only for the hostess but for the guest — and I confess a general tone of ab- stinence, and desire to prove indifference to food and drink, have greatly increased in my house in the last few years. This is in a measure due, no doubt, to people's kindness of heart and friendliness towards an old woman with a crank ; for I know my sons have often been con- doled with on the excessive pity it is that their mother has gone mad on the food question, the speaker putting it dovsm, no doubt, to nervous depression from starvation, or failure from old age. I, myself, have now considerable dread that mere abstemiousness should lead to underfeeding, which all seem agreed upon as the greatest danger for the young ; and if mixed feeders ask my advice, I say, ' Knock off vwong foods at breakfast as much as you like, but keep your other meals very much what you have been accustomed to until you have time to attend properly to the subject, and decide what is really the best diet for you.' Sportsmen and others who lead an habitually outdoor life can eat most things, and a middle-aged nephew, who has always led a healthy country life, said to me lately, ' My system is never to allow my stomach to dictate to me. The other day I took a glass of beer which, as you know, I never drink. It disagreed violently vnth me ; so I said, " Very well ; you shall have it every day for a week, and I got perfectly used to it. Then I left it off.' There is a rough truth in this ; an immense number of people can eat, with apparent immunity, for many years the food they are used to. But this is a question of training the digestion to assimilate and not refuse unaccustomed food, and is quite c 2 20 A THIRD POT-POURRI a different matter to well-digested food introducing poison into the system, if that food contains poison. A friend staying with me received the other day the following account of a large dinner to mixed dietists, after a meeting on Theosophy,the description being by a semi-con- vert to strict diet who was present : ' I was much amused to see one odd-looking person after another, with various degrees of dyspeptic appearance, helping themselves, with a pious air of exclusiveness, to one tomato, or a dish of beans, while some took fish, and others refused it with horror, and all agreed that meat was anathema. Certain stolid, wholesome-looking folk ploughed steadily through the whole menu, from soup to fruit ; and another entertaining point to the naughty scoffer was the amount of food-talk among the " dietists,'' while the brutal carnivora had leisure to devote themselves to other subjects ! One of the elect, who was daintily regaling himself on an apple and a glass of milk, explained to me, as I ate my salmon and cucumber, the brutalities of the slaughter-house and fisheries, and when I demurred to the statement that animals reared for food have a bad time of it, my opposite neighbour leaned forward and solemnly informed me that " some day I should have to be eaten " ! ' Does not this comic account of a modern effort to imitate the old bar- baric method of bringing people together by providing them with food and stimulants, rather suggest that, in the future, the one animal function we still perform in public — eating and drinking — may cease to be the pivot of sociability, and that when we wish to see a friend, old or new, we shall some day write : ' Come and have a chat with me ' instead of ' Come and dine, or lunch, or have a cup of tea ' ? The accusation that dietists talk too much about their food is perfectly true, and must be guarded against ; at the same time, I am all for people talking about the sub- HEALTH 21 jeets that particularly interest them at the moment, for 'out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh,' and the tendency of conversation at many dinner-tables, even when stimulated by meat and wine, often does not rise above the level of sport, scandal, or games. A few years ago it was bicycles, now it is motors that often absorb a whole evening. The breaking up of uniformity in food may be the initial stage of transition to a higher civilisation, luxury in social entertainment, both in food and drink, having governed the world too long. Just think what it means as showing the change that has come over the world, that a conquering general on his return home should think it desirable to write such an appeal to his countrymen as Lord Eoberts' letters to the press on ' treating ' soldiers. He wrote two letters, the second emphasising the first ; and so much did I honour him for such action, and so important did I feel it to be to spread the knowledge of his wishes in every possible way, that, together with some of my neighbours, I had large posters printed and circulated in the village, giving the full text of the letter, and headed in red ink : ' Eeturn of our soldiers from South Africa.' I take the liberty of including the letter here, ' lest we forget ' : ' Sir, — Will you kindly allow me, through the medium of your paper, to make an appeal to my countrymen and women upon a subject I have very much at heart, and which has been occupying my thoughts for some time ? ' All classes in the United Kingdom have shown such a keen interest in the army serving in South Africa, and have been so munificent in their efforts to supply every need of that army, that I feel sure they must be eagerly looking forward to its return, and to giving our brave soldiers and sailors the hearty welcome they so well deserve when they get back to their native land. 22 A THIRD POT-POURRI 'It is about the character of this welcome, and the effects it may have on the reputations of the troops whom I have been so proud to command, that I am anxious, and that I venture to express an opinion. My sincere hope is that the welcome may not take the form of " treating " the men to stimulants in public-houses or in the streets, and thus lead them into excesses which must tend to degrade those whom the nation delights to honour, and to lower the " soldiers of the Queen " in the eyes of the world — that world which has watched with undis- guised admiration the grand work they have performed for their Sovereign and their country. Prom the very kindness of their hearts, their innate politeness, and their gratitude for the welcome accorded them, it will be difficult for the men to refuse what is offered to them by their too generous friends. ' I therefore beg earnestly that the British public will refrain from tempting my gallant comrades, but will rather aid them to uphold the splendid reputation they have won for the imperial army. I am very proud that I am able to record, with the most absolute truth, that the conduct of this army from first to last has been exemplary. Not one single case of serious crime has been brought to my notice — indeed, nothing that deserves the name of crime. There has been no necessity for appeals or orders to the men to behave properly. I have trusted implicitly to their own soldierly feehngs and good sense, and I have not trusted in vain. They bore themselves like heroes on the battlefield, and like gentlemen on all other occasions. Most malicious falsehoods were spread abroad by the authorities in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal as to the brutality of Great Britain's soldiers, and as to the manner in which the women and children might expect to be treated. We found on first entering towns and villages, doors closed and shops shut up, while only English-born HEALTH 23 people were to be seen in the streets. But very shortly all this was changed. Doors were left open, shutters were taken down, and people of all nationalities moved freely about in the full assurance that they had nothing to fear from " the man in khaki," no matter how battered and war-stained his appearance. This testimony will, I feel sure, be very gratifying to the people of Great Britain, and of that Greater Britain whose sons have shared to the fullest extent in the suffering as weU as the glory of the war, and who have helped so materially to bring it to a successful close. ' I know how keen my fellow-subjects will be to show their appreciation of the upright and honourable bearing, as well as the gallantry of our sailors and soldiers, and I would entreat them, in return for all these grand men have done for them, to abstain from any action that might bring the smallest discredit upon those who have so worthily upheld the credit of their country. ' I am induced to make this appeal from having read, with great regret, that when our troops were leaving England, and passing through the streets of London, their injudicious friends pressed liquor upon them, and shoved bottles of spirits into their hands and pockets — a mode of " speeding the parting " friend which resulted in some very distressing and discreditable scenes. I fervently hope there may be no such scenes to mar the brightness of the welcome home. ' I remain, Sir, yours faithfully, 'EOBEBTS, F.M.' Health Books ' Uric Acid as a Factor in the Causation of Disease,' a contribution to the pathology of high blood-pressure, headache, epilepsy, mental depression, paroxysmal hsemo- 24 A THIRD POT-POURRI globinuria, and anaemia, Bright's disease, diabetes, gout, rheumatism, and other disorders, by Alexander Haig, M.A., M.D. Oxon., P.E.C.P., Physician to the Metro- politan Hospital, and the Eoyal Hospital for Children and Women; late Casualty Physician to St. Bartholo- mew's Hospital. Fifth edition, with seventy-five illustra- tions. (Churchill, London.) In spite of having mentioned this book before, I must re-name it here at the head of these health books, as the more I understand the subject, the more I am convinced that it is one of the most important books on medical science that have ever been given by a doctor to the public. I am told that it is much disputed here in England, though how it is scientifically disproved I am not able to judge. It has been translated into German, and, with their usual broadmindedness in matters of science, German doctors and scientists are taking a deep and practical interest in Dr. Haig's researches, and are even coming over here to consult him ; whereas in England I was lately told by a medical man of high standing and large practice, that ' Dr. Haig stood alone in his opinions, which were not shared by a single member of his profession.' Anyone who knows even as much of the matter as I do, knows this to be quite untrue. How far Dr. Haig's book has been seriously considered and answered in his own country I am not in a position to decide, but I do know that I have the names of over a score of doctors who are working on his lines.' The book is a big one and costs 14s., a sum which may be deterrent to many in these non-bookbuying days. It is hard reading, highly technical, and almost impossible for a lay -mind to read straight through ; but as a book of ' Leaflets of instruction in the best ways of beginning the diet are given by Dr. Haig to his patients, and are to be got by writing for them to A. Haig, Esq., M.D., 7 Brook Street, W. HEALTH 25 reference it is singularly clear and instructive, the index being so good that any subject can be readily looked up. ' Diet and Eood in Eelation to Strength and Power of Endurance.' Haig. Fourth edition. Seven illustrations. This book, costing only 2s., has been prepared by Dr. Haig for the general public in order to make plain and easy the A B C of his theory, so that the many sufferers from the diseases he has specially investigated may begin their studies and have an opportunity of being able in time to judge for themselves. I must again repeat that all hope of real improvement in the standard of health must come through the intel- ligent experience of the public teaching the doctors. Even those who already possess the earlier editions of this book I strongly recommend to get this latest one, as it contains valuable additional pages on bread foods — i.e., not only good home-made unadulterated loaves and bis- cuits, but all the many kinds and combinations of cereal products, such as wheat, barley, oats, maize, rice. There is also an interesting page of dental illustration, which ought to end the old controversy as to man being car- nivorous or omnivorous. One of the most interesting converts to the diet is Mr. Eustace Miles, M.A., the well-known tennis champion and Cambridge coach, who has frankly given to the public his personal experience in ' Muscle, Brain, and Diet,' a book which contains most useful general instruc- tion about food and health, together with some excellent cookery receipts for the simpler diet — one of which I include in my list of cooking receipts, it being in my opinion much too good to be missed. Two other useful volumes for the student of food as the basis of health, are Mr. Miles' ' Failures of Vegetarianism,' which is far more helpful than all the successes I have ever read of. 26 A THIRD POT-POURRI because it warns beginners of the errors they are almost sure to fall into if unguided : and ' Better Food for Boys,' a little Is. number of Messrs. Bell & Sons' ' Life and Light' Series, which brings the subject poignantly home to parents, guardians, and schoolmasters, and by providing a table of food values enables everyone, girls and adults, as well as boys, to calculate the right quantity and kind of food necessary for health — though nothing but personal trial and careful observation and patience will teach each individual the best food for his or her particular constitu- tion and way of life. ' Avenues to Health.' — This last of Mr. Miles' books on this subject is, perhaps, the most important of all, for it is brim full of generally interesting information culled from all kinds of sources, old and new, Western and Oriental, as to the best means to attain and maintain the highest physical and psychical health. My friend, Miss Adela Curtis, writes me the following notice of three useful pamphlets : ' When first we opened our bookshop, we got a quantity of little penny books on diet from Mr. Albert Broadbent, of Manchester, and experimented by putting one or two in the window, and about the shop casually among the other books. It may interest you, as much as it amused us, to learn that these little things were picked up, looked into, and bought by all classes of people, whenever we happened to bring them forward. One of these, " Forty Vegetarian Dinners," of which 20,000 have been sold, contains an interesting introduction by the Hon. Mrs. F. J. Bruce, whose testimony as the mother of a large and healthy family, and the head of a household numbering some twenty-two members, is exceptionally valuable, seeing that she has nothing but praise for the system after sixteen years' practice. ' Another of these dainty pennyworths, now^ in its HEALTH 27 seventeenth thousand, is called " Science in the Daily Meal," and gives carefully proportioned dietaries for six- teen days, as well as helpful advice for curing common ailments, and many remarkable extracts on the evils of modern diet from the works of Professor Atwater, the great American chemist, Dr. E. Williams of the Middlesex Cancer Hospital, Drs. Haig, Bouchard, Boix, Virchow, and Kellogg. This little book has lately been enlarged to a 3d. edition in paper and Qd. in cloth. ' " Fruits, Nuts, and Vegetables : their Uses as Pood and Medicine," a new 3d. edition of a booklet which has gone to its forty-fourth thousand, is an admirable com- pilation, adapting the quaint and half-forgotten lore of many herbals to the needs of modern Ufe.' A friend sent me the other day Dr. E. H. Dewey's book, ' A New Era for Women : Health without Drugs.' This book seems to have considerable attraction for many people, but I should say it was rather addressed to those who take drugs, or who over-eat, as his great panacea for health seems to be leaving off breakfast — a remedy much more necessary in America, where they have ten dishes at that meal. He preaches a great deal what we are all be- ginning to know and even to believe — that Nature is a wonder worker. His system of no-breakfast is based on the fact that sleep never makes anyone hungry, the gnawing sensation in the morning which people mistake for hunger being caused by the indigestion of the previous night's dinner or supper. Food will certainly stop this pain, but only at the expense of further digestive trouble, and hot water would be the best treatment of this spurious hunger, as it would cleanse the stomach of its unwholesome con- dition and help it to regain a normal and healthy desire for food. Most people relieve it by biscuits and milk in the night. Of course, there is such a thing as healthy hunger in the morning for those who have well digested 28 A THIRD POT-POURRI their dinner the night before, and who have done several hours' work before breakfast. ' The Perfect Way in Diet.' — A book which for its size contains a greater wealth of scientific information than almost any I know on the subject, is ' The Perfect Way in Diet,' by Mrs. Anna Kingsford, M.D. It is a transla- tion of her ' Thfese pour le Doctorat ' presented at the Faculte de Medicine of Paris on taking her degree in 1880, and is just one of those good things which the public is apt to lose sight of in the rush of new books. The treatise opens with a clear and able condensation of anatomical and physiological evidence for man's frugi- vorous habit, culminating in the following passage : ' If we have consecrated to this sketch of comparative anatomy and physiology a paragraph which may seem a little wearisome in detail, it is because it appears necessary to combat certain erroneous impressions affecting the struc- ture of man which obtain credence, not only in the vulgar world, but even among otherwise instructed persons.' How many times, for instance, have we not heard people speak with all the authority of conviction about the ' canine teeth ' and ' simple stomach ' of man, as certain evidence of his natural adaptation for a flesh diet ! At least we have demonstrated one fact : that if such argu- ments are valid, they apply with even greater force to the anthropoid apes — whose ' canine ' teeth are much longer and more powerful than those of man — and the scientists must make haste therefore to announce a rectification of their present division of the animal kingdom in order to class with the carnivora and their proximate species all those animals which now make up the order of primates. And yet vnth the solitary exception of man, there is not one of these last which does not in a natural condition absolutely refuse to feed on flesh ! M. Pouehet, in his 'Pluralit6 de la Eace Humaine,' observes that all the HEALTH 29 details of the digestive apparatus in man, as well as his dentition, constitute ' so many proofs of his frugivorous origin ' — an opinion shared by Professor Owen, who re- marks that the anthropoids and all the quadrumana derive their aUmentation from fruits, grains, and other succulent and nutritive vegetable substances, and that the strict analogy which exists between the structure of these animals and that of man clearly demonstrates his frugi- vorous nature. This is also the view taken by Cuvier in ' Le Eegne Animal,' Professor Lawrence in ' Lectures on Physiology,' Charles Bell in ' Diseases of the Teeth,' Linnaeus, Gassendi, Plourens, and a great number of other eminent writers. The last-named scientist gives expression to his views after the following manner : ' Man is neither carnivorous nor herbivorous. He has neither the teeth of the cud-chewers, nor their four stomachs, nor their intestines. If we consider these organs in man, we must conclude him to be by nature and origin frugivorous, as is the ape. It may possibly be objected that since, according to natural structure and propensities, man is a fruit and seed eater, he ought not to partake of those leguminous plants and roots which belong rather to the dietary of the herb-eaters, whose organisation we have shown to differ in so many details from that of man. It may be urged that trouble is wasted in proving to what order man belongs by nature, since with him, alone of all animals. Art has superseded Nature, and has enabled him by means of fire, condiments, and disguise, to eat and digest without disgust, and even with relish, the food of the tiger, the wolf, and the hyena. Such objections are not without an air of reason; and I shall meet them first by the frank statement that the most excellent and proper aliments of which our race can make use consist of tree-fruits and seeds, and not of the plants themselves, whether foliage or roots.' 30 A THIRD POT-POURRI Just lately a book has come to my hand which I think will be of the greatest use to those who are staggered by Dr. Haig's scientific language. It is called ' Medical Essays,' by T. E. AUinson, physician and surgeon, but note, as he does on his title-page, that he is ' Ex ' L.E.C.P., &c. This book, in 1901, had reached its twenty-ninth thousand, a sale as cheering as it is enormous, showing as it does how its teaching must have permeated all classes. It is in fact a popular mixture of very short articles on health, food, ailments, management of children, and general in- structions for right living, and makes the whole subject of physical well-being so plain and straightforward, that I think no head of a young family should be without it. So many are deterred from trying moderation and abste- miousness by the severity of Dr. Haig's measures, that it might help them greatly to read Dr. AUinson's explanations, and begin by trying his less strict form of diet. I should certainly have bought his largest book (price 10s. 6d) if I had known of it. As it was, I got Book P. at 6s. 6d., which is naturally less complete. Dr. AUinson's main principle seems to be that the greater proportion of disease is brought about by our own ignorance. I know well that in my youth when I ate a large breakfast, which always made me feel uncomfortable, I did it with the sincere belief that I was adding to my strength and working power during the day, whereas it often took me an hour and a half to get over the first effects of the meal, especially in winter. Dr. Allinson states in his preface that what he writes is also ' the be- ginning, I hope, of a school of healing that will take the place of allopathy and homoeopathy.' I feel sure that while medicines are still taken, strict dieting is much impeded in its benefits. Till all drugs are left off, few can judge of what they want in the way of food. ' A Treatise on the Tonic System of treating Affections of HEALTH 31 the Stomach and Brain.' By Henry Searle, Surgeon, Ken- nington Common. Published by Eichard & John Taylor. London. 1843. Amidst the rush of modern medical books, it is not otherwise than sobering and extremely interesting to take up an old book, and see what doctors believed and what they taught sixty years ago. It is one of the most beautiful articles of the creed of the profession, that no knowledge they obtain, no invention they make must ever be kept secret, but always openly given both to fellow- members and to the public. This is a noble idea, and often constitutes the great difference between a doctor and what is called a ' quack,' for the latter is apt to keep his discoveries to himself in order to make money out of them. There are many notable things in this old book, and the stuffing and tonic system we were all brought up on is well argued ; but I mention it chiefly for its strong con- demnation of tea and coffee so early as 1843. The increase of tea-drinking in all classes is astonishing. Mr. Searle says, ' Previously to the introduction of tea into this Kingdom, disorders of the stomach were by no means so prevalent as they have been since. Tea in the evening is found particularly refreshing, and is therefore considered an indispensable article of diet; but the refreshing effects of tea are not always unalloyed, most unpleasant symptoms of indigestion being sometimes experienced im- mediately after taking it. As tea-drinking is a univer- sally established practice, it would be vain to recommend its discontinuance ; but it may be strongly urged that tea should be taken in small quantities, and of moderate strength, and that those who are troubled with indiges- tion should combine with it a large proportion of milk.' Only so did this timid doctor in the early Victorian period venture to advise the public. In my lifetime tea 32 A THIRD POT-POURRI P has been entirely discontinued after dinner. Twenty years ago I can remember how the tray used to come in after dinner, and be almost universally refused ; and is it not quite possible that the same fate may be in store for the 5 o'clock custom when once the young realise how bad it is for themselves and their children after them ? Alas, the same economic danger stares one in the face as with meat, beer, or spirits : hundreds would be ruined in India and Ceylon if the drinking of tea were appreciably to decrease, but I confess I have no sympathy with those who make money by the adulteration of food, or by the sale of beer, spirits, tea, opium, quack drugs, or anything else that brings ruin and misery through bad health to millions of human beings. Other books that I should like to recommend to students of health are Hutchinson's ' Dietetics,' Parke's ' Practical Hygiene,' Dr. Pernie's ' Herbal Simples ' (5s.), Dr. Kellogg's ' Science in the Kitchen ' (12s. 6d.), and ' The Stomach,' Mr. A. W. Duncan's ' Chemistry of Food,' and ' Foods and their Comparative Values,' Dr. Lehmann's ' Eational Hygiene,' Dr. Poore's ' Rural Hygiene,' Dr. Dewey's ' True Science of Living,' Smith's ' Fruits and Parinacea,' Huxley's ' Elements of Physiology.' These and many other books, English and American, on health, education, &c., are kept in stock, as a rule, by Curtis & Davison, 4 High Street, Kensington. Having given the pubUc this list of books, which, I believe, will help the introduction of a new and a better era, I cannot resist the pleasure of speaking of a French classic, ' La Physiologie du Qott, de Brillat-Savarin,' re- pubUshed in 1879 by the Librairie des Bibliophiles with Eaux-fortes par Ad. Lalauze. My own old edition was of 1841. Most people know his famous aphorism, ' Dis-moi ce que tu manges, et je te dirai ce que tu es.' This book by the friend of the Eeca- HEALTH 33 miers has all the charm of the best eighteenth-century French literature. It is perhaps unkind, but I should be more than human if I withstood the temptation to quote here what he says about the doctors in Ms day, in his chapter called ' Des Gourmands ' : ' Des causes d'une autre nature, quoique non moins puissantes, agissent sur les m6deeins : ils sont gourmands par sdduction, et il faudrait qu'ils fussent de bronze pour resister k la force des choses. ' Les chers docteurs sont d'autant mieux accueillis que la sante, qui est sous leur patronage, est le plus pr^cieux de tous les biens ; aussi sont-ils enf ants gsbtds dans toute la force du terme. ' Toujours impatiemment attendus, ils sont accueillis avec empressement. C'est une jolie malade qui les engage ; c'est une jeune personne qui les caresse ; c'est un p6re, c'est un mari, qui leur recommandent ce qu'ils ont de plus oher. L'esp^rance les tourne par la droite, la reconnaissance par la gauche ; on les embecque comme des pigeons ; ils se laissent faire, et en six mois I'habitude est prise, ils sont gourmands sans retour.' In the editor's note to the 1879 edition he has a sen- tence which I think may form a motto very applicable to the eaters of the simpler foods compared with those who, up to now, have met to consume fish, flesh, and fowl. I claim that in the future the simpler foods may be as dainty and attractive as those recommended by Savarin, and that the contrast between the meals of the future and of the present will be as great as between the French cooking and the Eoman : ' Et d'ailleurs, il ne faut pas s'y tromper, la cuisine est v^ritablement un art, art tout moderne, art tout fran9ais, et qui trouve en Fi'ance son chantre le plus autoris6. Les grands repas des Eomains n'6taient qu'un brutal amas de plats gigantesques, ou les mets et les ingredients de toutes sortes se trouvaient confondus dans D 34 A THIRD POT-POURRI des sauces dont la seule analyse nous soulfeve aujourd'hui le coeur. La description du plus beau festin de LucuUus ne peut rien inspirer d'analogue a la douce Amotion qu'on ressent en lisant le r6cit du simple et succulent ddjeuner du cur6, si onctueusement racont6 dans le paragraphs des " Vari6t6s " qui a pour titre " L'Omelette au thon." ' I would recommend all those interested in the instruc- tion of the young to get ' A Short Account of the Human Body,' by Owen Lancaster, lecturer to the Natural Health Society, published by Allman & Son, 67 New Oxford Street, W.C., price 2s. 6d. It contains a coloured picture of a manikin with the skin removed, and folds that lift up and show the position of the internal organs. This diagram is exciting and interesting, and would inspire the young with a kind of reverential feeling for their internal machinery, of which they know so little, and which they treat so often with great unfairness. It has long been said a man is a fool or a doctor at forty. I fear, then, I know many fools, especially among women, who more frequently starve themselves and overwork than men do. What I want is that all, even the quite young, should respect their bodies, and believe that health also means beauty and strength; that all should know the difference between health, or what we are intended to be, and that continual, uncertain, ailing condition so common with young, middle-aged, and old, and to which people actually think it a virtue to submit. How few, even among nurses, know that if anyone is struck down by any kind of accident, the first thing to do, as with a man wounded in full health, is immensely to reduce nourish- ment and quantity of food ! I have several times known more injury to come from overfeeding when all exercise is stopped than from an accident itself. Wherever there is a weak or injured part, there the mischief vw'U settle, especially where the constitution is gouty or rheumatic ; HEALTH 35 and this, as should always be remembered, is the case with seventy -five out of every hundred persons. ' Water : How it Kills its Thousands.' This is a pamphlet issued by the Salutaris Company, which is well worth reading, if only for the caution against hard water as a drink for the gouty and rheumatic. Those who cannot afford habitually to buy Salutaris Water may like to know that it is easy enough to have distilled water at home by getting one of the stills supplied by the Gem Supply Co., 6 Bishop's Court, Chancery Lane, E.C. Would it not be better if, instead of expressing the heartiness of our rejoicings by giving enormous teas and dinners to the poor, which often make them ill or un- comfortable for days after, we were to give them wholesome food to carry away to their homes, which they would often spin out to last a week, and which would help the sick and healthy alike and cost the givers no more ? After the ' Health ' chapter, the subject in both my former books that roused most opposition and yet most interest was what I said about girls — their training, rela- tion to their mother, &c. In fact, I have several times been asked to give more of my advice. I never have any 'views,' except as the outcome of my own experiences, and all my dear nieces, real and adopted, have now grown into women and are bringing up their ovm children. Opinions on education grow quickly, and as the subject is of perennial interest to me in a general way, 1 can only mention a book or two which may be found useful and have come to my knowledge, almost by chance, in the last few years. All that is newest, most enlightening, and most stirring seems now to come from America, and I can recommend strongly to all a book, full of concentrated instruction and valuable suggestions, called ' An Ideal School, or Looking Forward,' by Preston Search, United States Superintendent of Schools, one of the 5s. ' Inter- d2 36 A THIRD POT-POURRI national ' Series, published by Arnold. An English book, lately published with an idea of awakening more general interest in the subject, is 'Education and Empire,' by E. B. Haldane. But to mothers, when education is over, I can only repeat what I have said before — that when all has been said and done with reference to education, human nature remains the same, and the really important thing for mothers to do is to try to know their own children. They may exhaust themselves in efforts to make their daughters sweet, attractive, graceful, and marriageable^ but unless they realise that no young people, any more than the rest of us, can live up to an ideal, the end is often artificiality and deceit in the children, and bitter disappointment to the parents. It seems so easy, in theory, for parents to know their children; but, in fact, nothing is more difficult. There are two courses open to every mother of young children, say, to the age of fifteen. One is, to hold up in practice and precept a high ideal, and persistently encourage the children always to act up to this standard, so impressing its importance on them that they come to feel it a proof of their personal affection for her to try to come up to it, at least, in her presence, even to the extent of acting a part to please her. This way, though often satisfactory in childhood, generally ends, so far as my experience goes, in disaster to character, for in insensibly forcing them to appear to be something they are not, it actually helps to train them in habits of deception and lying. The other course is to make up one's mind to the probability of naughtiness, selfishness, want of good manners, or any other undesirable but natural expression of themselves — in fact, to live in what is called the ' Palace of Truth,' trying to discover the plan Nature has outlined for them, and helping them to fulfil it by natural growth HEALTH 37 rather than forcing them, however gently and skil- fully, into some mould of our own choosing. This way brings a good deal of mortification to the mother and condemnation of her training from her friends; but I firmly believe that this method turns out in the end the truest and best human beings, and if the mother's own example, supported by the father's, has meanwhile declared and upheld her ideal of what her children should be, they will probably realise it in later life. I am always being told that everything is now very different from my day, but I still maintain, as I said in my former book, that all those differences are superficial. It is but the outward fashions that change. Only three years ago was published one of the most charming books of imagination that has appeared for a very long time — ' A Digit of the Moon : A Hindoo Love Story.' A great many people were disappointed at finding out that it was original and not a translation ; but to my mind it only adds greatly to its charm and interest that an Englishman living in India should have been able in these days to write such a book. It is perhaps too well known to justify a long quotation from it here. All the same, life is so full that many miss what they would like to see, and this description of man's notion of how woman was made seems to me a literary gem : ' One day, as they rested at noon beneath the thick shade of a Kadamba tree, the King gazed for a long time at the portrait of his mistress. And suddenly he broke silence and said, " Easak6sha, this is a woman. Now, a woman is the one thing about which I know nothing. Tell me, what is the nature of woman ? " Then Easakosha smiled, and said, " King, you should certainly keep this question to ask the Princess, for it is a hard question. A very terrible creature indeed is a woman, and one formed of strange elements. Apropos, I will tell you a story. Listen ! 38 A THIRD POT-POURRI '"In the beginning, when Twashtri came to the creation of woman he found that he had exhausted his materials in the making of man, and that no solid elements were left. In this dilemma, after profound meditation, he did as follows. He took the rotundity of the moon, and the curves of creepers, and the cUnging of tendrils, and the trembUng of grass, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephant's trunk, and the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of bees, and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot's bosom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of fire, and the coldness of snow, and the chattering of jays, and the cooing of the K61ila (the Indian cuckoo), and the hypocrisy of the crane, and the fidelity of the chakrSiWaka ; and compounding all these together he made woman and gave her to man. But after one week man came to him and said, ' Lord, this creature that you have given me makes my life miserable. She chatters incessantly, and teases me beyond endurance, never leaving me alone ; and she requires incessant attention, and takes all my time up, and cries about nothing, and is always idle; and so I have come to give her back again, as I cannot Hve with her.' So Twashtri said, ' Very well,' and he took her back. Then after another week man came again to him and said, ' Lord, I find that my life is very lonely since I gave you back that creature. I remember how she used to dance and sing to me, and look at me out of the corner of her eye, and play with me, and chng to me ; and her laughter was music, and she was beautiful to look at and soft to touch ; so give her back to me again.' So HEALTH 39 Twashtri said, 'Very well,' and gave her back again. Then, after only three days, man came back to him again and said, ' Lord, I know not how it is, but after all I have come to the conclusion that she is more of a trouble than a pleasure to me, so please take her back again.' But Twashtri said, ' Out on you ! Be off ! I will have no more of this. You must manage how you can.' Then man said, ' But I cannot Uve with her.' And Twashtri re- plied, ' Neither could you Uve without her.' And he turned his back on man and went on with his work. Then man said, ' What is to be done, for I cannot live either with or without her ? ' " ' And Easak6sha ceased and looked at the King. But the King remained silent, gazing intently at the portrait of the Princess. ' 40 A THIRD POT-POURRI HEALTH OF OTHEBS Imaginary conversation between two doctors — Advertisements versus Dr. Haig — Eemedies for depression on beginning diet — The old need not fear change of diet — Tea-drinking and the Chinese — The Bible and meat-eating— Pythagoreans and the bean — ' Better Food for Boys ' and the schoolmaster — Difficulties of the diet — Fat and thin women — Medieval and Greek idea — Individual cases — Maeterlinck's testimony. Hating done my best in the last chapter to tell about myself, I think it may be of some interest to those who are trying to help themselves, and who have, probably, those they love best and all the world against them, that I should now give some account of my personal observa- tion of others, and the details of a few cases that have come more particularly under my notice, these having been kind enough to send me their individual experience. Some are patients of Dr. Haig, others have been induced to try the diet from reading Mr. Miles' book, or from seeing the conspicuous benefit I have derived from the diet. Por a long time I thought Dr. Haig was the only medical practitioner of the kind, but the last six months have convinced me of my error, and now it seems to me that the idea of wrong food being a great cause of disease, is quite in the air and widespread. But it cannot be too often repeated, that the work of Dr. Haig and his col- leagues is not primarily a specific cure of disease, but a scientific research into food, their aim being to establish a HEALTH OF OTHERS 41 high standard of health on a simple and sound foundation of right diet. Being a doctor, however, Dr. Haig's experience must necessarily lie among the diseased, or, at least, the non -healthy, and this gives his system of diet a most severe trial. I must honestly say that, in all the cases that have come to me, there has never been one healthy person ; all have been suffering more or less from headaches, dyspepsia, anaemia, gout, rheumatism, weak- ness, &o., in spite of belonging to a class that has every chance of high feeding in the ordinary way, though many of them, from non-assimilation, have been as underfed as the unscientific vegetarians. I confess I am still puzzled by the apparently good results of the cramming system, which has been so generally adopted for nervous diseases by the medical profession, and of which Drs. Playfair and Weir-Mitchell are the renowned exponents. The benefit is, I believe, only temporary, and the over-stimulation of cramming on meat and wine is so dangerous for nervous temperaments that many cases of death and madness might be written down as ' victims of the medical pro- fession.' The high-feeding cure for tuberculosis has given this system such an immense fashion, that in Germany it is recommended as a -preventive measure as well as a cure, it being well known that the weakly form the best soil for the germs of the disease. I know a German mother who sent her only and very delicate son of sixteen, reduced by overwork and examinations, to Nordrach, the consumptive cure place, to face the possible infection, that he might be fed on a system which she could not induce him to follow at home. The result was so satis- factory that he was willing to go back there for his summer hoUday in the following year. The lesson to me from this, is not that the Nordrach meat diet is best for the purpose, this being attained with greater ultimate ad- vantage upon the Haig diet (see ' Diet and Food,' p. 108), 42 A THIRD POT-POURRI but that a person can be made to eat food enough by the help of a mental effort, or by the moral influence of some other human being, such as a doctor, friend, or nurse. The immediate results of the stuffing system tend immensely to support Dr. Haig's theories, as represented in the following imaginary conversation, written for me by a doctor : ' K. — If you take only small quantities of food, you may continue some meat, and even tea and coffee, with but little harm. ' H. — I grant this to a certain extent, and I know that a little uric acid is better than a great deal; but I can show that it always does harm to take any uric acid, and, personally, I never swallow a grain of it, if I have power to leave it out. ' K. — Well, it does not seem to harm me ; I am much better than I used to be, and I am old and yet feel well. ' H. — Let us get to facts ; will you tell me, for instance, what your old diet used to be and what your present diet is ? ' K. — -My ordinary diet might have been 1,200 grains of albumen per day. I then formed 12 grains of uric acid per day, and I introduced some 8 grains more in flesh and tea. I thus had to deal with 20 grains of uric acid a day, and with this I suffered badly from headaches. My present diet is about 800 grains of albumen, and I form 8 grains of uric acid, and introduce in the small quantities of flesh and tea I take some 8 or 4 grains more. I thus have to deal with some 11 to 12 grains of uric acid a day, and have no headaches. ' H. — No doubt this is a gain ; but what about your nutrition, and circulation ? ' K. — I lead a quiet life, and get up late ; but I am able to walk for several miles every day, and do a good deal of reading and writing. HEALTH OF OTHERS 43 ' S. — But your blood colour is nowhere near the proper standard, and your circulation in skin and all organs is slow, so that their nutrition is feeble. Now I know a man who is at present in his eightieth year, and who would do in one hour all the exercise you take in a day (Mr. C. J. Harris, often mentioned in the " Vegetarian " ) ; his ordinary day's work is thirty to forty miles on his tri- cycle, and he not infrequently rides fifty to sixty miles, and on several occasions has done a hundred in the twenty-four hours. His blood colour is good, his circula- tion is good, he is in every way strong and well nourished ; and the reason is simple, for he takes, each day, his physiological allowance of albumens, quite free from uric acid, while you only take two-thirds of your physio- logical allowance (800 in place of 1,200), and you further hinder your circulation, and injure your blood colour, by swallowing uric acid, which he does not. ' K. — I do not wish to do as much as Mr. Harris, I am content with my life as it is. ' H. — But you only live one-half the life that Mr. Harris does, and produce only one-half of the effect in the world ; if you are content with half a Ufe, when a whole one is open to you, well and good ; that is your affair ; but you will not persuade me that the half is equal to the whole.' The following is a doctor's note on the Mr. Harris referred to in the conversation : ' I may say that I have been watching Mr. Harris carefully for some years, that he always takes a physiological allowance of albumens, and produces a physiological amount of urea (which I have repeatedly estimated). There is no doubt where his strength and power come from ; and he gets his albumens chiefly from bread, nuts, and fruit, with very little milk or cheese, and at times none of these last. On K.'s diet such work as Mr. Harris does is impossible.' Time after time I have heard of various people, and 44 A THIRD POT-POURRI even doctors, trying the diet and giving it up after a few weeks or months, finding they could not do their work on the non-stimulating food. My family are then much surprised that this does not bring home to my mind a sense of failure. All it does do, is to convince me that very little is yet known of the right mixtures of food ; that there is, in most cases, a more or less severe reaction to be reckoned vsdth from the accumulated uric acid rushing into the blood on the withdrawal of the meat-tea-and-wLne diet, and that good results can rarely be expected, except with the young and healthy, under eighteen months to two years time. The change is too radical and permanent to be effected hurriedly. The hoarding of uric acid in the system seems to me to be Dr. Haig's great scientific discovery, and the one most disputed by other medical men. His work proves conclusively to me that aU benefit from German waters, alkahne treatment, &c., is only a temporary palliative, necessitating constant return, with danger of severe relapse in the end. I have known cases of extreme illness, and even death, from missing a course of Carlsbad waters for one season. The advertisements that explain health questions so clearly to the public every morning and even- ing in the newspapers are all based upon the old theory, that it is possible to clear the whole system of uric acid by alkaline drugs and mineral waters. If the advertisements are right. Dr. Haig's theories are all wrong. The first thing that put him on the scent of error in the old accepted idea, was that none of the usual remedies bring away any uric acid, though, of course, they clear it from the blood, and, therefore, give the weU-described sense of relief to the patient. This made him ask, ' Where does it go ? ' He now declares, after years of examination, that it is deposited on the soft tissues, the internal organs, the brain, the muscles, nerves, bone-joints, &e., waiting either to set HEALTH OF OTHERS 45 up disease in them under the action of any favourable external circumstance, or again to enter the blood stream and cause distress as soon as rising alkalinity will dissolve it. He maintains, in his books, that the sole real cure is to stop the introduction of foods containing uric acid, or its equivalent, xanthin, and replace them by a diet vrhich he considers suitable and natural for man. It is undeniable that, with most people, a few months of the diet causes great depression and weakness, which, for those who cannot take rest from work, is sometimes so serious a matter, that it means giving up the diet or the work. Great relief would be found in these cases if they took, in summer, 20 grains of bicarbonate of soda dis- solved in a teaspoonful of cold water and hot water added till the mixture is of the warmth of a cup of tea, or, in winter, a 5-grain dose of salicylate of soda. Neither of these remedies being a tonic, but rather a depressant, it is obvious that the relief experienced must be due to the effect they have in clearing the blood of the uric acid which has been brought into it from the tissues on its way out of the body. They must be kept in reserve for times when rest is impossible, and so enable the patient to con- tinue the diet which is to bring about ultimate cure. The same effect can be produced, by a temporary lapse back to the old uric-acid diet, which is an immense triumph to the enemies of the system, though perfectly intelligible to any student of Dr. Haig's theory. He himself has taken the trouble to publish leaflets expressly recommending a very gradual change of diet in order to avoid any severe degree of this depression and apparent exhaustion. Dr. Haig, Dr. Allinson, and Mr. Miles all seem to think that uric-acid diseases, such as gout and rheu- matism, headache, neuralgia, anasmia, epilepsy, would cease to exist if their diet were adopted. For as much as it is worth, my own personal experience and my 46 A THIRD POT-POURRI observation of others under various doctors and treat- ments absolutely corroborate their views. Doctors are still very much divided in their opinion as to meat being bad for gout and rheumatism, and very many of them tell gouty and rheumatic patients to eat plenty of meat and not much sugar, farinaceous, or carbohydrate substances ; so it is not their opinion that uric acid is increased in the system by flesh foods. These very doctors, however, always prescribe the medicines which, as Dr. Haig shows, clear the blood of uric acid but throw it back upon the tissues. Of late years, in severe cases of eczema and shingles, their great salvation seems to be the much-dis- carded remedy of mercury (calomel). Only the future can prove how far the few are right and the many wrong in this matter. In all probability diet will take centuries to have a fair trial, for the changes it would involve in every department of our modern life are almost unthinkable. I am most anxious that anyone who is at all interested in anything I have to say, not only as regards the im- provement of his own health but the benefit to the whole human race, should remember that the subject is one which demands at least a year of close and careful study, that it is in no sense like the German waters, or Salisbury cure, or any other diet prescribed for illness, a temporary affair with the hope of returning cheerfully to luxurious living ; it is a road on which may be written what Dante wrote over the entrance to Hell : ' Lasoiate ogni speranza voi che entrate.' There is absolutely no return without greater injury from the increased sensi- tiveness of the body and the quicker realisation of what is injurious food, but I do deny that the road leads to Hell ; I should like to add that, even when adopted late in life, it leads to the Paradise of Health. I am also the last to deny that, however strong this belief may be, it does include self-denial even to the old ; for, when people HEALTH OF OTHERS 47 are no longer young, habit has become second nature, and with people all round you eating what you have always been accustomed to, it does require a certain amount of strength of mind to refuse all the dishes that a few years ago you would have gladly eaten as the most wholesome food. It has taken me nine years of ex- perience to find out how injurious the most simple food of the flesh-eater, such as the invalid diet of boiled fish and chicken, really is. A great many elderly people say to me, ' I am too old to change ' ; only civility prevents me from saying to their face, ' I think you are quite wrong : it is never too late to mend. Many of the symptoms you suffer from would be immensely lessened if you did change.' As regards benefit, a great deal, of course, must depend on how much actual disease is already set up in the system, and in the case of old people it is even more important than with the middle-aged to avoid the crisis described above as depression and weakness. On the other hand, it should be remembered that at no other time of life is it so dangerous to overfeed and so little injurious to underfeed as in old age. I believe the time is not far distant when it may be discovered that the great cause of cancer is meat and salt, as leprosy is supposed to originate in eating salt fish in large quantities. There are no doubt a few people whose healthy faces shine and beam when they tell you they can eat every- thing. They are seldom really ill, they have beautiful teeth and complexions, strong bright healthy hair, and their nerves are not overstrung. But I think everyone will admit that these people, in all classes, are distinctly rare in civilised Europe in this year of our Lord 1902. Also, if you question them closely, you will generally find that they take mineral waters, aperients, pain-killers, and various other drugs, and are frequently affected by 48 A THIRD POT-POURRI changes of temperature, fatigue, missing a meal, east wind, &c. Many people quote the Bible in favour of flesh foods, saying, 'If meat had been very injurious, one would expect to find some warning words advising people not to eat it.' According to this line of argument, vegetarians have been hardly used at finding no warning against the deadly nightshade of our damp meadows, or the poisonous berries of the potato which cost Sir W. Ealeigh some pangs when he ate them by mistake on first discovering the plant. In a letter I have received this morning from Dr. Haig in answer to things I had told him, I having been depressed at the little progress made by what I consider the new enlightenment, he says : ' I have now no doubt that the cause will succeed, and that success cannot be too great or come too soon, for there are to-day millions and millions of people who are suffering, dying, or be- coming insane simply from ignorance.' I believe this opinion of Dr. Haig's will gain ground, and that twenty years will make an enormous difference in the under- standing of everyone on the subject of food. Nowadays, if we see a man drunk, we are half angry and half sorry, but we do not require telling that he has taken too much alcohol to bring him to the state we see him in. I believe that, in course of time, the same knowledge will be ours with regard to right and wrong feeding and its obvious results. I am fond of distributing Dr. Haig's leaflet, which explains most clearly that the xanthin of certain vegetable substances — peas, beans, lentils, mushrooms, asparagus, tea, coffee, cocoa — is the equivalent poison to uric acid in fish and flesh. Apropos of this latest discovery in the chemistry of food, I was amused to come across the following the other day in that very popular book of Mr. HEALTH OF OTHERS 49 Marion Crawford, ' The Eulers of the South ' : ' Hallam says somewhere that mankind has generally required some ceremonial follies to keep alive the wholesome spirit of association. It is hard to say now how many of the curious rules of life adopted by the Pythagorean brother- hood should be traced to this motive, and many of these contain more wisdom than appears in them at first sight. The brethren abstained from eating flesh, as most mystics have done, but they were as careful never to eat beans.' So many of our most modern inventions were known to the ancients that I feel the reason for the Pythagorean rule ' abstain from the bean ' is quite as likely to have been due to a knowledge of its harmful properties in dietetics as to a dread of that life of political intrigue which was symbolised by the bean used by the Greeks in balloting. An amusing instance came to me lately of how little these leaflets are understood even by intelligent and educated people, when a father wrote to me as foUows : ' A cowardly thought arose in my mind of submitting the leaflet to a friend of mine who is obliged by circumstances to devote much attention to his inside, but unhappily in an unguarded moment I remarked to Mrs. G., in the presence of the most intelligent of our cats, "I am surprised that you should provide so much fish for the household, when you know Mrs. Earle's leaflet says that fish positively reehs with xanthin." I don't know how the leaflet which riots in that particular subject of organic chemistry came to be torn into little bits, but for me it disposes of the subject altogether, which is too abstruse for the man in the street, and needs an expert to confirm or deny. " Xanthin " may be as real as " microbes," but is equally invisible, and I have my doubts about the whole lot of scientific conclusions based upon these insects or fish or whatever they are.' So carelessly had the leaflet B so A THIRD POT-POURRI been read that my correspondent can talk of the xanthin in fish ! A curious case of the effects of the harm the Salisbury cure has brought about in unintelligent hands was told me the other day by a friend. His mother-in-law lost her teeth, and her gums were too tender to admit of artificial aid. She therefore took pulped meat, often three pounds a day, and strong soups. Between the age of fifty and sixty she became very ill, and a great London specialist was sent for. After seeing her he took the son- in-law aside and said, ' All her symptoms point to a secret store of alcohol. Are you quite certain this is not the case ? ' Both the son-in-law and the servants were quite certain that she had nothing of the kind. She did not even take wine. But it is interesting to note that the stimulating meat-juices had produced the same symptoms as drink, accompanied by great exhilaration and depression. At sixty she died of starvation, with no organic disease at all. The question often asked me, and which moves me most, is what I recommend for the feeding of children. There is no doubt that the strongest argument which can be used against drunkenness and debauchery is the heredi- tary effect it has on children. Doctors now say that the children of confirmed smokers are far sooner injured by smoking themselves than the children of very moderate or non-smokers. It seems to me that this may be an explanation of the younger generation of the present day being so much more quickly and harmfully affected by tea than we were. Both coffee and tea have got much cheaper, and their use has been immensely promoted by the preaching of the teetotallers. Clergymen's wives, nurses, and all classes of over -worked women and men of the conscientious type, who would repudiate the help given to them by a glass of beer, habitually stimulate and HEALTH OF OTHERS 51 injure their nerves by excessive tea-drinking. I think there is no doubt that Indian and Ceylon tea are more injurious than even the poor quaUty Chinese which is sold in England to-day. This may be an additional explanation of the increased nervous disease among the poor, who love the rank flavour of the cheap Indian teas, and stew them long to extract all the goodness. Let people who doubt this try leaving off tea for a few months, and then see how it affects them on taking to it again. One of the strongest arguments for tea-drinking is that the Chinese have drunk it for centuries and remain what they are. I sat at dinner the other evening, next an English- man who had lived many years in China. I soon began to question him as to how far he thought the tea-drinking in China had been injurious to the natives. He said that, so far as he had ever been able to ascertain, he thought that it was absolutely harmless, but this probably from the way they made it. A small pinch of sun-dried leaves — just as much as they could take up between the finger and thumb — was put into a small cup, boiling water poured on it, the cup covered up with its saucer for a minute or two, and the infusion drunk when it had cooled. It was then scarcely more than hot water with a sUght flavour of tea. Besides the harmlessness of this mixture, no doubt the Chinese are better able to take tea through never having reduced their strength and created compli- cated diseases by centuries of excessive meat-eating and alcohol. For poison from the European way of tea- drinking, as from excessive smoking or drinking of alcohol, is supposed to be hereditary and is consequently more quickly injurious in the second or third generation. If this is so, surely the consideration and study of the effects that food has on the body is in no sense a ridiculous or degrading subject. So many people say, 'It is so un- worthy always to be talking or thinking about food or J33 52 A THIRD POT-POURRI health.' Their one wish is laughingly to put it aside and shift the responsibility of their own and their children's health on to the shoulders of the doctors, not even taking the trouble to learn what the modern advertisements try to teach them, viz. which foods are digested in the upper stomach and which in the lower, or that constipation is the commonest proof of indigestion. This question of the diet for children seems to me to be full of difficulty, and I should say cannot be under- taken without the consent of the father. This he is not the least Ukely to give unless he has studied the subject enough to wish to adopt it for himself as well as for his children. The first object of ambition to an intelligent boy or girl is to try to imitate father, and if he con- stantly throws brickbats at dieting the case is hopeless. I am sure in a few years the great school diflSculty wiU be much lessened, and that if a boy is anxious to continue his regular home food, there will in time be a house for non- stimulating diet at Eton. One of the keenest vegetarians I know succeeded in converting her daughter who was out of health, but had no effect on her son-in-law or her grandchildren. Where father and mother are agreed, I think the experiment of bringing up children as vegetarians may fairly be tried, though probably even those parents hardly realise the difficulties before them. A great deal will depend on how they can train their children mentally. In any case, in the present state of things, the parents can hardly ever go away from home together for any length of time, or to a distance which prevents their quick return, as the children ought not to be left to the sole care of even the best of nurses. She cannot be expected not to send for a doctor the moment anything goes wrong, and he in turn would, from want of practice among vegetarians, fail to understand the sensitiveness of the children. The nurse would have no weight in explaining HEALTH OF OTHERS 53 to him the wishes of the parents ; whereas if the parents were present probably the doctor would not interfere with the diet. The plain truth is that it all resolves itself into a question of character and knowledge in the parents. When a doctor finds that he has to deal with men and women who have taken the pains to acquaint themselves with the elements of physiology and the chemistry of food, his tone is very different from the one he uses, naturally enough, to the young and ignorant mother who appeals to him to make her sick child well, as if he worked by miracle, and who submits to be told by him that if she brings up her children on a non-meat diet she is ' a very wicked woman.' My object in repeating these things so often is that radical changes in diet can only be brought about by the public, and children are not likely to take to what their parents and elders do not practise ; though if the parents are non-meat-eaters the consequences of home example may act powerfully in this, as in other matters, when they grow to man's and woman's estate. One case, at least, I know where the diet has been successfully carried through school and college and joining a regiment, where the young man was looked upon as rather a curiosity, but was left unmolested. I am always supposed to be proselytising, and last year I sent to an old friend, a middle-aged schoolmaster, Mr. Miles' 'Better Food for Boys.' He says in reply: ' I have read and thought over Miles' book. It seems to me that the question is mainly a medical one.' This sentence epitomises what so many think and feel, and when I say, 'But apparently the medical profession refuse to give the matter serious thought and experiment,' this closes all discussion, and I am looked upon as a pre- judiced idiot. This I try to bear with the philosophic calm of a non-meat-eater. He writes further : ' To a lay- S4 A THIRD POT-POURRI man there is much in what Miles says, and for a large number of adults — for any adult, in fact, who leads a sedentary life, I believe his system is beneficial. I am following it myself in moderation — that is to say, I have knocked off meat meals and substituted Plasmon for them, and already dread the idea of sitting down to a big dinner. But if the practice becomes general, what a blow it will be to the social side of life ! You can't seriously sit down to rice and stewed fruit with half a dozen friends.' My friend's despair about the social side being reduced to stewed prunes and rice is very much as if he invited his friends to cold shoulder of mutton and potatoes. For festive occasions endless combinations and much luxury, attractive to all the senses, could be made. Even for the severest stage of diet — the fruitarian — if a housekeeper spends half what she does on fish, game, poultry, &c., for a dinner-party, she might have the most gorgeous and attractive display of the best fruits to be had in any market, and a cook once trained to the food would produce endless dainty varieties of cakes, biscuits, nut-creams, and rolls. These people who think that the social side of life must suffer with the disappearance of meat from our tables seem to forget that cereals, fruits, and wine are the foods which the highest imagination of man has always thought the most fit for the feasts of the Gods, a detail eagerly seized upon by Burne-Jones for representation in his famous picture on that subject. To go back to my letter : my friend says, ' I cannot persuade myself that the health of boys suffers from a meat diet. They do not, as a rule, overload the stomach and take strenuous exercise. Of course, it may fairly be said that if you bring boys up on meat they will be less likely to take to the simpler foods later on. But there are great difficulties in the way. Miles' diet cannot be made compulsory, and at a big school two systems cannot well HEALTH OF OTHERS 55 be worked, but I think schoolmasters might do much good by example and by preaching. That is the line I follow. The question which the author raises in his opening chapter is of the utmost importance, but there, again, only a doctor is qualified to give an opinion. Is sensuality less developed in gramnivorous animals than in the car- nivorous ? I doubt it. Plasmon is becoming popular with doctors. I am convinced that any baddish rheumatic or gouty tendencies would be the better for it.' I should like to say to this last sentence that this attitude towards Plasmon of thinking it a ' cure ' for rheumatism and gout is as dangerous as it is prevalent. In itself this valuable preparation is no cure ; it is a highly-concentrated proteid food, which enables people to leave off the alcohol, and the uric-acid-forming foods they have been used to. The allusion to animals seems to me rather wide of the mark. All Nature, even in flowers as described in the botanical language which I have known to shock prudish mothers, is apparently wasteful ; but, as I understand it, the word sensttality implies a moral conception — i.e. the antithesis of self-control, and this is a province with which Nature in the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms has nothing whatever to do. What I suppose my friend really means to ask is, whether sex vigour is less in gramnivorous animals than in carnivorous ? Had he thought for a moment, it would probably have come to his mind that the buU and the goat are almost proverbially used in art and literature to express this vigour rather than the lion and tiger. In Mr. Miles' books there are frequent allusions to the point, which is always puzzling schoolmasters, as to how to increase physical strength with moral self- control. Schoolmasters solve the difficulty by incessant games, to the detriment of learning. Mr. Miles' solution is non-stimulating food and drink. I was pleased to see that my friend sympathised with S6 A THIRD POT-POURRI me about the facility of carrying out the diet in old age, and the benefit of teaching by example. One advantage of taking to a diet of simpler food late in life is that it lessens to a great degree the family and social opposition, which from the kindest of reasons is almost universal. Abstinence in old age is looked upon as rather a virtue by the young, but when practised by their own contemporaries they consider it as a sign of eccentricity, affectation, love of notoriety, or extreme bad health. This being so, I find that diet looms as an insuperable obstacle with the young. Their experience being nil, their knowledge is weak ; the diet is often badly managed, the worry is great, and unless the improvement in health is rapid, as in several cases I have known it to be, they lose heart and prefer bad health under a doctor to trying to cure themselves against the approval of rela- tions and friends. No one but an actual invalid, for instance, can stand having to change the hours of meals instituted by our modern civilisation. Unless we are actually ill enough to give in, we must live according to the divisions of the day which suit the occupations of the various members of our family. These change with passing fashions, and, for aught we know, our grand- children may dine at Queen Anne's hour, which was 5 P.M. To a bachelor athlete like Mr. Miles, or a curate in the wilds of the country, it seems no hardship, and there is no pulling of the heartstrings in living on Plasmon and fruit ; but think of the young wife whose tired husband comes home at 7 p.m. after making, or trying to make, money for her, and finds that she has had her meal of dry bread and nuts and fruit at 6 p.m., and, however affection- ately disposed, can only sit and watch him drink his hot soup and eat his daintily -cooked chicken, winding up with iced fruit and cream. The situation is really harrowing, HEALTH OF OTHERS 57 and yet Dr. Haig says one of the best divisions of meals for dyspeptics is 11 and 6. These used to be the Erench hours for everybody, but that custom is now so entirely changed that when we come across it in hotels our home habits cause us to think the division tiresome and in- convenient. Many husbands might submit to this in their own homes ; but a still greater difficulty and irritation arises when the couple go from Saturday to Monday to friends in the country, where the tables groan with luxuries of every kind, and the wife finds it difficult to eat anything, for she has not the courage to ask for milk and cheese, and, the bread being uneatable from newness and baking-powder, she has to wait till the end of dinner for fruit, and suddenly realises, when she is at last eating her grapes, that the mistress of the house is dying to leave the table. I remember well years ago a vegetarian of some distinction who used to dine at our house, and invariably emptied the dessert-dish that happened to be in front of him, whatever it contained. It used, then, to cause me considerable suppressed irritation, but we change so that he has now all my sympathj^, and I often long to do it myself. Even with the help of summer vegetables, such as peas and beans, which are dangerous food to those with weak digestions, the young wife has been absolutely starved, and feels it all the more as, being an amateur vegetarian, she will probably, in nine oases out of ten, be underfed and have no reserves to fall back upon in emer- gency. Even if she has read Dr. Haig's leaflets, or Mr. Miles' lists of food values, she will most likely have done so without the real comprehension which would enable her to apply the facts to her individual case. She might be able to get more bulk of food at an ordinary table, but is perhaps prevented from taking it by the haunting fear of getting fat, which I find among nearly all young people of the present day. Obesity is, of course. S8 A THIRD POT-POURRI disease, and I believe is more easily cured by the diet than in any other way, for when I began it I lost two stone in six months ; but plumpness, especially for women, is natural and healthy, and the vanity of wishing to be thin, which has been so encouraged by the Pre-Eaphaelite School of Art with its unhealthy ideal of beauty, still holds its sway and accounts for much nervous disease among women. It is undeniable that the serpentine clothes of the present day look best on a thin peg, but on the whole there is no doubt in my mind that health comes before everything, and for a girl or woman whom Nature means to be fat, to diet herself thin, no matter by what means, is an exceedingly dangerous process which may cause many sufferings and complications, and even end in disease, and is quite as foolish as the efforts of the frog to swell itself to the size of an ox. At the same time, when I am told— as I often am — ' I should so like to take to your delightful diet of vegetables, only it would make me grow so fat,' by people who take butter and cream two or three times a day, in addition to a rich ordinary diet, I cannot help being amused, knowing how easily Dr. Haig's diet can be regulated for fat people. The old mediaBval theory of disregard of the body is still so strongly ingrained in some of the noblest natures that they would far rather be ill now and then than have to think out habitually what is good for them and act up to it, or to believe when they are, ill that it is their own fault rather than a visitation of Providence which they are to bear with resignation. They send for a doctor, pay him cheerfully, and hope for better days. This attitude of mind will change when people are trained from child- hood to understand that all sickness not caught from a germ is preventible, and that doing without food for a day, or even two, does far less harm to the healthy than eating wrong food. To be able to miss a meal without feeling HEALTH OF OTHERS 59 the worse, is one of the surest tests of being in good health. There was a time in my life when I nearly cried with misery if I did not get my tea at 5 o'clock, and felt quite ill all the evening. We must have patience and some courage. Eevolutions are never effected in the bosom of peace and perfect concordance. When I was young I remember saying to a friend, ' I wonder what the new religion will be when it comes ? ' She answered, ' Something set to Wagner's music' This did not seem to me to strike the true note. She had been long in Germany and was devoted to Wagner and his genius. I was not musical, and did not at that time know much of Wagner, but from the little I did know I felt he did not strike the key-note of self-denial which in some form or other is the basis of all religion. It will be curious if the religion of the future should avoid the dangerous asceticism of the Middle Ages which denied the body, by going back to the earlier Greek idea which recognised it as deserving of all respect, and treated it as a precious instrument to be kept in the highest degree of eflBciency and perfection : practising abstinence for the sake of health rather than as a direct means to moral excellence. In advocating the diet, one of the hardest things to combat, after the opposition of friends and inconvenience to social life, is a certain fondness of food and drink among those who consider that the one legitimate indulgence of life is to eat, if not drink, what one likes. I know several people who never deny that they are much the better for dieting, but who nearly burst with indignation when sitting at a table and seeing others eating all round them, because they cannot do the same. This naive and childlike side of the question was rather a revelation to me, as all my life I had avoided the things I thought not good for me, however tempting they were. I can't understand eating 6o A THIRD POT-POURRI that which you know does you harm. Modern vege- tarianism has enormously grown out of sentiment, but I think it is exceedingly advisable that people who take to the simpler foods for health's sake rather than for sentimental reasons, should at least adopt an attitude of mind which will give the system a fair trial unprejudiced by likes and dislikes, mental irritation being bad for digestion. A terrible idea has got about amongst my friends, and I might almost say patients, that if they take to the diet more or less strictly, they are not only to be quickly made quite well, but to remain so perpetually. Over-fatigue, change of weather, indigestion, &c., are supposed to have no effect at all on the non-meat-eater. Now I want everybody who undertakes the diet in consequence of ill health to understand that it cannot suddenly repair a debilitated state of the digestive organs. Most of our modern ailments are acknowledged to come from indi- gestion and non-assimilation. This goes on in many oases long after the excess of uric acid has ceased, and then the patients turn round on me and say, ' Why, after years of this self-denial and all the trouble that this peculiar feeding brings, am I to have this and that ail- ment? ' The probability is that they have frequently not digested their simpler food any better than they did their mixed foods ; they also do not get the enforced rest which attacks of illness, often lasting a week or more, imposed upon them. One can only assure them — and this sounds a feeble comfort — that they would have been much worse on the old diet, for I have never met a case which did not admit that any attacks of illness under the diet were very much milder than they formerly were. It is obviously unfair to judge of a diet which is the best for man in health by its effects on invalids. People with weak digestions have a difficult hill to get over in HEALTH OF OTHERS 6i leaving off meat, as doubldess it is lighter of digestion than any other food containing the same amount of nourishment. But people seldom realise that what may be a gain to the digestion may be an injury to the blood, and will bring round in time the very troubles from which they temporarily escape. For those who are digest- ing so badly that they are underfed, which can easily be told by colour of gums, loss of weight, excitable nerves, &c., it is most important that they should test themselves by weighing from time to time — say every three months. The nightmare of growing fat, alluded to before, makes many women believe they cannot take either milk or cheese. In these cases there must be a diet within the diet and a careful study of the proteid foods, which give nourishment without bulk. In cases of severe dyspepsia, Mellin's Food is invalu- able. Most people at the first difficulty say, ' The diet is not agreeing with me,' and go back to meat and cham- pagne, which does them immense good for a short time till the increased uric acid in their system brings back their original troubles. All the relations are delighted, the doctor in attendance is jubilant, and the vicious circle again begins. Their winter or spring illness is attributed to cold and east wind. I, from my experience, am quite convinced that in all cases of dyspepsia, rheumatism, gout, it is impossible to live up to anything like the full physiological allowance of proteid, especially in the case of women who do not work off the evil effect of non-assimilation by violent exercise as most men occasionally do. And here comes the great difficulty, viz. that each person has to find out for himself what amount of proteid he can assimilate, and in what form. Nobody else can know whether Nature is properly performing her functions, and digesting the food taken. Any necessity for a return to drugs, or 62 A THIRD POT-POURRI violently irritating foods like cracked wheat, is a sign that even the simpler foods are not being properly digested. I have never come across anyone who has given the simpler foods a fair trial of several years, who found any permanent benefit in returning to a meat diet. Doctors, who judge by the immediate results, would not agree with this. Most doctors naturally take a pride and pleasure in seeing their patients return to them after a tentative course of the diet, and it is an equal humiliation when good health results and enables them to keep away. Perhaps the health of the community would be improved if we adopted the Chinese and pauper system of only paying the doctors during health and not illness. There is a considerable difiSculty in the law of the land being entirely on the side of the doctors. The conversation at my breakfast table this morning would have made a more nervous woman's hair stand on end. Having an invalid patient of Dr. Haig's in the house under a strict diet of bread, almonds, and fruit, a member of the family said, ' It is quite clear we shall have an inquest very shortly in this house. I see the coroner saying with great emphasis, "Are you sure that Mrs. Earle is in her right mind? " ' This arose from a discussion as to whether the patient was being starved to death, or poisoned by prussie acid, the real point in my mind being whether she was taking more proteid food than she was able to digest, although within her physiological allowance, or whether she was less weU from being out too much in the damp. Damp certainly has a bad effect on a great many people's digestion. Driving and walking are to my mind much less harmful than the sitting about out of doors which is the invalid rule. The following statement of his own case was written out for me by a man-patient of Dr. Haig's : ' Present age 42. Occupation sedentary. Lives in London for ten HEALTH OF OTHERS 63 months of the year. Medical history bad, both on pater- nal and maternal side. Paternal : gout for generations. Father suffered from it on and off all his life, and acutely during ten years in the eyes, necessitating surgical treat- ment by operation. Maternal: chronic dyspepsia and liver complaint. Mother's father died of latter at 34. The man himself up to the age of 34 lived very well and thought much about eating and drinking, but did not indulge in either excessively. Was a heavy cigarette smoker. Suffered during every epidemic of influenza. In 1894 had an attack of influenza, followed by acute intercostal neuralgia, which continued for one month, and ended in an attack of phlebitis in the left leg, which lasted seven months (of which six were passed in a com- pletely recumbent position, the patient being forbidden to move without professional assistance), involved the two soffena veins and the femoral vein, and culminated in thrombosis, which left the femoral vein blocked perma- nently for the length of five inches close to the groin. Attack very severe, the leg remaining considerably larger than normal size with much varicosity. This attack was followed at intervals during six years by four other attacks of intercostal neuralgia (so severe that the dread of recurrence completely shook naturally strong nerves), the treatment of which, by means of salicylate of soda (in 20 gr. powders often taken every hour for eight hours at a stretch), reduced the patient to a condition of abject weakness, requiring weeks of the strongest tonics before strength at all was recovered. Two of these four attacks were followed by phlebitis in the leg originally attacked, which, though less severe than on the first occasion, neces- sitated spells of months' duration in bed or on a sofa. In September 1899 the patient underwent treatment at Bag- noles de I'Orne, in Prance, for the after effects of phlebitis. In November 1899 occurred an unusually severe attack of 64 A THIRD POT-POURRI shingles on the right jaw and side of the neck and upon the back of the head under the hair. In January 1900 phlebitis attacked the right leg, and the patient was warned by the leading French specialist on the subject, who is one of the doctors at Bagnoles, and came from Paris to see him, that he was in danger of constantly recurring attacks, which might well result in a chronic condition, and that elastic stockings must be worn on both legs from the toes to the knees, and never taken off except in bed. He pointed out that the treatment at Bagnoles was in many ways wonderfully efficacious in restoring elasticity to the tissue of veins, thickened and hardened through phlebitis, but procured no immunity from fresh attacks of that disease. Such immunity could only be obtained (if at all) by improving the condition of the blood, for which purpose he recommended a yearly visit to Carlsbad for the next twelve or fifteen years. The patient adopted Dr. Haig's system of diet on April 21, 1900, and has continued it ever since. He has never had another attack of phlebitis or intercostal neuralgia, and was, in August 1901, authorised by the specialist in ques- tion to discontinue the use of elastic stockings altogether, even when taking strong exercise, such as walking or bicycling for long distances.' The following letter may appeal to those who have to practise the diet under the difficulties of travelling. I myself have not taken voyages in steamers of late years, but in travelling on the Continent I find that if you conciliate the hotel-keeper and make it clear to him that economy is not your object, by paying cheerfully for all you don't eat and nearly double for what you do, you will find him most accommodating. ItaUan food adapts itself much more easily to the taste of the vegetarian than the modern French, at any rate in the expensive Paris re- staurants ; but there is no doubt that the long table-d'hdtes HEALTH OF OTHERS 65 where you don't eat are even more trying than the long tables-d'hdte where you do eat, and this must be just accepted as a trial which can only be avoided by taking lodgings. ' July 28, 1902. ' As we have just come back from travelling, you may care to hear how we got on as to diet. We had foohshly taken only a small amount of concentrated food with us, and this very soon ran out. However, we were thus able to experiment on how far it is possible to live on the gleanings from 'board-ship table-d'hdte. Practically every- thing is artificial — adulterated milk and butter, frozen meat, frozen vegetables, frozen fruit. Formerly a goat or a cow used to travel on the ship, and I beUeve that is still the case on some of the very small obscure Continental lines. The bread is extremely poor, little white rolls that taste very acid, and are probably made of gypsum, boron, soda, in fact anything except wheat. The artificial milk is exceedingly nasty and unwholesome and could only possibly be taken in very small quantities with tea or coffee. The only drink that commends itself is hot water. The unboiled water is never supposed to be safe in the Mediterranean and mineral waters certainly have a very bad effect on people unaccustomed to them. It seems to me, however, that those who have a peculiar diet ought to expect all these drawbacks, and starvation is not very terrible for a short space of time. The thoroughly ob- jectionable thing is the immense length of the meals, they nearly always consist of nine or ten com'ses and take nearly two hours. Imagine munching dry bad bread for nearly two hours while carrying on a sort of pretence at eating some of the meat courses, all for the sake of a little fruit and cheese at the end, these last being the only courses that are hurried. The only time I got on well, as regards food, was when the weather was bad. 66 A THIRD POT-POURRI Then the waiter brought me the few items of the menu that I could eat at once and without " reasoning why." I wish that providing necessaries and not " luxuries " was the ideal of 'board-ship caterers, as the effort to pro- vide "luxuries" only produces a lot of highly sauced dishes one more uneatable and unwholesome than the other. There is yet another unpleasantness ; on some steamers the stores of food are all kept on ice, and when they are removed from the ice, decomposition sets in very rapidly, the result being that the dining saloon, besides its normal, fragrant smeUs, has a peculiar, drain-like at- mosphere. The Continental train services with restaurant cars have the same principles ; they never have fresh food, even though they may be travelling through the richest countries in the world, and constantly stopping. No doubt the reason for this kind of food being supplied is, that there is a' demand for it. The class that lives most artificially is the class that travels most, and there- fore it becomes a matter of business necessity to supply the kind of food which is most constantly asked for. If we may be bold enough to give advice to other people who have the same diet as ourselves, it is that they should not travel at all, or that they should have a private yacht, or, if they have to travel in the ordinary way, that they should take a large supply of nourishing biscuits and a pouch like Jack the Giant-killer, into which they may slip everything, and thus keep up the appearance of having the eating capacity of the average traveller, and avoid the accusation made by hotel-keepers of undue economising.' The following case has been written out for me by the patient — a young woman whom I have known for many years, and who has most bravely fought against long chronic bad health : ' Five years ago, in the winter of 1897, I began a diet HEALTH OF OTHERS 67 of cereals, milk, cheese, nuts, fruits and vegetables, to the total exclusion of flesh foods, eggs, pulses, tea, coffee and cocoa. I was at that time suffering from anaemia, indigestion, neuralgia, and general weakness. My work was sedentary, and lasted from 9 a.m. till 7 p.m. For eleven months I stuck to the diet, appetite gradually getting so bad that, for the last few months, I used to live on the less solid foods, as milk, savoury vegetables, and the more tempting kinds of fruit, with very little bread, cheese, or nuts. At the end of the time I was so much worse that I went to Dr. Haig. He looked at the diary I had kept of my food and shook his head. He then examined me generally, and said I was " starved." After a few questions about the food I liked, he said, " Go out and get a mutton chop and a glass of Burgundy. Then go into the country for a rest, be out of doors aU you can, take this tonic, and eat as much fish and meat as you like. The first thing to do is to get a healthy appetite — then we will consider the diet. But eat anything rather than be underfed." I carried out these instructions and went back to him much improved a few weeks later. He then advised me to change very gradually, substituting cheese for meat at one meal only — and after keeping to that for some weeks, to change another meal, and so by degrees to get on to the diet. This I tried, but failed again, and then gave up altogether for about a year. Then I began again, and for two years had a series of hopeful beginnings and dismal endings. My friends used to say, " But why change at all when the ordinary diet suits you ? " It certainly did seem to suit me for the first three or four weeks when I went back to it from a non-meat diet, but I had always to be taking medicines, and sooner orlater came the dyspepsia, with the consequent exhaustion that made life a burden. As I woke each morning I used to feel "Here's f2 68 A THIRD POT-POURRI another day to drag myself through " — and as I lay down at night I used to be so dead beat that I felt it would be a relief to sleep for good. The change to Haig's diet always brought, at first, a delightful sense of lightness and well-being — a difference as between a well-oiled machine and one clogged with grit and dust — but after a few weeks I used to get too weak to go on with my work, and had to give it up. At last, after rather a bad collapse, the friend with whom I worked bound me over to a meat-fish-wine, &c., diet for twelve consecutive months. When they were over, I started once more very cautiously on the uric-acid-free diet, making a careful study, meanwhile, of food values, mixtures and quantities, and for six months I succeeded beyond my hopes. Every- one noticed how much better I was in every way, and I found for the first time since childhood, that I could dis- pense with all kinds of medicine. Suddenly I caught a bad chill after weeks of excessive overwork, which re- sulted in mucus coUtis with total collapse, and for two months I was in bed in charge of a nurse. The treatment was injections of carbolic alternately with boracic acid, and this played such havoc with an already enfeebled digestion, that I could take no sort of invalid food, except minute quantities of dissolved Plasmon, without hours of distress. At the end of three months' most careful nursing, my strength had so far improved that I was able to go into the country with a nurse, but the colitis being none the better for the treatment I had undergone, and the doctor who had attended me telling me that it might go on for three years, as it was a most difficult thing to cure, there being no drug that would touch it, I wrote to Dr. Haig and asked him to prescribe. He instantly stopped all injections and put me on salicylate of soda, and in three days the mucus had diminished. At the end of ten days it had entirely ceased, and I then went to HEALTH OF OTHERS 69 stay with a friend of his who asked him to come down from London to see me. This he most kindly did, and the result of the interview was that he stopped the salicylate, which had done its work, and for the dyspepsia, which was still very bad, he prescribed a perfectly dry diet, of bread, pounded almonds, fruit, vegetable and cheese, telling me to replace the two latter by more fruit (fresh and dried) and almonds, as I found I could take them. This answered so weU that digestion rapidly improved and, with it, strength. At the end of a month I could walk up steep hills on hot days, vsdth pleasure, a thing I had never, at my best, been able to do before. The almonds, even when ground in a nut-mill and pounded by a careful cook, were, I found, Uable to aggravate the intestinal inflammation, and as I did not digest cheese well enough to nourish satisfactorily upon it, I experi- mented upon the almonds till I got a substance as smooth as Devonshire cream, and of this I could soon take 4 oz. a day with comfort. So many people find almonds a difficulty that it may be as well to say how this almond cream is prepared, for almonds are equal to their own weight of meat in nourishment, and for those who dislike cheese, they are far too valuable an item in the list of uric-acid-free foods to be cast aside. ' Almond Cream. — Blanch the almonds in boiling water and grind in a nut-mill. Put about a tablespoonful at a time into a mortar with a teaspoonful of cold water, and work with the pestle till as smooth as butter, no particle the size of a pin's head being left. Mix in a little more cold water till of the consistency of clotted cream, and scrape out on to a dish. It is better to have only a small quantity at once in the mortar, or the smoothness is not so uniform. The nut-mill should be taken to pieces (one easy screw undoes the whole) every day and well scalded, for almonds turn as sour as milk, especially after they have * f3 70 A THIRD POT-POURRI been wet. For this reason, the almond cream should be freshly made every day. For travellers who prefer almonds to cheese, but cannot venture to eat them whole, this form of cream is excellent for sandwiches. Children and invalids, too, can digest them in this way. When I had been three months on this diet, I caught another bad chill, which brought on a severe relapse of the gastro- intestiaal inflammation, and again for two weeks I had to have a nurse and be kept in bed. For four days various invalid foods — barley water, beaten white of egg, cham- pagne and soda-water, weak solution of Plasmon, &o. — were tried in teaspoonfuls at the time, and all with equally distressing results. Finally a nutrient sup- pository was tried, which also proved a failure, and still further reduced my strength. Then, having convinced my nurse that the very things administered with the time- honoured idea of "keeping up my strength" not only failed to do this, but actually drained the little I had by causing sickness and pain, I insisted on a fast of twenty- four clear hours, to give the stomach a chance of righting itself. The thirst, which was intense, I relieved partly by holding a piece of ice in a bit of linen on the lips, and rinsing the mouth from time to time with bicarbonate of soda. Even a spoonful of hot or cold water instantly produced sickness, and there was nothing to be done but leave things alone and wait. At the end of twenty-four hours I took 20 grains bicarb, soda in haU-a-pint of hot-water — a teaspoonful every two minutes. After thirty hours I took, with comfort, 2 oz. Mellin's Food of the strength given to infants of four months, and this I repeated three times a day for two or three days, after which the quantity, though not the quality, was gradually increased — the bicarb, being taken an hour before each meal of Mellin's Food. Dr. Haig again most kindly came down from London, and said the starvation treatment was HEALTH OF OTHERS 71 the only one for the case — there being no risk whatever in fasting for five days, so long as I had 10 lbs. of flesh on my bones. His advice for future diet was to drop almonds entirely till all sign of weakness had disappeared in stomach and bowels, and to " feel my way " slowly on to a diet of bread, potatoes, milk, fresh curd cheese, fruit, with oU, cream, and butter ad lib. The bread to be stale, home-made, white [i.e. the wholemeal minus the bran), the potatoes to be steamed or baked in the skins to pre- serve the alkahne salts so valuable in all forms of gout and rheumatism (colitis being a kind of intestinal gout) ; the fruit to be ripe and uncooked, and always eaten with potatoes to prevent acid dyspepsia, and plenty of oil or butter to aid digestion. After being on this diet for a month, I dropped everything but bread and fruit, and recovery became so much more rapid that I have kept to this permanently with Dr. Haig's fuU approval, and have already built up a reserve of strength such as at one time seemed impossible to aU the doctors I consulted.' A young man I know has had eczema from his birth and, with every chance of consulting many physicians, no one had been able to cure it, eczema being one of the illnesses which, like leprosy, seem, on their own confes- sion, to baffle doctors, though many remedies make it apparently better for a time. After two and a half years of a form of the simpler foods which suited him, he seems, for the first time in his life, to be quite free from it. Having just heard of this cure, the following story in the papers (July 1902), of the tragedy in the home of an artisan (a marble-polisher) seemed to me peculiarly distressing. The mother had been very despondent because her two little boys were severely afflicted with eczema. She had taken them to several hospitals in vain, and at last, in despair, drowned them in a tub. ' It was God's curse ! ' she said to the police ; ' the neighbours used to call 72 A THIRD POT-POURRI their children away from playing with them, and it broke my heart. I put them into a tub of water and put them into the bed. I did not know what I was doing.' A verdict of ' wilful murder ' was brought in against her. This probably means a lifetime in Broadmoor. I quote this humble tragedy because I feel that, of all disorders, skin disease is most obviously cured by diet. After writing these long, and perhaps boresome, chapters on the subject of health, it was with no small . comfort that I found in Mr. Maeterlinck's latest book of essays, ' The Buried Temple,' in a chapter headed ' The Kingdom of Matter,' the following passage, which brought me that best of all consolations on a road that is impopular and strange, namely, to feel ' Verily, I am not travelling alone ' : ' We have said that man, in his relation to matter, is still in the experimental, groping, stage of his earliest days. He lacks even definite knowledge as to the kind of food best adapted for him, or the quantity of nourishment he requires ; he is still uncertain as to whether he be carnivorous or frugivorous. His intellect misleads his instinct. It was only yesterday that he learned that he had probably erred hitherto in the choice of his nourish- ment ; that he must reduce by two-thirds the quantity of nitrogen he absorbs, and largely increase the volume of hydrocarbons ; that a little fruit, or milk, a few vegetables, farinaceous substances — now the mere accessory of the too plentiful repasts which he works so hard to provide, which are his chief object in life, the goal of his efforts, of his strenuous, incessant labour — are amply sufficient to maintain the ardour of the finest and mightiest life. It is not my purpose here to discuss the question of vegetarian- ism, or to meet the objections that may be urged against it ; though it must be admitted that, of these objections, not one can withstand a loyal and scrupulous inquiry. HEALTH OF OTHERS 73 I, for my part, can affirm that those whom I have known to submit themselves to this regimen have found its result to be improved or restored health, marked addition of strength, and the acquisition by the mind of a clearness, brightness, well-being, such as might follow the release from some secular, loathsome, detestable dungeon. But we must not conclude these pages with an essay on alimentation, reasonable as such a proceeding might be. For, in truth, all our justice, morality, all our thoughts and feehngs, derive from three or four primordial necessi- ties, whereof the principal one is food. The least modifica- tion of one of these necessities would entail a marked change in our moral existence. Were the belief one day to become general that man could dispense with animal food, there would ensue not only a great economic revolu- tion — for a bullock, to produce one pound of meat, con- sumes more than a hundred of provender — but a moral improvement as well. . . . For we find that the man who abandons the regimen of meat abandons alcohol also ; and to do this is to renounce most of the coarser and more degraded pleasures of hfe. And it is in the passionate craving for these pleasures, in their glamour, and the prejudice they create, that the most formidable obstacle is found to the harmonious development of the race. De- tachment therefrom creates noble leisure, a new order of desires, a wish for enjoyment that must of necessity be loftier than the gross satisfactions which have their origin in alcohol. But aire days such as these in store for us — these happier, purer hours ? The crime of alcohol is not alone that it destroys its faithful and poisons one-half of the race, but also that it exercises a profound, though indirect, influence upon those who recoil from it in dread. The idea of pleasure which it maintains in the crowd forces its way, by means of the crowd's irresistible action, into the life even of the elect, and lessens and perverts all 74 A THIRD POT-POURRI that concerns man's peace and repose, his expansiveness, gladness, and joy ; retarding, too, it may safely be said, the birth of the truer, profounder, ideal of happiness ; one that shall be simpler, more peaceful and grave, more spiritual and human. This ideal is evidently stiU very imaginary, and may seem of but little importance ; and infinite time must elapse, as in all other eases, before the certitude of those who are convinced that the race, so far, has erred in the choice of its aliment (assuming the truth of this statement to be borne out by experience) shall reach the confused masses, and bring them enlightenment and comfort. But may this not be the expedient Nature holds in reserve for the time when the struggle for life shall have become too hopelessly unbearable — the struggle for life that to-day means the fight for meat and for alcohol, double source of injustice and waste whence all the others are fed, double symbol of a happiness and necessity whereof neither is human ? ' I owe most of my scientific instruction in the non- meat diet to Dr. Haig and his books. His address is A. Haig, Esq., M.D., 7 Brook Street, W., but, anxious as I was not to be supposed to favour one man in my wish to. advocate a cause, I was- given at my request, by a leading vegetarian, a list of medical men in different parts of England who were supposed to agree more or less with Dr. Haig, to the extent, at any rate, of recommending a non-flesh diet. I thought the list might be of some service to those of my readers interested in the health question not living in London. It has now been brought to my notice that one of these doctors objects to his name being mentioned in such a list as not warranted by fact, and Mkely to injure his standing in his profession. I offered this gentleman my sincere apologies in private. HEALTH OF OTHERS 75 and, as he wished it, in public also. It has been thought better that, for fear of injuring anyone else, I should with- draw the list altogether. I am sorry for this, not for the doctors, but for the convenience of the public, as the hst contained names in many of the principal towns in Eng- land. To doctors it is especially applicable, and is their own unwritten law, that ' good wine needs no bush.' The last information that reaches me is that the most successful and fashionable doctors in Paris, Berlin, and London are all striving to improve the health of their patients by diet rather than by drugs. And when this becomes more generally known it will do away with the great difficulty of dieting children. One reviewer notices this difficulty and says : ' I confess that I think the diet of the sons of the professional classes ought to be ar- ranged on the same lines as the theologies of princesses. It should be adaptable to any career likely to be em- braced; it would seem a pity therefore to educate the digestion of a child only to cope with one particular form of food.' As things are now this remark is quite just, and an Englishman without his meat and stimulant is a very uncomfortable individual. But many things will change and conform to circumstances, and time alone can prove if this new movement to improve the standard of health is right or wrong. Joubert said somewhere of Plato that he does not so much give us ideas of truth as create the atmosphere of light by which we perceive them for ourselves. So let it be. 76 A THIRD POT-POURRI SUPPLEMENT Home started in Backinghamshire, under Dr. Haig, for instruction and practice in uric-acid-free foods — A second home in Hamp- shire for fleshless diet, recommended by Mr. Eustace Miles, M.A. — Critical paper, by a patient of Dr. Haig — Dr. Haig's answer to same. A FEW fresh facts having come to my knowledge since the former chapters were written, I am adding them here as a postscript because I think they will be useful to those who have read what I have said before. The news has just reached me that a grateful patient of Dr. Haig's has started a self-supporting home where invalids, and those interested in Dr. Haig's theories of diet, may reside under his personal supervision and teach- ing. Miss Florence Jessop, the secretary of the home — Apsley House, Slough — will give all the necessary informa- tion to those who write for it. The pamphlet, describing the objects of the home, opens with this sentence : ' Life is not mere existence, but health and happiness. The object here is life in its fullest sense.' With Dr. Haig's characteristic eagerness to share his knowledge and experi- ence with all who care to learn, he has provided that doctors shall be taken in, free of charge, for Saturday to Monday visits, that they may get to understand about the place. This is only one more instance of what I have noticed ever since I have known him, viz. that he tries to teach everyone all he knows in the belief that, if only they understand his theory, they will be able to keep their own SUPPLEMENT 77 health in order and greatly control the chances of disease. The terms of the home are from three to five guineas per week, which include all comforts, and Dr. Haig's attend- ance on his bi-weekly visits. Poor patients can place themselves in his care at the Metropolitan Hospital, or the Eoyal Hospital for Children and Women, at both of which he is a visiting physician. I was told that, after the publication of my second book, some people said, ' I wonder what Dr. Haig pays Mrs. Earle for puf&ng him in her books ? ' This deliciously characteristic question of the age amused me immensely. I wonder what these same people will say now? It seems a pity that there should be anyone who does not understand the difference between personal interest of any sort, and the impersonal interest in scientific work which promises to benefit the whole world, if those who believe in it help to make it known. Mr. Eustace Miles, M.A., is thoroughly recommending another home called Broadlands, at Medstead, Hants, and says that he may be used as a reference, as it is just the kind of establishment to which he alluded in a recent letter to the ' Daily Mail.' Particulars can be obtained from Miss Houston, the secretary. The terms are two guineas a-week, which at first sight appears cheaper than Apsley House, but as this charge does not include medical attendance and instruction, there is no great difference. It being my fixed idea that the food question rests with the intelligent public and not with the doctors, I asked a friend who for over two years has taken immense interest in the question both for himself and others, to be kind enough to put on paper his present attitude with regard to diet. My friend sent his critical paper to Dr. Haig, who has most kindly taken the trouble to write for me his explanation of the difficulties raised. 78 A THIRD POT-POURRI ' 23rd October, 1902. — You ask me to give you a risume of my present views on diet. I am still as firm a believer as ever in Dr. Haig's conclusions as to the part played by uric acid in causing disease, and in that authority's contention that it must, from any point of view, be de- sirable to avoid as far as possible all food vrhich in itself contains uric acid, or one of the other acids producing analogous effects. On some points, however, I am in a critical frame of mind towards Dr. Haig's opinions, or rather what I believe to be his opinions, which conceivably may not be quite the same thing, seeing that I am only a humble amateur follower of the expert to whom I owe so much. And, firstly, as to cheese and milk. Whether by reason of the casein or of the lactic acid, which both contain, it seems to me to be clear that a large number of people cannot digest these substances, at any rate not in the large quantities originally recommended by Dr. Haig ; and many of the cases treated by Dr. Cantani, the Neapolitan specialist, seem to prove that milk and cheese are the direct cause of gout in some constitutions. It may well be that these substances must, for such people, be placed in the same category as eggs, which, on Dr. Haig's own showing, contain no uric acid, and yet, according to him, produce the same effects as if they did. I am told that Dr. Haig has ceased ordering milk and cheese so freely as at one time he did ; if that be the fact, I am glad to hear it, for I incline strongly to the opinion that their habitual use by many people has been re- sponsible for many mishaps. Then, as to the amount of food which each person should eat in the twenty-four hours. I doubt the reliabihty of Dr. Haig's method of computation — I mean, the method of multiplying the weight in pounds by nine, and treating the product as the number of grains of proteid which should be eaten per diem. Pritna facie, I should have expected that people SUPPLEMENT 79 would differ from each other in digestive idiosyncrasies quite as much as in other respects, and my experience up to the present time seems to me to show that the as- sumption is well founded. If this be true, a rule whereby the amount of food is ascertained for each person in an identical manner cannot be sound, because it takes no account of his or her individual peculiarities. Again, the circumstances and conditions of life frequently vary very much in the course of a few years ; at one time a man may work more physically than mentally, at another the reverse may be the case ; at one time he may be living in a hot climate or in a stuffy town, at another he may be living in a cold climate or in the country ; at one time he may be leading a life of constant worry and strain, at another he may be enjojdng a tranquil existence. I do not believe that these changes are represented by sufficient, if by any, changes in the weight, so as to make it the proper, or even a possible, criterion ; while I do believe that these changes materially affect the digestive capacity. At any rate, in my own case and in that of my wife, we were not in a satisfactory state, when eating at the rate prescribed by Dr. Haig's method, during the first two years, whereas we began to improve from the moment that we began to eat considerably less. My proper amount, according to Dr. Haig, is about 1,500 grains of proteid, whereas I am eating at this moment, and for the last two months have been eating, under 1,200 grains. It may be that two months do not afford a sufficiently long test; but against that objection I set the fact that the experience of everyone whom I know (including your- self) tallies with mine of the last two months. The matter is all important if the true rule is that every particle of proteid taken during the twenty -four hours, which is in excess of what is actually required just to make up the loss occasioned by the energy, mental or 8o A THIRD POT-POURRI physical, expended during the twenty-four hours, or which, for any reason, the individual is unable to metabolise, acts as a direct poison. This is the rule laid down by Dr. Cantani, as I understand the matter, and I am con- vinced that it is the true rule, and that the disregard of it explains many of the failures of the diet, and stiU more the quasi-failures. A friend of yours and mine suggested to me on Sunday last a way of maintaining the reliability of the method of calculation laid down by Dr. Haig, and yet of admitting that it often gives unsatisfactory results in individual cases. This was to regard Dr. Haig's amounts as the proper ones for the normal person, but to hold that very few people who take to the diet are in a normal condition at the start, and take a longer or shorter time, and generally longer time, to become so, and that beginners should regard Dr. Haig's amounts as the goal towards which they should work, but should not expect to be able at first to eat in accordance with them. My reply is that the assumption that people are not in a normal condition at the beginning is almost certainly true, and that the suggestion may be as sound as it is ingenious, but that it does not represent Dr. Haig's view, as I understand it, and that, further, a method of calculating the proper amount of proteid which is not a reliable guide at the precise time when people most want such a guide — namely, at the beginning, when they have no data of their own to go on— can hardly be considered satisfactory. ' I would further point out that the weight, to which Dr. Haig's method has to be applied, is the normal or proper weight, not the weight at any given moment, as indeed must be the case, for otherwise the fatter a person got the more he would be bound to eat, irrespective of all other consideration, and vice versa. Now everyone does not know his normal or proper weight, seeing that we have SUPPLEMENT 8i not all been in the habit, from early youth, of being weighed at frequent intervals, and of taking a careful note of the result : we are therefore not in a position to strike an average, and so ascertain the normal weight. In such circumstances the only thing to be done is to take the weight according to the height, but Dr. Haig himself regards that method as by no means satisfactory. Again, all methods of computation necessarily depend for their success on the accuracy of the tables of analyses, which purport to show the proportions of proteid and other things contained in the different foods. Now it is obvious to anyone who has looked into the question at all that hardly any of these tables agree, and sometimes they differ materially; and even when they do agree, there remains the question whether the person consulting them can extract the whole of the proteid shown by the tables to exist in a particular food ; in other words, whether he can fully digest it. ' In short, from whatever point of view you consider the matter, nothing can take the place of personal ex- perience ; and therefore, while it is desirable, and in truth unavoidable, to accept Dr. Haig's method of calculation, and to assume the accuracy of some of the food tables to begin with, as one must have some basis to start on, it must be clearly understood that, if the result is not what it should be, the blame is not to be attached to the simple foods, or to the principles inculcating their adoption, but to the manner in which the patient is applying them in his or her case. ' One of the surest signs in my opinion that the in- dividual application is wrong, is constipation, whether the patient has previously been a sufferer from that scourge or not. Of course, if the patient, on mixed foods, has never been troubled with it, and it began only with the adoption of the simple foods, the proof of mistake in in- G 82 A THIRD POT-POURRI dividual application is the more emphatic, but in any case, as I maintain, it is only a question of degree. The usual experience is, I fancy, that the adoption of the simple foods is followed at once by a marked improvement in the behaviour of the bovrels, which causes the heart of the neophyte to rejoice, and makes him think that the problem is solved for good and all. Such may indeed be the happy fate of some of us, but more usually, I think, the initial improvement gradually slackens, and finally dies away altogether, and the status quo ante the change of diet returns more or less. To all persons in that position I say that they should not be discouraged, that they should not think that the diet is in principle at fault, but that they should think that their individual method of appli- cation is wrong, and should never rest until, by experi- ment, they have discovered exactly what is the cause of the trouble. I do not think that Dr. Haig looks at this complaint, as it ought to be looked at, namely, as one of the most immediate and natural proofs that the diet is not being properly applied, except, of course, in cases where there is reason to diagnose structural or other organic defect in the bowels themselves. The result of not doing so is that a person, who adopts the simple foods, is very liable to bring over from his former condition and training the orthodox attitude, both among doctors and laymen, that constipation is one of the mysteries of Nature, which must be tolerated with resignation and fortitude, or treated with violence. Yet it seems to me much more hkely that it is merely due to the fact that the food is pre- sented to the bowels in a condition not suitable to their task, and that, either because something, which ought to have been removed by the process of mastication and stomachic digestion, has been left in, or vice versa, and is a kindly warning of Nature, which is meant to show us either that we are taking the wrong foods, or that we are SUPPLEMENT 83 taking them in the wrong quantities, or that we are com- bining them wrongly. 'I expect you will say that, if the whole matter ia really a question of individual effort and experiment, there is very little chance of right principles of diet ever spread- ing generally, seeing that most people expect their doctors to do all the thinking for them on the subject of health, and would decline even to entertain a proposition to change their diet, unless at least one could assure them that they had only got to foUow a cut-and-dried pro- gramme. I quite agree ; but then I do not think, and never have thought, that most people are at all likely to be con- vinced in any circumstances at the present stage. What I hope wiU happen is that the experience of the teetotallers will be repeated, and that a sufficient number of people will become convinced of the evils of the mixed foods, to bring the necessary pressure of public opinion to bear upon the medical profession to force them to review their pronouncements in the light of the new data, which are slowly accumulating. When this has been done, and the majority of doctors advocate a non-flesh diet, at first for invalids and then generally, the lay public will follow their lead, as a matter of course, in time. Considering that the profession is now contemplating the establish- ment of sanatoria for the treatment of consumption at the North Pole, and remembering what they would have thought of such a proposition, say, to be quite safe, forty years ago, we need not despair. Meanwhile we should none of us lose an opportunity of drawing the attention of our medical friends to their monstrous impertinence in claiming our respect and implicit belief professionally, so long as they, as a class, are at least as unhealthy as the rest of us. What should we say to a seaman who ob- viously could not sail his own boat, if he wanted to come and take charge of ours ? g2 84 A THIRD POT-POURRI ' P.S. — By the Way, the Cantani I have referred to above was a doctor of that name who practised at Naples and died in 1898. He was immensely thought of by the Itahan medical world, and devoted himself specially to gout, rheumatism and kindred disorders, in the treatment of which he obtained some remarkable successes, principally, as it seems to me, by his skill in applying the rule which I have quoted in this letter. He admitted meat in small quantities into his dietary, and absolutely excluded milk and cheese ; but as I have not yet been able to get hold of any of his books, which have not, I believe, been trans- lated, and have only seen an English work, which pur- ports to give a r&sum& of his theories and practice, I do not feel myself in a position to speak more definitely on the subject.' Dr. Haig answers these criticisms as follows : ' In making a few comments upon your friend's letter, I should like first to mention some points which cannot be lost sight of without getting into hopeless confusion. ' (1) Certain diseases are due to excess of uric acid in the body and blood. ' (2) I propose to get free from those diseases by as far as possible ceasing to swallow uric acid. ' (3) As a practical result of this a daily excretion of uric acid amounting on meat and tea diet to, say, 20 grains, can in eighteen months to two years be reduced to 10 or 11 grains a day ; and with this reduction the diseases due to uric acid gradually diminish and cease to trouble. ' (4) This result has nothing whatever to do with in- dividual constitution, age, digestion, or metabolism ; it is simply a matter of swallowing or not swallowing some 8, 10, or 12 grains of uric acid each day. ' (5) Quantity of food on a diet on which one has lived SUPPLEMENT 85 from childhood is a matter of habit : one unconsciously learns as a habit to eat enough ; but even here one may learn to eat too much. On a new diet one must have some rule to prevent any serious mistakes ; but no rule is absolute, it is a rough guide to be adjusted by each in- dividual. The rule of 9 or 10 grains of albumen per pound of body weight per day is the one that was taught in all text-books of physiology when I was a student twenty-five years ago. These twenty-five years of use have not enabled me to convict it of serious error ; on the contrary, I believe that for a rough guide it is very close to the truth, and that investigation would show that when the weight to be nourished has been properly calculated (and this, of course, requires skill and experience), there are not many people who do good work in the world and maintain their weight, strength, activity and blood colour at the normal standard, on less than 9 grains of albumen per pound of body weight per day. ' (6) No one has, I believe, found any xanthin or uric acid in milk or cheese, and the taking of one and a half pint of milk and one ounce of cheese every day does not interfere with the reduction of uric acid from 21 grains down to 10 per day (see No. 3). Some German chemists, on the other hand, have found xanthin in the yolk of eggs, and the taking of eggs does at once raise the uric acid above 10 grains per day in proportion to the quantity of egg taken. Milk and cheese are therefore uric-acid-free foods : yolk of egg is not. Thus far we have nothing to do with individuals, all are absolutely alike ; those who swallow uric acid suffer from its effects, those who do not swallow it do not suffer. ' (7) But when we come to deal with the available uric- acid-free foods, it is quite a different matter : here every individuality in health, disease, deformity, age, and condi- tion has to be considered in deciding which foods offer 86 A THIRD POT-POURRI special advantages for each individual case; and here there is scope for endless experience and discussion, which I shall not attempt even to outline in a letter. ' I can now, however, indicate shortly what I should say in reply to your friend's remarks. As to milk and cheese, I know some who do best on large quantities of milk, and I know others who do best on none ; such fluid diet is very bad for some diseases, very good for others ; there can be no rule for all. The harm that Cantani saw in gout and rheumatism from taking milk and cheese was possibly due to taking them in excessive quantity, or to the acids and salts in cheese, or to the dyspepsia which is in some people produced by milk ; but gout and rheuma- tism are but a small part of the diseases produced by uric acid ; and the harm that milk and cheese did in these was not due to introduction of uric acid. I have known cheese cause a relapse of rheumatism ; but this was because it contained much salt. I often purposely put patients on too large an allowance of albumens at first as in some diseases it is safer to be overfed rather than underfed ; and later, when the patient has got over'the change of diet, the quantity can be reduced. ' As I say in " Diet and Food," but few people want more than 1,400 grains per day ; but it is easy to over-estimate the exercise taken, and also to over-estimate the correct weight, or proper quantities of tissues to be nourished, as distinguished from fat which does not want extra nourish- ment. No doubt I often make mistakes in these matters in spite of my best endeavours. No rule is or can be absolute which has to take such data into account. If strength and blood-colour keep normal, I am content no matter how little food is being taken ; but for those who maintain strength and colour over years my figures will not often be found to be very far out. ' I do not know anything about Cantani's metabolism. SUPPLEMENT 87 I do know that, if I do not swallow uric acid or take too much food— i.e. above the 9 grains limit (an error which may be committed on all diets) — I do not sufifer. I quite agree that each person is to some extent a law to himself, especially as regards digestion ; and to a lesser extent as to quantity ; but the great physiological law of quantity is much less often broken than might be imagined. As to kinds of food each must try for himself, only general rules can be stated, and your friend is quite right in saying that the mistakes of individuals in details do not affect the great principle of the exclusion of uric acid. I am also inclined to agree with him that constipation is often a question of finding the particular uric-acid-free foods that suit the individual in question. StiU even here it is a rule that milk and cheese are constipating (and this may account for part of their evil influence in gout and rheu- matism as noticed by Cantani), while some breadstuffs and most vegetables and fruits have the opposite effect. Constipation may precipitate an attack of gout or rheu- matism, but it does not cause it ; and it can only preci- pitate it when an excess of uric acid is present in the blood; and Cantani's patients would often have some excess of uric acid in the blood as they took some meat, so that milk and cheese might precipitate gout in them, but not in one of my patients ; and the case mentioned above was a beginner who had not got free from uric acid. Many meat-eaters suffer from constipation, but not all, and one must, of course, give a different diet to those who suffer and to those who do not. Those who can take breadstuffs freely generally do well to live on them ; but many, myself among the number, cannot take enough bread, and must add milk and cheese to a small extent or starve. In my case this is due to an error in education, for if I had been brought up on breadstuffs I could easily have lived on them now. No one ever swallows uric acid 88 A THIRD POT-POURRI with impunity ; but each, as he learns this and comes to change his diet, must decide which foods suit his disease his stomach, his teeth, his age, and his habits, which last have grown to be a part of him. (Signed) ' A. Haig.' I read this autumn, according to my custom, the epitome in the ' Times,' of the speeches which a number of our greatest doctors addressed to their pupils on the reopening of the schools, and it is a remarkable thing that in those speeches there was not one word of instruc- tion, or, indeed, the smallest allusion to the fact that it was either desirable or possible to keep people from being ill at all. Just as I reached the end of my notes comes the thrill- ing account of the Berhn conference on Tuberculosis. It is a disappointment to me to find that there has not been sufficient investigation made during the last eighteen months to confirm or refute Dr. Koch's theory that the bovine tubercle is not transmissible to man. It is, how- ever, cheering to find that Dr. Koch is himself as firm as ever in his belief that overcrowding, damp, want of fresh air and sunlight are the predisposing causes to consump- tion, and that we must aboUsh these unhealthy conditions if we would successfully fight the monster which preys on so large a proportion of our population. He also refers to a point I have often been surprised to see so much neglected, viz. that while people will take care not to drink unboiled cow's milk, they cheerfully eat butter and cheese without any sterilising precautions. 89 GOATS Goats at Naples — Possible solution for milk difficulty in rural dis- tricts — A toothless generation — Ignorance as to nourishing value of separated milk — Mr. Hook on goat-keeping — Personal experiment —Boast kid and agneau-de-lait — Keasons for prejudice against goats — Suggestions for the philanthropic — Immunity of goats from tubercular disease — Day at Guildford — Almonds — The Astolat Press — Mr. Gates' herd of Toggenburg goats — Feeding of goats — Chemistry of food to be taught in elementary schools. When walking in April in the streets of Naples, I came across a large herd of goats being milked from door to door, and it suddenly flashed upon me with great force that, if the English people could be persuaded greatly to increase the keeping of goats, especially in rural districts, it might be possible to arrive at some solution of the problem which faces everyone who gives thought to matters of health, viz. the serious deterioration in the physique of the people of this kingdom. There is no more convincing sign of this than the fact, universally acknowledged I believe, that a whole generation is growing up which have hardly any teeth left by the early age of twenty. I am told that not by any means the least of the sufferings of the soldiers in S6uth Africa was toothache, and I remem- ber it was suggested in some newspaper that the War 0£&ce should provide false teeth for the recruits ! This state of health is by no means surprising when it is remembered how many children and young people are now brought up on baker's bread and stewed tea without any milk at all ; and, strange as it may seem, I believe a 90 A THIRD POT-POURRI child might have a better chance of health if it were brought up on moderate quantities of pure beer, instead of what the village mothers of to-day give their children. Milk is looked upon in our country districts as an extrava- gant luxury sometimes ordered by the doctor instead of cod-liver oil, and even when milk is ordered, there is great difficulty in getting it, for it is an easily verifiable fact that farmers prefer to keep their skim milk for young stock to selling it to the poor — and the new milk is all sent to the towns, or sold to well-to-do customers. Of course, skim milk would in no sense take the place of cod-liver , oil, neither does skim milk do for babies unless enriched by some fattening food ; but most people are hopelessly ignorant of the value of separated milk; they think the nourishment of milk is removed with the cream, whereas all the proteid is in the casein of the separated milk, there being none whatever in the cream or butter. For this reason it is obviously useless to depend for nourishment on cheeses made from cream, such as Camembert. I know one village in Suffolk where the proprietress offered the poor the separated milk of her dairy as a gift. This they refused, as they thought it quite worthless, and only ' pig's food,' a very different thing in their minds from food that was good for pigs. In a village not far from here a friend told me that she had been helping a man seriously ill of consumption. After he was removed to a home, the clergyman said the wife and five young children were very badly off. She, not sending food from her own house except in cases of grave illness, offered to give the mother two quarts of new milk a day for the children. After a few days the mother came up, and said she did not want the milk at all, as she had no use for it. It is almost inconceivable that a mother could so ignorantly refuse what was good for her children; it only helped to confirm me in my opinion GOATS 91 that the use of milk and the knowledge of its value are absolutely dying out in English villages. On my return home after my visit to Italy, I made inquiries as to the most recent book that had been pub- lished in England on goat-keeping. This brought to my hand the excellent little book by Mr. Bryan Hook, son of the artist vyhose beautiful sea-scapes delighted the eyes of my generation on their visits to the Academy. The book is called 'Milch Goats and their Management,' and is published by Vinton & Co., 9 New Bridge Street, E.G., 1896. For anyone interested in the subject of goats, and especially for those meaning to keep them, there could hardly be a better guide than this book, prompted as it was (see preface) by ' a firm conviction of the advantage that might be derived from a wider cul- tivation of the milch goat in this country, and an affection for the most intelligent, engaging, and picturesque of our domestic cattle.' Mr. Bryan Hook has had so many years' experience in goat-keeping, that his testimony is exceptionally valuable, and intending goat-keepers will do wisely to follow his advice as to choice of breed, feeding, housing, and general management, the only point in which I would beg to differ from him being in the con- struction of the goat-house. Mr. Hook recommends a raised path down the middle of this, and a gutter on each side for drainage, which is to flow into a pail or tank sunk outside the buildings, and be used for garden manur- ing. Mr. Gates, the well-known owner of the pure Toggenburg herd of goats near Guildford, suggests that a better way, as an economy of labour and an improvement in hygiene (see results of experiments by Dr. Poore in dry treatment versus water-borne sewage, in his invaluable book 'Eural Hygiene'), is that the raised paths and gutters be omitted, and the floor simply strewn with sawdust or dry garden earth. This absorbs all liquids. 92 A THIRD POT-POURRI prevents smells, and is easily swept up each morning when the house is brushed out, and if buried superficially is one of the finest fertilisers. This system has been followed by Mr. Gates, and he recommends it in preference to the water-swilled gutters. Certainly nothing could have been sweeter than his goat-house, which I visited one summer afternoon when it held ten goats. The sparred floor of the stalls is better raised eighteen inches from the floor, and the spars should be placed half an inch apart instead of one inch, as young kids are apt to get their very slender hoofs in between the wood when it begins to soften, and a broken leg may be the result of spars too wide apart, these young creatures being astonishingly nimble even from birth. Mr. Hook says : ' Goats are probably more subject to rheumatism than most other animals, and I have known them to be so acutely affected when heavy in kid that they were unable to rise, and almost unable to walk when on their legs.' I quote this sentence because it strikes me that goat-keepers may find that this tendency to rheumatism is caused by too high feeding, especially with oats, peas, and beans. Horses in the confinement of the stable often suffer in the same way, and are unable to stand the damp when turned out into the fields, not because that gives them the rheumatism any more than bad weather gives it to us. They have it in them from wrong feeding : the damp merely develops it. In consequence of this book I bought one goat, a hornless black and white crossbred, so that I and my gardener might gain a little personal experience — I always dispute that ' a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,' a little to my mind being better than none — and find out how much trouble and benefit there is in keeping goats on a very small scale. My first experiment after the birth of the two kids the GOATS 93 next spring — a boy and a girl — was to give to the children about the place a goat's-milk tea. They all, with one exception, said they liked it very much. The exception was the youngest, almost a baby, who was probably not hungry. After this the goat's milk was divided between the children of the gardener and coachman, and such honoured guests who were fond of milk and yet totally disbelieved that goat's milk was without taste or smell. Without a single exception every one of these pronounced it excellent, and some preferred it to cow's milk as a constant drink. This may be due to the fact that, as Mr. Hook says, the fat globules in goat's milk are so much more minute than in cow's milk that it is lighter on the palate and easier of digestion. Servants — who in my experience are the most conservative-minded of all classes — have now found out the good qualities of goat's milk so markedly that they are glad not to allow it to go out of the house. I can see the cautious reader^probably a male — saying, ' I wonder why she didn't take it herself ? ' It was because I did not wish to mix goat's with cow's milk in the separator, and I always drink separated milk ; for though not a large milk consumer, I prefer it without its cream, taking that portion of the milk by preference in the form of butter. Those who drink coffee or tea will find that goat's milk gives both these a much better colour in the cup than even the best cow's milk. My little kids I did not want to keep. I tried to sell them both in the neighbourhood, but no one would give me anything for them, dead or aUve, so I had the Billy killed and served for a Saturday to Monday party which I knew had no interest in the simpler foods. Having seen them immensely enjoy it, I called to their notice the menu, on which was plainly vTritten 'roast kid,' whereupon a young man at my side told me the following anecdote. 94 A THIRD POT-POURRI He had lately dined at a very expensive restaurant where the menu contained for the roast, cogneau-de-lait. He, having a frugal mind, and thinking of his own lambs in the country which sold for very little, asked to interview the chef after the feast. He said, ' Well, sir, I have no objection to telling you that agneau-de-lait is not to be procured in England, or at any rate is enormously ex- pensive. This dish of which you have been eating is only a kid.' I could not bear to kill the useful Nannie, so I gave her away to the man who had had charge of her mother. He used her as a pet for his children to drag a tiny cart, and is now so delighted with the milk our goat gives that he is going to keep his own for the same purpose. This year the same mother only had one kid, a very pretty little female, which I am rearing and keeping. The one kid instead of the usual two may be due to the mother having been principally fed on grass. She does not give nearly as much milk as the better-bred goats, but this may be partly because she is not so highly fed. She is pastured in a fresh spot every day and is given leaves, &c. In winter I find chopped mangold is a favourite food. Several cases have come to my knowledge of poor people refusing to keep a goat even when it had been given them, because they say it is so troublesome and destructive a creature. My interpretation of this would be that it is no good giving a goat to poor people, unless you give with it a strong collar, chain, and tethering pin, for unless this is done it is always breaking loose and doing damage. These things are expensive for poor people to buy — the collar and chain costing 7s. 6d. — they try to manage with bits of rope, or any other makeshift, and the result is unsatisfactory. Mr. Hook says in his book which supplements the larger work on goats by Mr. Pegler, that this prejudice GOATS 95 against goats is largely due to the fact that English cottage people get their small experience of goats from buying them out of the Irish herds which are brought over now and then. ' Unfortunately, it is from such inferior animals that an estimate of the whole species is generally formed, the over-sanguine goat-owner becoming disappointed by the wild nature, mischievous habits and scanty produce of the animal that he has purchased on the assurance that it will give two quarts of milk a day, and Uve anywhere and anyhow.' I was walking one evening on a Surrey common, and saw a little boy just taking a goat into a cottage. My interest being very keen, I began asking him why he kept it. He said, ' For milk.' My next question was, ' What do you do vnth the Mds ? ' He answered with a grin, ' Our goat don't 'ave no kids : she ain't 'ad none fur seven years.' This surprising answer so floored me that I meekly said, 'I suppose she doesn't give much milk f He said, ' No, not much.' I aftetwards heard that the little cottage contained a family of fifteen children and mother and father. There is no doubt a difficulty in the poor keeping a goat for each family, unless they are near a good common with grazing rights, which exceptional circumstance is practically not worth reckoning. My idea is that as philanthropic people abound everywhere, some of these might be the goat-keepers of the district, and either send the goats, in charge of a boy, round to the cottage doors to be milked there in a small measure, to be charged for at a remunerative price, or have the goats milked at home at an early hour in the morning and evening, so that the children might fetch the milk before and after school-hours. The charitable, on the other hand, who do not fear to give — such as the clergyman, the nurse, the district visitor, &c. — might keep goats for their own use 96 A THIRD POT-POURRI and give away milk for sick children and other urgent cases. Only time and patience will get rid of the prejudice against goats which exists in all classes, and may be partly due to experiences at Gibraltar, Malta, Corsica, and parts of Switzerland where the goat's milk is almost undrinkable. This unpleasant smell and flavour is caused by wrong feeding, by dirty hands in milking, and by letting the milk stand too long. The dehcious bruccio, of Corsica, is a fresh curd made from goat's milk. Julius Caesar openly avowed he preferred the plebeian goat's cheese to the greatest deUcaeies of the table, and the newspapers say President Loubet does the same. In the dim distance it does not seem to me impossible that useful foods may be made from sheep's milk, especially while lambs are still killed for meat. One of the chief recommendations of goat's milk in these days of nervousness about the danger of cow's milk, is that goats are among the few animals entirely exempt from tubercular disease. Sir "William Broadbent, writ- ing on the prevention of consumption, says, 'It is in- teresting to note that asses and goats do not suffer from tuberculosis.' It is a continual surprise to me that goats are not kept to supply the consumptive sanatoriums, and I hope this most important measure may be adopted at the King's new Hospital, for the prejudice of the patients might be met in the same way as the French chef met the demand for agneau-de-lait as stated before. The other day a friend came to see me who had last year been interested in my goat-talk. She told me she had bought a goat for her baby and was going to buy another, as both she and her children liked it so much. She said with pride, on my showing her my comparatively ugly black and white hornless mongrel, that her goats were beautiful fawn and white Toggenburgs. I felt GOATS 97 humbled, and she said, ' Don't you know the goat-farm at Guildford, kept by Mr. Gates, the head of the West Surrey Dairy Co. ? ' A few days afterwards I and a friend, who was herself anxious to keep goats, started for Guildford. Arrived at the station I suddenly remembered that I wanted to order a book, and trying the penny in the slot post-card box, found to my disgust that the cards were unstamped. I think the sale of these post- cards would greatly increase if, instead of two com- paratively useless cards at a penny, one, stamped ready for use, were sold at the same price. The diminution of profit would probably be covered by the additional sale. We walked up to the dairy and felt a little fiat when told that Mr. Gates was not there and lived three miles away. The clerk suggested that we might talk to his nephew. This we accordingly did, and heard that Mr. Gates was going to sell the whole herd, as it had been a hobby and he no longer had time to devote to it. It being part of the vegetarian creed to be cheerful under disappointment, we resolved to spend our two hours before the return train in loafing about the picturesque old town. Our first excitement was finding the Market Place filled with a detachment of Engineers, whose carts looked rather like Chinese junks and whose Boer hats and rough costume, to our imagination, conveyed the impression that they were just back from the front with all the South African dust and sunburn still thick upon them. On inquiry we found they had only returned a short time ago, but they had been on manoeuvres in the neighbourhood, and the junks turned out to be pontoons, the dust being good Surrey sand. Passing beautiful fruit shops, so rare in the villages near me, we bought two very cheap market baskets and proceeded to load them with fruits of all kinds which had suddenly flooded the market from the lateness of the 98 A THIRD POT-POURRI season, and were plentiful and cheap. Our next search was for almonds, but walkmg up the High Street I was suddenly glued to the window of a curiosity shop by the sight of a gorgeous blue and green fish, different from any I had in the china aquarium of fish which swim over my ugly hall stove on the whitewashed wall at home. Finding the price moderate, I yielded to the temptation to make the fish share the basket with my fruit. We then went to the best looking grocer's shop we could find, and my friend, who is an almond-fancier, asked if they had any Jordans. Fortunately for us they had bought in an extra large supply in the season, and had plenty of this kind at 2s. per lb., a great improvement upon the Valencias at Is. 8d. The disappointment sometimes caused to housekeepers by receiving bitter almonds, with the possible result that the nourishing item of a guest's meal has to be left out, may be guarded against by ordering ' second quality Jordan almonds,' which are Is. IQd. per lb. at the Stores. The twopence extra is well worth while to those who have once appreciated the difference between them and Valencias, which are the same in shape and size as the bitter almonds, so that it is impossible for a cook to know she is preparing uneatable food if she gets the latter by mistake. It is extravagant to buy the best Jordans at 3s. per lb., when the second quality are as good except for size. The shape, a very long oval, is the same, quite unlike the squat oval of the Valencia almond. It is curious to notice that when the derisive enemy accuses one of living on ' nuts and apples,' he is generally ignorant that almonds are nuts, and far the most nourish- ing of the whole nut family. Even when people do realise this, they are filled with dread at being ordered to consume a vast amount of prussic acid, having vaguely heard that this poison is extracted from almonds. It GOATS 99 may be worth while here to go back once more to our friend ' Chambers's Encyclopaedia,' and quote a few facts on the subject : — 'Bitter almonds contain the same substances (as sweet), and, in addition, a substance called amygdalin, from which is obtained a peculiar volatile oil. For the preparation of Fixed Oil of Almonds either bitter or sweet may be employed. The cake which is left after the expression of the fixed oil from bitter almonds, con- tains among other matters a portion of two substances, called respectively amygdalin and emulsin or synaptase. When the cake is bruised and made into a paste with water, the synaptase acts as a ferment upon the amygdalin, and one atom of the latter resolves itself into two atoms of volatile oil of bitter almond, one atom hydrocyanic acid (prussic), one atom grape sugar, two atoms formic acid, seven atoms water.' The volatile oil is not originally present in the bitter almond. The nut does not contain a trace of the oil ready formed, so that the oil is purely the product of the fermentation of amygdalin. It may be suggested that this change might be brought about by fermentation inside us; but in an interesting paper in the ' Herald of Health ' for April 1902, by Dr. E. P. Miller, there is an aceoimt of the two so-called ferments, the digestive or inorganic fermentation versus organic fermentation, and he says : ' The term ferment is not one that should be applied to the enzymes spoken of as the unorganised ferments that are elaborated within the cells of the glands producing them, for they are not in reality ferments, but simply digestive agents provided to prepare the nutritive constituents of food for absorption and assimilation.' Mrs. Wallace's excellent monthly magazine the ' Herald of Health ' is full of information of all kinds on health topics. The last page gives a set loo A THIRD POT-POURRI of useful general rules ' for the physical regeneration of man,' with which I am in great sympathy, a sympathy which I cordially extend to the motto of the paper : 'Life is not mere existence, but the enjoyment of health.' To go back to my account of the day in Guildford. In the shop where we bought our almonds was a stall presided over by an American girl with a chafing-dish and several varieties of American cereal foods and speci- men dishes prepared from them. What attracted me, as I had a vegetarian coming who always asked for farinaceous bulk which I avoid when alone, was a bundle marked Id., and called ' Nouilles lact^es Suisse,' or Swiss milk vermicelli, which shows its Swiss intelligence by instruct- ing the public as to the percentages of its component parts in an analysis signed by Dr. Bertschinger of Geneva; It is not otherwise than a noticeable sign of the times that in Germany and Switzerland prepared foods have to be analysed and certified by first-rate chemists. I have never come across this with either French or English foods. In the case of England, at any rate, where adulteration is so common, I think all patent medi- cines and foods should be certified by a Government inspector. Having filled our market baskets, we found them so heavy that we left them with this young lady till our return, and, with all the joyful feeling of touring in a picturesque foreign town, we walked on to find the shop of the well-known Mr. A. C. Curtis, author of ' A New Trafalgar,' and founder of the Astolat Press. It was a slight shook to our aesthetic sensibilities to find the shop in a chaotic bustle of ' sale,' which we forgave when we learnt that it ensured our finding Mr. Curtis himself on the premises ; and as my friend too was a writer and a bookseller, he welcomed us with all the friendhness of a GOATS loi fellow-craftsman, and fetched out from the back of the shop a case of his dainty little editions. Amongst these was his ' In Memoriam ' on vellum published at 10s. 6^^. net, of which he himself lately bought back the few re- maining copies he could find among the booksellers at an increased price, as the book is now out of print and scarce. The present fashion for these miniature libraries — as seen in the success of the ' Temple Classics,' the ' Bibelots,' and the new 'Unit Library,' which brings the great classics of all nations within the reach of EngUsh peasants — is very indicative of the stress of the times, which means pocket volumes for the busy workers who would perhaps never read at all but for the snatched intervals between work. The name ' Astolat Press ' suggested to us on our return to write and ask Mr. Curtis the origin of the assertion that Astolat — the home of Elaine — was the old name of Guildford. This was his reply : ' In the "Morte D' Arthur," book xviii. chap, ix., Sir Thomas Malory says of Sir Lancelot, "And then he rode so much until he came to Astolat, that is Guildford, and there it happed him in the eventide he came to an old baron's place that bight Sir Bernard of Astolat." There is no doubt that Tennyson identified Astolat with Guildford, and used the present ruined keep in his mental pictures. And he might well fancy Elaine watching the ford by St. Catharine's for the flash of the knight's armour as he rode from Winchester up the track we call " The Pilgrim's Way," but which is one of the earliest roadways in England, and existed long before St. Thomas of Canterbury's day. The Astolat Press is quite a small affair and inhabits, in what was once Archbishop Abbott's stable, an Elizabethan red-brick building, with solid walls, oak beams, and square-paned leaded casements. The loft makes a capital I02 A THIRD POT-POURRI compositors' room, and the solid ground floor a good foundation for engines, machines, and hand press.' After the first day at Guildford we felt rather crest- fallen at having learnt so little that was new about goats. I wrote to Mr. Gates, and he quickly answered that we might come over at once and see his herd. We were received with the greatest kindness and hospitality, and every question was most cordially answered. His goat- house was a picturesque thatched building, the floor strevm with sawdust, the animals being tethered in little stalls on a raised platform of battens half an inch apart, and about two inches wide. Apart from the obvious gain in cleanliness, this raised structure is a great convenience in milking and saves a special milking bench. The goats were nearly all pure Toggenburgs — beautiful deer-like creatures with fine fawn-and-white coats — and when I asked why they were being sold all together, thinking in my ignorance that it would be better to spread them about, Mr. Gates told me that he was anxious to sell them to someone who would keep the breed pure, as the Swiss Government had now forbidden their exportation. They have been purchased by Mr. R. Sugden, Longden, near Eugeley, Staffs. Mr. Sugden intends to keep the breed pure. The average yield of these goats in full milk is two to two and a half quarts each daily, the actual quantity given by Mr. Gates' herd of five in one season having been 714 Imperial gallons, or forty-two full-sized railway churns. In addition to his household supply of milk and butter, Mr. Gates has sent out more than 1,000 bottles of milk, sterilised for travelHng, besides selling the fresh milk for infants at Guildford. The price he charged — ^viz., eightpence a quart — is an interesting contrast to the price at the London dairies. Further details may be gathered from an illustrated GOATS 103 article entitled ' A Dairy Farm in Miniature,' by Mr. Bryan Hook, in ' Country Life ' of April 8, 1899. The goats were photographed, but the pictures do not do them justice. The impression made on one by these goats is that, compared with other breeds, they are as racehorses to cart- horses. Probably with increased knowledge and interest in the subject, the English goat will be improved — it being a most useful creature for all who cannot afford the special breed. Mr. Gates' little goat farm had the ad- vantage that it was adjoining a common where the goats could be turned out in charge of a boy. We also noticed that those in a field were allowed to run loose, a great improvement on the tethering system, as these creatures love change. Mr. Gates told us that this was quite safe when once they had grown used to a place, for they are so intelligent and friendly that they attach themselves to people and places like dogs. It was interesting to us to notice that, although there were eight milch goats and two or three kids in the house, the place was as sweet as a well-kept stable— the he-goats, the only offenders in this matter, being kept apart in a field. On the subject of feeding Mr. Gates told us that he grew lucerne on purpose for them, as they were fond of it for a change, and it was a most useful fodder, as he cut it three times over in the summer, and it grows almost as fast as it is cut. I have found that other useful foods are comfrey, sun- flowers, summer prunings of apple and pear trees, hedge- row cuttings, sweet chestnut leaves, and the leaves of the globe artichoke. In Italy cows are fed on artichoke leaves, but I cannot persuade my pampered Jerseys to eat them. According to many people, for the last two years I have had goats on the brain, which is only a variety of I04 A THIRD POT-POURRI the more usual accusation that for many years, alas ! for them, I have had diet on the brain. These accusations at first really distressed me, as no one feels cheerful under the implied supposition that senile decay is coming upon one with rapid strides. The fact is that goat-keeping is merely a variation of my interest in diet and the im- provement I hope it is to bring about in the health of the modem world. It has been an immense gratification to me to see that there has been such a very general growth of interest in this subject during the last few years. We see it affecting all classes from the highest to the lowest — our statesmen, our clergy, our men of science, almost the entire Press, and last, but not least, the King himself. The cloud of ignorance about food shows signs of break- ing up and dispersing. How complete it can be, even among intelligent well-educated people, was illustrated to me the other day when talking about food values over a tea-table with a trained village nurse and a friend much interested in the subject. Neither of them seemed to understand what I meant, and one of them suggested, ' Surely the most nourishing food is that which digests most easily.' I answered, ' You may easily digest fruit and vegetables, but the actual food value of what you have digested is very small indeed.' In fact, they were entirely unaware that there was such a thing as chemical analysis of food, and a scientific knowledge of the subject which they might have mastered with half the labour and time spent over complicated crochet stitches and lovely drawn-thread needlework. A friend of mine who has lately had a serious illness, told me that neither of the first-rate trained nurses who attended her had ever heard of such a thing as being able to calculate, the number of grains of proteid necessary for the day's nourishment, or to decide at a glance, at a well-spread table, what food on it is the best to choose. GOATS I OS Nothing has encouraged me more than finding this summer that the matter has been taken up in the iiighest quarters, and has been introduced into the Eevised In- structions for the Public Elementary Schools (1902). As few people take the trouble to get Blue-books, I venture to quote the following paragraphs from Appendix V. on Cookery : — ' v.— The dietary value of the food and cost of the materials should be taught at each lesson, if only one course of Cookery lessons is being given. When the arrangement is that the girls attend Cookery classes for two or more successive years, the dietary value of food should not be taught till the second year. ' Second year. — Instructions should be given on the various food stuffs, i.e. — cereals, pulse, fruits, vegetables, meats, and fish ; beverages. The dietary value of food. Digestion of albumen, starch, fat. More advanced dishes should be demonstrated and practised at each lesson, illustrating over again the Primary Methods taught in the First Year course. * Third year. — Complete dinners should be cooked by groups of children attending the class. The price of the dinner and the number of persons for whom it is in- tended should be written on the blackboard. Instruc- tions should be given on : — (a) Expenditure of wages on food. (6) The making of preserves. (c) Use and abuse of tin foods. (d) Vegetarian diet. (e) Preparation of food suitable for infants. 'The scholars should have practice in drawing up menus of dinners suitable for an artisan family, stating the price and season of the year.' This will instruct in the Elementary Schools, but I io6 A THIRD POT-POURRI hope the time is not distant when no educated child will sit down to any table whereon food is displayed without a perfect knowledge of the simple rules as to the nourish- ing values and right combination of food, and when a young mother will no more dream of asking her nurse whether she shall give her rather delicate offspring fruit or no fruit, than whether it shall go naked or clothed. loy WHOLESOME FOOD ON THREE SHILLINGS A WEEK ' Cornhill ' budgets— Food reformers and lentils — Taste for savoury foods — Nervous appetites — Cabinet Minister and charwoman — The healthy foods — Maeterlinck's appeal against meat and alcohol — Food values — To feed a family of four on 12s. a week — Nut milk — A week's menus, and cost — Ditto, with onoe- a-week cooking — Advantage of living in country — Goat's milk at a London dairy — Cheapest and healthiest diet at 2s. id. a. week — To wean servants from the beef-beer-tea faith — Possible purpose of meat-eating phase in evolution — A philanthropist's experiment — Amateur farmers — A pair of Bushey Art Students— Beceipts. In 1901 the Editor of the ' Cornhill Magazine ' pub- lished a series of five articles called ' Family Budgets,' beginning in April with that of the workman at 30s. a week, by Mr. Arthur Morrison, and ending in August with lOjOOOZ. a year, by Lady Agnew. Between these came, in May, a lower middle-class budget of 150Z. to 200Z. a year, in June an income of 8001. a year, and in July my own, which I now republish, on 1,800Z. a year. The reviewers found great amusement in the idea that there could be the smallest difficulty in living on such an income, but the proper adjustment of medium or large incomes is often a more complicated matter than the management of one which provides only for the necessi- ties of life. A friend of mine whose inheritance of 2,000Z. a year was stated in the newspapers, received a letter asking for a considerable sum out of it, on the plea that io8 A THIRD POT-POURRI the loss of it could not be felt out of her ' boundless wealth.' The ' Workman's Budget ' is, I think, the most interest- ing one of the series, as it deals with the hardships of town life on an income which is ten shillings a week higher than the usual bare subsistence of a pound a week. My friend, Miss Curtis, has kindly sent me the follow- ing suggestions on wholesome food for the poor and the depopulation of rural districts — huge difficulties, which have been dealt with in a most thoughtful and stimulat- ing way in a book of collected essays by various vraiters, and published by Fisher Unwin in 1901, under the title of ' The Heart of the Empire.' ' The question of wholesome food for the poor is not in itself a difficult one : the real obstacle lies in the pre- judice against a non-meat diet, which is often to be traced to the want of knowledge and sympathetic understanding of the tastes of the poor, in those who champion the economic way of living. Social reformers urge lentils as the article of food which gives the maximum of nourishment at the minimum of cost ; but, apart from the little-known fact that the xanthins of lentils and all pulse foods are now suspected by experts to be as un- wholesome as those of flesh foods, and therefore to be ruled out from the dietary of all who wish to control as far as possible the causes of disease, we have to face the fact of the people's dislike to all porridgy foods. This dislike cannot be lightly dismissed as a fad: the plain truth is that the appetites of the people are indicative of their constitutions, and these have changed during the last century of meat and tea diet. ' Imagine the under-nourished, over-worked mother of a family, after a hot day's washing or charing, sitting down WHOLESOME FOOD 109 with appetite to a mess of lentils. One might as well expect a delicate, hard-worked Cabinet Minister to enjoy a summer luncheon of boiled bacon and beans. The Cabinet Minister chooses lobster salad and a whisky-and- soda : the charwoman chooses tinned salmon and tea — if she can get it. ' The poor like fried food— a bit of fish ready cooked from the shop, a rasher of bacon, a pig's fry, anything crisp and savoury— and failing this, they like the tinned stuffs which give an excuse for just the piquant dash of vinegar or pickles which their jaded appetites require. ' Perverted tastes ! says the reformer. Yes, but why are they perverted ? Surely the whole conditions of life in our big towns are perverted from the way of health, and it is unreasonable to expect unhealthy men and women to have healthy appetites. ' The charwoman's husband, if he has the luck to earn his living by outdoor labour, may have a lentil-hunger; but how can she be ready for stodgy food after a day, or rather a lifetime, spent in wrestling with dirt in a stuffy house set in acres of stuffy streets ? ' Before we can expect people to eat lentils and beans we must see that they live under conditions which pro- duce a healthy hunger, and towards this the Garden City Association, 77 Chancery Lane, W.C, is working in a way that deserves the support of all who wish to improve the present state of our towns and cities. ' I have lately been asked to advise the best dietary for a family of four, consisting of father, mother, and two young children, in circumstances that allow of only 3s. per head a week for food, and since this is a case which may easily come into the experience of any who work amongst the poor, I include it here on the chance of being able to offer some useful hint. By " best " I understand " healthiest," so I exclude all such articles of food as are no A THIRD POT-POURRI shown by Dr. Haig's researches either to produce uric- acid diseases, or to aggravate a previously existing tendency towards them. This cuts off all flesh foods, together with eggs, the pulses (peas, beans, lentils), tea, coffee, cocoa, and alcohol : and leaves milk, cheese, nuts, cereals, vegetables, and fruit, to which may be added Plasmon, which is milk in a dry, concentrated form, requiring discretion in its use, for if taken indiscrimi- nately it may, like all highly nitrogenous (albuminous) foods, cause indigestion. A propos of the many objections from intelligent people to its being an " artificial food," it may be stated that Plasmon is no more artificial than the strong stock which a cook prepares by allowing the water to evaporate. All cooking is artificial to primitive man, and Plasmon is milk so cooked that the water evaporates and the condensed nutriment remains. Being made from sMm milk, which explains its extreme cheapness, it is deficient in the fat and sugar present in new milk, and for this reason Plasmon should not be substituted for new milk in feeding children. All young animals require fat and sugar, and a calf brought up on skim milk may be big and bony, but is never so well-favoured and thriving in condition as one which has been even partly fed on whole milk. Moreover, fat, so necessary to good digestion, is very evenly distributed in new milk, and for this reason alone it is, as a rule, unwise to upset nature's balance when feeding children. To adults, invalids, travellers, and athletes, Plasmon is an immense boon, and it should also do much to solve the problem of right feeding for the many whose incomes are insufficient for their needs. ' Here, for a moment, I would beg leave to refer to Maeterlinck's recent splendid appeal against meat and alcohol. In it he says, " A little fruit, or milk, a few vegetables, farinaceous substances .... are amply suffi- cient to maintain the ardour of the finest and mightiestlife." WHOLESOME FOOD iii ' If anyone ignorant of food values should try to reform his diet by this statement, it is probable that he would come to grief, although a student of dietetics would avoid disaster by substituting a7id for or in the sentence above, and by taking all four kinds of food to make up his dietary. Fruit can hardly be made an alternative to milk, the respective albumen values being too dispro- portionate. One pint of milk = 262 grains albumen or proteid ; but it would take over 2 lbs. of fruit to get this amount of nourishment, and so great a bulk of watery food would be likely to upset digestion somewhat seriously. If dried fruits such as figs, dates, raisins, and French plums were used, a much smaller quantity — 2 lb. — would give the necessary albumens ; but most people, when told to eat fruit, think of the fresh kinds, which are more tempting to sight, touch, taste, and smell. Only if " fruit " were read in its widest sense to include nuts, could it be fairly substituted for milk, and very few general readers would be likely to remember this. Milk itself is rather too bulky a food to depend on for the day's proteids, and should be supplemented by a dry form such as cheese or Plasmon, or by nuts — the following list showing roughly the order in which the simpler foods take rank as compared with meat, and with each other : — 1| oz. meat = 1 oz. cheese = 1| oz. almonds = 2| ozs. oatmeal. „ „ = 4 ozs. bread = 4 ozs. dried fruit = ^ pint mUk. „ „ = 17 ozs. vegetables or fresh fruit = 140 grs. proteid. ' To return to our family of four. If it is obliged to live in London, milk at 4d. a quart is too costly an item to allow of the parents drinking it, and even if an effort 112 A THIRD POT-POURRI were made to give the children ^ pint each every day, our 12s. would be seriously diminished. ' A cheaper drink, and one which Professor Konig says contains 268 units per lb. more nourishment than fresh milk, is the Nut Butter, sold in 1 lb. tins at 8d. by the International Health Association of Manchester, which supplies all the nut and cereal foods invented by the Battle Creek Sanatorium group of American food re- formers, headed by Dr. Kellogg. This nut butter is to be had from any vegetarian stores, and can be mixed with water to the consistency of cream or milk as desired. It is not at all greasy, and can be used as a substitute for milk in soups, puddings, &c. Children would prefer it sweetened. It has a roasted pea-nut colour and flavour, and next to Plasmon and Protene is the most highly nourishing drink I know, containing a greater proteid percentage than milk or raisin tea. Containing as it does a good proportion of nut fat in the finest possible emul- sion, this nut milk would obviously be far more economical as a food-drink than cow's milk, and for half the cost — viz., 8d. a week — the children could be given twice the amount, or 1 pint each a day, instead of ^ pint. ' For breakfast, then, oatmeal or barley porridge eaten with bread and marmalade or treacle, the children being trained to drink their nut milk in sips bettoeen the dry food, instead of washing it down half chewed, which is the usual result of the common habit of pouring milk ovei porridge — a bad plan which effectually prevents the cereal from being mixed with the saliva necessary to its digestion. If the adults cannot at first manage the porridge, fried bread and potatoes, or rice rissoles with a little Plasmon powder mixed in them, wiU make a savoury and sustaining meal, and if well masticated with bread there would be no craving for drink till an hour or two later, when water, hot or cold, is all that is necessary for WHOLESOME FOOD 113 health ; but as beginners often sadly miss the pick-me-up of the hot tea at breakfast, the following week's menus allow for Plasmon, hot bran tea, barley water, or any similar drink. To those who can afford it, Mellin's Food is an excellent substitute for tea, coffee, and cocoa, if made with a good deal of water, and not much milk. It is a malted food, and a great help to weak digestions. ' For dinner, cheese eaten plain with bread, vegetable, and salad, or grated and mixed with some cereal like macaroni, rice, hominy, or ground maize. ' For supper, bread with dried and fresh fruits, either plain or cooked into one of the many forms of pudding. ' If the fruit supper be not liked, as is possible enougli in the early stage of the diet (except by children who, if healthy, always enjoy it), some variety of vegetable with cheese or Plasmon may take its place. The week's menus here given have been found successful, and the cost is not above 12s. a week for quantities enough for two adults and two children, the albumen values being calculated at 1,400 grains a day for the man at hard work ratio, 1,300 grains a day for each child at growing ratio, and 1,200 grains a day for the woman, supposing her to be thirty-five years old. ' The receipts for these and other dishes will be found at the end for convenient reference in cooking. They admit of endless modification and enrichment with cream, butter, &c., but are given in a cheap form as the most useful. Sunday. Breakfast, 8 a.m. Fried polenta. Bread. Jam. Plasmon drink. Milk. Dinner, 1 p.m. Baked potatoes. Sage and onions. Apple sauce. Bread. Date pudding. Siqyper, 6 p.m. Cheese. Bread. Lettuce salad. I 114 A THIRD POT-POURRI Monday. Breakfast, 8 a.m. Pried bread. Oatcake. Treacle. Plasmon drink or barley water. Milk. Dinner, 1 p.m. Savoury polenta and grated cheese. Cabbage. Bread. Supper, 6 p.m. Barley and raisin pudding. Grated nuts. Bread. Bananas. Tuesday. Breakfast, 8 a.m. Oatmeal porridge. Milk. Bread. Jam. Plasmon drink or bran tea. Dinner, 1 p.m. Eice croquettes. Bread. Potatoes. Supper, 6 p.m. Cheese. Bread. Eadishes. Apple dumplings. Wednesday. Breakfast, 8 a.m. Pried hominy. Milk. Bread. Treacle. Plasmon drink. Dinner, 1 p.m. Vegetable stew with barley. Bread. Supper, 6 p.m. Cheese. Oatcake. Celery. Dates. Bread. Thubsday. Breakfast, 8 a.m. Oatmeal porridge. Bread. Jam. Plasmon drink. Milk. Dinner, 1 p.m. Macaroni a la tripe. Cheese. Stewed tomatoes. Bread. Supper, 6 p.m. Grated nuts. Bananas. Bread. Pkiday. Breakfast, 8 a.m. Fried potatoes and onions. Milk. Bread. Treacle. Oatmeal drink. Dinner, 1 p.m. Savoury nut cutlets (or stewed chest- nuts). Bread. Potatoes. Celery. Supper, 6 p.m. Cheese. Beetroot. Bread. Baked apple pudding (or jam roll). WHOLESOME FOOD 115 Satueday. Breakfast, 8 a.m. Barley porridge. Bread. Oatcake. Jara. Milk. Plasmon drink. Dinner, 1 p.m. Macaroni and cheese patties. Braised onions. Potatoes or carrots. Bread. Supper, 6 p.m. Grated nuts. Dates. Bread. Currant dumplings. Cereals . 1 lb. daily per head, lid. a week. Dried fruit 2 ozs. „ Cheese . 2 ozs. „ Nuts . 2 ozs. „ Vegetables and fruit . Jam or treacle . ^-packet Plasmon Nut milk and nut butter ty Bd. 11 id. tt id. . 6d. • 2d. 25. 6d. 4 lOs. Od. , 8d. Is. id. 12s. Od. ' The prices given are not such as the West-end house- keeper is accustomed to, but happily, as stated in Mr. Morrison's article in the " Cornhill " for April 1901, the truth of which can be proved by a walk through any of the Saturday night slum-markets, the poor have facilities for buying cheaper than is dreamed of by those of comfortable income, and where the housewife who prides herself on catering for her family at 10s. a head, pays l^d. each for bananas, the slum-sister gets them at three and sometimes even six a penny. 'For the town-dweller in winter, chestnuts are not dear if bought by the stone or half stone at Co-operative i3 ii6 A THIRD POT-POURRI Stores, for although by the pound they are a somewhat expensive food, the good ones rarely being under id. and often 6d. per lb., in quantities of 14 lbs., the finest dark- skinned Italian chestnuts are sold at the rate of 2d. a lb., and there is no more delicious and nourishing dish than stewed chestnuts. Children like it as kittens like cream. ' The amount of cooking may be urged as a drawback to such a diet, for it presupposes a wife at home all day, and anxious enough to make the meals attractive not to mind the extra work, though this might be reduced by making two meals a day instead of three ; for instance, at 7 A.M. and 2 p.m., or at 8 and 3, 9 and 4, 10 and 5, 11 and 6, or 12 and 7, according as is most convenient. This scheme is being tried by all classes in America with singular success. But there are many women who have to be out all day, and cannot therefore attend to cooking. For such, another dietary of wholesome and nourishing food is given for the same cost, and which will only involve a once-a-week cooking — i.e., of bread-stuffs, including cakes, biscuits, and tarts to make a pleasant variety. Potatoes, too, might be boiled or baked in skins and used for salads as required, if kept in a cool place — outside on a window- sill, for instance, provided it did not overhang a drain ! ' Home-made bread a week old is such sweet eating that those who have to study their digestion take care to have no other. The success of the diet at this cost depends upon the house-mother making the bread, for it is half the cost and four times the nourishment of baker's bread, and the cheaper the flour she buys the better it is, the expensive "pastry whites " and " Vienna " flours contain- ing more starch and less proteid than the yellowish house- hold " seconds.'' For frying purposes the cotton-seed oil used by fried fish shops is the cheapest, and a quart once bought will last for months, being used over and over WHOLESOME FOOD 117 again. This has not been estimated for in the list, because its cost being spread over so long a time is fractional per week, and the original outlay may be regarded by the housewife as part of her cooking " plant," Uke frying-pan or kettle. The nut butter in the week's expenses refers to cocoanut butter, which is a pure and excellent substitute for butter, lard, or dripping for pastry, biscuits, cakes, &c. The nut butter from which the nut milk is made will not do for these purposes or for frying, it being pulse-like rather than fatty. ' The Eippingille oil stoves are admirable for bread- making, as for all other cooking operations, and are cheaper than coal. Sunday. Breakfast. Bread. Barley flour biscuits. Jam. Plasmon drink. Milk. Dinner. Bread. Cheese. Celery. Ginger cakes. Sufjper. Bread. Dates. Grated nuts. Oranges. Monday. Breakfast. Bread. Oatcake. Treacle. Plasmon drink. Milk. Dinner. Bread. Cheese. Watercress. Jam tarts. Supper. Bread. Bananas. Nuts. Tuesday. Breakfast. Bread. Maize biscuits. Marmalade. Plasmon drink. Milk. Dinner. Bread. Cheese. Lettuce. Parkyn. Supper. Bread. Apples. Nuts. Mgs. Wednesday. Breakfast. Bread. Wheatcake. Jam. Plasmon drink. Milk. ii8 A THIRD POT-POURRI Dinner. Bread. Cheese. Potato salad or watercress. Currant short cakes. Supper. Bread. Nuts. Oranges. Dates. Thursday. Breakfast. Bread. Barley wafers. Treacle. Plasmon drink. Milk. Dinner. Bread. Cheese. Onions. Marmalade tarts. Supper. Bread. Nuts. Figs. Apples. Feiday. Breakfast. Bread. Oatcake. Marmalade. Plasmon drink. Milk. Dinner. Bread. Cheese. Eadishes or beetroot. Ginger biscuits. Supper. Bread. Nuts. Bananas. Eaisins. Saturday. Breakfast. Bread. Maize biscuits. Jam. Plasmon drink. Milk. Dinner. Bread. Cheese. Potato salad. Currant loaf. Supper. Bread. Nuts. Dates. Apples. ' The following is an excellent diet for dyspeptics who wish to reduce cooking. Breakfast, 10 a.m. 4 ozs. bread. 8 ozs. potato. 4 ozs. curd cheese with green salad. ^-pint milk. Dinner, 5 p.m. 4 ozs. bread. 8 ozs. potato. 16 ozs. fresh fruit. ^-pint of milk. Oil, butter, cream, ad lib. WHOLESOME FOOD 119 ' This gives a total of 1,208 grains proteid, which is the physiological allowance for a man or woman of 9 stone 9 lbs. leading an active working life. ' The details are as follows : — 4 ozs. curd cheese = 400 grains proteid or albumen. 80ZS. breadorcereals= 272 „ „ 16 ozs. potatoes . . =137 „ „ 16 ozs. fruit . . . = 137 1 pint of milk . . = 262 „ „ 1,208 'jThe cost of this diet to anyone living in the country with a couple of goats, a patch of vegetable garden, some fruit trees, and an acre of arable land, would be literally nothing but the labour of working the land and caring for the goats. Honey, too, could be added, and with due exercise of forethought in bottUng, drying and storing surplus fruits and vegetables, the supply during the winter months could be secured. ' To those fortunate enough to be able to get it, goat's milk is highly to be recommended, for the minuteness of the fat globules makes it easy of digestion, and being thinner to the palate, it is appreciated by those who dislike the fulness of unseparated cow's milk. If the demand in London were at aU in proportion to the worth of the article, the present ridiculous price charged for it would fall to something within reason. Last summer I went into one of the principal branch offices of a well- known London dairy and asked the price of goat's milk. I was told it was 4s. a quart, and in reply to my in- voluntary exclamation at such an exorbitant charge, the amiable young woman in charge said, " But think how many hves it has saved. Madam ! " It did not seem to occur to her, or to her employers, that this was the very I20 A THTRD POT-POURRI reason why it should be within the reach of all who need it. ' Cheapest and healthiest of all the forms of diet I have experimented upon is that of bread and fruit. With bread, dates, and apples, it is easy to live on id. a day, and get the full proteid ration for active working life for a body weight of 9 stone 4 lbs. A big man might have to spend 6d. Life on this diet is easier and happier than on the regime of meat, fish, game, wine, tea, &c., which costs eight times as much, for there are no digestive troubles on bread and fruit, unless one makes the mistake of taking them in a wrong proportion, or of eating stupid kinds of bread and unripe or overripe fruit ; and when one thinks how digestion controls such things as de- pression, headache, irritabihty, nervousness, exhaustion, and other minor ills which go to make some lives almost unbearable, one cannot help wishing that all suffering people could be persuaded to give fair trial to a diet of the simplest foods. ' Unhappily, for the physical well-being of the next generation, the countryman who now possesses a large well-stocked garden, and, as in many of the yillages in the West and South of England, often an orchard and bit of pasture as well, has so little knowledge of how to make the best use of his belongings that he sells his produce in order to buy unwholesome food such as tea, bacon, beer, butcher's meat, and tinned abominations like lobster, salmon, sardines, and potted meats. There is_^ little reason to suppose that the parents of to-day vrill change their habits of diet, but much may be hoped for in the way of a more intelligent and less wasteful order of things in the next generation, now that the beginnings of the chemistry and economics of food have been introduced into the School Board curriculum. And if, meanwhile, the educated and leisured classes would take the trouble WHOLESOME FOOD 121 to look carefully into these matters, and begin to practise a more enlightened system of dietetics, such as can be begun without any household upset of drastic change, the servant class would at least see that masters and mis- tresses no longer believe that life depends on eating meat three times a day. ' A great opportunity in this direction might be seized with advantage by the wives of country clergy. The wife of the present Bishop of Japan, when living at Andover, used to have a group of young village women to " high tea," or early supper at the Vicarage every Sunday evening, the household servants being given a holiday, and the meal being prepared and shared by the family and guests. ' A similar plan could be made the occasion for intro- ducing the simpler foods in many an attractive guise, and if the supper were given on a week day, it could be arranged to follow an informal cookery demonstration. Servants, like children, are very imitative, and will take to a new idea much more quickly if it is not forced upon them. One mother of a young family lately lit upon a happy plan in this connection. Her husband took to the simpler diet for health's sake, and she tried it from curiosity. The children soon began to beg for the food they saw their parents eating, and at last, as a great treat, they were allowed a non-meat dinner twice a week, with the result that before long they chose no meat at all. 'This surely is a good way to treat the subject with regard to servants. Let them see that you are well and able to work without meat and stimulants, and they will gradually lose their faith in beef, beer, and tea — a faith for which the example of the upper classes is entirely responsible, and which the bulk of the medical profession still supports. ' It has taken hundreds of years of bitter experience of 122 A THIRD POT-POURRI disease to awaken even a small percentage of the race to seek more wholesome food, and it will take centuries yet to convince the majority. Meanwhile there are interest- ing signs that the course of evolution for humanity leads through a meat-eating stage, and although one may gladly endeavour to save suffering to those who are ready for the change, one can possess one's soul in patience with regard to the world at large. Our very blunders towards the truth have their place and purpose in fitting us to appreciate the truth when we find it. The age of excessive meat-eating is helping to produce a highly nervous race, which is apparently the material required for the next stage of evolution — the stage in which the psychic force is to dominate the physical. 'Only by the apparent perishing of one order can another and higher order be bom. Perhaps when physical suffering and disease have reached their limit, we shall be ready to receive and to obey the laws of a saner and loftier way of life. When a man like Virchow says, " The future is vnth the vegetarians," one realises that with all their errors, and they are legion, they are the pioneers whose blundering efforts may be compared to the old shoes, and empty tins, and broken shards which go to make the foundation of the new road along which the whole race will some day travel. ' To try forcibly to evade the intermediate phases, heart-rending as some of these must be, is as foolish as any other premature interference with the natural laws of social growth. For instance, I heard lately of a bene- volent landowner who, distressed by the overcrowded condition of the slums, and the dearth of people in the country, built a model village with delightful cottages and gardens, recreation hall and library, church, club- room, inn, baths, and everything else that could be desired for health and happiness. He then transplanted WHOLESOME FOOD 123 slum-dwellers who were known to be in actual desti- tution — literally starving — and provided them with varieties of wage-earning occupation under the most healthy and liberal regulations. At the end of a year his village was deserted ; all the starving slummers had gone back, of their deliberate choice, to the misery whence he had taken them. Such facts would at first sight appear to be baffling. They do but illustrate the old adage, " You may take a horse to the water, but you can't make him drink." Those slum-people had not yet had their fill of slum experience, and were by no means thirsty for the refreshing life of the country. Wretched as they were, they had not reached the limit of their capacity for enduring squalor and getting some mysterious good out of it. Their turning-point had not yet come. Their evolution had been forcibly interrupted, and their blind instinct in returning to take it up where it had been broken off was a sound one, strange as it may look on the surface. ' A friend, who for years had had slum-dwellers driven down in brake-loads of fifty for summer days in her fields and gardens, told me once that her heart had never ached for them with quite such intolerable bitterness since she had heard from their spiritual pastor, that as they drew up one evening at the entrance to their alley after one of these outings, one of them had said, as if voicing the general sentiment, " The country's fine for a 'oliday, mates, but, arter all, this smells hke 'ome ! " ' There are many athirst for a country life, but they are not necessarily dwellers in the slums, though they may be found there, as in any other quarter of our crowded towns. Perhaps we should waste less time in futile regret over the depopulation of our villages if we could look upon our cities as the great mills of evolution into which the slow, massive, yokel strength has inevitably to 124 A THIRD POT-POURRI be drawn and ground " exceeding small," even to the dust of physical wreckage, that the nervous matter of the brain may be developed and exercised at all costs. It is those who have gone through the mill who are ready for the country : whose nervous systems have been developed to the point of exhaustion by the strain and grind of city life for, it may be, two or three generations, and whose brains are as restless and alert as the ploughboy's are dull and apathetic, whose nerves need repose as much as his need tension. The weary governess, the neurotic dressmaker, the dyspeptic bank-clerk, the anaemic student, the worn-out mother, these are they who crave for the country as prisoners crave for air and light, and these are the types which,, in my experience, are to some extent counterbalancing the current that sets from village to town, for these are among the applicants for ' small holdings,' in the hope — sometimes forlorn enough — of making a livelihood out of market gardening, chicken, bee, flower, and fruit farming. Many are the mistakes, and grievous the disappointments and even failures which they must suffer ; for as a rule they have little capital, less health, and no experience, and yet, in spite of all, so intense and deep-seated is their instinct for country life that they often manage to struggle through the first few years of hardship and make the modest living they desire. ' To those whose experience has brought them into more or less intimate touch with widely different classes of the community, there are not a few indications that the farming industries of England are being recruited from social levels entirely unhke those of old days. ' It used to be almost a joke among the Bushey art- students that if anyone married before his profession could support him he turned cottar-farmer ; and certainly some of them succeeded as such in the face of overwhelming WHOLESOME FOOD 125 difBculties, by the very simple and sensible device of throwing conventional ideas of fitness to the winds, and doing in England, without false shame, the work they would have done as a matter of course if they had gone " out West," or to the Colonies, to " take up land." These men and women, in most cases of delicate constitution and highly nervous temperament, have pitted themselves against conditions which to the labouring and artisan class would have seemed hopeless, and by sheer force of the cultivated intelligence that comes of good birth and breeding have won against long odds. One couple who started with lOOZ. capital and no income, on a tumble- down little farm of twenty acres, of which ten were so " foul " that no farmer in his senses would have taken the place — the docks and thistles having to be scythed down before the horse could be coaxed to pull the plough through them ! — have done so well that they have now moved on to a sixty-acre farm in the next county which has been under intensive culture for many years. ' The full story of their experiences — some of them as comic as others were tragic — I hope to tell elsewhere another day.' BECEIPTS ' Polenta Cutlets. — Stir one pound Indian maize m'ealinto slightly salted boiling water, adding two Spanish onions chopped very fine, an ounce of butter or oil, three ounces grated cheese, a little pepper, and herbs, if liked. Mix well, and put into a double pan and cook for half an hour, when it should be stiff. Turn out into a dish and press it into convenient shape for cutting up when cold into fingers, which dip in milk and breadcrumbs, and fry brown. Can be served with sauce if desired. 126 A THIRD POT-POURRI Unfermented Bread.— To every pound of flour allow half -pint milk and water (quarter-pint each). Mix lightly as for pastry, no kneading being required. Form into small rolls or fingers and bake in moderate oven on a pastry tray. If wheatmeal {i.e., the flour of the entire wheat grain) is used, care should be taken to have it very finely ground, as bran flakes are irritant and relaxing and very unsafe in some forms of digestive trouble, though equally good and useful in others. The indiscriminate recommendation of cracked wheat porridge and whole-meal bread is hardly wise in these days of gastro-intestinal delicacy, as seen in the many cases of appendicitis in adults and colitis in children. House-mothers should know when to give the right food to those in their charge. It is a good plan to keep in the house several different grains, such as wheat, barley, maize, oats, rice, in two forms — i.e., in the whole grain and as flour — and to make bread or biscuits of both mixed. For instance, pearled wheat, or the grain stripped of its outer bran, should be cooked slowly for three or four hours in a double pan with water enough to swell it without breaking the grain into a mash ; this cooked wheat is then mixed with ordinary wheat flour to the consistency of bread or pastry, and is shortened if liked with cocoanut butter, or ground nuts, and left plain, or sweetened and flavoured with dried fruit, spices, &c., and rolled out and cut for baking into biscuits or finger rolls. The same method can be followed with all the other cereals except maize which in the whole grain is too hard in this country. Maize meal mixed with wheat flour is very good in biscuit form, but is best cooked first,. as if for polenta without the savoury seasoning. All these whole and ground cereals can be got from Bax & Sons, millers, 35 Bishopsgate Street Without, E.G. The whole groats (the entire oat grain) WHOLESOME FOOD 127 are particularly good for porridge, but should, like all grains, be cooked several hours in a Gourmet boiler, or duplex boilerette, or other form of double saucepan which prevents burning. The duplex boilerette is made by Mr. Wellbank, Duplex Boilerette Works, Banbury, Oxon. Date Pudding* (cheap).— Wash dates quickly in hot water, dry, stone, and chop thtem, mix with double their weight of breadcrumbs, and a little sugar. Add skim milk or weak Plasmon solution till of pudding con- sistency. Steam two hours in buttered basin. Ground nuts and grated lemon peel may be added, if liked, or raw coarse oatmeal, and soaked tapioca, with a little flour, may be used instead of the breadcrumbs. Macaroni and Cheese Patties.— Take one ounce macaroni well boiled, cut very small, and add one large tablespoonful of grated cheese and the same of cream or nut butter. Season with salt, pepper, and mustard, if liked. Make some short paste, roU out thin and line patty pans. Fill with the mixture and cover with paste. Bake a light brown. Instead of patty pan, the paste can be doubled over the mixture and fried as fritters if pre- ferred. Butter and milk can be substituted for cream, and it is quite good without either, but in that case the maca- roni should be rather moist and the cheese fresh and soft. Maearoni a la Tripe. — Boil some macaroni till soft. Drain and put aside. Cut in fine rings as many Spanish onions as will equal the macaroni in bulk. Fry in butter till quite tender, but not coloured. Eemove from pan, and make a sauce by adding flour, milk, pepper, salt, a dash of nutmeg, and a torn bay-leaf. Eeplaee onion rings in this, and simmer gently for twenty minutes ; then remove the bay-leaf and add the macaroni, and heat through. Serve with grated Gruyere or other cheese. Chopped parsley may be substituted for the bay-leaf. Parkyn. — One pound sifted oatmeal, one pound 128 A THIRD POT-POURRI treacle, one pound coarse, brown sugar; .quarter-pound butter. Ground ginger to flavour. Mix, and bake in very slow oven in flat cakes the size of a saucer. Barley Water. — Four ounces pearl barley, two quarts water. Thoroughly wash the barley, add the water and boil till reduced to one quart. Strain through hair-sieve (or musUn) previously scalded, and press through some of the barley to thicken. Time to reduce, three to four hours. Can be flavoured with lemon peel and juice, sugar or honey, apple peel and pips, or any fruit juice. Stewed rhubarb juice is good. Savoury Vegretable Stew with Barley. —Chop up carrots, turnips, onions, potatoes, celery, tomatoes, and fry in butter. Add pearl barley and plenty of cold water, with seasoning of parsley, thyme, bay-leaf, mace, pepper, and salt. Stew in double saucepan till the barley is swelled and thoroughly tender. Serve with fried dice of bread. Fried Hominy. — Cook hominy in the usual way (soaking overnight in cold water, and boiling like por- ridge till soft) and put aside to cool. Then cut in any shape preferred, fry brown in oil or cocoanut butter, dust with sugar or salt, and serve. Stewed Chestnuts. — Slit the skins of the chestnuts, and put them into cold water. Bring to the boil, keeping lid tight, and cook about ten minutes. Lift out a few at a time and remove both outer and inner skins. When all are done, put them into a clean saucepan and cover with milk or milk and water. Stew slowly till the nuts break and are coated in a smooth creamy sauce. Time, one to two hours. An old saucepan used for nothing else should be kept for blanching them, as chestnut skins discolour it badly. Apple Dumplings without Suet.— Soaked tapioca and butter make a good substitute for suet in boiled WHOLESOME FOOD 129 pudding crust. Pare and core a large apple for each dumpling required. Mil the centre with a clove, a little sugar and a bit of butter. Cover with paste, tie in a floured cloth, and boil thirty to forty minutes. For the crust use as much soaked tapioca and butter in equal parts as you would have used of suet. Stewed Tomatoes. — Skin one pound tomatoes by blanching in boiling water for five minutes; then put them into a stewpan (earthenware for choice) with two lumps of sugar, a bit of butter the size of a walnut, and a little salt. No water. Stew them in their own juice gently for twenty minutes. Baked Apple Pudding.— Fill a pie-dish with alternate layers of sliced apples and bread crumbs, seasoning each layer with bits of butter, a little sugar, and a pinch of mixed cinnamon, cloves and allspice. Pour over the whole enough water and treacle mixed to moisten it, cover with crumbs, stand in a baking tin of hot water, and bake till apples are soft, three-quarters to one hour. Barley and Raisin Pudding.— Take the barley left from making barley water, put it into a buttered pie-dish with a handful of washed raisins. Cover with milk or dissolved Plasmon, and bake slowly one hour, or tiU the barley has swelled to top of dish. Curd Cheese. — Take two pints new milk, curdle it either by slow heat, or by rennet, lemon juice, fig juice, or bruised nettles. Turn the curd into a cheese cloth or butter muslin (coarse canvas will do), previously scalded, tie loosely and hang up to drain. After three or four hours tie again tighter. In twelve hours it is fit to eat, but if preferred it can be pressed and turned every day till as firm as ordinary cheese. Nut Cutlets. — Boil two ounces of butter in rather less than half-pint of milk. Add three ounces of dried browned K I30 A THIRD POT-POURRI breadcrumbs (or brown breadcrumbs). Cook till it does not stick to the pan. When cool add two ounces of ground walnuts, almonds or Barcelona nuts, seasoning to taste, and a little chopped onion or chives. Mix thoroughly and shape into cutlets or balls. EoU in flour, or in egg and breadcrumb, and fry in butter. Serve with tomato sauce, walnut gravy, or for children with bread sauce. If the same dish is prepared with white breadcrumbs, and a little good melted butter sauce used for mixing, it looks and tastes very like chicken croquettes. Souffle Potatoes with Nuts.— Take out the inside of as many large baked potatoes as you require. For each potato add one ounce of ground nuts, a dessert spoon- ful of cream or a bit of butter the size of a small walnut, pepper, salt, and if Uked a seasoning of onion juice and parsley. Beat thoroughly to a smooth creamy con- sistency, put the mixture back into the potato sMns, bake till very hot, and serve. A very savoury flavour is given by frying some sliced onions in the butter and adding the butter alone to the potatoes, but the colour is a little darkened by doing this. Brazil Nut Soup. — One pound of ground Brazil nuts stewed for twelve hours in two quarts of water ; flavour with celery and a few fried onions. Add one quart of boiling milk. Pass through a strainer, season, and serve with fried bread dice. A nourishing dish for a child or invalid is good bread sauce to which has been added two ounces of ground almonds, well pounded in a mortar. Serve with fried dice, or spinach. Baked almonds slightly salted, and ground, make excellent sandwiches. Riee Croquettes. — Take cold boiled rice and mix it with fried chopped onion, a few breadcrumbs, pepper, WHOLESOME FOOD 131 salt, chopped parsley, or mixed herbs flavouring, and enough melted oocoanut butter or nut milk to bind all together. When cold, shape into cakes, and fry in deep boiling fat. For this, as for all sorts of savouries like nut cutlets, fritters, &c., a frying basket and plenty of oil or fat are necessary for good cooking. It also needs experience, or a frying thermometer, to know when fat is at the right heat for deep frying. Braised Onions.— Peel large or medium sized onions in warm water to prevent the volatile oil from affecting the eyes, place them in a baking dish with butter enough to baste them well, and bake three hours, when they will be brown and tender. Eemove them on to a serving dish, pour hot water into the baking tin, and with a wooden spoon rub off all the dark brown caked juice, thickening if liked with a Uttle flour, in which case the tin must be placed over heat enough to boil the gravy and cook the flour. Pour over the onions and serve. This is a delicious dish which puzzles meat-eaters, as they think they are eating a rich meat sauce. Raisin Tea. — Take half a pound good raisins and wash well in cold water. Cut them up roughly to free the pulp in cooking, and put them into a stevring jar, or Gourmet boiler, with one quart cold water (distilled, for perfection). Cook three to four hours, when the liquid will be reduced to one pint. Press all but insoluble skins and stones through a fine, scalded sieve, and use either hot or cold. If too sweet, a little lemon juice may be added, but it is best without for invalids and children. This drink is of the same proteid value as milk, and is so much more easily digested that it is being used successfully in many cases of gastric disease where both milk and vegetable or meat soups are impossible. It is not recommended to meat- eaters, as the sweetness might cause bilious disturbance ; e2 132 A THIRD POT-POURRI but to scientific vegetarians and fruitarians it is in- valuable as a nutrient drink. For those who suffer from cold it is very warming. Nut Cutlets (another way). — One cupful grated bread, one cupful each of grated almonds and walnuts or Brazils, one teaspoonful powdered mace, one tablespoonful grated onion juice, one teaspoonful powdered mixed herbs, salt and pepper if liked, enough good melted butter sauce to mix and bind together. Stir all thoroughly well, and allow to go cold. Shape into cutlets or balls, flour, or egg and breadcrumb, and fry in a basket in deep fat at 350°. A few seconds will turn them brown, and they are crisp and dry, not the least greasy. A very nourishing and savoury dish which should be eaten with vegetables in the same proportion as if the cutlets were of meat.' 133 EIGHTEEN HUNDBED A YEAB REPKINTBD TEOM THE ' COBNHILL MAGAZINE ' A YOUNG friend came to see me not long ago, and after a short period of a somewhat shy reserve he looked up ■with a beaming, happy face, and said, ' I'm going to be married.' It all sounds so simple, these few words, and yet what do they not mean in two young lives 1 I re- sponded with a smile and the ordinary platitude of, ' I am very glad, and especially so for your mother's sake, for it will give her great pleasure.' As we talked on, I naturally came to the prosaic, elderly question, ' What have you got to live upon ? ' His answer came short and straight enough. ' With what my father left me and my salary, I shall make up 1,6001. a year, and the lady I am about to marry, I am told, is to have 200Z. of her own.' ' That will do well enough,' I said, ' even if you have to live in London. The most pessimistic objector to early marriage can hardly say that love need fly out of the window on such an income as that. But, all the same, wealth is comparative,' for everything depends on position and what there is to keep up. The young man, being of the cautious, prudent type, asked, ' And what do you think I ought to save yearly on such an income ? ' I answered, ' Erom 200Z. to 3001. a year.' He, not differing, but yet interrogatively, replied, 'I wonder why? I shall have more later on. Why is it necessary to save at all, and not just fit my expenditure to my present income ? ' This 134 A THIRD POT-POURRI opens so large a question that on my young friend's departure I asked myself why I think as I do about it. There seems to me a point of resemblance between saving and the very different occupation of gambling. Why is it that gambling has always, in all countries and at all times, been condemned by wise and prudent people, and saving (that is to say, not living up to your income, but leaving a margin more or less \nde, which you intend to add to your capital) been approved ? It cannot be only that in ten years or so you should be 2,000L or 3,O0OZ. richer. The approval of the saving and the condemnation of the gambling are directed, I think, to the mental attitude of the gambler or the careful man, rather than to any practical result to them personally of their conduct. The saving recommended is in no sense the spirit of the miser who piles up wealth for which he has no use, but a cautious guarding of expenditure which provides for future children, against a rainy day, or enables a man later in Mfe to better his house or his furniture, or to increase the enjoyment of his holidays. To adjust income and expenditure exactly is extremely diflScult, and anyone who does not pitch his estimate of expenditure below his income is almost sure in practice to exceed it. Of course, it is much less important to save on a more or less assured income (for no income is absolutely assured) than it is to save on an income which is almost entirely derived from salary, and dependent on a man's life or health or the success of the business in which he is engaged. To save ever so httle is very much better than keeping elaborate accounts. If, at the end of the year, the savings are there, no doubt remains that the expendi- ture has been, as regards essentials, well regulated — though getting as much as can be got out of the money spent is quite a different matter from making both ends meet. It is, all the same, interesting and good to re- EIGHTEEN HUNDRED A YEAR 135 member what can be done at a pinch, and how the upper working classes live in comfort on an income where thousands of impoverished gentry would simply starve on double the sum. The fundamental principle which governs the Uves of the working classes is to ignore to-morrow — to live from hand to mouth and day to day. And it is on this point that gentUity with a very small income is often perverted by not recognising the merits of the principle when circumstances make it a necessity. This seems to me worth considering, although I recommend the opposite principle as the one generally most admirable to practise with a larger income. The working man does his best for the moment, assumes that his children when reared will do Ukevrise, and the rest he leaves to Provi- dence, or chance, or whatever the unknown quantity may be called. The 'gentle' reared man, I say, cannot be happy unless he has a security against fate, not only for himself but for his family. It is a fine idea in many ways,, but it can perhaps grow into an exaggeration. The serious handicap to the ' gentle ' man is the education of his children. He must pay through the nose for it, or his children are apt to sink into a class to which they do not rightly belong and for which they are quite unfitted. The working man starts his children as he started him- self, with nothing more than the education provided by the nation, and their ovm power to work. The expenditure of an income of 1,800Z. a year will vary a great deal in detail according to whether it is spent in London or the country. I shall therefore consider the two separately, taking London first. Of course, the most important item is house-rent, and requirements and taste differ so widely that it seriously affects the whole income. The old idea was that house-rent should absorb only a tenth of the income ; but this in London is practically impossible — an eighth is nearer theV average nowadays. 136 A THIRD POT-POURRI Even this will vary very much with circumstances — ^the requirements and wishes of both parties. The wife con- stantly holds to living within easy reach of her family and friends, and the husband's wishes will be much affected by his kind of work. Saving of time in getting to work may be of great importance, necessitating the use of cabs. The house rent, which, on an income of 1,800Z., in most cases had better not exceed 200Z., including rates and taxes, may very easily mount up to 3501. When this is the case it is well to commit the extravagance boldly, and so secure a house in a locality which is practically a certain let, if circumstances make this de- sirable, or if the expenditure of any one year has exceeded the average. There seems to be a very general impression that living in a better locality and a more central part of the West End is an actual economy ; this may be the case if cabs are much used, but if the Underground or 'buses be the usual mode of locomotion, very little is saved except time, which in the case of the woman does not generally affect the income. At one period of my life, influenced no doubt by the growing so-called artistic fashion, I had a great dislike to the old two-roomed back and front house ; but I am now inclined to think that on the whole, especially in small houses, it is the best plan of house building for London. It gives more room, more convenience, and more air than any of the modem houses, arranged on what is considered a superior system — viz., blocking up the middle of the house with staircase and landings, all more or less dark, and which divide all the rooms from one another. Corner houses are, in my opinion, to be avoided, as they are always stuffy, a draught through being not easily obtained. Plats are not suited to young married couples. The boudoir or morning room so vaunted by agents seems to me very superfluous for young married people. EIGHTEEN HUNDRED A YEAR 137 In early married days and in winter, for reasons of economy, the husband being out all day, there seems no reason why the wife should not share the man's sitting- room. But if the drawing-room is used, she must live in it, or it will have an unbearably stiff appearance. The great advantage of the two-roomed house, with the absence of a dividing landing on the bedroom floors, is in case of illness. No one who has had to experience any kind of nursing fails to appreciate the great importance of rooms that communicate, and much suffering is often spared to the nervous child who feels the presence of its nurse in the adjoining room, and sees the gleam of the nursery light through the half-closed door. Besides, in the busy modern London life, those who have lately become one will feel it an advantage, by no means to be despised, that they can talk at all sorts of odd times through the open door, and discuss life's little difficulties, which are often created by a non-understanding of the circumstances. When man and woman are joint masters in the small details of everyday life and the just ruling of servants and children, there should be the comprehension of what Mr. Morley calls 'government by discussion, which is now counted the secret of liberty.' George Eliot says somewhere that ' a man with an affectionate dis- position who finds a vdte to concur with his fundamental idea of life easily comes to persuade himself that no other woman would have suited him so well, and does a little daily snapping and quarrelling without any sense of alienation.' How true this is; but also, how infinitely better is it that this should be done upstairs than in the drawing-room or dining-room, possibly before servants and guests. Having now given my opinion on the preferable style of house, for the sake of argument I will say that the young couple decide on the more fashionable locality, and 138 A THIRD POT-POURRI weight their income with a disproportionately high Under these circumstances I think the disposition of income and general expenditure would work out something like the following table : — I. Eent, rates, and taxes II. Housekeeping, including living, washing, lighting III. Eepairs, insurance, cleaning, painting,