Digestion and Food : Part 6

Hygienic Physiology: with Special Reference to the Use of Alcoholic Drinks and Narcotics
by Joel Dorman Steele, Ph.D.

(Page 11 of 16)

Worse than this, the alcoholic craving may be transmitted from father to son, and young persons often find themselves cursed with a terrible disease known as alcoholism - a keen, morbid appetite for liquor that demands gratification at any cost - stamped upon their very being through the reckless indulgence of this habit on the part of some one of their ancestors.

The Law of Heredity is, in this connection, well worth consideration. "The world is beginning to perceive," says Francis Galton, "that the life of each individual is, in some real sense, a continuation of the lives of his ancestors." "Each of us is the footing up of a double column of figures that goes back to the first pair." "We are omnibuses," remarks Holmes, "in which all our ancestors ride." We inherit from our parents our features, our physical vigor, our mental faculties, and even much of our moral character. Often, when one generation is skipped, the qualities will reappear in the following one. The virtues, as well as the vices, of our forefathers, have added to, or subtracted from, the strength of our brain and muscle. The evil tendencies of our natures, which it is the struggle of our lives to resist, constitute a part of our heirlooms from the past. Our descendants, in turn, will have reason to bless us only if we hand down to them a pure healthy physical, mental, and moral being.

"There is a marked tendency in nature to transmit all diseased conditions. therefore, the children of consumptive parents are apt to be consumptives. But of all agents, alcohol is the most potent in establishing a heredity that exhibits itself in the destruction of mind and body. Its malign influence was observed by the ancients long before the production of whiskey or brandy, or other distilled liquors, and when fermented liquors or wines only were known. Aristotle says, 'Drunken women have children like unto themselves,' and Plutarch remarks, 'One drunkard is the father of another.' The drunkard by inheritance is a more helpless slave than his progenitor, and his children are more helpless still, unless on the mother's side there is an untainted blood. For there is not only a propensity transmitted, but an actual disease of the nervous system." - Dr. Willard Parker.

Practical Questions

1. How do clothing and shelter economize food?

2. Is it well to take a long walk before breakfast?

3. Why is warm food easier to digest than cold?

4. Why is salt beef less nutritious than fresh?

5. What should be the food of a man recovering from a fever?

6. Is a cup of black coffee a healthful close to a hearty dinner?

7. Should iced water be used at a meal?

8. Why is strong tea or coffee injurious?

9. Should food or drink be taken hot?

10. Are fruitcakes, rich pastry, and puddings wholesome?

11. Why are warm biscuit and bread hard of digestion?

12. Should any stimulants be used in youth?

13. Why should bread be made spongy?

14. Which should remain longer in the mouth, bread or meat?

15. Why should cold water be used in making soup, and hot water in boiling meat?

16. Name the injurious effects of overeating.

17. Why do not buckwheat cakes, with syrup and butter, taste as well in July as in January?

18. Why is a late supper injurious?

19. What makes a man "bilious"?

20. What is the best remedy? Diet to give the organs rest, and active exercise to arouse the secretions and the circulation.

21. What is the practical use of hunger?

22. How can jugglers drink when standing on their heads?

23. Why do we relish butter on bread?

24. What would you do if you had taken arsenic by mistake?

25. Why should ham and sausage be thoroughly cooked?

26. Why do we wish butter on fish, eggs with tapioca, oil on salad, and milk with rice?

27. Explain the relation of food to exercise.

28. How do you explain the difference in the manner of eating between carnivorous and herbivorous animals?

29. Why is a child's face plump and an old man's wrinkled?

30. Show how life depends on repair and waste.

31. What is the difference between the decay of the teeth and the constant decay of the body?

32. Should biscuit and cake containing yellow spots of soda be eaten?

33. Tell how the body is composed of organs, how organs are made up of tissues, and how tissues consist of cells.

34. Why do we not need to drink three pints of water per day?

35. Why, during a pestilence, are those who use liquors as a beverage the first, and often the only victims?

36. What two secretions seem to have the same general use?

37. How may the digestive organs be strengthened?

38. Is the old rule, "after dinner sit awhile," a good one?

39. What would you do if you had taken laudanum by mistake? Paris Green? Sugar of lead? Oxalic acid? Phosphorus from matches? Ammonia? Corrosive sublimate?

40. What is the simplest way to produce vomiting, so essential in case of accidental poisoning?

41. In what way does alcohol interfere with the digestion?

42. Is alcohol assimilated?

43. What is the effect of alcohol on the albuminous substances?

44. Is there any nourishment in beer?

45. Show how the excessive use of alcohol may first increase, and, afterward, decrease, the size of the liver.

46. Will liquor help one to endure cold and exposure?

47. What is a fatty degeneration of the kidneys?

48. Contrast the action of alcohol and water in the body.

49. Is alcohol, in any proper sense of the term, a food?

50. Does liquor strengthen the muscles of a working man?

51. Is liquor a wholesome "tonic"?

52. Is it a good plan to take a glass of liquor before dinner?