Domestic medicine : $b or, a treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines. With an appendix, containing a dispensatory for the use of private practitionersBuchan, William
Science
Domestic medicine : $b or, a treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines. With an appendix, containing a dispensatory for the use of private practitioners
Buchan, William
Medicine, Popular -- Early works to 1800
We would recommend it to families, not only to prepare their own
liquors, but likewise their bread. Bread is so necessary a part of diet,
that too much care cannot be bestowed in order to have it sound and
wholesome. For this purpose, it is not only necessary that it be made of
good grain, but likewise properly prepared, and kept free from all
unwholesome ingredients. This, however, we have reason to believe is not
always the case with bread prepared by those who make a trade of vending
it. Their object is rather to please the eye, than to consult the
health. The best bread is that which is neither too coarse nor too fine;
well fermented and made of wheat flour, or rather of wheat and rye mixed
together.
To specify the different kinds of aliment, to explain their nature and
properties, and to point out their effects in different constitutions,
would far exceed the limits of our design. Instead of a detail of this
kind, which would not be generally understood, and of course little
attended to, we shall only mention the following easy rules with respect
to the choice of aliment.
Persons, whose solids are weak and relaxed, ought to avoid all viscid
food, or such things as are hard of digestion. Their diet, however,
ought to be nourishing; and they should take sufficient exercise in the
open air.
Such as abound with blood should be sparing in the use of every thing
that is highly nourishing, as fat meat, rich wines, strong ale, and such
like. Their food should consist chiefly of bread and other vegetable
substances; and their drink ought to be water, whey, or small beer.
Fat people should not eat freely of oily nourishing diet. They ought
frequently to use raddish, garlic, spices, or such things as are heating
and promote perspiration and urine. Their drink should be water, coffee,
tea, or the like; and they ought to take much exercise and little sleep.
Those who are too lean must follow an opposite course.
Such as are troubled with acidities, or whose food is apt to sour on the
stomach, should live much on animal food; and those who are afflicted
with hot alkaline eructations, ought to use a diet consisting chiefly of
acid vegetables.
People who are affected with the gout, low spirits, hypochondriac or
hysteric disorders, ought to avoid all flatulent food, every thing that
is viscid, or hard of digestion, all salted or smoke-dried provisions,
and whatever is austere, acid, or apt to turn sour on the stomach. Their
food should be light, spare, cool, and of an opening nature.
The diet ought not only to be suited to the age and constitution, but
also to the manner of life: a sedentary or studious person should live
more sparingly than one who labours hard without doors. Many kinds of
food will nourish a peasant very well which would be almost indigestible
to a citizen; and the latter will live upon a diet on which the former
would starve.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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