Cranberries, when thoroughly cooked and separated from the hulls, form the basis of a delicious jelly that is widely eaten in the winter over all portions of the United States. Like all sweets it is not entirely wholesome for dyspeptics or infants, but as it is usually eaten with meats and not in great quantities, it may be looked upon as being one of the most wholesome of all foods of this class. It does not seem to have such a tendency to produce sour stomach in many dyspeptics as is so frequently done by other foods containing vegetable acids. CHAPTER IX DANGER IN FRUITS AND PICKLES It is an error shared almost universally by both medical men and the laity that fruits and raw foods are wholesome. Everyone is familiar with the fact that fruits produce intestinal disturbances in children,--not only when they are very young, but after their digestive apparatus is fully developed. Rather curiously, however, instead of ascribing the disturbances that follow to the real cause, we generally dismiss the matter with the assertion that "early fruits are unhealthy," or trace the resulting ill effects to some other equally imaginary factor. In reality the reason why diarrhoea and other intestinal troubles so often occur after eating fruits in the early spring is that the boy or girl after a winter's fast greedily devours enormous quantities of them when they first ripen, and disturbances follow in proportion to the amount and character of these substances taken. There can be no question that fruits, while extremely palatable, usually produce trouble in dyspeptics, and even in those who still possess unimpaired digestive organs ill effects quite constantly follow on the heels of the taking of food of this character. Unfortunately, however, the great majority of dyspeptics have symptoms that in no way outwardly point toward digestive errors; as common examples, we might refer to the blackheads, pimples and small boils, so frequently observed on the faces of young boys and girls, or the rheumatic pains, and, at a later time, the "Bright's disease," that occur in older people. When you tell such patients that their trouble is indigestion, they are often mildly indignant, and loudly protest that they can eat anything with impunity; that they never have heart-burn, feelings of heaviness after eating, pains in the abdomen, or other symptoms referable to the stomach and intestines. We are rather disposed to be proud of our digestive powers, just as we are of our bodily strength, and nothing is more common than for chronic dyspeptics to maintain that they have never had indigestion in their lives, and to resent any insinuation to the contrary.