How to Eat: A Cure for "Nerves"Hinkle, Thomas C. (Thomas Clark)
Science
How to Eat: A Cure for "Nerves"
Hinkle, Thomas C. (Thomas Clark)
Diet in disease; Nervous system -- Diseases; Nervous system -- Hygiene
It may seem odd, but there are people who for some reason or other lack
the instinct, or whatever is needed, to know that a certain thing they
eat hurts them. I have had men and women sit in my office and say with
the utmost sincerity that they were certain that it wasn't anything they
ate that hurt them because they never had any pain in the abdomen.
Sometimes these people were in a dreadful state of nervous breakdown. So
you see the danger that lies here. If you know, you can always tell what
special thing disagrees with you. For example, I know eggs disagree with
me, and like John Burroughs and many others, I know when they harm me.
Therefore, after you have recovered you might try being your own
physician. But if you are not sure as to what disagrees with you, you
would much better stick to a vegetarian diet and go without eggs the
remainder of your days.
Commercial sugar also is the cause of many breakdowns among the people
of this country. And is it not strange how these poor suffering people
crave sweets--the very thing they should not have. They will argue with
themselves--and some physicians will agree with them--that they should
go right on eating candy because they want it. But, as I have already
said, there is just as much sense in saying a man should have whiskey
because he craves it or that a young man should have tobacco because he
craves it, as to say that any one should have candy because he craves
it. There is absolutely no sense in such an argument. If you are
suffering from a nervous breakdown, for sixty days quit eating candy and
everything sweet except honey, and follow the other rules I have already
laid down. It may be that you will have to stick to this diet for three
months. But try it. That is exactly what cured all my bodily ills and
brought my soul out of the dark and gloomy night after everything else
had failed. I do not mean to say that this diet alone cured me, but I do
say it was the biggest factor in the cure. There are, however, some
other things that it would be worse than folly to ignore. This I shall
come to later. But just here I want to have it understood that this
thing of eating--how you eat, and how much you eat, and what you
eat--is of transcendent importance in the cure.
Of course, under some circumstances connected with cases of breakdown,
nothing but the good judgment of friends will avail. For example, the
question of how much one shall eat is something that not all the books
in the world nor all the physicians in the world can determine. I say,
always quit while you want a little more. I cannot say more or less than
that.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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