Edwin Booth used to be troubled very much with indigestion; he
suffered keenly from it. One day he went to dine with some intimate
friends, and before the dinner began his hostess said with a very
smiling face: "Now, Mr. Booth, I have been especially careful with
this dinner not to have one thing that you cannot digest."
The host echoed her with a hearty "Yes, Mr. Booth, everything that
will come to the table is good for your digestion."
The words made a very happy impression on Mr. Booth. First there was
the kind, sympathetic friendliness of his hosts; and then the strong
suggestion they had given him that their food would agree with him.
Then there was very happy and interesting talk during the whole time
that they were at table and afterward. Mr.. Booth ate a hearty
dinner and, true to the words of his host and hostess, not one
single thing disagreed with him. And yet at that dinner, although
care had been taken to have it wholesome, there were served things
that under other conditions would have disagreed.
While we should aim always to eat wholesome food, it is really not
so much the food which makes the trouble as the attitude we take
toward it and the way we test it.
All the contractions which are made by our fussing about food
interfere with our circulation; the interference with our
circulation makes us liable to take cold, and it is safe to say that
more than half the colds that women have are caused principally by
wrong eating. Somewhat akin to grandmother's looking for her
spectacles when all the time they are pushed to the top of her head
is the way women fuss about their eating and then wonder why it is
that they cannot seem to stand drafts.
There is no doubt but that our food should be thoroughly masticated
before it goes into our stomachs. There is no doubt but that the
first process of digestion should be in our mouths. The relish which
we get for our food by masticating it properly is greater and also
helps toward digesting it truly. All this cannot be over-emphasized
if it is taken in the right way. But there is an extreme which
perhaps has not been thought of and for which happily I have an
example that will illustrate what I want to prove. I know a woman
who was, so to speak, daft on the subject of health. She attended to
all points of health with such minute detail that she seemed to have
lost all idea of why we should be healthy. One of her ways of
over-emphasizing the road to health was a very careful mastication
of her food. She chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed, and the
result was that she so strained her stomach with her chewing that
she brought on severe indigestion, simply as a result of an
overactive effort toward digestion. This was certainly a case of
"vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, and falls on the other."
And it was not unique.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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