Perhaps the most significant proof of the change in public opinion is the fact that many patients now ask a doctor, not which form of alcohol is “the best for them,” but which “will do them the least harm.” CHAPTER VIII. HOW TO EAT FOOD. [Sidenote: Mastication.] This is even more important than the nature of the food itself. The great majority of digestive troubles are due to the habit of taking food too quickly, and imperfectly masticating it. It is surprising what people can eat with impunity provided they take it slowly and chew it until it is reduced to a fine pulp, almost a liquid in fact, in the mouth. When staying at an hotel some time ago I met a gentleman of seventy who told me that he had never known all his life what it was to have a pain or a discomfort in his stomach. And his looks bore out his statement. Yet he would take most things that were set before him, but he ate them with a deliberation that is seldom met with nowadays. One has only to go into any restaurant to see crowds of men eating their food like ostriches, but without the digestion of an ostrich to deal with it after it has been swallowed. The rush and hurry of these days have caused meal-times to be looked upon as necessary nuisances, an unavoidable interference with the day’s work, rather than as a vitally-important function, and an opportunity for a congenial rest. Men get into such a habit of hurrying when at their business, that they attack their meals in the same manner, whether there be any need for haste or not. And if the urgency of their work is such as to curtail the time required for lunch or dinner, it would do them far less harm and vastly more good to take half the meal quietly instead of bolting the whole lot. Every bite that is swallowed without being masticated is a nail in a man’s coffin. And as we have seen already, this applies to soft foods as well as to those which are of a more substantial nature. When mastication is imperfect the starchy foods do not get their meed of saliva, and when meaty ones are taken in the same way, they are swallowed in too solid a form to be acted on by the gastric juices in the stomach. Indigestion results, and this means that the eatables lose their power of nourishment, and, what is even worse, become tainted with poison. Then there is not only trouble in the present, but even greater trouble in the remote future, which, if it gets beyond a certain stage, may baffle all the resources of medicine to put it right.