Chapter 6 Art Against Appetite.

The object of food is, to support the body in its natural development that it may reach a reasonable age without becoming too robust. Civilization can instruct us so to manage, that a gentle dissolution tread upon the heels of growth, that, as Metastasio hath it,

-"dalle fasce,

Si comincia a morir quando si nasce."2

An infant's appetite is all for milk; but art suggests a few additions to that lamentably simple diet. A lady not long since complacently informed her medical attendant that, for the use of a baby, then about eight months old she had spent nine pounds in "Infant's Preservative." Of this, or of some like preparation, the advertisements tells us that it compels Nature to be orderly, and that all infants take it with greediness. So we have even justice to the child. Pet drinks Preservative; papa drinks Port.

Then there is "farinaceous food." Here, for a purpose, we must interpolate a bit of science. There is a division of food into two great classes, nourishment and fuel. Nourishment is said to exist chiefly in animal flesh and blood, and in vegetable compounds which exactly correspond thereto, called vegetable fibrine, albumen, and caseine. Fuel exists in whatever contains much carbon: fat and starchy vegetables, potatoes, gum, sugar, alcoholic liquors. If a person take more nourishment than he wants, it is said to be wasted; if he take more fuel than he wants, part of it is wasted, and part of it the body stacks away as fat. These men of science furthermore assert, that the correct diet of a healthy man must contain eight parts of fuel food to one of nourishment. This preserves equilibrium, they say-suits, therefore, an adult; the child which has to become bigger as it lives has use for an excess of nourishment. And so one of the doctors, Dr. R.D. Thomson, gives this table; it has been often copied. The proportion of nourishment to fuel is in

Milk (food for a growing animal) 1 to 2.

Beans 1 to 2-1/2.

Oatmeal 1 to 5.

Barley 1 to 7.

Wheat flour (food for an animal at rest) 1 to 8.

Potatoes 1 to 9.

Rice 1 to 10.

Turnips 1 to 11.

Arrow-root, tapioca, sago 1 to 26.

Starch 1 to 40.

Very well, gentlemen, we take your facts. As ?gritudinary men, we know what use to make of them. We will give infants farinaceous food; arrow-root, tapioca, and the like; quite ready to be taught by you that so we give one particle of nourishment in twenty-six. Tell us, this diet is like putting leeches on a child. We are content. Leeches give a delicate whiteness that we are thankful to be able to obtain with out the biting or the bloodshed.

Sanitary people will allow a child, up to its seventh year, nothing beyond bread, milk, water, sugar, light meat broth, without fat, and fresh [pg 609] meat for its dinner-when it is old enough to bite it-with a little well-cooked vegetable. They confine a child, poor creature, to this miserable fare; permitting, in due season, only a pittance of the ripest fruit.

They would give children, while they are growing, oatmeal and milk for breakfast, made into a porridge. They would deny them beer. You know how strengthening that is, and yet these people say that there is not an ounce of meat in a whole bucketful. They would deny them comfits, cakes, wine, pastry, and grudge them nuts; but our boys shall rebel against all this. We will teach them to regard cake as bliss, and wine as glory; we will educate them to a love of tarts. Once let our art secure over the stomach its ascendency, and the civilized organ acquires new desires. Vitiated cravings, let the sanitary doctors call them; let them say that children will eat garbage, as young women will eat chalk and coals, not because it is their nature so to do, but because it is a symptom of disordered function. We know nothing about function. Art against Appetite has won the day, and the pale face of civilization is established.

Plain sugar, it is a good thing to forbid our children; there is something healthy in their love of it. Suppose we tell them that it spoils the teeth. They know no better; we do. We know that the negroes, who in a great measure live upon sugar, are quite famous for their sound white teeth; and Mr. Richardson tells us of tribes among the Arabs of Sahara, whose beautiful teeth he lauds, that they are in the habit of keeping about them a stick of sugar in a leathern case, which they bring out from time to time for a suck, as we bring out the snuff-box for a pinch. But we will tell our children that plain sugar spoils the teeth; sugar mixed with chalk or verdigris, or any other mess-that is to say, civilized sugar-they are welcome to.

And for ourselves, we will eat any thing. The more our cooks, with spice, with druggery and pastry, raise our wonder up, the more we will approve their handicraft. We will excite the stomach with a peppered soup; we will make fish indigestible with melted butter, and correct the butter with cayenne. We will take sauces, we will drink wine, we will drink beer, we will eat pie-crust, we will eat indescribable productions-we will take celery, and cheese, and ale-we will take liqueur-we will take wine and olives and more wine, and oranges and almonds, and any thing else that may present itself, and we will call all that our dinner, and for such the stomach shall accept it. We will eat more than we need, but will compel an appetite. Art against Appetite forever.

Sanitary people bear ill-will to pie-crust; they teach that butter, after being baked therein, becomes a compound hateful to the stomach. We will eat pies, we will eat pastry, we will eat-we would eat M. Soyer himself in a tart, if it were possible.

We will uphold London milk. Mr. Rugg says that it is apt to contain chalk, the brains of sheep, oxen, and cows, flour, starch, treacle, whiting, sugar of lead, arnotto, size, etc. Who cares for Mr. Rugg? London milk is better than country milk, for London cows are town cows. They live in a city, in close sheds, in our own dear alleys-are consumptive-they are delightful cows; only their milk is too strong, it requires watering and doctoring, and then it is delicious milk.

Tea we are not quite sure about. Some people say that because tea took so sudden a hold upon the human appetite, because it spread so widely in so short a time, that therefore it supplies a want: its use is natural. Liebig suggests that it supplies a constituent of bile. I think rather that its use has become general because it causes innocent intoxication. Few men are not glad to be made cheerful harmlessly. For this reason I think it is that the use of tea and coffee has become popular; and since whatever sustains cheerfulness advances health-the body working with good will under a pleasant master-tea does our service little good. In excess, no doubt, it can be rendered hurtful (so can bread and butter); but the best way of pressing it into employment, as an ?gritudinary aid, is by the practice of taking it extremely hot. A few observations upon the temperature at which food is refused by all the lower animals, will soon convince you that in man-not as regards tea only, but in a great many respects-Art has established her own rule, and that the Appetite of Nature has been conquered.

We have a great respect for alcoholic liquors. It has been seen that the excess of these makes fat; they, therefore, who have least need of fat, according to our rules, are those who have most need of wine and beer.

Of ordinary meats there is not much to say, We have read of Dr. Beaumont's servant, who had an open musket-hole leading into his stomach, through which the doctor made experiments. Many experiments were made, and tables drawn of no great value on the digestibility of divers kinds of meat. Climate and habit are, on such points, paramount. Pig is pollution to the children of the Sun, the Jew, and Mussulman; but children of winter, the Scandinavians, could not imagine Paradise complete without it. Schrimner, the sacred hog, cut up daily and eaten by the tenants of Walhalla, collected his fragments in the night, and was in his sty again ready for slaughter the next morning. These things concern us little, for it is not with plain meat that we have here to do, but with the noble art of Cookery. That art, which once obeyed and now commands our appetite, which is become the teacher where it was the taught, we duly reverence. When ?gritudinary science shall obtain its college, and when each Unhealthy Course shall have its eminent professor to teach Theory and Practice-then we shall have a Court of Aldermen for Patrons, a Gravedigger for Principal, and a Cook shall be Dean of Faculty.

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