Farinaceous Foods

Farinaceous foods should be cautiously given to young infants. Neither the secretion of the saliva in the mouth, nor of the gastric juice in the stomach, is adapted for their digestion.

Among the farinaceous foods suitable for young children are baked flour, corn flour, biscuit powder, arrowroot, ground rice, etc. It is not possible to say in what cases each of these may be most suitable; what may be easily digested by one child may not agree with another, or with the same child for long together.

After five or six months a crust may be given, but should be carefully watched.

When some teeth are cut, the admixture of solids may occasionally be permitted; but even when all the teeth are cut, it is advisable only to give meat every other or every third day. Soups, beef tea, etc, may be given at other times.

General Diet

It is scarcely necessary here to enter upon the diet for adults in health, as this will depend very much upon the pursuits and upon the inclinations of each. It is well known that those who work hard can generally eat well without much regard to what is put before them - "Hunger is their best sauce".

It is where little bodily exertion is undergone, and perhaps very little brain work either, that the appetite is apt to flag and to require pampering: it is in such cases that a diet beyond the plainest and lightest is calculated to become the origin of disease.

It may suffice to offer a few remarks on the digestibility of some articles of food as a guide to invalids, and with reference to the diet recommended under the several headings of disease in the following pages.

It may be stated generally that beef is less digestible than mutton, especially for persons subject to dyspepsia. Beef is more easily digested cold than hot by delicate stomachs. Both these meats will require upwards of three hours for digestion. Salt beef will demand twice the time. Veal, lamb, and young meat generally is not so easy of digestion as the meat of animals killed at maturer age. Pork in any form is less readily digested than other meats.

Fowls, Poultry, Game, though generally regarded as light and digestible, are not always so in the cases of the invalid or the convalescent; they are not wholly digested much under four or five hours.

Fish, especially the white sorts, are easy of digestion, according as they are plainly cooked. Salted fish are more slowly digested fish, as also are those that are fat, such as salmon. Much, however, depends upon the cooking, and of the adjuncts, the sauces, etc.

Melted butter is usually taken with fish, but is better omitted when they are the food of the invalid. Butter when melted, or prepared in any way over fire, readily becomes altered in its composition, and yields various fatty acids, which are the sources of indigestion. This is more especially the case with pastry such as short pie-crust, etc. For the delicate stomach, fish cannot be too plainly and simply cooked; under these circumstances they form a light and nutritious diet.

Shell Fish, including under the term oysters, mussels, whelks, lobsters, crabs, are all more or less difficult of digestion, and unsuitable for invalids. Oysters are, perhaps, the least open to this objection, but they require three or four hours' digestion, and are not the light nourishment usually supposed, unless very carefully cooked.

Sweetbread and tripe are easy of digestion, as also are the brains of animals.

Liver and kidneys are the reverse of digestible.

Ripe Fruits and Vegetables are more easily digested than any of the preceding articles; but then, as they consist of a large proportion of water, they are not so nourishing as animal substances. Vegetarians supplement the deficient nutritive qualities of vegetables by a liberal allowance of animal matter in the shape of eggs and milk.

Cheese, being almost entirely an albuminous substance, contains a very large amount of nutriment; but from this element being combined with the fatty acids and some of the oily constituents of milk, it is not easily digested by weak stomachs when taken alone. It nevertheless is often useful in promoting the digestion of other food, to which it sometimes acts after the manner of a ferment when taken in small quantities; for instance, after dinner.

Sausages, when fresh, are not unwholesome, and they contain a large quantity of nourishment in a compact form.