[23]
[Sidenote: Intelligent cravings of particular sick for particular
articles of diet.]
In the diseases produced by bad food, such as scorbutic dysentery and
diarrhoea, the patient's stomach often craves for and digests things,
some of which certainly would be laid down in no dietary that ever was
invented for sick, and especially not for such sick. These are fruit,
pickles, jams, gingerbread, fat of ham or of bacon, suet, cheese,
butter, milk. These cases I have seen not by ones, nor by tens, but by
hundreds. And the patient's stomach was right and the book was wrong.
The articles craved for, in these cases, might have been principally
arranged under the two heads of fat and vegetable acids.
There is often a marked difference between men and women in this matter
of sick feeding. Women's digestion is generally slower.
[24] It is made a frequent recommendation to persons about to incur
great exhaustion, either from the nature of the service or from their
being not in a state fit for it, to eat a piece of bread before they go.
I wish the recommenders would themselves try the experiment of
substituting a piece of bread for a cup of tea or coffee or beef tea as
a refresher.
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