The Scalpel

6 The diet should consist of both nitrogenized and non-nitrogenzied aliment in due proportions.—Though oily food contributes little, if any, to the organization of the solid tissues of the body, it is indispensably important as a caloric element. In cold climates, where this element is most required, as in Kamschatka, Greenland, and other high northern countries, it properly becomes the staple food. On the contrary, in tropical regions, where the body is subjected to excessive heat, the free use of oily food is dangerous, and often productive of disease. In temperate climates, between these two extremes, the healthy nutriment of the body requires a judicious combination of the two great classes of aliment—nitrogenized and calorific food.

An insufficient use of oily food is a common and most injurious error of diet. Infants at the breast are sometimes rendered weak and sickly by this error on the part of mothers, the milk, in consequence, becoming deficient of its oily constituent. Many children, also, after weaning, become sickly from want of oily nutriment. Deprived of the butter, to which they have been accustomed in the mother's milk, they are fed on cow's milk, too much diluted, panada, arrowroot, or some simple farinaceous food. A common consequence of such feeding is a general paleness of the skin and mucous membranes; the lips lose their natural florid hue; the ears are cold, white, and translucent; the limbs and whole surface of the body are usually cold, with an occasional transient flush of heat, especially about the head; the bowels alternate between costiveness and diarrhœa, and the child has restless nights, with frequent starting in its sleep. In many cases of this common train of symptoms, the health is soon improved by simply adding a little butter to the ordinary food.

With young girls, fashion sometimes deters from eating of fat meat, which is regarded as a sign of grossness and want of delicacy; and many, between the ages of thirteen and twenty years, manifest the injurious consequences of this error. The skin is flabby, cool, and blanched, and the whole system appears exsanguineous; the cheeks are sometimes flushed with a transient, irritative, feverish heat, but there is a persistent coldness of the hands and feet, and the aggregate heat of the body is deficient. The lymphatic glands of the neck become enlarged. The appetite is irregular and fastidious; especially in the morning, food is taken reluctantly or utterly refused. In short, the general assemblage of symptoms indicate a scrufulous constitution. In most cases there is a morbid thirst, and the symptoms become aggravated by an excessive use of cold water and other drinks. If, perchance, the friends indulge a fashionable hydropathic monomania, the external use of cold water is brought in requisition, still more to lessen the vital heat, depress the powers of life, and aid the full development of phthisis.

Most individuals who avoid fat meat also use little of butter and oily gravies; though many compensate for this want, in part at least, by a free use of those articles, and also milk, eggs, and various saccharine substances. But they constitute an imperfect substitute for fat meat, without which, sooner or later, the body is almost sure to show the effect of deficient clorification​ .

That these striking facts are commonly unnoticed, the truth of which is rendered evident by observation and inquiry, is conclusive proof that this subject has received little attention. Its importance can hardly be doubted, or over estimated, when it is considered that full one-fifth of the human race is destroyed by phthisis. To parents, whose children have this aversion to oily food—this fearful sign of early dissolution—the subject is one of deepest interest. It also deserves the careful consdieration of life insurance companies, of young persons in making matrimonial alliances, and certainly of physicians, the professed public guardians of human life and health. The presumption will commonly hold true, that a person who habitually avoids fat meat at the age of twenty-one, will die of phthisis before forty-five.

But the great importance of oily food, in relation to this disease, consists in its preventive efficacy. In most cases of unequivocally developed phthisis, all curative plans of treatment fail. Prevention is the great object; to accomplish which, I feel assured, a rational plan of diet—a proper combination of nitrogenized and caloric food—may be employed with most salutary effect. The significant fact, that the subjects of phthisis are, with few exceptions, those who avoid fat meat, should be generally known.—Young persons should be fully warned against this dangerous error. The gay miss of eighteen, whose countenance, to the practical observer, clearly shows the want of caloric nutriment, should be plainly told that if this error of diet is continued, phthisis will claim her as a victim before forty-five. In short, all persons who avoid fat meat should fully understand their danger. It is no pleasant office to press upon the attention of our young friends and patrons such homely truths; but the physician who faithfully and candidly does it, will sometimes have the glad reflection of having saved a patient from premature decline.