"The healthy action of the digestive process must be provided for by careful attention to various particulars. First of all, the food should be of good quality and properly cooked. The best methods of preparation by cooking are the simplest; such as roasting, broiling, or boiling. Articles of food which are fried are very apt to be indigestible and hurtful, because the fat used in this method of cooking is infiltrated by the heat, and made to penetrate through the whole mass of the food. Now we have seen that fatty sub-stances are not digested in the stomach, as the gastric juice has no action upon them. In their natural condition they are simply mixed loosely with the albuminous matters, as butter, when taken with bread or vegetables, or the adipose tissue which is mingled with the muscular flesh of meat; and the solution of the albuminous matters in the stomach, therefore, easily sets them free, to pass into the small intestines. But when imbibed, and thoroughly infiltrated through the alimentary substances, they present an obstacle to the access of the watery gastric juice, and not only remain undigested themselves, but also interfere with the digestion of the albuminous matters. It is for this reason that all kinds of food in which butter or other oleaginous matters are used as ingredients, so as to be absorbed into their sub-stance in cooking, are more indigestible than if prepared in a simple manner." - Dalton ("Treatise on Physiology," N. Y., 1878).

None of the immediate principles, taken separately, in the animal or vegetable kingdom, suffices for complete nutrition, even during a short time, and even with the addition of water to drink.

Payen ("Substances Alimentaires") considers that we can realize the most favorable chances of preserving for a long time health and strength, especially by maintaining a fair balance in the consumption of nutritive substances of an animal and of a vegetable nature, by varying our alimentary regime, and by avoiding both insufficiency and excess of nourishment.

The flesh of the ox, according to all the authorities on alimentation, of all the kinds of muscular tissue, is that which possesses the greatest nutritive power, which represents the most renovating plastic aliment, which furnishes the most tasty and appetizing broth, and which can be used more constantly with profit than any other article of food of its class.

Incidentally let it be noted that salted meat is much less nutritious than fresh. It has been ascertained chemically that brine extracts from the muscular tissue much of its nutritive principle.

Dalton places next after beef, as being most valuable as nutriment, mutton and venison; then the flesh of fowls, the various kinds of game-birds, and, lastly, fish.

The opinion of modern French scientists, as presented in the article on Food in the "Nouveau Dictionnaire de Medicine," may be noted and read with interest. According to this authority, "Fish is only slightly nutritive, but easily digestible. Its exclusive use would soon produce a diminution of muscular force, paleness of the tissues, and all the signs of an alimentation insufficient in quality.

"Fish is more digestible than the white meat of fowl.

"The flesh of shell-fish crustaceans is hard of digestion.

"Roast meat is more digestible than boiled.

"Eggs very slightly cooked and dairy produce are more digestible than white meats.

"Of vegetables, the feculents are the most digestible.

"New wheat bread is heavier than stale bread.

"The aliments to which the cook's art gives a liquid or semi-liquid form are, in general, more digestible.

"The more readily an aliment is dissolved by the juices of the stomach the easier its digestion."

Add to these facts the remark of Dalton: "Cheese contains the nutritious elements of the milk in a condensed, but somewhat indigestible, form."

Nevertheless you will eat a little cheese after your dinner, for, as Brillat-Savarin hath it, "A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye."

Of the vegetable tribe, lentils, beans, and peas are the most nourishing.

Fruit, when perfectly ripe, is most easy of digestion, because the juice of fruit consists of pure grape-sugar (glucose) and water, and it is in the form of grape-sugar that all starchy food is finally absorbed into the system. It may be said that the starch of the fruit, having been already changed into glucose by the process of ripening, requires no digestion after it is eaten by man, inasmuch as it is already in the state in which this element of nutrition is immediately absorbed into the system.

Special qualities of meats from the point of view of their digestibility.

According to Payen, without there being anything absolute in these qualities, which depend on the particular state of the digestive organs of different individuals or on their idiosyncrasies, we may say, in general, that meats are more easily digestible the less strong their cohesion and the less their hardness. We might thus establish between them the following order, beginning with the lightest:

Sea and river fish, fowl, game, crustaceans, lamb, veal, beef, mutton, wild boar, pork.

In these categories are generally considered heavy and hard to digest: salmon, eels, geese, ducks, and some other water-birds, as well as strongly smoked and salted meat.

On the time required for the digestion of different kinds of food.

The above is taken from Beaumont's "Experiments on Digestion." Dalton comments on these observations as follows : "These results would not always be precisely the same 3 for different persons, since there are variations in this respect according to age and temperament. Thus, in most instances, mutton would probably be equally digestible with beef, or perhaps more so; and milk, which in some persons is easily digested, in others is disposed of with considerable difficulty. But, as a general rule, the comparative digestibility of different substances is, no doubt, correctly expressed by the above list."