In Chronic Rheumatism

"The basis of the diet should be farinaceous food with a few fresh green vegetables. Fish, eggs, and fowl may be eaten; but dark meat is not desirable. Sweets and alcoholic beverages should be omitted from the menu, and all foods should be plainly cooked and eaten in moderation."

Second Principle

The giving of food best adapted to relieve the digestive organs of unnecessary labor while maintaining nutrition.

The old adage was "feed a cold and starve a fever." In place of the 3,500 calories in the average, normal dietary, a fever patient was reduced to a dietary supplying but 40c calories. It was not until 1882 that it was conclusively proven that fever patients could digest food just as well as other patients. Fever oxidizes proteid matter. A patient fed on milk or beef juice rich in the proteid principles save the tissues of his body by so much, though enough food cannot be ingested to replace all the proteid matter oxidized by the fever, hence the emaciation even in patients who are fed the most successfully.

Typhoid Fever

The seat of typhoid fever is in the small intestine, and all food that is given needs be such as is principally digested in the stomach and leaves but little waste, thus relieving the intestine. If stomach digestion in any fever can be carried on fairly well, the loss of bodily weight is proportionately checked. In an ulcerated condition of the intestine liquid is less liable than solid food to cause disturbance. Milk or broths are largely digested in the stomach, and milk especially provides nutriment; these then are the foods indicated in fevers. Clear soups, consommé and thin gruels of rice, oatmeal or barley, from which all solid material has been carefully removed by straining through a double fold of cheesecloth, may also be used. If these latter be used alone tissue waste will be noticeable in a few days at the most, as they do not contain sufficient protein to make up for the oxidation of proteid from the system; but with these combined with gelatine, white of egg and broths the patient will do well. To illustrate, note that a cup of bouillon supplies but sixteen calories of heat, while an egg furnishes seventy-five calories.

The Third Principle

Foods Possessing Curative Value For Special Diseases

Scurvy is less common than formerly. This is owing, in a measure, to increased facilities of preserving and transporting food, whereby a more varied dietary is secured. It should be remembered, however, that canned and dried foods have lost some of their life-giving properties.

When young children are afflicted with scurvy, it is usually found that their dietary has been too closely confined to proprietary foods, sterilized milk, evaporated cream, etc.

Olive oil, butter, cream and bacon fat, indicated in tuberculosis, may be given in countless appetizing ways; the main thing to determine is in what forms these may be presented to be most readily assimilated by the individual patient. (Note the ways of giving butter in diabetes.) Butter becomes a liquid at the temperature of the body and may be absorbed almost at once on entering the intestine.

In cases of malaria and all catarrhal affections of the throat and alimentary canal, fresh pineapple juice acts as a germicide, though the cooked juice loses this power to a large extent, if not entirely.

The first requisite in the diet of both the sick and the well is pure water; if disease be present, pure water, taken alone and in sufficient quantity, will do much toward washing it from the system. Except in special diseases, the proportion of carbohydrate and proteid food in general remains the same in sickness as in health, though after a wasting disease tissue-building rather than force-producing food would be indicated. This is the time also for gelatinoids or "proteid savers." Of this group gelatine in various forms is the most available.

Diet for the very sick is similar to that of a young infant - i.e., milk or liquid food. To be easily digested, give milk in teaspoonfuls, thus avoiding large curds. If diluted the curd will be softer and more easily broken up. Dilute with rice or barley water, or with water gruel.