food, but where sweets are
over-eaten, and not properly digested, they give rise to a great
accumulation of gas in the intestine, and produce in many persons
a marked acidity of the stomach, frequently accompanied by severe
insomnia. Nothing so quickly relieves such sleeplessness, caused by
a "sour stomach," as allowing ten or fifteen grains of ordinary
cooking-soda to slowly dissolve in the mouth and swallowing the
saliva rendered alkaline in this way.

_Milk._--Milk may be looked upon as an ideal food, it being composed of
water carrying in solution the three great natural foods--albumins in the
form of casein, carbohydrates as milk-sugar or lactose, and fat. Mixed in
the proportion in which they here occur, they are most admirably adapted
to the delicate digestive apparatus of the infant--the relative
proportion of the different substances even gradually changing as the
assimilative powers of the youthful organism increase; it is thus seen
that milk itself is not of constant composition, even in the same animal,
and that it alters in such a manner as to meet best the needs of the
delicate being depending upon it for proper sustenance. It is also the
case that the composition of milk varies in different animals--showing
again how admirably nature exerts its powers in meeting desired ends.

The lesson of practicable importance that we learn from this is that the
milk of one of the lower animals is not in its natural state quite suited
to the delicate stomach of the growing infant, and that if it be
substituted for the mother's milk it must be more or less altered,
depending upon the age of the child. It is particularly important that
sweet milk be taken slowly, as otherwise large curds, difficult of
digestion, form as soon as it gets into the stomach.

CHAPTER VIII

FOOD-VALUE OF VEGETABLES

In recent times we hear much of vegetarianism, which has its advocates
among many highly intelligent people, and which, as a consequence, has
achieved a certain vogue throughout the civilized world. It is rarely the
case, however, that those who affect to practice this cult in reality
live exclusively on a vegetable diet. As a rule it will be found that
they are milk-drinkers, and not infrequently add eggs to their dietary.
It is, of course, absurd to regard as vegetarians those who simply avoid
meat, since it is true that the nitrogenous substances contained in milk
and eggs differ