Cassell's dictionary of cookery

'' A small quantity of beef tea added to other articles of food makes them more nourishing. "The reason why beef tea should be nourishing and jelly not so to the sick is a secret yet undiscovered, but it clearly shows that observation of the sick is the only clue to the best dietary. "Again, the nourishing power of milk and of the preparations from milk is very much underrated ; there is nearly as much nourishment in half a pint of milk as there is in a quarter of a pound of meat. But this is not the whole question, or nearly the whole. The main question is what the patient's stomach can derive nourishment from, and of this the patient's stomach is the sole judge. Chemistry cannot tell this. The patient's stomach must be its own chemist. The diet which will keep the healthy man healthy will kill the sick one. The same beef which is most nutritive of all meat, and which nourishes the healthy man, is the least nourishing of all food to the sick man, whose half-dead stomach can assimilate no part of it, that is, make no food out of it. On a diet of beef tea, healthy men, on the other hand, speedily lose their strength. "I have known patients live for many months without touching bread, because they could not eat baker's bread. These were country patients. Home-made bread or brown bread is an important article of diet for man patients. The use of aperients may be entirely superseded by it. Oat-cake is another. " To watch for the opinions, then, which the patient's stomach gives, rather than to read books about foods, is the business of all those who have to settle what the patient is to eat — perhaps the most important thing to be provided for him after the air he is to breathe. " A good deal too much against tea is said by wise people, and a great deal too much of tea is given to the sick by foolish people. When you see the natural and almost universal craving in English sick for their tea, you cannot but feel that Nature knows what she is about. But a little tea or coffee restores them quite as much as a great deal; and a great deal of tea, and especially of coffee, impairs the little power of digestion they have. Yet a nurse, because she sees how one or two cups of tea or coffee restores her patient, thinks that three or fourcups will do twice as much. This is not the case at all ; it is, however, certain that there is nothing yet discovered which is a substitute to the English patient for his cup of tea ; ho can take it when he can take nothing else, and he often cannot take anything else if he has it not. I should be very glad if any of the abusers of tea would point out what to give to an English patient after a sleepless night instead of tea. If you give it at five or six o'clock in the morning, he may even sometimes fall asleep after it, and get perhaps his only two or three hours' sleep during "the twentyfour. At the same time, you never should give tea or coffee to the sick, as a rule, after five o'clock in the afternoon. Sleeplessness in the early night is from excitement generally, and is increased by tea or coffee; sleeplessness which continues to the early moining is from exhaustion often, and is relieved by tea. The only English patients I have ever known refuse tea, have been typhus cases, and the first sign of their getting better was their craving again SIC