On habits and manners

on of numberless diseases. Now, the common, one may almost say universal, cause of dyspepsia, is that food, which is either unwholesome in itself, or made so by improper cookery, is put into stomachs to which Nature has given the ability to resent the abuse. This law of nature is so unyielding that if you at- tempt to make your stomach do work for which it was not intended, your body will sooner or later suffer the consequences, and nothing is more certain than that men and women who desire to be healthy themselves, or to have healthy children, must learn to make their food and its preparation, a matter of reasonable consideration. It is possible that this principle of the physiological necessity of good cookery would be sufficient for my present purpose, but there is still another fact which I want you to notice, and that is, that the highest civilization always includes great care in the choice and preparation of food. Uncivilized races live like animals, eating anything they can get, at any time and in any way ; but the gradual ascent of humanity in the scale of civilization is marked always by an increase of care in respect to food, both as regards material and cookery. So long as you eat like animals, that is, irregularly, coarsely and carelessly, just so long you are, and will remain uncivilized, and therefore, if you mean to civilize yourself thoroughly, it follows that you must become refined and careful in regard to food and its preparation. You have then, as you see, two good reasons for trying to educate yourselves in respect to your habits of eating and drinking — 1st, that in order to be really and permanently healthy you must have good and well cooked food ; 2d, that you can never be really civilized until you learn to be refined and careful as regards your food. Now, practically, it is upon women rather than upon men that the burden of this responsibility falls, and women, in this country at least, have few more useful fields of work than the kitchen. For most of the women to whom I am writing, economy of time, of money and of labor is a necessity, and it is only, as I have said before, when you have learned to appreciate the importance of your work to yourselves, and to others, that you will do it well. I hope, therefore, that you will believe me when I tell you, that when you have learned from the materials at your command to choose and prepare for your husband and children, good and wholesome food, you have done a great thing ; you are helping them and yourselves in ways of which you do not dream. If yon are in earnest in your desire to do this, you must begin with a few simple facts which can be easily stated and remembered, and you must determine to work intelligently and by rule, not blindly and by " guess.'5 In the first place then, you need to learn how to choose and cook, meat, fish, vegetables, and the different kinds of grain, and a certain amount of real study is necessary to do this. In regard to meats, for example, you should know that beef, mutton and venison are more wholesome than veal or pork, that almost all kinds of poultry and game are