The philosophy of eating. By Albert J. Bellows, M.D.

WHEN WE NEED OSMAZOME.

217

law, encouraging us to be content with Nature's simple
arrangements for our welfare and happiness, and warning us of the danger of disregarding them. My position in regard to condiments and aromatic drinks is
this: If we could always get good natural food,
adapted to our constitutional condition, and have it
cooked so as best to develop its natural osmazome, and
if we could get with it pure water, we should need
nothing else to enable us to enjoy to the fullest extent
our gustatory pleasures, and the enjoyment arising
from the highest degree of health and activity of all
our faculties; but that, with unsavory food and impure
water, we derive great benefit from delicately flavored
condiments and aromatic beverages in moderate quantities; that a choice in these beverages is to be determined by consulting the taste of each individual; that
in preparing these beverages the question is how to get
the osmazome without getting the deleterious qualities
with which it is connected; and that the advantages to
be derived from osmazome are never in direct proportion
to the amount taken, but are more nearly in the inverse
proportion, while the deleterious elements connected
with almost all the beverages in common use increase
in direct proportion to the quantity used.
The deleterious element in tea and coffee we have
already shown to be tannin, and this element can be
avoided by making these beverages quickly, never
allowing but a few moments in steeping. By this
process the osmazome, being volatile, is all obtained,