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

NEVER EAT WITHOUT AN APPETITE.

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therefore, no question of duty, and can see the absurdity of urging sick friends to eat, when food is not only
not desired, but absolutely loathed, as it generally is in
all serious illness; and we find that such advice, if followed, is always succeeded by evil consequences.
In the mean time there is generally strong thirst, that
is best satisfied with pure cold water; and this also is a
clear intimation that pure cold water is the best thing,
and the only thing, that Nature in such cases requires;
and I have never seen a case in which the slightest
harm came from gratifying this demand to the fullest
extent, - not by filling the stomach at once, especially
with very cold water, but by gratifying the desire in a
more effectual way: by constantly sipping it, however
cold it may be. And I have indulged many a patient,
and have found great advantage in keeping up, without
five minutes' cessation, the cooling influence of cold
water on the tongue and in the stomach.
After a time, longer or shorter, according to the violence of the fever, Nature becoming exhausted, demands
a little nutriment; but the stomach cannot digest food
for want of gastric juice.
Dr. Beaumont had for many years a young man who
had the stomach opened by a cannon ball, which carried
away the surrounding integuments and left it open for
inspection, by simply raising a kind of trap-door made
by folds of the integuments that remained. This gave
him an opportunity, which no other physiologist ever
had, of witnessing the processes of digestion under all
circumstances, in sickness or health, and noting many