other words, keep your mind off your stomach during the process of digestion, and you will soon forget that you have a stomach. The immunity of animals and idiots from diseases of the digestive organs, many of whom eat enormously of whatever they can get, is due to the fact that they are beyond the reach of suggestions adverse to health. Some one has well said that if the current dietetic suggestions could reach the mind of an ostrich, he would soon be unable to digest a boiled potato.

CHAPTER VIII

"PURITANICAL" DIET AND MEDICINE

Asceticism of our Puritan Ancestors.

Tendency of Primitive Minds to reason by Analogy. - Influence of Asceticism on Dietetics. The Appetite usually a Safe Guide. — Dyspepsia often caused by Suggestion. The Principle of Asceticism in the Old Medical Practice. Importance of the Law of suggestion in Connection with Diet and Medicine.

IN

N saying what I shall have to say under the above heading, it is far from my intention to cast any reflections upon the character or the religion of our Puritan ancestors. It is only in reference to some salient peculiarities that a parallel can be drawn which justifies the title to this chapter.

It was these peculiarities, growing insensibly out of an ascetic religion, that drew from Lord Macaulay the remark that the Puritans of the epoch of which he was writing "hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. That this was literally true, Macaulay then proceeds to demonstrate by documentary evidence.

Of course, this trait of character constituted no part of the religion of Puritanism, per se; but it is undeniable that the characteristic has been inherited by later generations to such an extent that in this country, at least, Puritanism at one time came to be

1 History of England, vol. i. p. 154.

popularly regarded as a religion the fundamental tenet of which was that whatever is pleasurable is necessarily sinful. Whether this was literally true it is aside from our purpose to inquire. But that the acts of our Puritan ancestors often justified the conclusion is a matter of history. It is sufficient for our present purpose to know that the rank and file so believed, and that their belief was justified by the pulpit utterances of such leaders as the Mathers, the Baxters, and their more feeble imitators. Judging from Baxter's utterances, for instance, it would seem that the only pleasurable emotion which he considered at all legitimate was the holy joy naturally arising from the assurance that all other sects were destined to suffer eternal torment in the next world. This pleasure could not reasonably be denied the "saints;" for, as Baxter informs us, God himself will take infinite pleasure in the eternal torments of the damned.1 But all other pleasures were inhibited as being sinful. Music, dancing, laughter, feasting, public amusements, and all kinds of games came under the ban; and they even sought to place limitations upon the enjoyment of parental love, as being displeasing in the sight of a jealous God, who was apt to kill the child whose mother's affection for her offspring was just a little too pronounced. In short, any pleasurable indulgence that would afford a momentary relief from the contemplation of the certainty and imminence of death, and the gloom and dampness of the grave, was held to be essentially wicked and deserving of punishment by means of eternal fire. Now, it is a singular psychological fact that when 1 Saint's Rest, chap. vi.

a popular idea takes possession of a community in relation to one subject, it is sure to be carried over to other subjects where an analogy is supposed to exist. The human mind at a certain stage of evolutionary development is prone to seek for analogies, and on the slightest provocation the most momentous "scientific" conclusions will be drawn from supposed analogies, when in point of fact the two subjects have absolutely nothing in common. Thus, the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the butterfly has, time out of mind, been supposed to afford a valid scientific argument in proof of the immortality of the human soul, and learned logicians have solemnly set it forth as such in text-books for the use of schools and colleges. The butterfly as a symbol of immortality is beautiful and poetical, but considered as inductive proof of the survival of the human soul after death, it is grossly illogical and unscientific. The reason is obvious: the laws governing the physical structure and metamorphosis of the butterfly are laws of the organic world, whereas the laws of the human soul are spiritual laws; and it is axiomatic that no legitimate scientific analogy exists between subjects governed by different laws. As well might one hope to solve a mathematical problem by the rules of grammar.

On the other hand, the old pagan argument against immortality is invalid for the same reason. I allude to "Averroeism," or the doctrine of "emanation and absorption," which at one time threatened to convert all Europe to paganism.1 It was an analogical

1 See "A Scientific Demonstration of the Future Life ;" also Draper's "Conflict between Religion and Science."

argument of the same specious character as the one alluded to in favor of immortality, for that it sought to justify conclusions relating to a purely spiritual question by reference alone to phenomena of the material universe.

In view of this tendency of primitive minds to find analogies where none exist, it is not at all strange that in a community holding fast to the idea that in the moral and social realms whatever is pleasurable is sinful, they should also believe that in the gastronomic world whatever tastes particularly good is necessarily unwholesome, and that the efficacy of medicines is proportioned to their nastiness and the consequent amount of discomfort that can be inflicted on the patient by their administration. I do not undertake to say that this doctrine has been authoritatively formulated; but it was well stated, according to a newspaper anecdote, by a little girl whose Puritan mother had refused her a second piece of pie on the ground that it would make her sick. "Oh, mamma!" exclaimed the afflicted little maiden, "it seems as though everything in this world that is real nice is either wicked or indigestible."

This expresses the true situation in a nutshell. It is probable that no one has ever formulated the idea that food is unwholesome in proportion to its palatability, but certain it is that an incalculable number of people habitually act upon that "principle." It is equally certain that it is the outgrowth- unconscious, perhaps — of the popular puritanical idea, as before stated.

Be that as it may, the fact remains, and it must be dealt with in this connection; for it is one of the