William S. Gilbert - "Fifty Bab Ballads"

James Elroy Flecker - "Forty Two Poems"

Katherine Keene Galt - "The Girl Scouts at Home"

Nikolaj Velimirovic - "The Agony of the Church (1917)"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

A Handbook of Health

W >> Woods Hutchinson >> A Handbook of Health





FOOTNOTES:

[1] The term _salts_ includes, as will be explained later, a large
number of substances, like ordinary table salt, baking soda, and the
laxative salts.

[2] There are three pairs of these: one just below the ears and behind
the angles of the jaw, known as the _parotid_; one under the middle of
the lower jaw known as the _submaxillary_; and a small pair just under
the tip of the tongue, called the _sublingual_. These glands have grown
up from the very simplest of beginnings. At first there was just a
little pocketing or pouching down of the mucous lining, like the finger
of a glove; then a couple of smaller hollow fingers budded off from the
bottom of the first finger; then four smaller fingers from the bottom of
these; and so on, until a regular little hollow tree or shrub of these
tiny tubes was built up, all discharging through the original hollow
stem, which has now become what we call the _duct_ of the gland. Every
secreting gland in the body--the stomach (or peptic) glands, the
salivary glands, the liver, the pancreas--is built up upon this simple
plan. The saliva and the juice of the pancreas and that of the liver
(bile) are alkaline, as are also the blood and most juices of the body.
The stomach juice is acid, as also are the urine and the perspiration.

[3] It is wonderfully elastic and constantly changing in size,
contracting till it will scarcely hold a quart when empty, and
expanding, as food or drink is put into it, until it will easily hold
two quarts, or even a gallon or more when greatly distended, as by gas.

[4] If you take some pepsin which has been extracted from the stomach of
a pig or a calf, melt it in water in a glass tube, then drop one or two
little pieces of meat or hard-boiled white of egg into it, you can see
them slowly melt away like sugar in a cup of coffee. If you add a few
drops of hydrochloric acid, the melting will go on much faster; and if
you warm up the tube to about the heat of the body, it will proceed
faster still. So nature knew just what she was doing when she provided
pepsin and acid and warmth in the stomach.

[5] The liver and the bile are more fully described in chapter XVII.

[6] Tiny plant cells, known also as _germs_, which cause fermentation,
decay, and many diseases.




CHAPTER III

THE FOOD-FUEL OF THE BODY-ENGINE


WHAT KIND OF FOOD SHOULD WE EAT?

Generally speaking, our Appetites will Guide us. Our whole body is an
ingenious machine for catching food, digesting it, and turning the
energy, or fuel value, which it contains, into life, movement, and
growth.

Naturally, two things follow: first, that the kind and amount of food
which we eat is of great importance; and second, that from the millions
of years of experience that the human body has had in trying all sorts
of foods, it has adapted itself to certain kinds of food and developed
certain likes and dislikes which we call _appetites_. Those who happened
to like unhealthy and unwholesome foods were poisoned, or grew thin and
weak and died off, so that we are descended solely from people who had
sound and reliable food appetites; and, in the main, what our instincts
and appetites tell us about food is to be depended upon.

The main questions which we have to consider are: How much of the
different kinds of food it is best for us to eat, and in what
proportions we should use them. Both men and animals, since the world
began, have been trying to eat and digest almost everything that they
could get into their mouths. And what we now like and prepare as foods
are the things which have stood the test, and proved themselves able to
yield strength and nourishment to the body. So practically every food
that comes upon our tables has some kind of real food value, or it
wouldn't appear there.

The most careful study and analysis have shown that almost every known
food has some peculiar advantage, such as digestibility, or cheapness,
or pleasant taste as flavoring for other more nutritious, but less
interesting, foods. But some foods have much higher degrees of
nutritiousness or digestibility or wholesomeness than others; so that
our problem is to pick out from a number of foods that "taste good" to
us, those which are the most nutritious, the most digestible, and the
most wholesome, and to see that we get plenty of them. It is not that
certain foods, or classes of food, are "good," and should be eaten to
the exclusion of all others; nor that certain foods, or classes of food,
are "bad," and should be excluded from our tables entirely; but that
certain foods are more nutritious, or more wholesome, than others; and
that it is best to see that we get plenty of the former before indulging
our appetites upon the latter.

Beware of Tainted Food. The most dangerous fault that any food can
have is that it shall be tainted, or spoiled, or smell bad. Spoiling, or
tainting, means that the food has become infected by some germs of
putrefaction, generally _bacteria_ or _moulds_ (see chapter XXVI). It is
the poisons--called _ptomaines_, or _toxins_--produced by these germs
which cause the serious disturbances in the stomach, and not either the
amount or the kind of food itself. Even a regular "gorge" upon early
apples or watermelon or cake or ice cream will not give you half so bad,
nor so dangerous, colic as one little piece of tainted meat or fish or
egg, or one cupful of dirty milk, or a single helping of cabbage or
tomatoes that have begun to spoil, or of jam made out of spoiled berries
or other fruit. This spoiling can be prevented by strict cleanliness in
handling foods, especially milk, meat, and fruit; by keeping foods
screened from dust and flies; and by keeping them cool with ice in
summer time, thus checking the growth of these "spoiling" germs. The
refrigerator in the kitchen prevents colic or diarrhea, ice in hot
weather is one of the necessaries of life. Smell every piece of food to
be eaten, in the kitchen before it is cooked, if possible; but if not,
at the table avoid everything that has an unpleasant odor, or tastes
queer, and you will avoid two-thirds of the colic, diarrhea, and bilious
attacks which are so often supposed to be due to eating too much.

[Illustration: A CHEAP HOME-MADE ICE BOX

This should not cost over twenty-five cents. The sketch shows an
ordinary soap box; inside is a tin pail surrounded by a sheet of tin, so
that there is a circular air space between the pail and the sheet of
tin. Sawdust is packed around the tin, and cracked ice (two cents a day)
fills the tin pail around the milk bottle. The newspapers inside the
cover help to keep out the warmth of the outside air. Recommended by the
Boards of Health of New York City and Chicago.]

Variety in Food is Necessary. Man has always lived on, and apparently
required, a great variety of foods, animal and vegetable--fish and
flesh, nuts, fruit, grains, fat, sugar, and vegetables. Indeed, it was
probably because man could live on anything and everything that he was
able to survive in famines and to get so far ahead of all other sorts of
animals.

We still need a great variety of different sorts of food in order to
keep our health; so our tendency to become tired of a certain food,
after we have had it over and over and over again, for breakfast,
dinner, and supper, is a sound and healthy one. There is no "best food";
nor is there any one food on which we can live and work, as an engine
will work all its "life" on one kind of coal, wood, or oil. No one kind
of food contains all the stuffs that our body is made of and needs, in
exactly the right proportions. It takes a dozen or more different kinds
of food to supply these, and the body picks out what it wants, and
throws away the remainder.

Even the best and most nutritious and digestible single food, like meat,
or bread and butter, or sugar, is not sufficient by itself; nor will it
do for every meal in the day, or every day in the week. We must eat
other things with it; and we must from time to time change it for
something which may even be not quite so nutritious, in order to give
our body the opportunity to select from a great variety of foods the
particular things which its wonderful instincts and skill can use to
build it up and keep it healthy. This is why every grocery store, every
butcher shop, every fish market, and every confectioner's shows such a
great variety of different kinds of foods put up and prepared in all
sorts of ways. Although nearly two-thirds of the actual fuel which we
put into our body-boilers is in the form of a dozen or fifteen great
staple foods, like bread, meat, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, potatoes, and
fish, yet all the lighter foods, also, are needed for perfect health.

It is possible, by careful selection, and by taking a great deal of
trouble, to supply all the elements of the body from animal foods alone,
or from vegetable foods alone. But practically, it has everywhere, and
in all ages, been found that the best and most healthful diet is a
proper combination of animal and vegetable foods. Our starches, for
instance, which furnish most of our fuel,--though they give us
_comparatively little_ to _build up_, or _repair_, the body with,--are
found, as we have seen, in the vegetable kingdom, in grains and fruits;
while most of our proteins and fats, which chiefly give us the materials
with which to build up, or repair, the body, are found in the animal
kingdom. There is no advantage whatever in trying to exclude either
animal food or vegetable food from our dietary. Both animal and
vegetable foods are wholesome in their proper place, and their proper
place is on the table together.

Those nations which live solely, or even chiefly, upon one or two kinds
of staple foods, such as rice, potatoes, corn-meal, or yams, do so
solely because they are too poor to afford other kinds of food, or too
lazy, or too uncivilized, to get them; and instead of being healthier
and longer-lived than civilized races, they are much more subject to
disease and live only about half as long.


THE THREE GREAT CLASSES OF FOOD-FUEL

Food is Fuel. Now what is the chief quality which makes one kind of
food preferable to another? As our body machine runs entirely upon the
energy or "strength" which it gets out of its food, _a good food must
have plenty of fuel value_; that is to say, it must be capable of
burning and giving off heat and steaming-power. Other things being
equal, the more it has of this fuel value, the more desirable and
valuable it will be as a food.

From this point of view, foods may be roughly classified, after the
fashion of the materials needed to build a fire in a grate or stove, as
Coal foods, Kindling foods, and Paper foods. Although coal, kindling,
and paper are of very different fuel values, they are all necessary to
start the fire in the grate and to keep it burning properly. Moreover,
any one of them would keep a fire going alone, after a fashion, provided
that you had a grate or furnace large enough to burn it in, and could
shovel it in fast enough; and the same is true, to a certain degree, of
the foods in the body.

How to Judge the Fuel Value of Foods. One of the best ways of roughly
determining whether a given food belongs in the Coal, the Kindling, or
the Paper class, is to take a handful or spoonful of it, dry it
thoroughly by some means,--evaporating, or driving off the water,--and
then throw what is left into a fire and see how it will burn. A piece of
beef, for instance, would shrink a good deal in drying; but about
one-third of it would be left, and this dried beef would burn quite
briskly and would last for some time in the fire. A piece of bread of
the same size would not shrink so much, but would lose about the same
proportion of its weight; and it also would burn with a clear, hot
flame, though not quite so long as the beef. A piece of fat of the same
size would shrink very little in drying and would burn with a bright,
hot flame, nearly twice as long as either the beef or the bread. These
would all be classed as Coal foods.

Then if we were to dry a slice of apple, it would shrink down into a
little leathery shaving; and this, when thrown into the fire, would burn
with a smudgy kind of flame, give off very little heat, and soon
smoulder away. A piece of raw potato of the same size would shrink even
more, but would give a hotter and cleaner flame. A leaf of cabbage, or a
piece of beet-root, or four or five large strawberries would shrivel
away in the drying almost to nothing and, if thoroughly dried, would
disappear in a flash when thrown on the fire. These, then, except the
potato, we should regard as Kindling foods.

But it would take a large handful of lettuce leaves, or a big cup of
beef-tea, or a good-sized bowl of soup, or a big cucumber, or a gallon
of tea or coffee, to leave sufficient solid remains when completely
dried, to make more than a flash when thrown into the fire. These, then,
are Paper foods, with little fuel value.




CHAPTER IV

THE COAL FOODS


Kinds of Coal Foods. There are many different kinds of Coal foods,
such as pork, mutton, beef, bread, corn-cakes, bacon, potatoes, rice,
sugar, cheese, butter, and so on. But when you come to look at them more
closely, and to take them to pieces, or, as we say, analyze them, you
will see that they all fall into three different kinds or classes: (1)
_Proteins_, such as meat, milk, fish, eggs, cheese, etc. (2)
_Starch-sugars_ (_carbohydrates_), found pure as laundry starch and as
white sugar; also found, as starch, making up the bulk of wheat and
other grains, and of potatoes, rice, peas; also found, as sugar, in
honey, beet-roots, sugar cane, and the sap of maple trees. (3) _Fats_,
found in fat meats, butter, oil, nuts, beeswax, etc.

This whole class of Coal foods can be recognized by the fact that
usually some one of them will form the staple, or main dish, of almost
any regular meal, which is generally a combination of all three
classes--a protein in the shape of meat; a starch-sugar in the form of
bread, potatoes, or rice; and a fat in the form of butter in northern
climates, or of olive oil in the tropics.


PROTEINS, OR "MEATS"

Proteins, the "First Foods." There are proteins, or "meats," both
animal and vegetable; and no one can support life without protein in
some form. This is because proteins alone contain sufficient amounts of
the great element called _nitrogen_, which forms a large part of every
portion of our bodies. This is why they are called proteins, meaning
"first foods," or most necessary foods. Whatever we may live on in later
life, we all began on a diet of liquid meat (milk), and could have
survived and grown up on nothing else.

Composition of Proteins. Nearly all our meats are the muscle of
different sorts of animals, made of a soft, reddish, animal pulp called
_myosin_; the other principal proteins being white of egg, curd of milk,
and a gummy, whitish-gray substance called _gluten_, found in wheat
flour. This gluten is the stuff that makes the paste and dough of wheat
flour sticky, so that you can paste things together with it; while that
made from corn meal or oatmeal will fall to pieces when you take it up.
The jelly-like or pulp-like myosin in meat is held together by strings
or threads of tough, fibrous stuff; and the more there is of this
fibrous material in a particular piece or "cut," of meat, the tougher
and less juicy it is. The thick, soft muscles, which lie close under the
backbone in the small of the back, in all animals, have less of this
tough and indigestible fibrous stuff in them, and cuts across them give
us the well-known porter-house, sirloin, or tenderloin steaks, and the
best and tenderest mutton and pork chops.

Fuel Value of Meats. Weight for weight, most of the butcher's
meats--beef, pork, mutton, and veal--have about the same food value,
differing chiefly in the amount of fat that is mixed in with their
fibres, and in certain flavoring substances, which give them, when
roasted, or broiled, their special flavors. The different flavors are
not of any practical importance, except in the case of mutton, which
some people dislike and therefore can take only occasionally, and in
small amounts.

The amount of fat in meats, however, is more important; and depends
largely upon how well the animal has been fed. There is usually the least
amount of fat in mutton, more in beef, and by far the greatest amount
in pork. This fat adds to the fuel value of meat, but makes it a little
slower of digestion; and its presence in large amounts in pork, together
with the fact that it lies, not only in layers and streaks, but also
mixed in between the fibres of the lean as well has caused this meat to
be regarded as richer and more difficult of digestion than either beef
or mutton. This, however is not quite fair to the pork, because smaller
amounts of it will satisfy the appetite and furnish the body with
sufficient fuel and nutrition. If it be eaten in moderate amounts and
thoroughly chewed, it is a wholesome and valuable food.

Veal is slightly less digestible than beef or mutton, on account of the
amount of slippery _gelatin_ in and among its fibres; but if well cooked
and well chewed, it is wholesome.

The other meats--chicken, duck, and other poultry, game, etc.--are of
much less nutritive value than either beef, pork, or mutton, partly
because of the large amount of waste in them, in the form of bones,
skin, and tendons, and partly from the greater amount of water in them.
But their flavors make them an agreeable change from the staple meats.

Fish belongs in the same class as poultry and consists of the same
muscle substance, but, as you can readily see by the way that it shrinks
when dried, contains far more water and has less fuel value. Some of the
richer and more solid fishes, like salmon, halibut, and mackerel,
contain, in addition to their protein, considerable amounts of fat and,
when dried or cured, give a rather high fuel value at moderate cost. But
the peculiar flavor of fish, its large percentage of water, and the
special make-up of its protein, give it a very low food value, and
render it, on the whole, undesirable as a permanent staple food. Races
and classes who live on it as their chief meat-food are not so vigorous
or so healthy as those who eat also the flesh of animals. As a rule, it
is not best to use fish as the main dish of a meal oftener than two or
three times a week.

[Illustration: A BABY-MILK STATION

The milk sold here for a few cents is perfectly clean and pure, and is
variously adapted to the needs of different babies. In many cities such
milk stations have been established.]

Milk. Milk is an interesting food of great value because it combines
in itself all three of the great classes of food-stuffs,--protein,
starch-sugar, and fat. Its protein is a substance called _casein_, which
forms the bulk of curds, and which, when dried and salted, is called
cheese. The fat is present in little tiny globules which give milk its
whitish or milky color. When milk is allowed to stand, these globules of
fat, being lighter, float up to the top and form a layer which is called
cream. When this cream is skimmed off and put into a churn, and shaken
or beaten violently so as to break the little film with which each of
these droplets is coated, they run together and form a yellow mass which
we call butter. In addition to the curd and fat, milk contains also
sugar, called milk-sugar (_lactose_), which gives it its sweetish
taste. And as a considerable part of the casein, or curd, is composed
of another starch-like body, or animal starch, this makes milk quite
rich in the starch-sugar group of food-stuffs.

All these substances, of course, in milk are dissolved in a large amount
of water, so that when milk is evaporated, or dried, it shrinks down to
barely one-sixth of its former bulk. It is, in fact, a liquid meat,
starch-sugar, and fat in one; and that is why babies are able to live
and thrive on it alone for the first six months of their lives. It is
also a very valuable food for older children, though, naturally, it is
not "strong" enough and needs to be combined with bread, puddings, meat,
and fat.

Soups and Broths. Soups, broths, and beef teas are water in which
meats, bones, and other scraps have been boiled. They are about
ninety-eight per cent water, and contain nothing of the meat or bones
except some of their flavor, and a little gelatin. They have little or
no nutritive or fuel value, and are really Paper foods, useful solely as
stimulants to appetite and digestion, enabling us to swallow with relish
large pieces of bread or crackers, or the potatoes, rice, pea-meal,
cheese, or other real foods with which they are thickened. Their food
value has been greatly exaggerated, and many an unfortunate invalid has
literally starved on them. Ninety-five per cent of the food value of the
meat and bones, out of which soups are made, remains at the bottom of
the pot, after the soup has been poured off. The commercial extracts of
meat are little better than frauds, for they contain practically nothing
but flavoring matters.

Protein in Vegetables. Several vegetable substances contain
considerable amounts of protein. One of these has already been
mentioned,--the gluten or sticky part of bread,--and this is what has
given wheat its well-deserved reputation as the best of all grains out
of which to make flour for human food.

There is also another vegetable protein, called _legumin_, found in
quite large amounts in dried beans and peas; but this is of limited food
value, first because it is difficult of digestion, and secondly because
with it, in dried peas and beans, are found a pungent oil and a bitter
substance, which give them their peculiar strong flavor, both of which
are quite irritating to the average person's digestion. So distressing
and disturbing are these flavoring substances to the civilized stomach,
that, after thousands of attempts to use them more largely, it has been
found that a full meal of beans once or twice a week is all that the
comfort and health of the body will stand. This is really a great pity,
for beans and peas are both nourishing and cheap. Nuts also contain much
protein, but are both difficult of digestion and expensive.

Virtues and Drawbacks of Meats. Taken all together, the proteins, or
meats, are the most nutritious and wholesome single class of foods.
Their chief drawback is their expense, which, in proportion to their
fuel value, is greater than that of the starches. Then, on account of
their attractiveness, they may be eaten at times in too large amounts.
They are also somewhat more difficult to keep and preserve than are
either the starches or the fats. The old idea that, when burned up in
the body, they give rise to waste products, which are either more
poisonous or more difficult to get rid of than those of vegetable foods,
is now regarded as having no sufficient foundation. Neither is the
common belief that meats cause _gout_ well founded.

The greatest danger connected with meats is that they may become
tainted, or begin to spoil, or decay, before they are used.
Unfortunately, the ingenious cook has invented a great many ways of
smothering, or disguising, the well-marked bad taste of decayed, or
spoiled, meat by spices, onions, and savory herbs. So, as a general
thing, the safest plan, especially when traveling or living away from
home, is to avoid as far as possible hashes, stews, and other "made"
dishes containing meat. This is one of the ways in which spices and
onions have got such a bad reputation for "heating the blood," or
upsetting the stomach, when it is really the decayed meat which they are
used to disguise that causes the trouble. Highly spiced dishes rob you
of the services of your best guide to the wholesomeness of food--your
nose.

Risks of Dirty Milk. The risks from tainting or spoiling are
particularly great in the case of milk, partly on account of the dusty
and otherwise uncleanly barns and sheds in which it is often handled and
kept, and from which it is loaded with a heavy crop of bacteria at the
very start; and partly because the same delicateness which makes it so
easily digestible for babies, makes it equally easy for germs and
bacteria to grow in it and spoil, or sour, it. You all know how
disagreeable the taste of spoiled milk is; and it is as dangerous as it
is disagreeable. A very large share of the illnesses of babies and young
children, particularly the diseases of stomach and bowels which are so
common in hot weather, are due to the use of spoiled, dirty milk.

[Illustration: CLEAN, DRY SUNNING YARDS AT A MODEL DAIRY]

There is one sure preventive for all these dangers, and that is
_absolute cleanliness_ from cow to customer. All the changes that take
place in milk are caused by germs of various sorts, usually floating in
the air, that get into it. If the milk is so handled and protected, from
cow to breakfast table, that these germs cannot get into it, it will
remain sweet for several days.

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