Notes and thoughts from practice.

  • Tyson, William Joseph.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Notes and thoughts from practice. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    seriously think about these questions until, perhaps, we begin to put on too much flesh, or find that the power of exercise in many ways is leaving us. If we were properly taught at 20 and we really carried out the lessons, then the early increase of flesh, and a disinclination for exercise, might, I believe, be longer postponed. As regards the quantity of food, I find that most writers are agreed that too much is almost invariably taken, and there seems little doubt that this is true; the cause of this is, perhaps, due principally to this, that whilst in the evolution of the race so much care has been given to the cultivation of the mind, the diet has continued the same, although much less strain has been thrown upon the physical parts of the body, and, consequently, less albuminous substances are required. Yet this statement requires much modification, for when the body is being built up a full diet is necessary, but it must be an assimilative one. The effects of excessive alcoholic drinking are always more apparent than excessive eating ; the former, whether in an acute or chronic form, show themselves in many ways, and a drunken man is an object-lesson which no amount of over-eating is capable of producing. The normal effects of over- drinking are worse than the results of surfeiting, hence the raison d’etre of temperance societies ; but the over-fed man is no less wearing out his internal organs than the alcoholic—the mill in the former grinds more slowly, but no less surely. The amount of nitrogenous food eaten should vary