The housekeepers' educator and guide

Preface

I FIND that the people, everywhere, are interested in the subject of food.

During the last ten years, in the hundreds of addresses which I have given in New England, the Middle States, in the West and South, audiences that on many questions would have voiced a notable contrast of opinion, on the value and imperativeness of this question, were practically agreed.

A knowledge of the close relation existing between one's food and every function of the body and brain, is not now limited to physicians and a few special students in dietetics, but is becoming a matter of general interest and discussion in all progressive communities.

Never, perhaps, in the history of the world, were so many people intelligently considering the question of right eating, as now.

When we realize that it is the food taken into the stomach, which, broken and dissolved by digestion, becomes blood, brain, muscle, and by the marvelous chemistry of nature is transmuted into thought, emotion, energy — life itself, the wonder is that these vitally important subjects of diet and nutrition have not always been as prominent as they are today.

With the hope of arousing even new interest in the subject, by putting in terse and comprehensive form some

PREFACE.

of its great truths, this book is published. That its study may prove beneficial in the home and family life of the people, so far as its circulation shall extend, is the sincere wish of the author.

Acknowledgment is hereby made of assistance from the following sources, in the preparation of this work :

" Food," by Prof. A. H.. Church ; " Food in Health

and Disease," by I. Burney Yeo, M. D. ; " Chemistry of

Common Life," by James F. W. Johnston, M. D , and Prof.

A. H. Church. " A Treatise on Food and Dietetics," by

Dr. F. W. Pavy, and E. B. Worrell's work on ''Food

Adulteration."

E. B. W.

Dorchester, Mass., { October 7, 1S97. j

Contents

PAGES.

Compounds and Elements of the Body 7-10

The four Alimentary Principles • . . . . ir- 15