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forms of it a military bent of superiority, and also that there is a very general appreciation of the fact that the opposite extreme, the small, snub variety of nose, is indicative of mental inferiority, often conjoined with comic disposition and alimentary and bibulous propensities. But all the existing intermediate varieties of nose, as indicative of mind and temperament, are very far, indeed, from being recognized in their full significance, and most persons who would claim profound insight into a person by looking into the eye would never think for a moment of consulting the nose as any index to mind and character, and yet the nose is there much more helplessly than the eye to testify as to the worth or worthlessness of its possessor.

The nose is sometimes the seat of the most violent inflammations. Inebriety sometimes leaves its mark there in the manner in which Bardolph was afflicted. The disease of rosacea, in the form of rhinophyma, which was what Bardolph had, has other sources besides those of excessive drinking, that are not popularly known, and hence one innocently a sufferer is sincerely to be pitied as having to bear not only the disease, but the most unjust conclusions regarding its cause.

Lupus, popularly termed cancer, but not regarded by phy sicians as true cancer, sometimes attacks and rapidly destroys the nose, being, in respect of its capacity to destroy the tissues, like cancer, thus leading naturally to the popular designation of it.

Sometimes from a small centre of irritation, as, for instance, a broken and unkindly-healed mole, which has been subjected to fierce alternations of heat and cold (the causes are numerous that are capable of setting up inflammation in such a place), there arises a morbid affection known as epithelioma. These cases seem extremely trifling at first, hardly worthy of notice, but, like the spark that is capable of causing the great conflagration, they do not bear letting alone. The electric needle at once extirpates such growths in their incipient stages. We

have known of the case of such an excrescence that had been successively treated by perforation with red-hot needles, when it grew again, and then by excision with curved scissors, which cut it out nearly to the bone, when it grew again; but we have never known of a case in which the electric needle has been used for extirpating one when it has returned.

There is nothing to be said here as to the toilet of the nose, save that it should be performed in private with the handkerchief, as that of the other exterior organs of the body may be with the wash-rag. We are sorry to say that in our public conveyances sanitary rules are not sufficiently adopted and enforced by the companies. Picking the nose is outrageously frequent. Only smoking is prohibited, and the rule against it enforced. But spitting is far worse, because some spit holds the germs of the bacillus of consumption, which may, in the form. of dust, eventually find its way into a favorable soil in lungs. predisposed to consumption, and this practice is not forbidden by the companies, although it is most prevalent in the cars among some classes of men, and although it is well known that consumption is contagious. The companies should also prohibit the unsanitary practices of cleaning the nails and picking the teeth in public conveyances, where they are to be constantly seen. These practices are doubly coarse, for refinement is nothing if not considerate of others, and nothing if not self-respectful enough to keep for privacy the offices of cleansing the person.*

* Singular to relate, it so happens that since these lines were written, last winter, and before they can be printed, notices have been everywhere posted in the cars about Philadelphia, forbidding spitting in them. We, however, let them stand in their entirety, as possibly useful instruction for the country at large, in which the habit of spitting in public places has always been very prevalent. We have seen roughs, immediately upon seating themselves in a car, whip out plugs of tobacco and help themselves to chews therefrom, with the air of having reached a place specially devoted to chewing. But, bad as this tobacco-chewing and spitting has been, it is as nothing compared with the filthiness and danger of expectoration upon the floor of the cars of phlegm hawked from the deepest recesses of the throat, heretofore constantly practiced in cars, in total disregard of cleanliness, and to the nauseation of ladies and gentlemen.

CHAPTER XXXI.

FOOD IN ITS RELATION TO HEALTH, BEAUTY, AND PLEASURE.

HE subject of food, viewed scientifically, is too deep to be

entered upon in a work of this kind, as the reader may judge when informed that great masters of dietetics have differed even as to the classification of food, and, therefore, of course, as to many details regarding it. Dunglison's summary of the simplest classification will receive the most general acceptance. He says that in nitrogenized food is included the fibrinous, albuminous, caseinous, and gelatinous elements; and that in non-nitrogenous food is included the amylaceous, saccharine, and oleaginous elements. Lastly, then, come the inorganic elements of food He remarks, further, that the second category might be further simplified, for amylaceous food is convertible into sugar during digestion, and from either oleaginous matter may be formed.

What we have more particularly to consider is, not the scientific aspect of food as related to the human body, but the ordinary practices as to eating that lie before us in our daily walks in life. Even within this sphere the subject is so vast that it can be at best but skimmed over here. Since the primitive apple, through which man fell from grace, the tillers of the soil have made the earth to yield of its goodly fruits, and river, ocean, and air have been laid under contribution for the sustenance of the body and the gratification of the palate of mankind.

In the course of this process, certain countries have developed particular dishes, and their inhabitants have imbibed particular tastes. Hence, home-staying people have come to regard their tastes as the natural and true standard, and often decline even to make trial of new dishes, whether from their own

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or other lands. But all tastes, including that in eating, depend ⚫ upon education. What one is brought up to in childhood to eat, he generally eats with greater relish than he eats anything else. The ability, however, to acquire new tastes lasts through life, and one of the chief differences between cultivated and uncultivated people is, that the former, as compared with the latter, prolong through life to some degree childhood's capacity for acquisition of all sorts, including what relates to the delectation of the palate.

This difference among mankind is enormous. Nothing more clearly marks the provincial, the untraveled man, than the perfect self-satisfaction with which he holds that everything that enters into his habits, including the food he eats, represents the sole proper, preordained ways of the best-constituted man. Nothing can swerve him from the fixed idea that he possesses the true standard of food. He likes it, and therefore it is the best possible food, and no addition to or subtraction from it could be made without marring his bill of fare. Content with the wretched cooking to which he is often habituated, he will marvel at the discomfiture of some experienced traveler in face of the viands which he relishes as the best on earth.

Just the very reverse is the man of education, especially if he has been a traveler, and has seen many countries and many different ways. He believes, with Brillat Savarin, that he who discovers a new dish contributes more to the happiness of mankind than he who discovers a new star. He philosophically perceives that what has been to him previously unknown is equivalent, so far as he is concerned, to having been just discovered, and he sets himself to acquire new tastes in dishes, and does acquire them, if not with the facility of youth, at least with an advantage which not even youth possesses—a discriminative palate, that renders every new enterprise an acquisition likely to be successful in true directions. That there are

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