FRUIT OR MEDICINE?

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2233, 30 October 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

FRUIT OR MEDICINE?

Of all the fruits with which we are blessed, the peach is the most delicious and digestible. There is nothing more palatable, wholesome, and medicinal. When eaten they should be ripe, but not over-ripe and half-rotten ; and in this condition they may make a part of either meal, or be eaten between meals. But it is better to make them part of the regular meals. It is a mistaken idea that no fruit should be eaten at breakfast. It would be far better if people would eat leas bacon and grease at that meal, and more fruit. In the morning there is an acrid state of the secretions, and nothing is so welt calculated to correct this as cooling sub-acid fruits, such as peaches, apples, &c. Most of us have been taught that eating fruit before breakfast is highly dangerous. How the idea originated I do not know ; but it is cprtainly a great error, and one which is contrary to both reason and facts. The apple is one of the best of fruits. Baked or stewed apples will generally agree with the most delicate stomaah, aud are an excellent medicine in many cases of sickness. Green or half ripe apples stewed and sweetened are pleasant to the taste, nouiishing, cooling and taxative — far superior in many cases to the abominable doses of salts and oil usually given in fever and other diseases. Raw apples and dried apples stewed are better for constipation than most liver piils. Oranges are very acceptable to most stomachs, having all the advantages of the acid alluded to ; but the juice alone should be taken, the pulp being rejected. The same may be said of lemons, pomegranates, and all that class of fruits. Lemonade is the best drink in fevers, and when thickened with sugar, is far better than syrup of squills and other nauseous drugs in many cases of cough. The small-seeded fruits, such as blackberries, figs, raspberries and strawberries, may be classed amongst the best foods and medicines. The sugar in them is nutritious ; the acid is cooling and purifying; and the seeds are laxative. We should look more to oar gardens and orchards for our medicines and less to our drug stores. — Scottish Agiicultural Gazette.

A new comic opera to be produced will, it is said, have a chorus of the oldest and. ugliest women to bo found in London, who will be employed as a foil and contrast to a number of wt 11- favoured damsel 0 . Amektca now makes one-fifth of the iron and one-fourth of the steel of the world, and is second only to Great Britain. In steel America will probably lead the world in 1800. This country already leads the world in Bessemer steel ; in 1860 it made only 40,000 tons ; in 1882, 1,500,000 tons. The Earl of Lonsdale ig patron of forty-one "livings" in the Church of England. His expei ienc9 as ' ' financier " of a travelling dramatic company may possibly afford him considerable knowledge of the world ; but it is a question if it will conduce to the efficient filling of any of these livings that may become vacant.