DRINKING BEFORE MEALS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 2388, 29 October 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

DRINKING BEFORE MEALS.

Is the morning the stomach contains a considerable quantity of mucus spread over and adherent to its walls. If food enters at this time, the tenacious mucus will interfere, to some extent, with the direct contact between the food and the stomach necessary to provoke the secretion of gastric juice. A glass of water, taken before breakfast, passes through the stomach into the small intestines in a continuous and uninterrupted flow; it partly distends the stomach, stretching and to some extent obliterating the ruga.-; it thins and washes out most of the tenacious muons ; it increases the fulness of the capillaries of the stomach, directly if the water is warm, and indirectly in a reactionary way if it is cold ; it causes peristalsis of the alimentary tract, wakes it up (so to speak), and gives it a morning exercise and washing. Care must be taken not to give cold water when the circulation, cither local or general, is so feeble as to make reaction improbable. We should not risk it in advanced age. nor in the feeble, whether old or young, nor should it he given in local trouble-, like chronic gastric catarrh. In these cases it is best to give warm or hot water. The addition of salt is very beneficial. Snei. a tiiiie-liononred custom adrinking soup at the beginning of a meal could only have been so persi-tciitly adhered to because of it having been found by experience to be the most appropriate time. It does exactly what warm or :.ot water, with the addition of salt, doe-, and more, in that it is nutritive and excites the flow of gastric juice. —Dr. Leuf, in the M-lieil News.