CHAPTER LVI.

BUTTER EATERS.

About the year 1833, I became somewhat intimately acquainted with the dietetic and general physical habits of a young woman in a family where I was a boarder, whose case will be instructive.

She was about twenty-five years of age, and resided in a family that had adopted her as their own, her parents being unknown. She possessed a good natural constitution; and was, for the most part, of good habits. If there was any considerable defect of constitution, it consisted in a predominance of the biliary and lymphatic over the nervous and sanguine temperaments. Yet she was not wholly wanting in that susceptibility, not to say activity, which the sanguine temperament is wont to impart. But the same necessity which is so often the mother of invention, is also sometimes the progenitor of a good share of activity; and this was, in a remarkable degree, the lot of Miss Powell.

Although her skin was not by any means fair, it was not a bad skin. It was firm in its structure, and very little susceptible of those slight but ever recurring diseased conditions in which persons of a sanguine temperament so often find themselves involved. Such I mean to say was her natural physical condition, when uninfluenced by any considerable practical errors.

And yet I had not been many months one of her more intimate acquaintances, ere her face--hitherto so smooth and transparent--became as rough and congested as any drunkard's face ever was, only the eruption was more minute. It was what the common opinion of that region would have called a rash. It came on suddenly, was visible for a short time, and then gradually disappeared, leaving, in some instances, a branny substance, consisting of a desquamation of the cuticle.

When the eruption had once fairly disappeared, her skin was as smooth as ever. Then again, however, in a little time, its roughness would return, to an extent which, to young ladies, is usually quite annoying. Young men, in general, are not so much disturbed by a little roughness of the skin, as the young of the other sex.

My particular acquaintance with her habits and annoyances continued as many as four or five years. During this period there were several ebbings and flowings of this tide of eruptive disease. My curiosity, towards the end of this period, was so much excited that I sought and obtained of her an opportunity for conversation on the subject. The result was as curious as it was, to me, unexpected. It appeared, in the sequel, that she understood, perfectly well, the whole matter, and held the control of her cutaneous system in her own hands, nearly as much as if she had been a mere piece of mechanism. She had not sought for medical advice, because she knew the true method of cure for her complaints as well as anybody could have told her.

In truth, she cured it about once a year, simply by omitting the cause which produced it. This she had found out was butter, salted butter, of course, eaten with her meals. She had somehow discovered that this article of food was the real cause of her disease, and that entire abstemiousness in this particular, would, in a reasonable time, remove it.

I inquired why, after a long period of abstinence from butter, she ever returned to its use. Her reply was that she was too fond of it to omit it entirely and forever. She preferred to use it till the eruption began to be quite troublesome, which was sometimes many weeks; then abstain from it till she recovered, and then return to it. This gave her an opportunity to use it from one-third to one-half of the time; and this she thought greatly preferable to entire abstinence.

At this time I did not press her to abandon wholly an article of food, which, though partially rejected, was yet slowly producing derangement of her digestive system, and might, in time, result in internal disease, which would be serious and irremediable. I did not do it; first, because I knew my advice would not be very acceptable; secondly, for want of that full measure of gospel benevolence which leads us to try to do good, even in places where we have no right to expect it will be received; and, lastly, no doubt for want of moral courage.

Were I to live my life over again, particularly my medical life, I would pray and labor for a little more of what I am accustomed to call holy boldness. By this term I do not mean _meddlesomeness_,--for this is by no means to be commended,--but true Christian or apostolic boldness.

Of late years the young woman above referred to has been in circumstances which, I have reason to believe, practically precluded the use of the offending article. I meet her occasionally, but always with a smooth face, which greatly confirms my prepossessions.[H] Happy would it be for a multitude of our race if their circumstances were such as to exclude this and many other articles of food and drink which are well known to injure them.

One instance occurred in the very neighborhood of the foregoing, which, though I received it at second hand, is not a little striking, and is wholly reliable. A certain young mother--the wife of a merchant in easy circumstances, was so excessively fond of butter, that, though she was a dyspeptic, and knew it increased her dyspepsia, she used to eat it in a manner the most objectionable which could possibly have been devised.

For example: she would take a ball of this article,--say half or three-quarters of a pound,--pierce it with the point of a firm stick, and having heated it, on all sides, over the fire, till the whole surface was softened, would then plunge it into a vessel of flour, in such a manner that the latter would adhere to it on all sides, till a great deal was absorbed by the butter. Having done this, she would again heat the surface of the ball and again dip or roll it in the flour. This alternate melting the surface of the ball and rolling it in flour, was continued till the whole became a mass of heated or scorched flour, entirely full of the melted butter, and as completely indigestible as it possibly could be, when she would leisurely sit down at a table and eat the whole of it.

Did it make her sick?--you will ask. It did, indeed, and she expected it would. She would go immediately to bed, as soon as the huge bolus was swallowed, and lie there a day or two, perhaps two or three days. Occasionally such a surfeit cost her the confinement of a whole week.

It is truly surprising that any Christian woman should thus make a beast of herself, for the sake of the momentary indulgence of the appetite; but so it is. I have met with a few such. Happily, however, conduct so low and bestial is not so frequent among females as males, though quite too frequent among the former so long as a single case is found, which could be prevented by reasoning or even by authority.

There is one thing concerning butter which deserves notice, and which it may not be amiss to mention in this place. What we call butter, in this country,--what is used, I mean, at our tables,--is properly pickled or salted butter. Now, I suppose it is pretty well understood, that in some of the countries of Europe no such thing as salted or pickled butter is used or known. They make use of milk, cream, and a little fresh butter; but that is all. In the kingdom of Brazil, among the native population, at least, no such thing as butter, in any shape, has ever yet been known.

Fresh butter is sufficiently difficult of digestion; but salted butter is much more so; and this is the main point to which I wish to call your attention. Why, what is our object in salting down butter? Is it not to prevent change? Would it not otherwise soon become acid and disagreeable? And does not salting it so harden or toughen it, or, as it were, fix it, that it will resist the natural tendency to decomposition or putrefaction?

But will not this same "fixation," so to call it, prepare it to resist changes within the stomach as well as outside of it; or, in other words, prevent, in a measure, the work of digestion? Most unquestionably it will. And herein is the stronghold of objection to this article. Hence, too, the reason why it causes eruptions on the skin. The irritation begins on the lining membrane of the stomach. The latter is first coated with eruption; and, after a time, by what is called sympathy, the same tendency is manifested in the face.

These things ought to be well understood. There is great ignorance on this subject, and what is known is generally the _ipse dixit_ of somebody. Reasons there are none for using salted butter. Or, if any, they are few, and frequently very flimsy and weak. Let us have hygiene taught us, were it only that we may know for ourselves the right and wrong of these matters.

FOOTNOTES:

[H] Since this was penned, the young woman has died of erysipelas. Can it be that she has been compelled, in this form, to pay a fearful penalty for her former abuses? One might think that twenty years of reformation would have worn out the diseased tendencies. Perhaps she recurred, in later years, unknown to the writer, to her former favorite article.