This explains why bread is the source of so much discomfort. For bread, as it is usually made in this country, is more or less moist, and consequently the saliva has the same difficulty to encounter as in the case of bread and milk. The water has arrived first and keeps the saliva out. If the process were carried on to a further and drier stage, as in the hardbake of the Colonial, we should be able to assimilate it with ease.
We are apt to envy the Oriental his capacity for digesting starch. Yet his powers in this direction are due not so much to any inherited faculty on his part as to the way in which the rice is cooked. The glutinous material on the outside of the granules prevents the saliva from penetrating. The Oriental gets rid of it by washing the rice in cold water half-way through the cooking, rubbing it between his hands at the same time. The writer once recommended this plan to a lady who complained of indigestion after eating rice, and told her that if she insisted on its being carried out she would have no further difficulty in the matter. She replied that there would be a great difficulty--the cook would immediately give notice.
[Sidenote: The slow poison of dyspepsia.]
Yet if these hints as to the preparation of starchy foods were taken advantage of, we should hear much less of the fermentative dyspepsia which is at the root of so much of the slow poisoning from which many people suffer, to the detriment of their general health and their nervous systems in particular.
It is this slow, long-continued poisoning which undermines the nervous system and lays it open to attack from all the other causes that predispose to a breakdown. No amount of inconvenience or self-denial is too great that can lead to the avoidance of the dyspepsia which causes it. And this ailment may accompany the plainest and simplest of diets, if they are taken in the wrong way. Space would not permit of our treating this fully, but mention will be made of two or three common articles of diet which are liable to be followed by indigestion.
Apart from any special idiosyncrasy, many people suffer from nausea or some other form of discomfort after taking eggs. It is not uncommon to hear people say that they can take them in the latter part of the day, but not in the mornings, without some ill-effect. If that is so, they should be careful to avoid having them for breakfast, for when taken at this meal they are often responsible for headaches which come on in the course of the morning.