Persons troubled with slow digestion are better to eat only two meals a day. The writer has personal knowledge of a goodly number of women who have been benefited wonderfully by adopting the two meal a day plan.
Some persons, much troubled with dyspepsia, have adopted the plan of prolonged fasting advocated by Dr. Dewey, and testify to a cure by this method. While heroic, it is certainly more rational than drug treatment. For acute dyspepsia a fast is requisite.
All that alcoholics can do for dyspepsia is to allay the uneasy sensations for a time, while adding to the trouble. It has been abundantly proved that alcohol must pass from the stomach before digestion can begin.
"Many cases which seem to be relieved by the use of beer are really benefited by the hop, or other bitter, which the ale or beer contains. _Hop tea_ is a useful stomachic, and a quarter of a pint, or half that quantity, may be taken cold. It is made in the same way as tea, using a handful of hops to a pint of boiling water. Make fresh every day."
"In cases of chronic dyspepsia the use of alcohol seems to be particularly deleterious, although not infrequently prescribed, if not in the form of alcohol or ordinary alcoholic liquors, in the form of some so-called 'bitters,' 'elixir' or 'cordial.' Nothing could be further removed from the truth than the popular notion that alcohol, at least in the form of certain wines, is helpful to digestion. Roberts showed, years ago, that alcohol even in small doses, diminishes the activity of the stomach in the digestion of proteids. Gluzinski showed, ten years ago, that alcohol causes an arrest in the secretion of pepsin, and also of its action upon food. Wolff showed that the habitual use of alcohol produces disorder of the stomach to such a degree as to render it incapable of responding to the normal excitation of the food. Hugounencq found that all wines, without exception, prevent the action of pepsin upon proteids. The most harmful are those which contain large quantities of alcohol, cream of tartar or coloring matter. Wines often contain coloring matters which at once completely arrest digestion, such as methylin blue and fuchsin.
"A few years ago I made a series of experiments in which I administered alcohol in various forms with a test meal, noting the effect upon the stomach fluid as determined by the accurate chemic examination of the method of Hayem and Winter. The result of these experiments I reported at the 1893 meeting of the American Medical Temperance Association. The subject of experiment was a healthy young man whose stomach was doing a slight excess of work, the amount of combined chlorin being nearly fifty per cent. above normal, although the amount of free hydrochloric acid was normal in quantity. Four ounces of claret with the ordinary test meal reduced the free hydrochloric acid from 28 milligrams per 100 c. c. of stomach fluid to zero, and the combined chlorin from .270 to .125. In the same case the administration of two ounces of brandy with the ordinary test meal reduced the combined chlorin to .035, scarcely more than one eighth of the original amount, the free hydrochloric acid remaining at zero. Thus it appears that four ounces of claret produced marked hypopepsia in a case of moderate hyperpepsia, whereas two ounces of brandy produced practically apepsia."