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DISEASES OF THE ORGANS OF DIGESTION. 379
The diet of the nurse may give an infant dyspepsia.
Whatever will give the mother or nurse this disease,
will so affect the milk as to cause it in the child. We
6hall see what that is directly.
Eating too much food will cause dyspepsia, by over
tasking the power of the stomach to digest and dispose
of surplus food, and by the undigested food lying in the
stomach, a source of irritation.
Eating too fast, by preventing mastication and insalivatio'n.
Those who eat too fast, generally eat too
much.
Eating hot food and drinking hot drinks, which en
feeble the stomach.
Eating indigestible food, as new bread, short-cakes,
pastry, sweetmeats, pickles, oily and greasy meats,
gravies, mince-pies, and all that sort of thing. We ex
haust the power of an organ, if we overtask it— we dis
ease it, if we task it unnaturally.
Eating condiments, as pepper, ginger, mustard,
spices.
Taking drugs. Every poison, of whatever kind,
taken into the stomach must injure it. Nature protects
it wonderfully. It bears an astonishing amount of
poisoning
; but not without more or less mischief.
All spirituous and narcotic beverages, tea, coffee, and
alcoholic drinks.
Tobacco, above all, by its direct action upon
the nerv
ous system, by its acrid, irritating character, and by its
constant excitement of the salivary glands and waste of
this secretion. Even a constant loss of saliva in moist
ening linen, will produce dyspepsia; much more the
spitting of the smoker and chewer.