The Young Mother

This is a Fiction Short Story book. In controversies, to see in how many things antagonists agree, before proceeding to the points in which they differ, I will here endeavor to enumerate them. 1. All unripe fruits, especially, if eaten raw and uncooked--let the season, or prevalent disease, or individual, be what or who it may--are unwholesome. 2. Excess, in the use of the most wholesome fruits, under any circumstances, is also injurious. 3. Fruits, eaten immediately after a full meal, when the stomach is in an improper condition for receiving anything more, contribute to overtask the digestive powers, and must hence produce more or less of injury. 4. The skins and kernels of the larger fruits are unwholesome, because indigestible. The skins of fruits, if beaten or masticated finely, may appear to be digested, because dissolved; but I Lave already endeavored to show that solution is not always digestion. 5. Fruits of all kinds are most wholesome in their own country, and in their own appropriate season. 6. Dried fruits are less wholesome than fresh. 7. Fruit of all kinds should be withheld from infants, until they have teeth. Thus far, as I have already said, all agree; at least so far as I know. There are several other points on which medical men are generally agreed, though not universally. One of these is, that fruits, if eaten at all, should usually form a part of a regular rneal. Another is, that it is better not to eat them immediately before going to bed. There are contradictory opinions among the mass of the community, physicians as well as others, on the general intention of our summer fruits. From the fact that children's diseases prevail more at the season of the year when fruits are more abundant, many think the fruits are the immediate cause of them.