The Chemistry of Cookery

inner lining of the stomach, by exciting it to increased and abnormal activity. A dyspeptic may obtain immediate relief by using cayenne pepper. Among the advertised patent medicines is a pill bearing the very ominous name of its compounder, the active constituent of which is cayenne. Great relief and temporary comfort is commonly obtained by using it as a ‘dinner pill.’ If thus used only as a temporary remedy for an acute and temporary, or exceptional, attack of indigestion all is well, but the cayenne, whether taken in pills or dusted over the food or stewed with it in curries or any otherwise, is one of the most cruel of slow poisons when taken _habitually_. Thousands of poor wretches are crawling miserably towards their graves, the victims of the multitude of maladies of both mind and body that are connected with chronic, incurable dyspepsia, all brought about by the habitual use of cayenne and its condimental cousins. The usual history of these victims is, that they began by over-feeding, took the condiment to force the stomach to do more than its healthful amount of work, using but a little at first. Then the stomach became tolerant of this little, and demanded more; then more, and more, and more, until at last inflammation, ulceration, torpidity, and finally the death of the digestive powers, accompanied with all that long train of miseries to which I have referred. India is their special fatherland. Englishmen, accustomed to an active life at home, and a climate demanding much fuel-food for the maintenance of animal heat, go to India, crammed, maybe, with Latin, but ignorant of the laws of health; cheap servants promote indolence, tropical heat diminishes respiratory oxidation, and the appetite naturally fails. Instead of understanding this failure as an admonition to take smaller quantities of food, or food of less nutritive and combustive value, such as carbohydrates instead of hydrocarbons and albumenoids, they regard it as a symptom of ill-health, and take curries, bitter ale, and other tonics or appetising condiments, which, however mischievous in England, are far more so there. I know several