Note 35 — Chapter VII · Life in Northumberland—My Sister Eleanora’s Wedding—Alnwick Castle in 1855 and 1892—Serious Illness—Death of Oswin and Seymour Cresswell.

For the benefit of possible sufferers, I may mention that if I ever do have a suggestion of rheumatism, I at once attribute it to unsuspected indigestion, and for a short while adopt Dr. Salisbury’s system of diet, which consists in refraining from all foods most liable to fermentation, i.e. all vegetables, milk, sugar, fish, alcohol in any form, and limiting the “menu” to three good meals daily of very finely minced and well-cooked beef, with no accompaniment except some crisp toast, and if necessary a little strong meat-soup or black coffee.

But the less fluid with meals the better, as it weakens the gastric juices, and fluid is supplied by a good drink of hot water four times a day, i.e. on first awakening, in the middle of the forenoon and afternoon, and the last thing at night, always about an hour and a half before or after eating. This supplies a bath for the internal machinery, and acts on the same principle as washing the plate you have used at one meal before it is required for the next meal.

N. B.—Always ask for a small jug of boiling water, a bottle of cold water, and a cup, that you may prepare your drink to suit your own taste, otherwise you are apt to get a tumbler of scalding water all ready poured out. By mixing for yourself and sipping slowly you can probably manage to swallow a double allowance, and soon learn to enjoy it. Some people think that a pinch of salt makes it more palatable. I may mention that I know of hundreds of people once martyrs to the many phases of indigestion, dyspepsia, and their effects (called by many names, but all due to the same cause), who attribute their restoration to health to this simple course of dieting, as taught in this country by the late Mrs. Elma Stuart (daughter of a Cumming of Logie).