Fruit as an Antidote for Intemperance
A writer in a European temperance journal calls attention to the value of fruit as an antidote to the craving for liquor. He says: “In Germany, a nation greatly in advance of other countries in matters relative to hygiene, alcoholic disease has been successfully coped with by dieting and natural curative agencies. I have said that the use of fresh fruit is an antidote for drink craving, and this is true.
“The explanation is simple. Fruit may be called nature’s medicine. Every apple, every orange, every plum and every grape is a bottle of medicine. An orange is three parts water—distilled in nature’s laboratory—but this water is rich in peculiar fruit acids medicinally balanced, which are specially cooling to the thirst of the drunkard and soothing to the diseased state of his stomach. An apple or an orange, eaten when the desire for ‘a glass’ arises, would generally take it away, and every victory would make less strong each recurring temptation.
“The function of fresh fruit and succulent vegetables is not so much to provide solid nourishment as to supply the needful acids of the blood. Once get the blood pure and every time its pure nutrient stream bathes the several tissues of the body it will bring away some impurity and leave behind an atom of healthy tissue, until, in time, the drunkard shall stand up purified—in his right mind.”