" If I had been her stomach I should have said: "Madam,
when you have got through giving me your especial attention I will
begin my work--which, by the way, is not your work but mine!" And,
virtually, that is what her stomach did say. Sitting bolt upright
and consciously waiting for your food to begin digestion is an
over-attention to what is none of your business, which contracts
your brain, contracts your stomach and stops its work.
Our business is only to fulfill the conditions rightly. The French
workmen do that when they sit quietly after a meal talking of their
various interests. Any one can fulfill the conditions properly by
keeping a little quiet, having some pleasant chat, reading a bright
story or taking life easy in any quiet way for half an hour. Or, if
work must begin directly after eating, begin it quietly. But this
feeling that it is our business to attend to the working functions
of our stomachs is officious and harmful. We must fulfill the
conditions and then forget our stomachs. If our stomachs remind us
of themselves by some misbehavior we must seek for the cause and
remedy it, but we should not on any account feel that the cause is
necessarily in the food we have eaten. It may be, and probably often
is, entirely back of that. A quick, sharp resistance to something
that is said will often cause indigestion. In that case we must stop
resisting and not blame the food. A dog was once made to swallow a
little bullet with his food and then an X-ray was thrown on to his
stomach in order that the process of digestion might be watched by
means of the bullet.
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