"The plentiful use of sugar in diet, is one of the best preventives that has ever been discovered of the diseases which are produced by worms. The Author of Nature seems to have implanted a love of the aliment in all children, as if it were on purpose to defend them from those diseases. I know a gentleman in Philadelphia, who early adopted this opinion, and who by indulging a large family of children, in the use of sugar, has preserved them all from the diseases usually occasioned by worms." (288) --Benjamin Rush, "An Account of the Sugar Maple-Tree,"
Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical
Although here referring to the perceived benefits of sugar in general, Rush's whole essay was meant to promote the domestic production of sugar from the plentiful sugar maple trees in the new United States. What a great thing it must have been to be the children of that "Philadelphia gentleman"! At least, that is, until all that sugar started to rot their teeth.
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