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Price 75 cents. 9. MATTHIAS'S LEGISLATIVE MANUAL, for Conducting Business in Town and Ward Meetings, Societies, Boards of Directors and Ma- nagers, and other Deliberative Bodies, based on Parliamentary, Con- gressional, and Legislative Practice; the 5th edition, much improved NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE Bethesda, Maryland \ THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIVING. ; cr^^l^U J*-*^/-* e< BY HERBERT MAYO, M.D. FORMERLY SENIOR SURGEON TO THE MIDDLESEX HOSPITAL, AND ONE OF THE PROFESSORS OF ANATOMY AND SURGERY TO THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS, ETC. ETC. ETC. FROM THE THIRD LONDON EDITION. PHILADELPHIA: LINDSAY AND BLAKISTON 1852. tH.l w1* Doctor, no physicking. We are, as I already told you, a machine made to live. We are organized for that purpose, and such is our nature. Do not counteract the living principle. Let it alone; leave it the liberty of defending itself,—it will do better than your drugs.—The Emperor Napoleon. PREFACE. "For though we Christians do continually aspire and pant after the Land of Promise; yet it will be a token of God's favour towards us in our journeyings through the world's wilderness, to have our shoes and garments (I mean those of our frail bodies) little worn or impaired."— Bacon. I confidently hope that my name will live in medical literature as that of one who, in his time, solidly con- tributed to the advancement of medical science, by the publication, during a series of thirty years, in health and in illness, of facts and views, the principal of which are embodied in the following works: Anatomical and Phy- siological Commentaries * — Outlines of Human Phy- siology*—Outlines of Human Pathology*—A Treatise on Syphilis*—The Nervous System and its Functions^ —A Treatise on Hydropathy*—Letters on the Truths contained in Popular Superstitions.% But the present work is not of that quality, and I wish to make its apology. The Philosophy of Living, of which I am now preparing the third edition, was written at the suggestion of an emi- nent publisher, who desired to have a book to the title. I gladly acceded to a proposal which offered me an op- portunity of using up some odds and ends of physiological reflection, and involved the necessity of referring to their * Renshaw, Strand. f Parker, West Strand. % Blackwood, Paternoster-row. iv PREFACE. sources for various curious and valuable facts hitherto only vaguely known to me. The book is accordingly a superficial compilation of facts and principles, which any one without previous physiological reading may under- stand. My apology for it is, that I have taken every pains to render it sound. Its scope perhaps is not so extensive as the present notions of Hygiene demand. The principles of the whole subject are indeed expounded; but I have not ventured theoretically to direct their spe- cial application to the newly felt want of society. The volume mainly consists of a series of Essays on that part of the subject which is personal to every one, whose cir- cumstances allow him to choose where and how to live. It is to be viewed, therefore, rather as ancillary to the advice of the fashionable physician, than as conveying lessons of sanatary regulation and provision for the poorer classes. On the latter most important branch of Hygiene ob- servations are now in process of accumulation on all sides; and before long some work equal to their importance will no doubt issue from the pen of one or other of those most zealous in carrying out such improvement, and in tracing the length and breadth of this class of social desiderata. My utterly crippled state withdraws me from this worthy scene of emulation, and from the endeavour to lead in an object so large and useful. So I keep to the narrow ground I can yet occupy; and, as in the paragraph at the head of these remarks, exhibit# again my drift and purpose in an extract from Lord Bacon's writings, re- tiring under its shelter, as behind a Telamonian shield. " There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man's own observation,' what he finds good of and what PREFACE. V he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health. But it is a safer conclusion to say, This agreeth not well with me, therefore I will not continue it; than this, I find no offence in this, therefore I may use it. For strength of nature in youth passeth over many excesses, which are owing a man till his age. Discern of the coming on of years, and think not to do the same things still; for age will not be defied. Beware of sudden change in any great point of diet, and if necessity en- force it, fit the rest to it. For it is a secret both in na- ture and state, that it is safer to change many things than one. Examine thy customs of diet, sleep, exercise, apparel, and the like; and try in any thing" thou shalt judge hurtful, to discontinue it by little and little; but so as if thou dost find any inconvenience by the change, thou come back to it again; for it is hard to distinguish that which is generally held good and wholesome, from that which is good particularly, and fit for thine own body. To be free-minded, and cheerfully-disposed at hours of meat, and of sleep, and of exercise, is one of the best precepts of long lasting. "As for the passions and studies of the mind, avoid envy, anxious fears, anger, fretting inwards, subtile and knotty inquisitions, joys and exhilarations in exeess, sad- ness not communicated. Entertain hopes, mirth rather than joy, variety of delights rather than surfeit of them; wonder and admiration, and therefore novelties; studies that fill the mind with splendid and illustrious objects, as histories, fables and contemplations of nature. * * * * If you make physic too familiar, it will make no extra- ordinary effect when sickness cometh. I commend rather some diet for certain seasons, than frequent use of physic, 1* Vi PREFACE. except it be grown into a custom. For those diets alter the body more, and trouble it less. Despise no new ac- cident in your body, but ask opinion of it. In sickness, respect health principally; and in health, action. For those that put their bodies to endure in health, may, in most sicknesses which are not very sharp, be cured only with diet and tendering. Celsus would never have spoken it as a physician, had he not been a wise man withal, when he giveth it for one of the great precepts of health and lasting, that a man do vary and interchange contra- ries, but with an inclination to the more benign extreme: use fasting and full eating, but rather full eating; watch- ing and sleep, but rather sleep; sitting and exercise, but rather exercise; and the like. So shall nature be che- rished, and yet taught masteries. Physicians are some of them so pleasing and conformable to the humours of the patient, as they press not the true cure of the dis- ease ; and some others are so regular in proceeding ac- cording to art for the disease, as they respect not suffi- ciently the condition of the patient. Take one of a mid- dle temper; or, if it may not be found in one man, com- bine two of either sort; and forget not to call as well the best acquainted with your body, as the best reputed of for his faculty." H. M. Boppard on the Rhine, January, 1851. CONTENTS. DIVERSITIES OF CONSTITUTION. I. Temperament, ..... The Mixed or Equal Temperament, The Sanguine, .... The Lymphatic, . . ... The Bilious, .... The Nervous, .... Temperament of Different European Nations, II. Habit, ..... Plethora, ..... Full and Relaxed Habit, . Spare and Sthenic Habit, . Spare and Relaxed Habit, . III. Diathesis, ..... The Gouty Diathesis, . The Scrofulous, .... The Cancerous, .... CHAPTER I. OF DIET. I. Of Digestion, .... Nature and Influence of the Gastric Juice, Chyme, .... II. Of Food, ..... Aliment of one kind, Classification of the Articles of Food, Digestibleness of Food, Influence of Culinary Processes, 1. What Food the most digestible, ---- Meat, ---- Milk and Eggs, ---- Soups, ---- Fish, .... Viii • CONTENTS. Ill IV. V. What Oily Food most digestible, ---- Farinaceous Food, ---- Crude Vegetables, how disposed of, Table of the Digestibleness of Food, 2. Quantity of Nutriment in Food, Food taken during Training, : Food taken by Captain Barclay during his great Pedestrian Food taken in the process of Wasting, Rules for the Food of Delicate Children, -------the Convalescent, -------those sinking under Mortal Disease 3. Stimulating Quality of Food, Food to be not too easy of Digestion, Food to be varied, . Use of Condiments, Salt, Vinegar, &c, Of Drinks, .... Of Vegetable Infusions, Of Beer, .... Cider and Perry, Wines, their use and abuse, Table of the quantity of Alcohol in Wines, Of strong and dry Wines, . Of light and generous Wines, Of rich and sweet Wines, . Of aromatic Wines, Of acid Wines, Of ardent Spirits, their use, Quantity .of Food, Rules for quantity of Food, Influence of Liquids in producing Fat, Intervals between Meals, . Conditions which strengthen or weaken Powers, Abstinence, Exercise, Cold, Age, VI. Of Food at Different Ages, Food of Infants after Weaning, Food of weakly Infants, the Digestive Feat, 59 60 61 61 61 62 62 63 65 67 67 68 69 69 71 71 74 75 CONTENTS. ix Faults often committed, Meals of Adults, Breakfast, . Luncheon, . Dinner, Tea, VII. Social Relations of Food, A first-rate Dinner in England the best in the World, Social Uses of English Dinners, CHAPTER II. OF EXERCISE. Nature of the Muscles, Laws of their growth, Local and general Use of Exercise on the Body, Conditions rendering Exercise salutary, Exercises of Boys, .... Physical Education of Girls, . Sources of Spinal Curvature Explained, Rules for preventing it, . Exercises proper for Adults, . Remarkable instances of Health improved, Exercise used in Training, . Exercises of the Greeks, Cautions as to the Use of Exercise, - Walking, Riding, Archery, . . Exercise of the Aged, .... Use of Friction, .... CHAPTER III. OF SLEEP. Dr. Whewell's deduction from the length of the natural period of one alternation of Sleep and Waking, . . 127 Condition of the Mind during Sleep, . . . 129 Lord Brougham's Hypothesis %f the time of the occurrence of Dreams, ...... 130 In Sleep the Mind put out of gear, . . . .131 Somnambulism, ....•• 132 X CONTENTS. Double Consciousness, ' Condition of the Brain in Sleep, Relation of Fits to Sleep; and practical Deduction Influences which prevent or promote Sleep, Fatigue, Influence of Heat, . Influence of Cold, . Influence of our Meals, Food a Substitute for Sleep, Preparation for Sleep, Posture for Sleep, . Sensations peculiar to Sleep, Nightmare, Quantity of Sleep, . Effects of too much Sleep, . Sleep in Infancy, Sleep in old Age, . Proper period for Sleep, Period when Sleep is most called for, Wakefulness, The Od Force, Opium as a remedy for Wakefulness, CHAPTER IV. OF BATHING. Mr. Walker's Self-purifying Principle, Rules of Ablution, . Of Vapour and Hot Air Baths, Their Medicinal Uses, Of Warm Baths, . Of Sweating Baths, Of Warm Sea Baths, Of Cold Bathing, . Temperature and Duration, Of the Shower-bath, Preservation of the Teeth, . Preservation of Hearing, Preservation of Sight, Recommendation of Gray Spectacles, Effects of Glasses on Defective Sight, CONTENTS. xi CHAPTER V. OF CLOTHING Use of Clothing, . Effects of Exposure to cold and Damp, Severities of Cold, how endured in Capt Expedition, Precautions used in Training, Effects of low Diet in chilling the Body, Source of Animal Heat, Clothing of Infants and the Aged, . Clothing of Boys, . Danger of Cold in hot Climates, Miscellaneous Relations of Dress, . . 170 171 tain Franklin's 172 173 174 175 . 176 177 179 ,» 181 CHAPTER VI. OF AIR AND CLIMATE. I. General Properties of the Atmosphere, Air of Cities contaminated by smoke, ---------------------by Animal Exhalation, ---------------------and Decomposition, Air of the Country, .... Use of Change of Air, .... Situations suited to different Seasons, II. Noxious Agencies of Air and Climate generally considered, 189 Great Elevations ill-fitted for Human Life, . .190 Temperature—coup-de-soleil, .... 191 Effects of hot and cold Climates upon Europeans, . . 192 Dryness and Moisture, . . . . .193 The Air a Vehicle of conveying Poison into the System, . 194 Animal Poisons, . . . . . .195 How is Cholera communicated ? . . . .196 III. Malaria, . . . . . . .196 Source of Malaria—Vegetable Decomposition, . .198 Fresh water Marshes, ..... 201 Salt water Marshes, ..... 204 Influence of Woods, ..... 204 Effects of Clearage, ..... 205 Effects of Drainage, ..... 205 Diffusion of Malaria, ..... 208 184 185 186 186 187 189 189 xii CONTENTS. IV. Climates suited to the Strumous Diathesis. English Climates, . The South Coast, . South-west Coast, . Land's End, West of England, . South-west of France, South-east of France, Montpellier, Marseilles, Hyeres, Nice, Italy, Madeira, .... CHAPTER VII. HEALTH OF MIND. Habits of Mind favouring Health of Body, Of Amusements, Of Travelling, Of the Fine Arts, Of Cards, . Of Chess, . Of Novel Reading, Analysis of Humour, Analysis of Wit, I. Of Self-control, What it means, Of Veracity, Of Justice, Of Charity, Of Piety, . Character of Howard, II. Of Intellectual Culture and Occupation, Use of a regular Education, Objects contemplated in Education, Of Differences in Men's Understandings, Of Justness of Thought, Of Comprehensiveness, Of Invention, Application of Talent to the Conduct of Affairs, Character of Lord Falkland, ' Character of William Pitt, . THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIVING. INTRODUCTION. DIVERSITIES OF CONSTITUTION. In the Greek medal which furnishes the device for the title-page, Hygeia is represented with emblems of greater efficiency than the healing god. Her snake is three times as big as that of JEsculapius, and could evi- dently eat half-a-dozen such at a meal. Besides, she handles it with familiar dexterity, while the god's is carelessly twined round his life-preserver. Even so, in the advance of knowledge, hygiene is found to be an art more important than medicine—prevention is recognised to be something better than cure. The tuns of medicine which were annually swallowed by the British public are already sensibly reduced. Physicians and apothecaries begin to look anxiously round for protection; and society, at this pace, is not unlikely soon to adopt the sage custom of the court of China, which consists in paying its medical adviser as long as the sovereign is well, and withholding his salary during the term of the royal illness. Accord- ingly, although it seems hard to expect those who live by curing diseases to co-operate in preventing it, the en- lightened few see which way the wind sets, and are already lending their efforts to promote hygienic knowledge. 2 14 INTRODUCTION. But I am no renegade to my profession. No one knows better, or would argue more stoutly, than myself, that the common basis of hygienic and of medical knowledge is an enlightened study of disease, and that physicians and surgeons have honestly done their best for the real interests of both, in their long and elaborate researches, which have resulted in modern physiology and pathology. For the first step to be realized was, the determination of what it is that is to be cured or prevented, of what are the causes, what the intimate nature, and what the spontaneous course and progress of disease. Thus much, I repeat, this necessary initial achievement has been worthily accomplished by the labours of physicians and Burgeons. The science, so to speak, has been done ample justice to; not so the art, at least the medical portion of the art, of healing. .Not that efforts on the part of physicians in this direction have been wholly wanting or erroneous. Not to speak of the noble half-hygienic invention of Jenner for the extirpation of small-pox, the realization of the efficiency of bleeding, of calomel, of tartar-emetic in various forms of inflammation, of opium, colchicum, iodine, in other specialities, are valuable points made in the art. But still the art is a world behind the science. In a medical consultation, nothing can be wished for more luminous than the diagnosis, more certain than the prevision of the next steps of the malady, but " excitus ergo quis est;" in nineteen cases out of twenty, nothing can be more puerile than the prescription in which all this knowledge ends. But here the value of hygienic principles is beginning to make itself felt. Already surgeons are aware that the proper basis of treatment in one serious constitutional DIVERSITIES OF CONSTITUTION. 15 ailment is abstinence; and generally, physicians are alive to the just value of restrictions in diet, and of provision of good air and of bodily exercise. But much more is yet to come out of a systematic study of the elements which occupy the bodily functions in health. Not that there have been hitherto wanting ingenious men who have tried their hands at this part of the healing art. So Schrott, near Friewaldau, practises his hunger- cure upon all comers. In Switzerland, establishments exist for the administration of the goat's-whey cure. People flock to the Rhine in autumn for the grape-cure. At a certain season, at Munich, the beer-cure is taken. At Graefenberg, Priesnitz invented the cold-water cure. In London, Harrison invented the rest-cure for caries of the back. Even sleep, a kind of sleep, at least, has been turned to no less account; and a variety of bodily affec- tions have been cured by the manipulations of Greatrex and Mesmer. The men who have done these things have not been physicians; and physicians have stigmatized them as quacks; let us see with how much justice. Or what is meant by that opprobrious term ? A quack is one who practises or advertises a means of cure, the nature of which he keeps secret. Quacks are of three kinds. -—-jt— 1. The criminal quack, who employs virulent drugs, which for five per cent, of cures cause forty per cent, of deaths or ruined health. 2. The rogue quack, who advertises, like Holloway, a perfectly inert ointment for the cure of an incurable dis- ease. He is better than the first; he lets you off cheaply, sparing your life, and only taxing your purse. 3. The fair quack, who advertises, like the owners of 16 INTRODUCTION. James's powder, a useful medicine, concealing only for his profit the mode of preparing it. Those whose achievements I have before referred to do not fall into either of these classes. They are of a dif- ferent order—they are honest, but ignorant men, who by their mother wit have come upon a fertile idea, which they follow out boldly and openly, with no concealment, their powers of observation and natural sagacity enabling them to do this with comparative safety to their patients, while their very ignorance gives them courage to hazard what a well-informed physician would recoil from. Physi- cians are wrong to stigmatize such men as quacks; they should rather hail them as instruments intended by Provi- dence to provide new material for enriching the healing art; and instead of uniformly rejecting, they should care- fully sift and examine all similar pretensions to useful discovery, in the confidence that here and there, amidst many errors and much rubbish, they will come upon gems of the first water, like Priesnitz's hydropathy. Here, in that especial instance, they may learn an important lesson in witnessing the results obtained in the cure of disease, through the systematic extension and use of one of the hygienic elements. From such a study they may return to the consideration of the rest with a new confidence, and enter much encouraged upon the investigations of pure hygiene. Need I say more to recommend the latter to the amateur? It is unnecessary, if he has bought my book: he has then only to read on. But if he is still in doubt, let him consider the following argument. We are born not without a purpose. Part of the end of our existence is held to be, that we may serve our Maker by doing good to our fellow-creatures, and, through DIVERSITIES OF CONSTITUTION. 17 our exertions and example, advance the cause of know- ledge, morality, and religion, and make those around us happy, and by these means ourselves. If this be so, it surely must be our duty to study and learn and practise the means of preserving health, without which our exer- tions may be crippled at the outset of life, and years of the valuable service expected of us be utterly frustrated. Nor may such care be ever relaxed; there is a resiliency in the frame which seems often to defy noxious impres- sions or the abuse of our strength; but this is in seeming only; for no such impression is made on us, no strain •given to the health, but its effect remains, and sooner or later tells to our detriment. So must we, in the true per- formance of our duty, live constantly by sanatary rule and system. It is true that there are differences among men —that some have extraordinary strength and endurance, and that others are born weak. But this reflection only makes out the field of necessary inquiry to be so much the larger, as we have to study, not general rules alone, but their adaptations to our.own peculiar needs. Every one has some vague ideas on this subject. Ac- cordingly, proverbial wisdom has declared that, at the age of forty, a man must be either a fool or a physician; implying, that if he has common powers of observation, there must have been forced upon him, towards the mid- dle of life, a knowledge of what things generally suit or impair his health, and in what his constitution differs from that of others. I think it may be of use preliminarily to sketch the leading forms of diversity of constitution and health which are noticed in our countrymen, to help my reader to place himself initiatively in his proper niche in the hygeian scale. 18 INTRODUCTION. Diversities of constitution (excluding from among their elements disease, but not the tendency to it) may be re- ferred to three natural divisions,—Temperament, Habit, Diathesis. By temperament I intend to express the ideas usually conveyed by the term; and in the use of the words habit and diathesis, it will be found that I only differ from custom in restricting each to one of several meanings, in which they have hitherto been indiscrimi- nately employed. I. TEMPERAMENT. By Temperaments are meant certain conjunctions of* peculiarities of mind and body, compatible with perfect health and ordinary duration of existence; which are born with the individual, but are capable of being height- ened or diminished through the influence of external cir- cumstances ; and which, when disease is excited in the frame, impart to it a bias. The elements, in which the distinction of temperaments has been sought, are three: external physical character, mental disposition or cast of thought and temper, pro- clivity to certain forms of bodily disorder. Of these ele- ments the least certain is mental disposition. The mind depends for the manifestation of its powers upon the brain, and every variety of brain is met with in every tempera- ment. Nevertheless it appears to be true, that indepen- dently of what appear to be the native force and consti- tution of the mind, a character of vivacity or sluggish- ness, of mutableness or constancy, and the like, appears to be superadded by temperament. Proclivity to disease becomes, on a different ground, an inadequate criterion of temperament; it requires fitting TEMPERAMENT. 19 circumstances to develop it, and when" it is indisputably manifested, the subject of it is already removed from the province which we are now considering. The principal criterion of temperament is therefore to be looked for in external physical appearance. The leading varieties of temperament which are dis- tinguishable in this country, may be described as the mixed or equal, the sanguine, the lymphatic, the bilious, the nervous. Some may think it would be more philosophical to con- sider those only as primary temperaments which have an element in excess. But the Greeks had their temperate temperament; and when there are four elements always co-existing, it is not illogical to treat as primary varieties their five simplest combinations; namely, one for the union of the four in equal proportions, and one for the predominance of each. The reader is to bear in mind that for one instance that occurs exemplifying either of these varieties purely, there are forty-nine which are composite, combining one or more prominent characteristics of the others. It is likewise to be understood that each temperament is more or less strongly modified by sex and age. Or, to state the difference relating to sex more justly, it should be affirmed that each temperament has a softer or rougher cast,—a masculine or feminine character,—which are commonly appropriately distributed to men and women; but not invariably. A temperament with a strong cast of effeminacy is sometimes met with in men ;* and a mascu- * James the First was singularly effeminate; he could not behold a drawn sword without shuddering: this and other traits in his character, exemplifying the distinction drawn in the text, are pointedly stated by D'lsraeli, in his Curiosities of Literature. 20 INTRODUCTION. line quality in women. This error of cast of tempera- ment I have known in several instances. 1. The mixed or equal temperament is that in which no physical element predominates, in which the greatest soundness of constitution or power of resisting the greatest variety of morbific impressions exists; and to which, as might be expected, the highest physical and mental de- velopment is congenial. This temperament, in England, presents the following physical character. The eyes gray, or gray mingled with a shade of brown or blue. The hair soft, flowing, of different shades of brown, the eyes sometimes a deep blue, with dark eye-brows and hair, sometimes a dark hazel. The complexion in women almost fair, with a colour either fixed or changing. In men the complexion colouring only with exercise, otherwise not pale, but fresh, browning readily on exposure to the sun. The body capable of great endurance, mostly neither spare nor large; not easily reduced to the former condition, nor prone, except in age, to become, unwieldy; capable of the highest development of muscular strength: in women often combining the finest perfection of shape and fea- ture. The ordinary mental characteristics (if these remarks are not too fanciful) are a disposition grave but cheerful, often joined with a quick perception of humour, and touched with liveliness of fancy; the understanding often vigorous, the judgment sound; the character well disposed towards great and continually renewed exertion. Lord Bacon seems to have contemplated the prevalence of some such temperament as I have described under this head, when he speaks of "Eyes somewhat large, and the circle inclined to greenness, senses not too quick, the pulse TEMPERAMENT. 21 in youth slow, toward old age quicker," among the prog- nostics of long life. 2. The sanguine temperament is characterized by a fair complexion with colour, the eyes blue, the hair red, or brown with a shade of red or yellow, auburn or golden; in men the complexion ruddy, reddening upon exposure to the sun. The frame, with indulgence, liable to become large: with habits of bodily exercise, susceptible of the strongest muscular development. The vascular system preponderating gives this temperament its character. The pulse is strong and often frequent, the circulation vigorous. In one of the greatest geniuses in his branch of art that have adorned this country, in whose constitution the sanguine temperament prevails, the pulse, remarkable for strength and regularity, is rarely under a hundred, and after dinner commonly rises to a hundred and ten, or a hundred and twenty. The mental features of the sanguine temperament are, a disposition ardent, hasty, and impetuous; the spirits high and buoyant; a capacity for intellectual exertion of the strongest kind, or highest flight, but often capricious and ill-sustained: although excitable, this temperament is generally combined with less sensibility than the mixed, or the nervous. The morbid tendencies peculiar to the sanguine temperament are all inflammatory; reduction by bleeding is borne to a greater extent by persons of this temperament than by others. 3. The lymphatic [serous, pituitous, phlegmatic, or leucophlegmatic] temperament is characterized physically by a light complexion, inclined to white rather than fair, the hair sandy, the eyes a bluish gray, the eyebrows and eyelashes inclined to white. The circulation tranquil or 22 INTRODUCTION. languid. The frame often large; the muscles large, but deficient in strength; the person disposed to fulness. The terms by which the temperament is designated are to be viewed as entirely hypothetical. It has been already observed that every variety of mind may be combined with every temperament. But the prevalent disposition of this temperament is towards in- dolence and inexertion: the temper unmoved and impas- sive. I think that talent in persons of this temperament, when brought into activity, works easily; the judgment is cool, and the head clear. The diseases to which persons of this temperament are characteristically obnoxious are, indigestion, and such as flow from want of power of the circulation, passive en- largement of the heart, chronic glandular tumours, a varicose state of the veins, &c. Persons of this tempera- ment are inferior in stamina to those of the mixed, the sanguine, or the melancholic: and their ' health is liable to be injured by depletion. 4. The bilious temperament derives its physical cha- racter from redundancy of bile in the system. Hence the complexion is dark, with a tinge of yellow; the eyes are dark; the hair black, strong, and coarse, either lank and straight, or crisp and curling: the circulation is slow, and the quantity of blood less than in the sanguine tem- perament: the frame is spare; the temper serious, the feelings not promptly excitable. The common form of indisposition is bilious disorder, headache, loss of appetite, nausea, bile upon the stomach, supervening upon slight causes, physical or mental. The constitutional stamina are strong, and not easily exhausted. Depletion by bleeding is not prejudicial; but the effect TEMPERAMENT. 23 required is generally obtained by a moderate abstraction of blood. The character naturally grave, and although strong, yet without elasticity, is liable to fall into melan- choly. There are two varieties of the bilious temperament, which I am induced to mention from the familiarity of the terms which express them. Neither, however, as I shall define them, are frequent varieties in this country. One is the choleric, the other the melancholic tempera- ment. The former combines with the bilious, a larger dose of the nervous temperament; the latter of the san- guine. The former, with a complexion like the bilious, displays greater irritability and less strength of fibre. The latter, distinguished by a complexion darker but fresher, the veins large, the pulse strong but slow, is characterized by its capability of physical endurance, and by the mental energy frequently co-existing with it. 5. The nervous temperament. The sanguine, the.phleg- matic, the bilious temperaments, are distinguishable by external appearance; and if the mixed or equal tempera- ment is not equally salient, it requires no length of ob- servation to determine its existence by outward physical signs alone. The marks of the nervous temperament are less constant and obvious. This temperament, the off- spring at once and parent of refinement, is a modification of each or either of the rest, as the mixed consists of the predominant characteristics of the other four, attempered and subdued. The nervous temperament commonly pre- sents the general outward habitudes of the mixed, next in frequency of the sanguine, mingling with each an air of delicacy and grace not its own, joined with a high tone of feeling; and a natural justness of perception. 24 INTRODUCTION. The circulation in persons of the nervous temperament is easily excitable, but wants power. The pulse is gene- rally frequent, without strength: the action of the heart is unequal, and easily affected by accidental circumstances. The strength and weakness of such persons equally ap- pear greater than they are. The tendency of this tem- perament is to exhaust itself, and to use its resources with waste of nervous power. Lowering such a temperament by depletion is injurious. A remark, which is of the more importance, that the state to which the nervous temperament is reduced, when over- wrought, often closely resembles threatenings of disease in vital organs, that in other temperaments are relieved by bleeding. If one should attempt to describe the prevailing fea- tures of the inhabitants of the continent of Europe by the proportions which they display of the temperaments above described, the following, perhaps, might come near to their average of physical character. The Italians, as compared with the English, are free from any share of the lymphatic temperament. Their olive or lurid complexion is based on the bilious or me- lancholic, with which their energetic feelings correspond; their quick sensibility and vivacity indicate a consider- able participation in the nervous temperament. The Spaniards have probably less of the nervous tem- perament, while in other respects they agree with the Italians. The Germans, with their inertia of industry, and ex- traordinary capacity of application, reflective, imagina- tive, rather than of deep or quick sensibility, exhibit in their minds, as in their persons, the conjunction of the lymphatic and sanguineous temperaments. HABIT. 25 The Dutch present the nearest approach to the lym- phatic temperament. Besides the pure lymphatic, how- ever, they often exhibit the same character in two com- binations,—the one with the sanguine, the other with the choleric. The French have little of the phlegmatic temperament; the nervous, the choleric, the sanguine, combine to form the leading elements of their physical and mental consti- tutions. The citizens of the United States come nearest to the English; but they lack of the mixed or equal temperament its proportion of the sanguine. II. HABIT. Habits are conditions of the body, brought on by manner of living; which are favoured by temperament, one temperament disposing towards one habit of body, another to another; but which are distinct from tempera- ment ; which again dispose the frame to disease, but that general, not specific; and which, though they lead to dis- ease, and aggravate it when present, are distinct from disease. The frame may, for example, be either full or spare. Indolence and indulgence may give volume and mass of fluid and solid to the same body, which, under active ex- ertion, and in the midst of hardship and privation, would have been spare and attenuated. Independently, again, of fulness and spareness, and combined with either, the body may exhibit either a sthenic* or a relaxed condition. The body may be either * 2&tvo(, strength. Sthenic, strong, rigid. 3 26 INTRODUCTION. full and sthenic, or full and relaxed; or spare and sthenic, or spare and relaxed. The term plethora is commonly used to express the full and sthenic condition of the frame; it is most natural to the sanguine temperament, but often occurs in the mixed. Cribb, the pugilist, as I recollect to have seen him fifteen years ago, well exemplified this condition in a person of the latter physical character. The person large, the countenance full and disposed to general colour, darkened to lividity on stooping; the breath short upon exertion. In such persons the body and mind are often indolent; the sleep is long and profound, and not proportionately refreshing. The prominent feature is* excess in the quan- tity of the circulation, leading to hemorrhages, inflamma- tions, apoplexy. A common spontaneous mode of relief consists in severe but regular attacks of gout. The proper remedy is abstinence and regular exercise, not suddenly, but gradually adopted. When plethora occurs in the bilious temperament, which is prone to spareness of habit, it does not show itself by material increase of volume in the frame; but the pulse is full and strong, the eye suffused, the complexion darker, and headache and bilious disorder more frequently expe- rienced. The pulse, however, it is to be remarked, is not a cer-. tain measure of this condition of the system. Sooner or later the organs of the circulation are liable to be obstructed by the quantity of fluid they contain, the heart to be un- equal to, and to give way from, the task; the pulse to be slow, laboured, unequal, rising upon depletion. Fulness with relaxation ordinarily shows itself by re- dundancy of fat. The circulation is not loaded, for the HABIT. 27 superfluous nutriment has this ready vent. Accordingly, the system will generally ill bear bleeding in persons of this habit; they are full, but weak. Lowering in any mode, except by exercise, (or unless their diet has pre- viously been immoderate,) endangers the health. The disposition to form fat, once established, is disposed to perpetuate itself, and so draws upon the circulation, im- poverished by injudicious means of reduction. No change in the constitution is to be viewed with more suspicion than sudden and rapid increase in fat, between twenty and forty years of age. Such an increase of the frame, unless it happen to be reduced by altered habits of living, or some spontaneous change in the nutrition of the sys- tem, commonly leads to febrile or inflammatory illness. It is to be observed that fatness, though commonly the sign of a relaxed habit, yet not unfrequently co-exists with plethora. It again occasionally happens that ful- ness with relaxation, even in a sanguine temperament, is not attended with considerable obesity; the alternative may be spontaneous, profuse, and exhausting perspira- tion. Fulness in the lymphatic temperament takes the form of relaxation. Persons of this temperament often spread and become large. Lord Bacon observes, " corpulency in youth foreshows a short life; in age it is a thing more indifferent." In youth it marks a disposition to fulness of habit, and co- existent weakness of stamina. In advanced life it mea- sures only the disproportion between exercise and diet, and is often a salutary vent for excess of the latter. Nevertheless, it is a better sign, when, as age advances, the frame decreases in fulness. 28 INTRODUCTION. A spare habit, maintained by intellectual and bodily activity, short of over-fatigue and exhaustion, consti- tutes the wholesomest condition of the economy. It is met with in persons of the mixed temperament in its most faultless character. It is seen in the sanguine and the bilious, but then it is less exempt from the diseases to which each of the latter is prone. A spare habit with relaxation is the result of excess and exhaustion, of anxiety, mental depression, and dis- tress. It is the measure of a weakness of the frame, which, unless the cause provoking it is removed, and the system allowed to recruit itself, threatens disease of the brain, of the heart, or of the lungs; palsy, angina, con- sumption. III. diathesis. Two principles have been already adverted to by which mental and physical constitution are modified. One, hereditary transmission, which determines tempera- ment. The other, the influence of mode of living, which determines habit. Either of these principles, again, may be the source of disease. Many persons are born with an hereditary disposition to disease. In some the dis- position prevails in a single organ. Either the brain, or the stomach, or the lungs, or any other organ, may be hereditarily weak. Thus a tendency to insanity is found in one individual, a weak digestion in another, early failure of the teeth in a third, a tendency to be- come blind in a fourth, to deafness in a fifth. But there are certain morbid dispositions which are general, and seem rooted, not in one organ of the body, but in the entire frame; which may not only, being in- DIATHESIS. 29 herited, be heightened by accidental circumstances, but possibly may be induced by a concurrence of causes in a previously sound constitution. These dispositions to general disease, whether founded in original and inherit- ed weakness or deprivation of the system, or brought on by unwholesome living, constitute diathesis. They are distinguished from the diseases to which they lead, by co-existing for a part or the whole of life with seem- ing health. Where they are hereditary, the infant may be born with every appearance of health; but after a longer or shorter interval, the disease of which the sys- tem contained the germs manifests itself, partially or universally, mildly or severely. There are three diatheses,—that of gout, the stru- mous, and the cancerous. 1. The Grouty diathesis.—This disposition does not manifest itself by any unvarying outward signs. The gouty diathesis, if inherited, sometimes leads to attacks of gout in childhood, often about the age of twenty, oftener later in life. From forty to forty-two years of age is the commonest period for the first mani- festation of gout. The causes of gout, where the diathe- sis is not inherited, are all and any of the influences which tend at once to heat and to exhaust the body. Upon the whole, mental influences are more deleterious than physical ones. Or the worst combination of all is recourse to physical indulgence short of excess, to the temporary renovation to be obtained by good society and good cheer, as a means which for a time upholds the strength, when at the same time the mind is intensely wrought and strained by the contention of the world, by 3* 30 INTRODUCTION. ambition, success, anxiety, disappointment; accordingly, not two in five escape gout of those who lead a life of high exertion in England. The first attack of gout is commonly a specific inflamma- tion of one of the smaller joints. Then other joints, and almost every organ, are occasionally liable to be involved in the disease, either in some form of chronic pain, or by sudden congestive metastasis. This disease, from its frequency and the variety of character it assumes, is one of the most interesting to the physician. As the dia- thesis is based in exhaustion and debility, the mode of combating it must not be by lowering means. The treatment should at once cool the blood and strengthen the system. Before the invention of hydropathy no ade- quate means existed of fulfilling those indications. 2. The Strumous* diathesis displays itself under two different and opposite physical characters. In one, and the more frequent variety, the child pre- sents unusual delicacy; the skin is clear, fine, transpa- rent ; the frame slight; the mind quick, forward, intelli- gent, touched with a high degree of sensibility and gentleness; with this the skin, for the most part, remark- ably fair, the veins showing through it; the cheek with a delicate but brilliant colour: the upper lip is commonly full; and, as another trivial peculiarity, the ends of the fingers are observed to be broad, and the nails bend over and are convex at their extremities. With the same character of delicacy, a dark transparent skin and dark eyes are occasionally joined, equally marking the stru- mous diathesis; the white part of the eye, glistening and * Struma; struere, to build; from the tumours which it causes. Syn. scrofula. DIATHESIS. 31 pearl-coloured, has a lustrous appearance; the mind quick and intelligent, as in the first variety. In the opposite form of the strumous diathesis the skin is thick, pale or dark; the eyes gray or brown; the mind sluggish; and the perceptions blunt and slow- In this variety softening of the bones, or deformity from rickets, is often met with. Sometimes without deformi- ty, when grown up, the frame is stunted, the head large; in childhood the features are often unpleasing, unequal; the ears large, the eyebrows thick, the eyes like an adult's, but dull and inexpressive. Children in whom the diathesis is strong, do not fail to display early threatenings of strumous disease, either in a weak digestion, furred tongue, and tumid stomach, or in chronic inflammation of the eyes, or in ulcers of the eyelids, or behind the ears, or in glandular swellings in the neck. From birth to advanced age, persons of the strumous diathesis are in danger of scrofula developing itself in one or more organs or textures of the frame. In early childhood the glandular system and the bones, from boy- hood to the age of five-and-twenty, the lungs are the parts the most liable to be invaded. But every part of the frame, from the integuments to the innermost organs, at every age, may fall into strumous action. From the age of thirty upwards, this morbid disposition declines in strength; it remains liable, nevertheless, to be re-invi- gorated by every accident of life that tends to debilitate the system. It is in childhood and youth, when the frame is ex- panding, and growth in progress, that the diathesis has the greatest force. The causes which heighten it and 32 INTRODUCTION. excite scrofulous disease, are insufficient or unwhole- some nutriment, and exposure to cold and damp. The injudicious management of the food of weakly children, which is next to universal, concurs with the vicissitudes peculiar to our climate, to render scrofula rife in this country. But with care and observation, the diet of a child may be accurately suited to its wants, and to the powers of its digestion; and the effects of our climate may be mitigated by avoiding exposure to its inclemency, and by clothing, or by temporarily quitting it for a warmer. Upon these subjects, some directions will be given in the subsequent chapters under the heads of Diet, Clothing, Air. Where the strumous diathesis is forcible, it betrays itself by the external features which have been described. Where it is slight, some milder form of scrofulous action often gives the first warning of danger. The means of exploration and our knowledge of pathological anatomy are now so much enlarged, that when suspicion is awa- kened, it is generally possible to determine whether or not the affection already exists in the form of disease. A moral feature, peculiar to this diathesis, is a certain elasticity of spirits, and a confidence against the mortal disease which threatens, that if it does not contribute to retard its progress, yet brightens the declining hours. 3. The Cancerous Diathesis. The cancerous diathesis is probably always present from birth, but the disease much oftener occurs in persons whose parents have not had it, than the reverse. ■ The diathesis is liable to be brought into action at any period of life, from childhood to old age. It rarely breaks into disease before the age of forty, and most frequently be- DIATHESIS. 33 tween forty and sixty: but I have seen visceral cancer at twelve, and glandular cancer at sixteen. The causes which mature the diathesis, or cause it to ripen into disease, are frequently mechanical, such as a blow accidentally received. The use of parts, more than their disuse, renders them susceptible of cancer. Mental distress and anxiety, I have a superstition, promote its occurrence. There is no external physical character which dis- tinguishes the cancerous diathesis. I have seen the dis- ease manifest itself in persons of every temperament. But I think that those of a light complexion are less fre- quently attacked with cancer than those whose skin is darker;—dark eyebrows, and gray eyes, with an inner circle of hazel, and dark-brown hair, are perhaps the commonest features. I might add two other diatheses to the list, the scorbutic and the syphilitic; for both are liable to be hereditary. But it would be trenching too far upon the domain of Pathology. ( 34 ) CHAPTER I. OF DIET. Dr. Arnott gives the following amusing summary of the powers of the steam-engine, and of the objects upon which they have been employed. "In its present perfect state, the steam-engine ap- pears a thing almost endowed with intelligence. It re- gulates with perfect accuracy and uniformity the num- ber of its strokes in a given time, and counts and re- cords them moreover, to tell how much work it has done, as a clock records the beats of its pendulum; it regulates the quantity of steam admitted to work, the briskness of the fire, the supply of water to the boiler, the supply of coals to the fire; it opens and shuts its valves with absolute precision as to time and manner:— it oils its joints; it takes out any air that may acciden- tally enter any part that should be vacuous; and when any thing goes wrong which it cannot of itself rectify, it warns its attendants by ringing a bell; yet, with all these talents, and even when possessing the power of a hundred horses, it is obedient to the hand of a child: it never tires, and wants no sleep; it is not subject to malady, when originally well made; and only refuses to work when worn out with age; it is equally active in all climates, and will do work of any kind;—it is a water- pumper, a miner; a sailor, a cotton-spinner, a weaver, a blacksmith, a miller, &c.; and a small engine in the character of a steam-pony may be seen dragging after DIET. 35 it on a railroad a hundred tons of merchandise, or a re- giment of soldiers, with greater speed than that of our fleetest coaches. It is the king of machines, and a per- manent realization of the genii of eastern fable, whose supernatural powers were occasionally at the command of man." In order, however, that the steam-engine may perform these wonders, and work in any of the capacities which have been enumerated, two things are necessary. The engine must be fed; and as its parts become worn by use, they must be repaired. It must be supplied with coal, wood, charcoal, or other combustible matter, and water, which it converts into power; and when the ma- chinery is injured, what is imperfect must be changed and replaced. The machinery of the animal frame works under the same conditions. In order that it may energize it must have food; and that it may not sensibly be deteriorated by use, it must undergo constant repairs. But there is this difference in the two cases. In the animal frame, the source both of its energies and of its structural re- storation is one and the same. Its food furnishes both. The blood, which is formed from our food, flowing to the brain, and the muscles, and the stomach, not merely maintains their power, but in addition carries to the same parts, and to all the rest, materials for their reno- vation. The supply of food to the steam-engine has one pur- pose only to effect. It is, again, administered with ab- solute precision as to time and quantity: for it is mea- eured out by those who understand the construction and working of the machinery, who know its wants exactly, 36 DIET. and have no bias from prejudice or inclination to supply them otherwise than with rigorous exactness. The food of human beings, more complicated in its objects, is meted out under much less favourable circum- stances. The party who apportions it, for the most part, does not understand the action or the wants of the machine which he undertakes to supply; and what is more, for a long period is not only incurious on the sub- ject, but often disposed to repel any information which may fall in his way. His motive for conveying aliment into his inside is of a totally different complexion to a calculated forethought of the needs of his economy; his exclusive object is to please two senses, and to gratify two appetites;—perhaps he besides takes delight in the whirl into which the machinery is thrown by excess, that fills him with giddy transport, while it endangers and undermines his existence. Well, indeed, may Dr. Beau- mont say, " In the present state of civilized society, with the provocatives of the culinary art, and the incentives of highly-seasoned food, brandy, and wines, the tempta- tions to excess in the indulgence of the table are rather too strong to be resisted by poor human nature." I shall endeavour, in the present chapter, to explain the principles by which our diet should be regulated. Accordingly, I shall treat—of the nature of digestion;— of the nature of the various substances used as food;— of the qualities which render food wholesome and nutri- tive ;—of the circumstances which strengthen or weaken digestion;—of rules for the frequency, quality, and quantity of our meals, adapted to different periods of life. It is not the young and the healthy, I am afraid, who DIGESTION. 37 "will yet profit by these remarks. But every one who has reached the middle of life must have had occasion to observe how much his comfort and his powers of exer- tion depend upon the state of his stomach, and will have lost some of his original indifference to rules of diet. Such rules must especially interest those who have the care of others,—of children with delicate health,—of the aged who have ceased to exert their former care and observation of themselves. And if the principles have already been laid down by many writers, no one, it is probable, can attentively reconsider this subject, without seeing some of its bearings more justly and usefully than his predecessors have done. I. DIGESTION. Digestion is the commencement of assimilation, or of that process by which, in animals, their food is by suc- cessive mutations converted into a liquid that is to cir- culate as a living and vitalizing agent through their frame. In human beings, assimilation comprises the following steps. The solid food is bruised in the mouth, and mixed with the saliva; it is then swallowed, and conveyed along the oesophagus into the stomach, where it is altered into a uniform pulpy mass, termed chyme;* from the sto- mach it passes into the small intestines, where it is mixed with the bile and other fluids, which cause the chylef or recrementitious part to separate from it: the chyle is ab- sorbed by the lacteals, and transmitted by them to the veins; mingling with the blood in the veins,-the chyle * Chyme, %vuv, j'undere, a fusion. t Chyle, %u1lqs, a juice, or liquid. 4 38 DIET. is then passed through the vessels of the lungs, and aerated. The process of assimilation is then complete, and the blood so obtained from the food is fit to sustain life. Of these changes, there is one which, in a popular treatise like the present, exclusively merits attention. This is the alteration which the food undergoes in the stomach:—its conversion into chyme. Mr. Abernethy emphatically called this Digestion; that is to say, he restricted the term digestion to this function. What precedes this change is mechanical, and a mechanical substitute may be found for it. The steps in assimilation which follow this change, if it has been perfectly executed, and the meal converted into proper chyme, are unfelt by us, executed independently of volition, and certain, if the system is in health, to be accomplished properly. The stomach is the seat of hunger; we take food to allay its cravings, which are found to be equally appeased, whether the food is swallowed in the ordinary manner, or directly introduced into the organ. This fact was estab- lished by experiments in the case of Alexis St. Martin, of which Dr. Beaumont availed himself with so much in- dustry and judgment. A permanent aperture had been made into this person's stomach by a gunshot wound in the side, which allowed its interior to be seen, its contents to be taken out and examined,- and foreign matters to be directly conveyed into it. The following are among the experiments adverted to. " To ascertain whether the sense of hunger would be allayed without the food being passed through the oeso- phagus, St. Martin fasted from breakfast-time till four o'clock, P; M., and became quite hungry. I then put in DIGESTION. 39 at the aperture, three and a half drachms of lean boiled beef. The sense of hunger immediately subsided, and Btopped the croaking noise caused by the motion of the air in the stomach and the intestines, peculiar to him since the wound, and almost always observed when the stomach is empty. z "At one o'clock, another day, St. Martin complaining} of being quite hungry, I put into the stomach, at the aperture, twelve raw oysters, more than middling size. The sensation was allayed, and the appetite satisfied, the same as if swallowed." Consistently with these curious facts, it is well known that the natural disposition of a very hungry person is to chew hastily and imperfectly, and to bolt his food. He is not satisfied till the food reaches his stomach. Food, how- ever, when insufficiently masticated, and swallowed in large and hard masses, is liable to injure the oesophagus in going down, and when it reaches the stomach, is diffi- cult of digestion. One purpose of the senses of taste and flavour which we enjoy, is to induce us to continue com- minuting the food in the mouth, and bruising it as long as its taste and flavour last: while we are gratifying these senses, the food acquires the requisite consistence for easy swallowing and easy digestion. The time gained by this process prevents the stomach being too rapidly filled, and allows the appetite to be satiated before the stomach is overloaded. The substances introduced into the stomach are in reference to their consistence either innutritious liquids, or liquids with food mixed, or solids. The first are quickly absorbed and carried out of the stomach; the second undergo a separation of the liquid; after which the solider part, like ordinary solid food, is digested. 40 DIET. The process of digestion is strictly chemical. It is the result of the action of a solvent fluid upon the aliment, and takes place almost equally well without as within the body, if the proper temperature is maintained. The solvent fluid is poured out by the lining membrane of the stomach, as the perspiration pours off the surface of the body. It is called the gastric* juice. It consists of water holding in solution free muriatic and acetic acids, phosphates and muriates with bases of potassa and soda, magnesia and lime, and an animal matter soluble in cold water, but insoluble in hot. It is clear and transpa- rent, inodorous, a little saltish, and very perceptibly acid. It does not exist constantly, or accumulate in the stomach: but it is only secreted when wanted, or when the stomach is excited by the introduction of new matter into it. ■ The solvent power of the gastric juice out of the body was ascertained by Spallanzani, and Mr. Hunter dis- covered the remarkable phenomenon, that it would even digest, after death, the stomach which formed it. Dr. Beaumont, by many experiments, has confirmed the con- clusions of Spallanzani. In some of the most valuable which he narrates, the " changes in the same meal were observed, while part of it was undergoing digestion in the stomach, part in a phial of gastric juice obtained at the same time from the same stomach, and maintained at the temperature of 100° by immersion in hot water. The effect of the gastric juice on the piece of meat intro- duced into the stomach, was exactly similar to that in the phial, only more rapid (from the addition doubtless of more gastric juice) after the first half hour, and sooner * raexriQ, the stomach; gastric, belonging to the stomach. 4 FOOD. 41 completed. Digestion commenced on, and was confined to, the surface in both situations. Agitation accelerated the solution in the phial, by removing the coat that was digested on the surface, enveloping the remainder of the meat in the gastric juice, and giving the fluid access to the undigested portion." The dissolved food, or the chyme, has the appearance of a thick homogeneous liquid, the colour of which par- takes slightly of the colour of the food eaten. It is always of a lightish or grayish colour; varying in its shade and appearance from that of cream, to a grayish or dark-coloured gruel. Chyme from butter, fat meats, oil, resembles rich cream. All chyme is acid. The perfectn^ss of digestion (the food being digestible, and the stomach in health,) is dependent on the quantity of the gastric juice; if the quantity of the latter is pro- portionate to the meal which has been taken, the whole is changed into chyme. If the quantity of gastric juice is insufficient, a residue of undigested food remains in the stomach, and becomes a source of irritation and de- rangement of function. It is not necessary that the sto- mach should be emptied of one meal before another is introduced into it. The presence of a second meal, crude and fresh, does not necessarily disturb the digestion of the first. If the stomach is in full vigour, and can fur- nish the absolute quantity of gastric juice required for both, both meals will undergo together harmonious diges- tion. II. OF FOOD. Our food, it has been already remarked, consists of solid and liquid,—the former intended to be changed into chyme, the latter to be absorbed at once, and carried 4. * 42 DIET. into the circulation, to make up for the waste of fluids which continually takes place. The distinction, however, is not a rigorous one. The food which we introduce into the stomach is a very soft and moist solid, either from its own nature, or from having been mixed with the sali- va or other liquids; and the liquid which we drink for the primary object of allaying thirst, is often qualified by the addition of nutritive matter, or of some stimulating principle. The substances which we consume as food are borrowed from the animal or vegetable kingdoms. Their essential ingredients are certain chemical principles, fibrin, albu- men, gelatin, oil, gluten, sugar, singly or in combina- tion. Different as- are these elements, ,it is probable, that the ultimate principle of nutriment is always the , same, from whatever source obtained. It was said by Hippocrates that there are many kinds of aliment, but that there is at the same time but one aliment. Nothing has been proved in modern physiology or chemistry to in- validate this opinion. Dr. Franklin told Dr. Stark that, when a journeyman printer, he lived for a fortnight on bread and water, at the rate of ten-pennyworth of bread per week, and that he found himself stout and hearty with this diet. *■ Sir John Pringle told the same author that he knew a / lady, then ninety years of age, who ate only the pure fat ^ of meat. An Englishman supposes that wheaten bread and a large proportion of animal food are necessary for strength. A labouring Irishman or Scotchman would probably stand up for the excellence of a small portion of animal food with plenty of potatoes and oatmeal. The Lapland- F00D« 43 ers are a meagre race, living exclusively on animal food; the Hindoos, a fine race of men, feed on vegetables alone. Facts so opposite, while they strengthen the original conclusion of Hippocrates, do not render the analysis of the materia alimentaria the less interesting or important. It is certain that if all nourishment be one, it yet may be obtained from some sources with greater facility, and less exhaustion of the digestive powers, than from others: and that, although the stomach may accommodate itself, under the stern discipline of necessity, to less wholesome diet, and nations survive that use it, population is, never- theless, checked, and life abbreviated, through the influ- ence of this cause. There are two modes of pursuing the inquiry; the first being the comparison as to longevity and physical strength of the inhabitants of those coun- tries in which opposite kinds of food are used; the second a collation of the observations which, under different circumstances, have been made in our own country, as to the effects of different modes of diet on individuals. On the present occasion, I shall enter upon the second branch alone of this inquiry. We may commence with examining the nature of the different substances which we consume as food, and their properties in reference to digestion, and the nourishment of the frame. The following classification of the articles of food I have adopted from Dr. Paris's excellent Treatise on Diet. I. Fibrinous Aliments. Comprehending the flesh and blood of various animals, especially such as have arrived at puberty; venison, beef, mutton, hare. II. Albuminous. Eggs: certain animal matter. III. Gelatinous Aliments. The flesh of young ani- mals: veal, chicken, calf's-foot, certain fishes. 44 DIET. IV. Fatty and oily Aliments. Animal fats, oils, and butter: cocoa, &c.: ducks, pork, geese, eels, &c.■ V. Caseous Aliments. The different kinds of milk, cheese, &c. VI. Farinaceous Aliments. Wheat, barley, oats, rice, potato, sago, arrow-root, &c. VII. Mucilaginous Aliments. Carrots, turnips, as- paragus, cabbage, &c. VIII. Sweet Aliments. The different kinds of sugar, figs, dates, &c.: carrots. IX. Acidulous Aliments. Oranges, apples, and other acescent fruits. Condiments consist of salt, vinegar, pepper, and the like; which will afterwards be more particularly adverted to. Our drinks consist, I. Of water, II. Of vegetable infusions. III. Of fermented liquors, wine, beer, &c. IV. Of ardent spirits. Three properties must be combined in food to render it wholesome, and adequate to maintain the vigour of the stomach and of the entire system: THESE ARE, DIGESTIBILITY, NUTRITIVENESS, AND A CER- TAIN POWER OF EXCITING OR STIMULATING DIGESTION. I have placed digestibleness first, as it is evidently the essential condition. However nutritive the food, if the stomach cannot digest it, it cannot go td*nourishment • nor is this merely a negative result. Food that is not digested produces disorder of the stomach, and derange- ment of the entire frame. If a person convalescent from protracted and exhausting illness, on the first return of FOOD. 45 appetite eat a meal of beef-steaks and porter, instead of his being strengthened, vomiting, derangement of the circulation, and a relapse into illness, are the conse- quences. If in health a person consumes a meal, part of which is not digested, he is liable to parallel consequences, sometimes trivial, but to which it has happened that life has been the forfeit. Some foods are naturally, that is, chemically, slower of digestion than others; vegetable food than animal food, oily substances than those which are not so, gelatinous and albuminous than fibrinous. But a great deal de- pends upon the mechanical condition of the aliment. If it is tender, of a loose texture, easily divisible, the gas- tric juice, aided by the motion of the stomach, quickly penetrates and rapidly chymifies it. When, on the con- trary, food is hard and close-grained, it is proportionately difficult of digestion. The use of cookery, independently of the gratification of the palate, and the variety of tastes and flavours which it produces, is to render food both chemically and me- chanically more digestible. "It appears, from my ex- periments," says Mr. Hunter, "that boiled, and roasted, and even putrid meat, is easier of digestion than raw." By cookery, meat is rendered shorter, or its texture more separable, than when raw; and when the process is the wholesomest, the oil is in part extracted. The whole- somest cookery is broiling; in which the portion of meat is of no great thickness, and its fibre is cut across. The action of heat upon the divided fibre and the connecting tissue, renders the texture more penetrable, and from the cut surface the melted fat easily exudes. Roasting is next to broiling; not so wholesome, because the con- 46 DIET. traction of the surface compresses and hardens the inte- rior of the meat, and the oil has a less free escape. t Baking is inferior to roasting, as the want of motion and the closeness of the oven contribute to detain the oil. Frying is unwholesome, inasmuch as it adds oil, and that partly in its worst state, the empyreumatic. Boiling has the advantage of extracting the oil from meat, but it gives hardness by coagulating the albumen. By the process of stewing this evil is avoided; but, on the other hand, much that is nutritious is parted with in exchange for the mechanical increase of digestibility. Vegetable food, however, is wonderfully benefited by boiling; most vegetables would be wholly indigestible but for the soft- ening which they thus attain. The most digestible food, to a stomach in perfect vi- gour, is venison; its age makes it fibrinous; its texture is naturally not so close-grained as that of beef and mut- ton, and the period during which it is hung gives it ad- ditional tenderness. Next to venison probably follow grouse, at least in weather which allows the bird to be kept sufficiently long. All game has relatively this looseness of texture; so a pheasant or partridge is more digestible than a turkey or barn-door fowl. Facts of this description, which Dr. Beaumont ascertained, are at variance with the opinions which for a long time held their ground. I am fully satisfied of their correctness by observations that I have had opportunities of making on the powers of weak stomachs. The length of time that adult game will keep, not only makes it tenderer, but likewise brings out its flavour, which tends in an- other way to promote digestion. Nothing is more tasteless than a pheasant cooked too soon, or has a finer FOOD. 47 flavour after hanging a proper length of time. No doubt this flavour, while it gratifies the palate, assists digestion, by sympathetically exciting the stomach. Albuminous food is easy of digestion, just in propor- tion to its mechanical condition. White of egg, which is nearly pure albumen, if taken into the stomach either very slightly or not at all coagulated, is perhaps as ra- pidly chymified as any article that we use for food. If previously formed into hard coagula, by heat or otherwise, and swallowed in large solid pieces, it experiences a very protracted digestion. The reason is intelligible enough. In the first case, the albumen coagulates in the stomach in a light, filmy, porous, semi-transparent, watery sub- stance, having been penetrated or infiltrated with the gastric juice, while it is yet fluid. In the second case, the gastric juice has to operate, not on the whole at once, but upon layer after layer of its surface. Minuteness of subdivision, such as protracted mastication produces, will therefore render albumen that has been coagulated again digestible. Eggs are most wholesome when lightly done, as by boiling from two minutes and a-half to three mi- nutes. Eggs when raw are laxative, when cooked hard the reverse. The coagulated yolk is often of great use to young children with weak insides. The flesh of young animals is less digestible than that of adult animals, which is attributed to its containing a larger portion of gelatin, and less fibrin. But jelly by itself, Dr. Beaumont found to be of quick and light di- gestion. Unlike albumen, gelatin is unsusceptible of co- agulation ; and it is probable that the gastric juice acts directly upon it in its soft, solid state. Broths and soups are difficult of digestion, if made a 48 DIET. meal of. In small quantity, they mingle with the other food, and do not disturb the process, being divided among and incorporated with the solid aliment. When the stomach has to operate upon a soup alone, it appears em- barrassed between the direct absorption of the liquid part, and the difficulty of acting upon the aliment so much di- luted. Digestion is slow; the superfluous liquid is tar- dily absorbed; and then only, the rest is chymified. Broth or soup may be rendered easily digestible by being thickened with any farinaceous substance; the superfluous water is then used in reducing the solid matter; bread eaten with every mouthful of soup answers as well. Bar- ley in broth contributes to the same end. The habitudes of the stomach in respect to broths and soups, appear to be very capricious. In health and strength, those articles are certainly indigestible unless qualified in the manner above described. On the other hand, after fatigue, or after medicine, or during a cold, good broth is as wholesome as it is refreshing. A cold that is not inflammatory increases the power of diges- tion. Fish, as it consists of many different kinds, presents every degree of digestibility. The most digestible is whiting boiled; broiled it is less so; (fried still less.) Haddock next, plain boiled, or broiled. Cod is richer and heavier, as are soles and turbot. Eels when stewed are, notwithstanding their richness, digestible. The patients in hospitals, when convalescent and indulged with the choice of food, commonly ask for and digest this dish. Perch is perhaps the most digestible river-fish. Salmon is not very digestible in the state in which it reaches the London market. The oil of its fat, which DIGESTIBLENESS OF FOOD. 49 * when fresh, forms a curd between the flakes, by keeping, becomes diffused through the fish, and imparts to it a richness which weak stomachs often cannot contend with. In its freshest state, the fish is different, and materially wholesomer. The mode of treating the fish, just caught, and the philosophy of the process, are thus clinically given by Sir Humphry Davy. " He is safe; we must now prepare him for the pot. Give him a stunning blow on the head to deprive him of sensation, and then make a transverse cut just below the gills, and crimp him by cutting to the bone on each side, so as almost to divide him into slices; and now hold him by the tail that he may bleed. There is a small spring, I see, close under that bank, which I dare say has the mean temperature of the atmosphere in this climate, and is much under 50°—place him there, and let him remain for ten minutes; then carry him to the pot, and before you put in a slice let the water and salt boil furiously, and give the water time to recover its heat before you throw in another, and so proceed with the whole fish; leave the head out, and throw in the thickest pieces first. "I am endeavouring to find a reason for the effect of crimping and cold in preserving the curd of fish. Have you ever thought on this subject? uHalieus. Yes: I conclude that the fat of the salmon between the flakes of the muscles is mixed with much al- bumen and gelatin, and is extremely liable to decom- pose, and by keeping it cool, the temperature is retarded; and by boiling the salt and water, which is of a higher temperature than that of common boiling water, the al- bumen is coagulated, and the curdiness preserved. The crimping, by preventing the irritability of the fibre from 5 50 DIET. being gradually exhausted, seems to preserve it so hard and fresh that it breaks under the teeth; and a fresh fish not crimped is generally tough."* Shell-fish is slow of digestion, but some more so than others; lobster than crab, crab than oysters, when the latter are eaten raw. Oysters when stewed or escalloped are rendered hard and less digestible. Oil is generally indigestible. This probably arises from the difficulty which a watery liquid, such as the gas- tric juice, has in penetrating it. It is the want of hete- rogeneous adhesion between the fluids which prevents the one from acting upon the other. The oil repels the water of the gastric juice. I believe, however, that oil in small quantity, or in minute division, and administered with other food, is to most persons not indigestible. It is not felt to be so; and it is remarkable that in the choice of food in training, where adult or fibrinous meats are recommended, and fat is forbidden, yet that the lean of fat meat is preferred,, in the texture of which there is probably more oil than in the lean of thin meat. The mixture of oil in salad appears to render the raw vegeta- ble more digestible. Fat with meat is commonly unwhole- some to, and disliked by, both the young and the aged, and ought to be shunned in their diet. Yet bacon is generally digestible even to weak stomachs. Dr. Beaumont found that meats containing any quan- tity of oil commonly caused a flow of bile into the sto- mach. He was unable to satisfy himself whether the mix- ture of the bile with the gastric juice is salutary, and for the purpose of promoting the digestion of refractory food, or a mischievous result of the disturbance of the stomach, * Davy's Salmonix. DIGESTIBLENESS OF FOOD. 51 produced by the presence of less digestible aliment. However this may be, persons of the bilious temperament are generally unable to digest oily meats, such as pork, and goose, and duck. But there is something in these meats, besides their fat,, that renders them unwholesome. The mischief arising from the oily nature of meats is in- creased by their being hot; when eaten cold they are more digestible. Milk is lightly curded in the stomach by the gastric juice, and the curd digested like albumen. Fresh milk is rich from the oil contained in its cream ; it is on this account indigestible to many. It loses part of its rich- ness by boiling; and then, or mixed with lime-water, can be digested by those in whom it else produces heart-burn. Cheese eaten with bread alone, as a meal, is digestible, but not easily so; in conjunction with other viands, it is, perhaps, more wholesome toasted. Farinaceous food is digestible, or otherwise, on the principles already explained. Bread, not very new, is perfectly digestible. The process_of Xermentation gives it porousness of texture anoTpenetrableness. The reason why new bread is less digestible is not evident; to say that it swells on the stomach does not explain the matter. Biscuit is digestible from its crispness and shortness, be- ing readily separable and broken into minute fragments. Arrow-root, sago, and such like, when pure, are in the condition of biscuit well and perfectly masticated, and are of very light digestion. Pastry is digested with diffi- culty, in consequence of the oil which it contains; pud- dings, from their heaviness, that is, closeness of texture; in" proportion as they are light, they become digestible. Semolina and maccaroni, when not browned, are highly digestible. 52 DIET. There is great difference in the digestibility of the po- tato; those which are rendered by boiling barely soft, and remain tenacious, stay long undissolved in the sto- mach: in this state they were found in Dr. Beaumont's experiments to yield very slowly to the action of the gastric juice when submitted to it in phials in a sand-bath. Pieces of raw potato, when treated in the same manner, almost entirely resisted the action of the gastric juice; many hours elapsed before the slightest appearance of digestion was observable, and then only upon, the surface, where the external laminae became a little softened, mu- cilaginous, and slightly farinaceous. The potato which is, on boiling, mealy, and breaks into flower on pressure, is extremely digestible. The same principles determine the digestibility of different preparations of rice. Chestnuts are heavy, and difficult of digestion; when kept some time they become less so, and are rendered more palatable, through the greater evolution of their saccharine principle. Their digestibility is much in- creased by the perfectness with which they are roasted and masticated. Esculent roots, as carrots, turnips, Jerusalem arti- chokes, when well cooked, are digested easily; though less so than meat and farinaceous food; but they often, from the water they contain, produce flatulence: peas and beans the same. Crude vegetables, by some law of the animal economy, not well understood, are allowed, even when the stomach is in a healthy state, sometimes to pass from it into the intestines, while other food is retained there to receive the solvent action of the gastric juice. The vegetables that are eaten raw have either some stimulating proper- DIGESTIBLENESS OF FOOD. 53 ty, as mustard and cress, horseradish; or like lettuce and cellery, have considerable crispness and lightness of tex- ture. They are at best, however, of difficult digestion. To complete the remarks which I proposed to lay be- fore the reader on the digestibility of food, I subjoin a tabular view of a series of observations made by Dr. Beaumont on the reduction of the meals introduced into the stomach of Alexis St. Martin. These observations are in every point of view extremely interesting. They show the average and the extremes of the time that di- gestion occupies. They present some important lessons as to the digestibility of different kinds of food; and they tend to exhibit, what is more important still, how much less the natural digestibility of food has to do with the time of its disappearance from the stomach, than many other causes,—such as the sparingness of the preceding meal, the state of the spirits, of the weather, the degree of previous exhaustion, and the like. 5* ARTICLES OF DIET. Tripe, soused . . . Pig's feet, do ... Venison steak, fresh . Codfish, dry .... Bread and milk . . . Turkey..... Goose, wild .... Pig, young .... Hash, Meat and Vegetables Oysters..... Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto...... Beef, fresh, fat, and lean . Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto...... Mode of cooking. Fried . Boiled . Broiled Boiled . Cold . Roasted Warm . Raw Stewed. Raw cc Stewed . Roasted Broiled Boiled With Bread, or Vegetables, or both. REMARKS. Exercise. Moderate. Increased. Rest. H. M. 1 00 1 00 1 35 2 00 2 00 2 30 2 30 2 30 2 30 2 45 3 30 3 00 3 00 3 30 3 30 3 00 2 45 3 00 *4 00 H. M. 3 *30 H. M. 3 45 C Oyster suspended in stomach I during experiment. C Nothing but a little dry bread < or cracker taken at these f meals. Exercised till fatigued. Morbid appearance of stomach. Beef, fresh, fat, and lean Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto, salted . . . Ditto, ditto .... Pork, recently salted . Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto....... Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto, fresh .... Ditto, steak .... Ditto...... Mutton, fat and lean . Ditto...... Ditto...... Ditto...... Boiled . Roasted Broiled CC Roasted Broiled H. M. *3 38' 3 *30 *3 30' H. M. 3 30 30 30 15 30 15 00 30 30 30 30 4 00 3 30 3 00 4 00 4 30 4 00 4 15 4 15 Large proportion of fat. Ditto. C Large proportion of fat, and I in recumbent position. Became angry during experi- ment. Unusually full meal. Unusually full meal. Morbid appearance of sto- mach. ARTICLES OF DIET. Mode of cooking. Meal. Willi Bread, or Vegetables, or both. REMARKS. Esercise. Moderate. Increased. Rest. Mutton, fat and lean, . . Ditto ....... Fowls (hens) .... Broiled CC Hard boiled Soft boiled Hard boiled cc Soft boiled Broiled. . cc Fried . . cc Broiled. . cc Boiled . . cc cc Broiled. . cc cc cc cc cc cc Dinner Breakfast. cc cc Dinner Breakfast. Dinner Breakfast. Dinner Breakfast. cc cc cc cc Dinner cc Breakfast. Dinner Breakfast. Dinner Breakfast. Dinner Breakfast. H. M. 4 00 4 30 3 30 3 00 5 30 3 30 3 00 3 30 3 00 4 00 5 00 3 30 *4 00* 4 00 4 00 4 00 4 00 4 00 4 45 *4 30* 5 30 H. M. 4 15 3 45' H. M. Full meal, coarsely masti-cated. ( Bread, or bread and coffee, no f vegetables used with the eggs. Morbid appearance of stomach. Ditto. With soft boiled eggs. f Muslin bag containing same J kind of diet, suspended during | these experiments, morbid [appearance of stomach also. Full meal—severe exercise. With bread and coffee. With bread and water. Ditto ditto. Muslin bag suspended in sto-mach. Morbid appearance of sto-mach. Morbid appearance of sto-mach. NOURISHMENT IN FOOD. 57 H. M. Soup, made of fresh muscular fibre of beef, and vegetables . . 4 00 Do. made of the hock, with vegetables.....4 15 Bread, buttered, for breakfast, with coffee [morbid appearance of stomach].........4 15 Do. buttered, for breakfast, with coffee . . . . 3 45 Do. dry, for breakfast, with coffee.....4 00 Do. dry, for dinner, with dry mashed potatoes . . . 3 45 The second point to be considered in our food is the quantity of nutriment contained in it. It may be considered to be proved by general experi- ence, that animal food is more nourishing than vegetable food, and the flesh of adult than that of young animals. The best testimony which can be adduced upon this point, is that of trainers. The following is the account of the diet used in training, communicated to Sir John Sinclair by Mr. Jackson. " The diet is simple,—animal food alone; and it is recommended to take very little salt and some vinegar with the food, which prevents thirst, and is good to pro- mote leanness. Vegetables are never given, as turnips, or carrots, or potatoes. But bread is allowed, only it must be stale. They breakfast upon meat, about eight o'clock, and dine at two. Suppers are not recommended, but they may take a biscuit and a little cold meat about eight o'clock, two hours before they go to bed. It is reckoned much against a man's wind to go to bed with a full stomach, and they in general take a walk after sup- per. Some people will have tea, but it is not recom- mended, nor is it strengthening, and no liquor is given warm. Full and substantial meals are given at breakfast and dinner; beef and mutton are best. It is contended 58 DIET. that there is more nourishment in the lean of meat than the fat, which is fully proved by experiment; fat, being of a greasy nature, causes bile, and palls the stomach: the lean of fat meat is best. Veal and lamb are never given, nor is pork. The legs of fowls, being sinewy, are much approved of. The yolk of a raw egg is reckoned the best thing in a morning, and is supposed to prevent bilious complaints. Beef-steaks are reckoned very good, and rather underdone than otherwise, as all meat in gene- ral is; and it is better to have the meat broiled, than roasted, or boiled, by which nutriment is lost. No fish whatever is allowed, because it is reckoned watery, and not to be compared with meat in point of nutriment. The fat of meat is never given, but the lean of the best meat. No butter nor cheese on any account; cheese is indigestible. Meat must be dressed as plain as possible, without seasoning of any kind. Men will live longer on beef, without change, than on any other kind of animal food; but mutton is reckoned most easily digested. The meat must always be fresh, and never salted. No quan- tity of meat is fixed; it depends upon the constitution and appetite. Little men will eat as much as large men, and very frequently more. Pies and puddings are never given, nor any kind of pastry. As to hard dumplings, people may as well take earthenware into their sto- mach." The systematic and violent exercise, which forms the basis of training, and for which the most nutritive food alone would supply strength enough, will be spoken of in the next chapter. The following was the food taken by Captain Barclay in his most extraordinary walk of a thousand miles in a thousand successive hours, June 1, 1809:— NOURISHMENT IN FOOD. 50 He breakfasted, after returning from his walk, at five in the morning. He ate a roasted fowl and drank a pint of strong ale, and then took two cups of tea, with bread and butter. He lunched at twelve; the one day on beef-steaks, and the other on mutton-chops, of which he ate a consi- derable quantity. He dined at six, either on roast beef, or mutton- chops. His drink was porter, and two or three glasses of wine. He supped at eleven, on a cold fowl. He ate such ve- getables as were in season; and the quantity of animal food he took daily was from five to six pounds. It may be interesting to contrast with the means by which the muscular strength is maintained in its highest vigour, preparatory to the most violent, or during the most protracted exertion, the details of the system by which, without direct reference to strength, though that is marvellously maintained at the same time, the frame is reduced to the utmost, by combining the least nutritious diet with depletory exercise. Mr. Sandevir, a surgeon of Newmarket, communicated to Sir John Sinclair the following particulars as to the mode in which jockeys reduce their weight. With those in high repute as riders, training or wast- ing is continued, in a greater or less degree, from about three weeks before Easter to the end of October; but a week or ten days is quite sufficient for a rider to reduce himself a stone to a stone and a half. Their diet is lowered to this extent. " For breakfast, a small piece of bread and butter, with tea in moderation. For dinner, a very small piece of pudding, and less meat; 60 DIET. and when fish is to be obtained, neither one nor the other are allowed. Wine and water is their usual beverage, in the proportion of one pint of wine to two of water. Tea in the afternoon, with little or no bread and butter, and no supper. " After breakfast, having sufficiently loaded themselves with clothes, that is, five or six waistcoats, two coats, and as many pairs of breeches, a severe walk is taken, from ten to fifteen or sixteen miles; after their return home they put on dry clothes, and, if much fatigued, some of them will lie down for an hour before dinner; after which no severe exercise is taken, but the remaining part of the day is spent in that way that may be most agreeable to themselves. They generally go to bed by nine o'clock, and continue there till six or seven the next morning. Some of them that do not like excessive walk- ing, have recourse to medicine, commonly Glauber's salts, two ounces the dose. " John Arnall, when rider to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, was desired to reduce himself as much as he possibly could, to enable him to ride some favourite horse, without his carrying more weight than was agreed upon; in consequence of which he abstained from animal, and even farinaceous food, for eight succeeding days, and the only substitute was now and then a piece of apple; he was not injured by it. " Dennis Fitzpatrick, a person at this time continually employed as a rider, de'clares that he is less fatigued by riding, and has more strength to contend with a deter- mined horse in a severe race, when moderately reduced, than when allowed to live as he pleased, although he never weighs more than nine stone, and frequently has reduced himself to seven stone seven pounds." NOURISHMENT IN FOOD. 61 The preceding examples are valuable as showing the impressions of practical persons upon the questions of what diet is the most nourishing, what the least so. We seem authorized to conclude that meats contain the most nutriment, milk and eggs the next, the best farinaceous food the next, fish the next, vegetables the least. This knowledge has the following applications. Persons in health, leading ordinary lives, and taking moderate exercise, have rather to avoid superfluity of food, than to seek what is most nutritious. If, therefore, they have not self-command enough to limit themselves to % sparing quantity of the most nourishing food, they may learn from these- remarks what is least so. In young persons of the strumous diathesis, the stomach is less weak than easily disordered; the tongue is furred, the appetite capricious, often excessive; food too light does not furnish nourishment enough; nutritive food, in too great quantity, deranges the stomach and heats the system; two moderate meals of animal food, the most digestible and varied, are requisite daily, and with one, wine or ale: besides these, two light farinaceous meals. To those of naturally good stamina, who are convales- cent after fever, or inflammatory attacks, the lightest nutriment alone is commonly necessary;—gruel, arrow- root, beef-tea with dry toast, calves'-foot jelly, boiled whiting, and the like. The stomach does not want, and will not bear, stimulating; but it is weak, and can chymify only the most digestible food; and that in small quanti- ties. Its tone is sure to return spontaneously. For those who, by a more melancholy fate, are sinking under mortal disease, as in various forms of cancer, nutri- tion and support alone are to be thought of. With such, 6 62 DIET, whose days are numbered, the remote evils contingent upon the use of stimulants have not to be taken into ac- count; jelly and arrow-root with wine, yolk of egg with brandy, and the like, are useful and proper now, in addi- tion to more rich or substantial food, which the appetite will occasionally fancy. Thirdly, of the Stimulating quality of food. When we have considered digestibility and nutritive- ness, a third quality of our food remains, of equal impor- tance with either. Its influence does not, indeed, during health, tell at a single meal, or in a single day: but unless it is attended to, nutrition flags, the frame weakens, and death even may take place, brought on by this cause alone. This quality is the capability of drawing upon the energies of the stomach, of exciting it to an active discharge of its function, to vigorous secretion and mo- tion. Such is the constitution of our frame, that every part requires excitement and activity directly for itself? and sympathetically for the rest. One important vital organ falling into languor, the rest are, by a necessary enchainment, drawn into feebleness. The application of this remark runs out to a great variety of instances. The strength of an organ, when in health, can only be maintained by the regular exercise of its function. Thus the strength of the bones, and sinews, and muscles, and the perfection of the organs of the senses, are preserved by constant use. Applying this principle to the stomach, we may con- clude it to be necessary not only that the food introduced into it should be digestible and nourishing, but that it should be, to a certain extent, difficult of digestion, to call out and exercise the force of the stomach. STIMULATING QUALITIES. 03 M. Magendie made some very remarkable experiments, the results of which probably turned in great measure upon this principle, although he attributed them to another. He found that animals, fed exclusively upon sugar, or upon gum, or upon butter, for a few days throve as usual, but then began to fall away, became emaciated, and died. The solution of the fact he sup- posed to be the want of azote in the aliment which he gave to the subjects of the experiment. It is probable, however, that the concentratedness and singleness of the food contributed principally to the result.* It is stated in Sinclair's Code of Health, that a dog, which was fed upon the richest broth, (but upon that alone,) could not be kept alive; while another, which had only the meat boiled to a chip (and water,) throve very well.f Another principle in the animal economy is, that to sustain an organ in perfect health, its exercise should be varied. How much this contributes to health of mind will be noticed afterwards, to the perfection of the organs of the senses, of the muscular frame; in the case of the stomach it applies with no less certainty. Diet should be varied. It is reasonable to presume that the injurious effect shown in Magendie's experiments just adverted to, de- pended in part upon the want of variety in the food, and would have been postponed, if not averted, had this * The Xamtschadales are frequently compelled to live on fish-oil, but they judiciously form it into a paste with saw-dust, or the rasped filings of indigenous plants.—Dr. Paris. f Soups, as a principal or exclusive diet for the healthy, are a physio- logical error. They combine indigestibleness with concentratedness. A diet of bread and water is far more wholesome. 64 DIET. circumstance been attended to. A series of experiments directed to this point would be highly interesting.* In the case of the stomach, it is possible to combine, simultaneously, the operation of both of these principles. In a single meal the food may be mixed, and indeed, to a certain extent, it always is so. The observations made by Dr. Beaumont show that the stomach attacks simultaneously substances of different digestibility introduced into it, and despatches them in the same time as if they had been there singly. Thus of ' a meal made of venison and pork, the first disappears in half the time of the second. The pork does not make the venison less digestible. There are, however, limits to this principle. One may be, that one substance thoroughly indigestible to a par- ticular stomach may interrupt the digestion of all the wholesome substances which accompany it: and the more the dishes tasted, the greater the chance of coming upon the slight touch of garlic or other matter, which, to the idiosyncrasy of this or that individual, may be poisonous. In another view, mixed food is certainly useful,—when taken not daily, but occasionally,—on the principle im- mediately before explained, as varying, one day with another, the call upon the resources of the stomach. There is again another salutary object that may be attained by a meal of different dishes. It may be desi- rable to take nourishment, when the appetite, from what- * The reader is to remember, that what is prejudicial in health, is often beneficial in disease. In the volume supplementary to the present, a case is mentioned of indigestion cured by restricting the food to one article. Dr. Rust gives a case of chorea, in a patient twenty years of age, which was cured by an exclusive diet of spinach, pursued for ten weeks STIMULATING QUALITIES. 65 ever cause, has faded and gone off. In that case a spoonful of soup, a flake of fish, a slice of cold beef, in succession, will provoke an appetite, and with it diges- tion, where the nicest mutton-cutlet, or the most tempt- ing slice of a haunch of venison, would have gone against the stomach. Another principle of the animal economy is the follow- ing. Every part (with the exception of those which have a function exclusively mechanical) when weakened, or called upon for more than usual exertion, may, within certain limits, be rendered capable of it by adequate stimulation. When the heart's action is flagging, brandy or ammonia will revive it; when a sportsman is wearied to the utmost at the close of a day's shooting, the certainty that game is at hand will re-invigorate his tired muscles. The means by which digestion may be reinforced under parallel circumstances, are the use of condiments, certain vegetable infusions, and fermented and alcoholic liquids. The use of these means may be resorted to in every de- gree, from wholesome and salutary excitement of the stomach, to high and repeated stimulation, that in the end proves destructive through the debility which is its certain consequence. Salt taken in moderation with food is not less whole- some than grateful to the palate. Its operation is not very clearly made out. But as it is sensibly a stimulant when applied to the tongue, such probably is its action on the stomach. It deserves to be added, that in solu- tion it produces a fluid which has some analogy to the gastric juice:—that it is not nugatory is shown by the effects of excess in using it, or of total abstinence from it: the first, at least as exemplified in the extensive use 6* 66 DIET. of salted provisions, produces scurvy, the latter intestinal worms. Salt forms an important element in bread. About twelve ounces are generally added to each bushel of flour. Of the vegetable acids, vinegar, or lemon-juice, are wholesome stimulants to the stomach when it has to con- tend with certain forms of indigestible food. These are rich and oily substances, as pork, goose, wild-fowl, salmon. The malic acid in apple-sauce eaten with the former, the lemon-juice with the third, the vinegar with the fourth, have thus come into common use. Whether they act as stimulants only, or directly assist the gastric fluid in the digestion of these rich aliments, is undeter- mined. There are foods, again, which are rich without being greasy, of which nature is, eminently, turtle. To assist the digestion of this highly flavoured and gelati- nous viand, lemon-juice is usually added, and punch drank with it: the palate having suggested, and philoso- phy approving the association. Vinegar promotes the digestion of lettuce, celery, beet-root; and to judge by our sensations only, it may be presumed that oil in this case acts as an auxiliary. [ Vide p. 50.] Aromatic condiments are either spices, or hot and savoury herbs and roots: to the former belong pepper, cayenne, cinnamon, nutmeg, &c.; to the latter, horse- radish, mustard, garlic, leeks, onions, sage, and the like. One or other of these are commonly used as auxiliary stimulants in the cases last mentioned. They are used, being themselves unwholesome, to correct another form of unwholesomeness. They heat the stomach, and that is ab- stractedly bad; but the stomach is contending with refrac- tory food, and therefore is the better for being heated. FERMENTED LIQUORS. 67 Condiments of the spicy kind are not essential to the process of digestion in the healthy state of the system. No one, when in health, ever adds them to a dish, except on the conviction that the food it contains is indigestible, or from habit having rendered their use artificially neces- sary. Their continual use never' fails to produce an indirect debility of the stomach. All our drinks, with the exception of water, and those which, like chocolate or broth, combine nutriment with water, contain something which enhances the quality of food we are now considering. Coffee is stimulating both to the stomach and to the nerves. Tea, though less so, partakes of the same character, as any one is conscious of who takes a larger quantity, or another kind, than that to which he is accustomed. Coffee, as being the stronger stimulant, is the most prejudicial; on the other hand it may be the most salutary; and when the diges- tion is weak, it is sometimes better reinforced by a cup of coffee immediately after dinner, than by wine. Tea, in general, does more harm from the quantity of unneces- sary liquid which it introduces into the stomach, than by its specific qualities. Unnecessary liquid weakens the stomach, and turns to wind. The simplest stimulating liquid is soda-water: the car- bonic acid which it contains and disengages in the sto- mach has a reviving and salutary effect upon it in many states of temporary debility. But to permanently weak stomachs it is generally unwholesome. And it is to be regarded as unwholesome during a meal, but as an excellent beverage at some interval afterwards. The more stimulating beverages are fermented liquors, being either beer, cider, perry, or wines, and distilled spirits. 68 DIET. The wholesomest of these are the different varieties of beer, but even in these there are differences, which are evinced by their effects on different constitutions. The principle common to all beer is more or less of the bitter or astringent quality of the hop. The saluta- riness of this principle is shown in various ways. Dr. Paris observes, "No cattle will thrive upon grasses which do not contain a portion of this vegetable principle; this fact has been most satisfactorily proved by the researches of Mr. Sinclair, gardemer to the Duke of Bedford, which are recorded in that magnificent work, the l Hortus Gf-ramineus Woburnensis.' They show that if sheep are fed on yellow turnips, which contain little or no bitter principle, they instinctively seek for, and greedily de- vour, any provender that may contain it; and that if they cannot so obtain it, they become diseased and die." Nothing can be more generally wholesome than good \ table-beer. Sydenham always took a glass at his meals, and considered it a preservative against gravel.* Mr. Jackson in his answers to queries put by Sir John Sinclair observes, "Malt liquor, good and old, without bottling, is best. If any person accustomed to drink wine would try malt liquor for a month, he would find himself much the better for it." In his directions for the diet of persons in training Mr. Jackson observes, " Malt liquor is best, and particu- larly home-brewed beer, old, and never bottled, that being windy. As to wine, a little red-wine, which is much preferable to white; never more than a half-pint of * Beer was introduced into this country in good company, if the words of the following couplet are true: " Hops, reformation, turkeys, carps, and beer, Came into England all within a year." WINE. 69 wine after dinner, and none after supper. The quantity of beer not to exceed three pints during the whole day, taken with breakfast and dinner, and a little after sup- per. Sometimes white wine and water is allowed to a man at breakfast, who does not like malt liquor. The liquor should not be taken in great draughts, but by mouthfuls, which quenches the thirst better, and that is the only object required. Liquor is always given cold, but never before meals, unless in cases of extreme thirst, when a little white wine and water may be taken. A gentleman in training, if he merely wishes to get into good condition, may take wine and water instead of malt liquor, if he prefers it." Cider and perry are grateful drinks in hot weather, but as they do not contain a sufficient quantity of spirit to prevent their passing into the acetous fermentation in the stomach of an invalid, they should be avoided by those who have any predisposition to indigestion. They want the salutary bitter of beer, without having alcohol enough to compensate for its absence. Wines.—To those who are in perfect health, and do not exceed their strength, it is to be presumed that wine is not merely useless, but positively injurious. It ex- cites the stomach and nervous system, and that excite- ment is followed by proportionate debility. Wine, then, is a poison; but, taken in moderation, it is a poison that operates extremely slowly. Like other poisons, when the system is in certain states of disorder, wine is admi- nistered beneficially. There are those whose delicacy of constitution and weakness of digestion (persons, for example, of the stru- mous diathesis,) require the support of wine. In many 70 DIET. who are recovering from exhausting illness, the restora- tive effects of wine are not less necessary, and are more immediately appreciable. During health, again, the frame frequently falls below its proper strength, which admits of being beneficially raised by this means. The stomach, lowered in tone through mental anxiety, or bodily fatigue, may be unable to digest, and the appetite to relish food, unless its energies are recruited by wine. Some, again, there are, who are obliged, knowing at what price, to exert themselves, mentally or bodily, or both, beyond their strength; with the assistance of wine, they are rendered capable of making efforts, under which their frame would else give way. As wines differ in their flavour, so likewise do they differ in their effects. Their different properties require to be studied both by those who have occasion to use them for their profit, or, drinking them as a luxury, would shun superfluous harm from their use. The prin- cipal, but by no means all the effects of wine, depend on the proportion of alcohol which it contains. But, inde- pendently of strength, one wine is astringent, another rich and cordial, a third dry, while a fourth is remarka- ble for the prompt but evanescent excitement it produces. All wine has a period at which it attains its finest flavour, and is most wholesome. This period differs with every wine, and with every growth of every wine. New wine is more heady, heating, and liable to disturb diges- tion : wine too old, on the other hand, is acid. I first subjoin Mr. Brande's analysis of wines in re- ference to the quantity of alcohol which they contain; and will afterwards comment upon other differences of particular wines. WINE. 71 Table of the quantity of Alcohol (specific gravity -825) at 60° Fahrenheit, in several kinds of Wine and other liquors. Per Cent. by Measure. | Per Cent. by Measure. Port, average of three kinds, 23-48 Ditto, highest, . . . 25-83 Ditto, lowest, . . . 21-40 Madeira, highest, . . 24-42 Hock, Palm Wine, Vin de Grave, Frontignac, . 8-88 . 4-70 . 12-80 . 12-72 Ditto, lowest, . . . 19-34 Cote Roti, . . 12-32 Sherry,average of four kinds, 17-92 Roussillon, . . 17-26 Ditto, highest, . . . 19-83 Ditto, lowest, . . . 12-25 Cape Madeira, Ditto Muchat, . . 18-11 . 18-25 Claret.average of three kinds, 14-43 Constantia,. . 19-75 Calcavella, . . . 18-10 Tent, . 13-20 Lisbon, .... 18-94 Sheraz, . 15-52 Malaga, .... 17-26 Syracuse, . . 15-28 Bucellas, .... 18-49 Nice, . 14-63 Red Madeira, . . . 18-40 Tokay, . 9-88 Malmsey do., . . . 16-40 Marsala, .... 25-87 Ditto, .... 17-26 Raisin Wine, Grape do., Currant do., . 25-77 . 18-11 . 20-25 Red Champagne, . . 11-30 White do., . . . 12-80 Gooseberry Wine, Elder Wine, Cider, & I . 11-69 'erry, 9-87 Burgundy, .... 11-55 Ditto, .... 11-95 Stout, Ale, . . 6-80 . 8-88 White Hermitage, . . 17-43 Red do., . . 12-32 Brandy, Rum, . . . . . 53-39 . 53-68 Hock, .... 14-37 Hollands, . 51-60 The wines principally known in this country may be classed in the following manner. 1. Strong and dry wines. These are of two classes, the non-astringent and the astringent. The non-astringent are Madeira, Sercial, Sherry, which are the best; Marsala, Cape wine, the inferior descrip- tions. Madeira and sherry are the wines most generally whole- some in this climate for those who require wine. Taken 72 DIET. thus, in a manner medicinally, they are better drank after than during dinner. Three glasses are sufficient to re- cruit all ordinary exhaustion, or to ensure the digestion of any moderate repast. The same quantity is less heat- ing when diluted with water. In persons of the gouty diathesis, to whom from want of stamina or a relaxed habit of body wine is necessary, these wines are invalua- ble. In such constitutions they sometimes require to be given in considerable quantities, a pint or more daily. The finest and driest sherry is called Amontillado. The fineness of the wine results from an accidental perfectness of the fermentation. Out of forty butts collected from the same vineyards, not above two or three have this quality: they^are reserved to flavour the inferior growths. The astringent strong and dry wines are Port, Bene- carlo, &c. Of these, port alone is generally known in England. Port, if new, is heady, and disturbs digestion, causing bile to flow into the stomach. All port does this with the bilious, and can seldom be drank by them on that account. There are others with whom port wine invariably produces heart-burn. Port, if bottled too soon, alters very slowly; and if a full wine, retains, with its colour, its luscidusness and sweetness, for fifteen or twenty years, without mate- rial improvement; it retains at the same time much of the unwholesomeness of new wine. Port wine, kept too long in the wood, on the other hand, continues to change rapidly after bottling, becoming in a few years tawny, losing its astringency, and acquiring a slightly acid taste. In this state port wine is again unwholesome, having an increased tendency to produce gout. Port originally of a good quality, that has been kept in the wood a proper WINE. 73 length of time, (which for the mixed wine as we receive it in this country varies, according to its quality, from two to five years,) and in bottle from five to twenty, to those with whom it agrees, is extremely wholesome. There are many persons who suffer from gout with whom port does not disagree, and who continue to drink it in re- duced quantities during the fit with^advantage. Port-wine is .doctored in the following manner. The finest growths are used to flavour, in different proportions, the inferior growths. Nothing is more capricious than the vintage. The favourable vintages in the present century have occurred in 1802, 1811, 1815, 1820, 1821, 1825, 1834. This is generally the same for all wines. The mixture sent from Oporto to the best houses in Lon- don commonly includes several vintages: it is brandied before being shipped. French brandy is only admitted into Portugal under a heavy duty; and the brandy which is there made is extremely bad: this deteriorates the wine. The quality of hardness, which is one of the worst that port wine can have, and the most unwholesome, is attri- buted to a mixture with particularly bad brandy. The mixtures, as the vintages, differ in fulness of body and lusciousness. Time reduces those qualities, but never makes very sweet port good. There is one criterion of fine and old port, which I never knew fail, although it may be an accident. The cork, when it has dried, that is to say an hour after it has been drawn, should be covered on its under sur- face and part of its cylindrical surface with crystals of tartar. Benecarlois a coarse-flavoured astringent Spanish wine. Some extremely old benecarlo which I remember tasting, 7 74 DIET. preserved the astringency, combined with a high and agreeable flavour. Val de Penas unites a slight astringency with the quality and flavour of the next class. 2. Light and generous wines. Under this head may be included claret and Champagne. Fine claret, of which the best three growths are Lafitte, Chateau Margaux, and Latour, the first of the most deli- cate flavour, the second fuller, and the third still more so, is one of the most perfect wines. In lightness, flavour, soundness, it exceeds most. It has, however, a gouty tendency. Almost all the clarets drank in England have flavour and body given to them by a mixture with hermi- tage. The best two kinds of Champagne are the not efferves- cing wines of Sillery and Ay. Sillery is dry, Ay sweet. No wines can be finer or purer, or more wholesome. The Mousseux wine is either sparkling or creaming. The former contains the most carbonic acid. The spark- ling and the creaming kinds are bottled before fermen- tation is completed, the sparkling sooner than the cream- ing. The carbonic acid in Champagne Mousseux contributes to produce its exciting quality. This wine has a strong tendency to produce gout. Otherwise, setting aside that there are a few whose digestion and whose nerves it di- rectly unsettles, it is extremely wholesome, more so than most wines; it exhilarates more, while it heats less than other wines. Trial has been made of other wines with the mousseux character given to them by bottling before fermentation is completed. But these wines want the generous quality ARDENT SPIRITS. 75 of Champagne; and, though agreeable to the palate, are not wholesome. There is, however, one other, which is both pleasant and wholesome as an effervescing wine. This is St. Peray. It is a wine of considerable strength. Rich and sweet wines. Of these the principal, and much beyond the rest, is Tokay. Its flavour for richness, delicacy, and .duration upon the palate, exceeds that of every other wine: its flavour depends on no element that deranges the stomach or nerves. The wines of this class that follow Tokay may be enu- merated in the following order of excellence. Vin de Paille, Paxarete, Mountain, Spanish muscatelle, Rive- saltes, Constantia, Malmsey Madeira. All these are ad- mirable cordials. Cyprus, when of the finest quality, which is as rarely met with as good Tokay, should stand high on the above list. The highly-flavoured wines of Frontignan, French muscatelle, &c, are lighter, less wholesome, having un- dergone an imperfect fermentation. Aromatic wines. This term is hardly appropriate, but it is used to express the qualities peculiar to Burgundy. The perfume of this wine is connected with something that acts powerfully on the system, so that two or three glasses, with many, disorder the stomach and the nerves to a remarkable degree. To a great many this im- pression, though perceived, is not enough to be disagree- able. Acid wines. Johannisberg, hock, as well as the in- ferior species of this class, combine with little spirit a sensible acidity, and different degrees of body and fla- vour. 76 DIET. In some of the finest, the bouquet reminds you, by its powerful quality and influence on the nerves, of Burgundy. In ordinarily good hock or Rhenish wine, this is not per- ceptible. Some of the lighter wines of this class, Moselle for ex- ample, are artificially flavoured, and are an agreeable ■beverage in the summer. But upon the whole, these light Rhenish wines, and the corresponding French wines, are greatly inferior to good table-beer, and are much less wholesome: they are ^commonly drank because they are wine, by those with whom stronger wines disagree. One remark is always introduced when the effects of wine upon the system are noticed. It is justly held that mixing wines renders them doubly noxious. It deserves remark, perhaps, that bad wine seems to produce intoxication sooner than good wine, even when weaker than the good wine. This is owing to its effect on the stomach. Wine may make you tipsy either by dis- ordering the stomach or the head. Good wine does the latter alone: bad wine both. When wine is declared to be unwholesome from its stimulating properties, it is unnecessary to reprobate the use of ardent spirits. Their total exclusion from the diet of persons under training is their sufficient condemnation. Mr. Jackson says:—"In training, spirits are never allowed on any consideration whatever." Their parching quality is not redeemed, or redeemable, by any means; they heat the stomach, derange the liver, and lead, as Dr. Bright has pointed out, to structural disease of the kidneys, crowning their deleterious agency by shattering and over- throwing the brain and nervous system. Yet they have their use, like night-shade, and hemlock, and tobacco. QUANTITY OF FOOD. 77 They sometimes will recruit flagging vitality, when threat- ened with imminent extinction, and when all other means would be insufficient. And in cases where wine is required, and its use is found to produce acidity, cogniac with water often forms the required substitute. III. QUANTITY OF FOOD. Different quantities of nutriment are required at dif- ferent ages, by persons of different sexes, constitutions, habits of life. But every one possessed of moderate powers of observation can tell how much he individually requires. A gentleman, upwards of seventy, as remarkable for his healthy and hale appearance, as early distinguished for his contributions to science, whom I remember to have heard questioned at dinner why he was so abstemious, answered, that he had always made it a rule to eat half only that he could, and that he believed he owed his health to the practice. It may not appear to all easy to stop at this period of a repast, or even to know when they have reached it; but it is in the power of every one to observe when his first appetite is satisfied; after which some are tempted to begin again, and to start as it were with a second wind. This first appeasement of the appetite no one will overlook, if he masticates slowly, and directs his attention to the point before drinking a glass of wine. There is a rougher rule for determining the quantity of food; which is, not to eat as much as will produce sen- sations of fulness, weight, oppression, torpor, languor, chilliness: the objection to this rule is, that it requires a few excesses to furnish data for the calculation. 78 DIET. However he may learn to determine the limit, a person of sense will, as his habit, stop at every meal before he reaches a point which will leave him less capable than before of any exertion, mental or bodily. Rousseau, him- self a gourmand, somewhere introduces the remark, (that has a justness not often met with in his ferment of vitiated morality,) Abstinence is the Epicurism of Reason. Drinks are generally as essential to the system as food: the water of which they principally consist is necessary to make up for the constant waste of fluid. Much less drink, however, is required than might be supposed; on this occasion the appetite is no guide. It is true, indeed, that a person is not to drink unless he is thirsty; but it does not follow that he should drink because he is so. Nothing promotes thirst so much as quenching it, or grows more readily into habit than drinking. Much liquid weakens the stomach, and produces flatulence and fat. The latter consequence has, perhaps, hardly been suf- ficiently attended to in rules laid down for those who have a disposition to obesity to combat. It is most remarkably exemplified in a case recorded in the secon^ volume of the Transactions of the College of Physicians, of which the following is an abstract:— Thomas Wood, a miller of Billericay, in Essex, was born in 1719, and, having grown to manhood, lived in- temperately, eating fat meat three times a day, and drink- ing strong ale. About the age of forty, he became ex- tremely fat; but continuing well, he pursued his accus- tomed habits. In his forty-fourth year, indigestion, sick- ness, suffocation, swimmings in the head, and apoplexy, QUANTITY OF FOOD. 79 supervened; when, becoming acquainted w?th the writings of Cornaro, he determined to leave off his excesses. This he did gradually, and his health amended. In January, 1765, his allowance of animal food being now much re- duced, he entirely left off ale, and drank water only. Still he was troubled with rheumatism and gout. He then took more exercise, used cold bathing, and left off animal food; and gradually was led to leave off drinking entirely, and to limit his food for the twenty-four hours to a pud- ding composed of one pound of the flour of which the best kind of sea-biscuit is made, boiled with a pint and a half of skimmed milk, without any other addition. It was con- jectured that he lost ten, or perhaps eleven stone weight in the process of restoring himself "from the condition of a decrepit old man, to perfect health, and to the vigour and activity of youth." His pulse fell, in the process of reduction, to from forty-four to forty-seven pulsations in a minute. When asked, "what first induced him to abstain from drink," he answered, that it happened one day that the servant had forgotten to bring his water at dinner as usual;, that being then full of business, he did nat think of calling for any; and that, having found himself easier and less oppressed by that meal than common, he deter- mined to try whether a total omission of all liquids might not be an improvement to his diet, and that he soon found the experiment to answer. He then added, that " he was further encouraged to abstain from liquids by an observa- tion that he had made in feeding hogs. He never allowed these animals to drink; and to this he attributed the ex- cellence of his pork, it being greatly valued on account of the whiteness and firmness of the flesh." 80 DIET. The quantit/ of food we take is materially influenced by the weather. Cold weather sharpens the appetite, hot weather lessens or destroys it. We are certainly, likewise, less disposed to eat butcher's meat in hot weather than in cold, and prefer to take a large proportion of farinaceous and vegetable food. Nature certainly sug- gests, that we should take less nutriment in hot seasons, but one would hardly have been prepared for the influence of heat upon nutrition, which the last African travellers experien«ed. " It was," says Mr. Laird, " a subject of remark among us, and occasioned some amusement, to see the different effects of heat on different constitutions: sometimes with the thermometer at 84,1 felt cold in a blanket dress; and at other times when it was 75, 1 was oppressed with heat. It appeared, however, to depend much on the moist or dry state of the atmosphere. I found that a very simple rule had hitherto kept me in excellent health; if I felt sleepy after a meal, I considered it a gentle hint from my stomach that I was over-working it, and reduced my fare accordingly; in fact, I thought the less one consumed the better, as all our party appeared to have a most^ unac- countable propensity to become fat. I did not eat one- half that I had been accustomed to in England, and yet could not keep myself from increasing; Dr. Briggs was precisely in the same way; and as for Lander, he was as broad as he was long." IV. INTERVALS BETWEEN MEALS. It has already been stated, that the residue of ono meal being in the stomach, does not necessarily interfere with the digestion of a fresh one. This, however, sup- DIGESTIVE POWERS. 81 poses either that the first meal or the second is light, or that the system required unusually fast recruiting; that is to say, that there was gastric juice and plenty for both. Practically, many take dinner after a late luncheon, or bread and butter with tea, after a late dinner, without feeling any inconvenience from the mixture of the meals. Nevertheless, as a general rule, where people are living in plenty, it is better to make the intervals such as sup- pose a complete digestion, and the stomach emptied for some period before the reception of the next meal. As a corollary to this rule, the intervals should be di- rectly proportional to the quantities of meals. This re- mark bears diversified applications. There is a weakness of digestion, which consists in the stomach being unable to furnish any great quantity of gastric juice at a time, al- though in the twenty-four hours a full proportion may be secreted. Persons with this form of weakness require light and frequent meals. In infants, in persons recover- ing from exhausting illness, in the aged, the digestive forces commonly present this feature. A strong stomach will bear either alternative, and will feed either full and seldom, or lightly and frequently. Two hearty meals are best in such a case, as they are more natural, and as they call out to a greater extent the resources of the organ. • V. CONDITIONS WHICH STRENGTHEN OR WEAKEN THE DIGESTIVE POWERS. The elements of a strong digestion, in a healthy frame, are the following:—The first and most important (because compatible with every mode of life) is abstemiousness: the stomach never overloaded, the frame kept by this means 82 DIET. rather below than up to its full strength and animal force. How far this principle will go, is shown in an extreme case quoted by Mr. Hunter, in his remarks upon diges- tion. Nothing (observes Mr. Hunter) can show more clearly that the secretion of the gastric juice is increased in pro- portion to the call for nourishment in the body, than what happened to Admiral Byron, Captains Cheap and Hamil- ton, when shipwrecked on the west coast of South America; who, after suffering months of hunger and fatigue, were reduced to skin and bone; yet, when they came to good living, Byron thus expresses himself: " The governor or- dered a table to be spread for us, with cold ham and fowls, which only we three sat down to, and in a short time de- spatched more than ten men with common appetites would have done. It is amazing that our eating to that excess we had done, from the time we first got among these kind Indians, had not killed us; we were never satisfied, and used to take all opportunities, for some months afterwards, of filling our pockets when we were not seen, that we might get up two or three times in the night to cram our- selves." The next means of strengthening digestion is strong ex- ercise with full nutrition. Training, Mr. Jackson observes, wonderfully sharpens the appetite. . The experiments of Sir Busick Harwood gave rise to the belief that exercise interferes with the act of digestion. This is true, however, only of violent exercise. That moderate exercise promotes digestion was ascertained by Dr. Beaumont in his experiments on Alexis St. Martin. He observed, at the same time, that the same cause, in- creasing the circulation, heightens the temperature of the stomach. INDIGESTION. 83 A dry state of the atmosphere, Dr. Beaumont observed, had equally the effect of raising the temperature of the stomach. A moist air lowered it. These conditions of the atmosphere influence digestion proportionably. Cold, in every one's experience, heightens the appetite, and in- creases the digestive powers; and unembarrassed thoughts, and youth, no less promote them. The conditions which lower the digestive force are for the most part the contraries of those which have been last enumerated. Repletion overloads and exhausts the stomach, and fatigue palsies its powers and destroys appetite. Abstain- ing from exercise for a day invigorates the digestion,— for several days weakens it. These opposite phenomena turn upon the following principles:—We rise in the morn- ing refreshed by sleep, and with a certain quantity of disposable energy. We may employ it any way. If we consume it in strong bodily exercise, there is none left for the stomach to use. If we stay at home all day, em- ployed in reading or writing, by dinner-time we have used less than customary of our nervous power, and a superfluity remains for digestion. The principle which at length destroys the appetite of the recluse student, is the dependence of his stomach on the vigour of his entire frame. To circulate his blood, to strengthen his system, air and exercise are wanted; neglect of them sympatheti- cally weakens his stomach. In age, the powers of the stomach gradually fail. " Cornaro," says Mr. Aberne- thy, "found that as the powers of his stomach declined with the powers of life in general, it was necessary for him to diminish the quantity of his food; by so doing he retained to the last the feeling of health." At the 84 DIET. strongest period of life the digestive powers are liable to be temporarily exhausted by strong mental excitement, by hope or fear, by pleasure or pain, by the softer or the fiercer passions. Dr. Beaumont made the singular re- mark, that anger causes bile to flow into the stomach; hence the indigestion of the choleric man. The causes which have been enumerated weaken the powers of the stomach. Under the conditions which have been stated, a small quantity of the wholesomest food alone can be digested. If a plain but hearty meal is eaten, that alone will cause indigestion. Part only of such a meal will be chymified; the rest will remain un- changed, producing a sense of weight at the pit of the stomach, distention from wind, heartburn, and sickness; or passing into the intestines, may cause violent and dan- gerous disorder. When the symptoms of indigestion arise from the sto- mach being slightly overtaxed, and are limited to a sense of weight, distention, heartburn, they are easily relieved. The heartburn proceeds from a forcible effort on the part of the stomach, to digest what it cannot. For this pur- pose, the stomach pours out a quantity of acid secretion, that is not wholesome gastric juice. This acid fluid is not a solvent, but an irritant, and the principal cause of the pain experienced. A few grains of carbonate of soda in a wine glass of cold water, or joined with as many drops of sal volatile in a wine glass of hot water, will neutralize the acid, and the stomach will be tranquillized. The patient has then only to wait, introducing nothing more into the stomach, which in a few hours will have recovered its tone, and secrete gastric juice enough to dissolve what remains of the meal. INDIGESTION. 85 If the indigestion has arisen from any thing in the meal which is positively indigestible, as shell-fish, or salad, for instance, there ere three things to be apprehended. The undigested substance may pass into the intestines, pro- ducing disorder there, and requiring laxative medicine to remove it, and cordials, with chalk and opium, to tran- quillize the bowels. . Or it may be immediately got rid of by nausea and vomiting, to which, if there is a dispo- sition, the patient had better promote it by drinking a large tumbler of warm water, containing a tea-spoonful of salt. Sometimes, however, the indigestible substance remains in the stomach for days, during which the patient takes his usual meals, which are regularly digested ; but he has constant uneasiness at the stomach; the stomach gradually loses its tone, the tongue becomes furred, the night is sleepless, slight fever supervenes. The locality of the pain, attended as it is with tenderness on pressure, the pain not having altered its place from the first, with such a history as I have supposed, explains the nature of the disorder, which may be cured by a vomit. Indigestion, as a complaint, means a series of symp- toms, which arise from the stomach being unequal to chymify food. The symptoms are, the appetite languid or voracious, generally irregular, sometimes as usual; a sense of weight, distention, pain, heartburn, super- vening one, two, three hours, or later, after a meal, and in the worst cases often lasting till the contents of the sto- mach are thrown up, either not much changed, or with an acrid taste. Many persons eat a light breakfast, and go tolerably through the day; they then eat a light din- ner, and warm their stomachs with two or three glasses of sherry; then with hot tea; and go to bed at eleven, 8 86 DIET. and go to sleep; towards one,or two,or three,they wake with pain, distention, heartburn, which soda and sal vola- tile will not remove, and which opium only relieves inju- riously; sometimes the stomach in the end conquers the meal; generally the food is at last thrown up. There may be every degree of distress short of what I have de- scribed, attended with every kind of sympathetic disor- der ;—uneasy sensations and action of the heart; cough, dry, ringing, characteristic; a cloud over the spirits and the thoughts, and settled hypochondriasis. In a treatise supplementary to the present, entitled Management of the Organs of Digestion in Health and Disease, I have followed this important subject in many of its bearings. VI. OF FOOD AT DIFFERENT AGES, The food of infants is immediately provided by nature. The milk, that forms it, is remarkable for its lightness and richness; it is bluer than the milk of the cow, has more cream (which will not, however, separate butter) and spontaneously deposits some curd on standing. Un- less the mother is in strong health, it is best to have a wet-nurse. In persons of a nervous temperament, the very anxiety for the infant often impairs the quality, or lessens the supply of its proper nourishment; and in the protracted and fruitless effort to nurse, the health both of the mother and of the child is liable to be seriously in- jured. Those infants are generally the strongest and the most forward, which are the latest weaned. In the process of weaning, when children are delicate asses' milk, which comes nearest their former food, is an important auxiliary. Otherwise, different varieties of fari- FOOD AT DIFFERENT AGES. 87 naceous food, that, under various denominations, are pre- pared for the purpose, or good arrow-root, mixed with milk of the cow, are used. Animal food is to be introduced earlier in the food of delicate than in that of strong children, if their stomachs will digest it; but for this there is no rule. In this, as in every other instance of medical management, each case is a new one, and what is best can be determined by trial only. That is the best food which is most easily digested, and on which the child thrives. The best ani- mal food to begin with is beef-tea thickened with arrow- root. In general, forwardness of the teeth indicates a forward digestion; and as soon as the child can extract the juices of a mutton-chop, this food is well qualified for its oc- casional use. Animal food should not, however, be given to healthy children, under the age of three years, more frequently than twice a week. Two faults are especially liable to be incurred in the management of young children. If the habit is inflam- matory, the quantity of animal food which might other- wise be given advantageously, will produce heat, fever, fulness of the vessels of the head. On the other hand, farinaceous food, as it is justly considered to be less heat- ing, and to be less nutritious, yet may in any habit, through incaution, easily be given in such quantity as to overload the stomach and bowels, from whence any train of dis- ordered actions may arise. A child of a year old, and weaned, requires food for the next six months about four times in the day, and twice in the night. By the age of two years, a child should have discontinued taking food in the night, and about four 88 DIET. meals are sufficient in the day; through boyhood the same number of meals is necessary. An adult in full health requires two substantial meals, and often without prejudice partakes of two additional slight repasts, in the twenty-four hours. Women, more delicately organized, eat sparingly, and require three meals in the day. Of the two hearty meals, which are necessary to men, use has determined that one shall principally consist of farinaceous, the other of animal food; and that the beverage with the first shall be coffee, tea, or cocoa; with the second, malt-liquor or wine. Some points in this ar- rangement are arbitrary, others essential. The beverage at breakfast used to be, and might as well now consist of, beer; coffee might be, indeed in many countries is, as- sociated with the second repast in place of other stimu- lants. But if either repast is to be heavier than the "other, and to be taken with wine, it is judicious to throw it later in the day, when the hours of ordinary business are past. The whole of this arrangement is so far arbitrary, that the dinner might be with advantage as light as the break- fast. So light, indeed, men habitually make this repast, when it is to be immediately followed by serious occupa- tion. The wholesomest bread for breakfast is stale household bread, with fresh butter; the least wholesome, muffins, which combine the faults of new bread and toast. How- ever, until forty, or considerably later, a strong stomach makes no distinction between these aliments, if they are alternated. To most, again, new French bread is perfectly digestible. breakfast. S$ Black tea is better than coffee, coffee than green tea: the two latter unnecessarily excite, and therefore indi- rectly debilitate the stomach and nerves. To make tea, let the quantity of a breakfast-cup and a half of boiling water flow upon the tea, and pour the infusion out in two minutes. By this means you have all the flavour, with- out too much of the bitter principle. A large breakfast cup of tea is all that any one requires. More tends to produce wind, and weakens the stomach. A fresh egg boiled from two and a half to three minutes, and a slice of ham or tongue, or the like, are a wholesome addition to the repast. To those who reside in cities, the stomach is ready for breakfast by the time that the offices of dressing are gone through, nor is there any good, but harm, in delaying it. The breakfast should be so light as not to encumber the stomach or the system, or to interfere with any kind of e"xertion shortly after it. The system often adopted on the Continent,' of taking a cup of strong coffee on rising, then giving some hours to business, and finally recruiting with a dijeuner h la fourchette, is a false one. The substitute of a stimulant for nourishment weakens the stomach. The dispropor- tionate ravages of the cholera, at Paris, may be attri- buted to the inferiority of visceral stamina in the French, produced by less wholesome diet than our own. In persons with weak stomachs, no meal requires to be more studied than breakfast. If the stomach is overladen at the commencement of the day, or if any thing unwhole- some is taken, digestion is deranged, and the stomach will not be right again for hours. The quantity of liquid, its nature, whether tea, cocoa, gruel, asses' milk, &c., of 8* 90 DIET. solid, whether dried toast, rusk, biscuit, with or without ham, bacon, scraped beef, &c, require attentive manage- ment. In growing children in whom the strumous diathesis prevails, digestion is weak, and the appetite for breakfast often entirely fails; it is useful in such cases to give some savoury meat to provoke the stomach to relish a moderate repast. If one who breakfasts at half-past eight and dines at half-past five or six, is hungry at one or two, he had better eat a luncheon; a sandwich with or without a glass of sherry is the best. It is better not to make a luncheon a meal of habit; but to take it only when the appetite tells that you require it. Here an oppor- tunity occurs of advantageously varying the frequency of meals. The two principles to regulate the repast of dinner are moderation and variety;—to dine one day on a single dish, another on several; one day to make cold meat the principal part of dinner, another to shun it. As a general rule, all puddings and pastry should be avoided: the diner has already had enough; and these, in themselves, are less digestible. A single glass of good beer at dinner, and three glasses of sherry, madeira, or port, afterwards, are amply sufficient. The hour of dinner should be neither too late nor too early: if too late, the system will have been exhausted for want of it, will be weakened, and the digestion en- feebled ; if too early, the stomach will crave another sub- stantial meal, which, taken late in the evening, will not be digested before the hours of sleep. A person who breakfasts at nine, should not dine later than six. TEA. 91 The rule for tea after dinner is very simple. To those with whom it agrees, it is pleasant and refreshing; but two cups are sufficient; more than that quantity of fluid weakens the stomach. Nothing can be more pernicious than using tea or coffee to enable the mind, when already exhausted, to continue toiling late in the night. (The best receipt, however, for this purpose, is whiskey-punch made with green tea.) Wine is wholesomer, taken in great moderation, a glass occasionally, than either strong tea or coffee. Such a custom, however, should never be in- dulged in; it is exhausting the resources of health and life. Tea, as a meal, has this advantage; if the dinner has been too light, a slice of bread and butter taken with tea, will make up for the deficiency, and render supper un- necessary. The meals of aged persons require, like those of chil- dren and convalescents, to be more frequent than those of adults; so a meat luncheon, with a glass of wine, is often necessary. As the stomach is weaker, the food should be eaten slowly, and well comminuted. Dr. Rush observes, " The appetite is often good in old age. Parr, who died at 152, ate heartily in the last week of his life. The kindness of nature in providing this last portion of earthly enjoyments for old people, deserves to be noticed. It is remarkable, that they have, like chil- dren, a frequent recurrence of appetite, and sustain with great uneasiness the intervals of regular meals. But old people differ from children in preferring solid to liquid aliment." 92 diet. VII. social relations of food. "Nee enim sequitur, ut cui cor sapiet, ei non sapiat palatus." Cicero de Finibus. There remains another point of view, under which the subject of diet may be regarded. Nature has thrown so much gratification, to those, at least, who have good sto- machs and discriminating palates, around the social board, that we are tempted to ask, whether we are designed to content ourselves with what is simple, nutritious, and enough, and may not allowably indulge a little in pleasures, certainly not very elevated, but which the majority seem agreed not to despise. To what extent are the pleasures of the table a rational object of serious consideration and pursuit ? The prodigality of Nature towards us on this occasion does not authorize us to abuse her gifts by excess. She has indeed implanted in all a principle, which, if sufficiently recollected, would be a safeguard to us,—the strong wish for life, protracted, without suffering, till the last resources of our mortal being are expended. But excess in the pleasures of the table abbreviates existence, and clouds it with periods of bodily ailment, mental depression, dis- content, and self-dissatisfaction. Such is the price which must be paid for repeated draughts from the cup of social indulgence filled to overflow. Add to this the reflection, (looking to the senses alone,) that the most exquisite and elaborate repast does not carry with it, for those who can command it, half the physical gratification which simply slaking thirst and appeasing hunger, when brought on by healthy habits and exercise, convey. Lest any one should doubt the truth of the last reflection, I extract two pas- social relations of food. 93 sages from former numbers of the Quarterly Review, which will bring home to the imagination of the reader the pleasures which I would compare. The first deserves a place in a chapter in an English work upon diet, in a national point of view, as vindicating our pre-eminence even in cookery:* " It seems allowed on all hands, that a first-rate dinner in England is out of all comparison better than a dinner of the same class in any other country; for we get the best cooks, as we get the best singers and dancers, by bid- ding highest for them; and we have cultivated certain national dishes to a point which makes them the envy of the world. In proof of this bold assertion, which is backed, moreover, by the unqualified admission of Ude, we request attention to the menu of the dinner given at the Clarendon to Lord Chesterfield, on his quitting the office of Master * It is true that the masters of the art are foreigners; but the talent which we foster we naturalize. Who {si parvis liceat componere magna) thought, or thinks, of West or of Brunei but as Englishmen] Accord- ingly West was President of the Royal Academy, and Brunei has been Vice-President of the Royal Society. I remember (if I may be pardoned introducing the anecdote,—it relates to nationality,) hearing Mr. Brunei remark that nothing had more astonished him than the energy, hardi- hood, steadiness, and silence, with which he had seen the workmen un- der his direction encounter the most imminent personal danger, which they were perfectly aware of, and might justifiably have shrunk from. He expressed his belief that no nation in the world could produce the same quantity and style of courage. The best of the men, he added, were Cornish miners. I am tempted to digress still further. I asked a dis- tinguished soldier what difference he had observed in action between the English, the Irish, and the Scotch. His answer was that he thought they were equally brave; but that the Irish are liable to become impa- tient, and are kept back with difficulty under a hot fire; that the Scotch, steady under such circumstances, are remarkable for the stubborn and obstinate valour which they display when sorely pressed; that the Eng- lish, with equal resolution, are, in either case, more manageable by their officers. 94 DIET. of the Buckhounds. The party consisted of thirty; the price was six guineas a head; and the dinner was ordered by Comte d'Orsay, who stands without a rival amongst connoisseurs in this department of art:— 1 Premier Service. 1 Potages.—Printannier: a la reine: turtle. iPoissons.—Turbot (lobster and Dutch sauces:) saumon a la Tartare: rougets a la cardinal: friture de morue: white bait. RSleves.—Filet de boeuf a-la Napolitaine: dindon a la chipolate: timballe de macaroni: haunch of venison. 'Fntries.—Croquettes de volailles: petits pat6s aux huitres; cotelettes d'agneau: puree de champignons: cotelettes d'agneau aux pois d'asperge: fricandeau de veau a l'oseille: ris de veau piqu6 aux tomates: cotelettes de pigeons a la Dusselle: chartreuse de legumes aux faisans: filets de cannetons a la Bigarrade: boudins a la Richelieu: saute de volaille aux truffes: pat6 de mouton monte\ ' C6U.—Boeuf roti: jambon: salade. ' Second Service. iRbti.—Chapons, quails, turkey-poults, green-goose. * Entremets.—Asperges: haricot a la Franchise: may- onnaise d'homard: gelee Macedoine: aspices d'oeufs de pluvier: Charlotte Russe: gelee au Marasquin: creme marbre: corbeille de patisserie: vol-au-vent de rhubarb: tourte d'abricots: corbeille des meringues: dressed crab: salade au gelatine:—Champignons aux fines herbes. iRHlves.^-Soufflee alavanille: Nesselrode pudding: Adelaide sandwiches: fondus.—Pieces montSes, &c. &c. &c.'" SOCIAL RELATIONS OF FOOD. 95 The sketch which I would oppose to the preceding full- length portrait of a superb dinner is the following:— In a training establishment, in most cases, the horse reposes in the same chamber with the stable-boy. This is on a principle of prudence rather than of economy. Horses in high condition are given to roll in the night, and get cast in their stalls, and here assistance is at hand; as by the means of stirrup-leathers buckled together, they are extricated from their awkward position by the joint efforts of the boys. We have been told that an interest- ing scene takes place on the wakening of the boys in the morning. The event is anxiously looked forward for by the horses, who, when they hear them, awaken each other, neigh, and denote their eagerness to be fed, which is the first step taken. The second is a proper arrangement of their beds, and then dressing and exercise. When they return home the horses are well dressed again; the boys then break their fast; and Holcroft spoke from experience when he said, "Nothing can exceed the enjoyment of a stable-boy's breakfast." It will not, I think, be doubted that the predominance of gratification belongs to the second instance,—with this advantage, that the stable-boy is the better for his break- fast, whereas it is not improbable that the partakers of the splendid repast of which I have copied the charte, were individually the worse for the epicurean indulgences to which it led. It appears to me a logical inference that pleasures which, while they peril the health, are of the same kind, and not equal in degree, with a stable-boy's breakfast, ought not to be an object of serious concern to a rational being. The pleasures of the table, however, when used in 96 DIET. moderation, admit of some defence: they promote social intercourse. Man, unlike animals, is in best humour when he is feeding, and more disposed then than at other times to cultivate those amicable relations by which the bonds of society are strengthened. The influence of this prin- ciple is more acknowledged in England than in any other country. With us no public meeting is valid without a dinner: no party leader is chartered in public estimation till his services have been anticipated or acknowledged, and his public principles pledged, amidst circling bumpers and convivial cheers. Even charity obeys the same law; and the beneficent institutions for the sick, and the lame, and the blind, find increase of prosperity in their annual festive celebrations. This disposition of our countrymen is partly attributable to their affluence, which renders the burden of such en- tertainments light, partly to the practical character of the English, partly to the prevalence of the nervous tempera- ment. We are not easily brought together to do nothing; our pleasures, our amusements, are of a more strenuous character than those of our neighbours, and distinguish an Englishman, not less than the power-loom, and the rail-road, and those strides of mechanical invention, the physical material of which has been wittily said to prove that the age of iron is the true age of gold. Some one remarked of a fire in a room, that it has one eminent advantage,—it gives you a motive for selecting and remaining in one part of it. It is the same with a dinner,—it takes you into society, and keeps you there. Rousseau, who felt an irksomeness in going into society avowedly with no purpose but to converse, was accustomed to carry a knitting-needle and a ball of cotton, to occupy SOCIAL RELATIONS OF FOOD. 97 the intervals of talking. The dinner-table has a like use for that cast of temperament which belongs to the shy and fidgety. The banquet temporarily remedies their constitutional infirmity. For those who carry into society something more than a good digestion, who, to minds stored with useful infor- mation, unite good humour, good sense, and good breed- ing, and who find in society the same elements which they bring, the festive board which assembles them sparkles with wholesome recreation. In that case, Liber Pater sheds an influence which is divine; and the host who brings together well-assorted guests in the numbers of the graces or the muses, if only a mortal Amphitryon, yet dis- penses and partakes of ambrosia. Some of the best parts of existence are the converse of a friend, with whom, in unrestrained exposition of one's thoughts, one may unravel and disentangle each skein of knotted prejudice, and many-coloured opinion. In such intimacies, however, cultivated exclusively, what Lord Bacon termed idola specus are sure to be worshipped. The principles may be right, the understanding may be sound, but the world is viewed from a single point, and to a certain extent inevitably erroneously. A true esti- mate of mankind and of the value of human pursuits, can alone be formed by one who corrects his closet specula- tions by the collective judgment of society. Intercourse with general society should not, perhaps, be too frequent; for time is absorbed, which ought to be given to more serious objects. Besides it is pleasure, and pleasure unintermittingly pursued in a short time loses its zest. It does not, indeed, part with its attractive force, when it becomes less pleasant. But by a curious 9 98 DIET. moral law it becomes converted from an enjoyment into a compulsory but unsatisfactory craving. Pleasure is the most agreeable relaxation,—the hardest business. The pleasures of society are like other pleasures; and such scenes even as are figured in the following instance by Sir Walter Scott, would as certainly, on a constant recur- rence, have become faded and dull, as in their occasional eelebration they must have been full of entertainment, and equally conducive to health of body and mind. " The Burnett, whose taste for the evening meal of the ancients is quoted by Mr. Pleydell, was the celebrated metaphysician and excellent man, Lord Monboddo, whose ccense will not easily be soon forgotten by those who have shared his classic hospitality. His philosophy, as is well known, was of a fanciful and somewhat fantastic charac- ter ; but his learning was deep, and he was possessed of a singular power of eloquence, which reminded the hearer of the os rotundum of the Grove or Academe. Enthu- siastically partial to classical habits, his entertainments were always given in the evening, when there was a cir- culation of excellent Bordeaux, in flasks garlanded with roses, which were also strewed on the table, after the manner of Horace. The best society, whether in respect of rank or literary distinction, was always to be found in St. John-street, Canongate. The conversation of the ex- cellent old man, his high, gentlemanlike, chivalrous spirit, the learning and wit with which he defended his fanciful paradoxes, the kind and liberal spirit of his hospitality, must render these nodes cceneeque dear to all who, like the author (though, then young,) had the honour of sitting at his board." SOCIAL RELATIONS OF FOOD. 99 The tone of the above is far too epicurean. But, if I mistake not, it suits the times. But time never stands still, and the times are always changing. And the habits of luxurious indulgence of the first half of the nineteenth century (if viewed fairly as belonging to an important transition period in society) will not be too severely con- demned. Fifty years a§o, I have been told, it was cus- tomary to see gentlemen walk into the drawing-room, after dinner, flushed and unsteady with wine. Three thousand years ago, we see in Wilkins's fac-similes of Egyptian designs, that the ladies of the best society were equally liable to be overtaken in their excesses. It is something that in fifty years the substitution has taken place of luxurious and refined indulgence for coarse ex- cess. Who can doubt the value of refinement of manners as an element of civilization ? Yet it is very questionable whether the polished tone of our present good society could have arisen except in the midst of opulent and splendid indulgence. Before, there was coarser indul- gence ; then a sudden expansion of wealth took place, and a uniform tone of refined pleasure followed. The re- finement thus obtained (like Grecian art from sensual impurity) may remain, when that which sullied its birth has disappeared. Nor are favouring circumstances far off, namely, a vast reduction of the national wealth, and still heavier calls on what remains, which will favour the arrival of such a consummation. ( ioo ) CHAPTER II. OF EXERCISE. The living machines, which Nature frames, agree in this respect with engines of human construction; they are worn and consumed by use. But they differ in ano- ther,—inaction is not less fatal to them. Use, which at every instant impairs and takes something from the steam- engine, for a long period invigorates the frame and sinews of a labourer. The same law pervades the whole organism: the mind, like the body, is strengthened by exertion. We have at present, however, only to do with the employment of the mechanical powers of the frame, the use of which is emphatically called exercise. To form an idea of the mechanism of voluntary motion, the reader is to suppose that the ends of the bones are accurately adjusted to each other: some as plane surfaces, others as hinges, others as balls and sockets; and that they are so tied together by ligaments that they cannot fall asunder, or move but in those actions for which their surfaces are fittingly shaped. The motions of the body are the play of its different joints. That pl*y is deter- mined, or the joints are either moved to a succession of positions, or permanently fixed and maintained in one, by the action of the voluntary muscles. These extend from bone to bone, passing over the joints, which they move or fix, through their power of instantaneously shortening or becoming rigid, upon mere volition. The examination of a single joint will serve to explain the conditions be- longing to the motions of all. EXERCISE. 101 The elbow forms a perfect hinge. Of several muscles disposed about it, it will again be sufficient for my present purpose to consider two alone. One of these is situated in front, and bends the joint; the other behind, which ex- tends it. Each of these is a thick band of flesh, which is attached to the arm-bone above, to a bone of the fore-arm below. It consists of fine threads, which are disposed parallel to each other and lengthwise in reference to the arm-bone. These parallel threads, when in repose, de- scribe straight lines. When we desire to exert them, the will transmitting an influence along the nerves, suddenly throws each of the threads into a zigzag line. But the ends of the same thread, bent into a zigzag, must be nearer than before; and as they are attached each to a point of a different bone, these points of the two bones must be approximated. So it follows that the action of the mus- cular threads on the fore-part of the arm bends the elbow, while that of the muscular threads disposed behind the arm-bone is the reverse. By a voluntary effort, we can maintain either of these sets of threads in zigzag lines, with angles more or less open, determining thus the du- ration and degree of the flexion or extension of the joint at Our pleasure. Every other position, gesture, action of the body, is similarly performed. Now if we keep the elbow bent at a right angle, we may sustain in the hand a considerable weight; the force which supports it is the strength of the muscular threads, acting vertically upon the bones of the fore-arm. Sub- stitute, in idea, for these threads a skein of silk; it would equally serve, attached as the muscle is, and being of the same length, to support a moderate weight. But the 9* 102 EXERCISE. threads would become frayed and strained by use, if often employed to support this weight; and one or other break- ing, would diminish in number. The parallel threads of the muscle, on the contrary, not only appear individually to strengthen by use, but, what is more wonderful, they become more numerous; the whole muscle acquires an in- crease in volume through the increasing number of its constituent threads. It is, however, to be understood, that exercise, to be salutary, and to strengthen, must have its limits. Immoderate exercise will fatigue, exhaust, and permanently weaken the same muscle, which moderate exercise would have developed, and which inexertion would have rendered powerless and useless; the extreme effects the same, the mean the best. The temperate exercise of the muscles has other di- rectly local effects, that are equally beneficial. The bones become larger and harder, the sinews about the joints stronger; the blood circulates with more vivacity; the con- tents of the veins are driven onwards to the heart by the pressure of the contracting muscles, and so room is made for a quicker supply of arterial blood, on which nourish- ment depends. Thus it is well known, that in bleeding in the arm, if the blood does not flow briskly, the patient has only to open and shut the hand, in other words, to use the muscles of the fore-arm, and the stream is freer. Nor does the enlargement and strengthening, conse- quent on exercise, include those parts alone which minister to locomotion. It is certain that the play of the chest, and its freer and more extensive motion, contribute to strengthen the lungs. The left side of the chest is habi- tually less exerted, whether from original inferiority of development, or otherwise, than the right; and of the EXERCISE. 103 whole left side, the upper part has the least play and ac- tion. The upper part of the left lung, which has thus the least mechanical motion given to it, is likewise the part which consumption first attacks. To exemplify the same law, another part of the respi- ratory apparatus may be used, to which exercise, given without thought, causes it to be developed, not beneficially, but to the prejudice of personal appearance. If a young man gives in to the habit of taking snuff, the aperture of the nostrils becomes sensibly longer, wider, and more vascular; the organ, enlarging with the mechanical exer- cise it takes, becomes, like the habit, preposterous. Such are the effects of local exercise,—to develop the resources of growth, and to invigorate the circulation. Suppose the exercise not local, but general;—the entire frame expands and acquires vigour, the venous circulation is disembarrassed by the continual propulsion of the blood towards the heart, the heart's action is more free and strong, the animal temperature is raised, the breathing is improved, superfluous fat disappears, transpiration is pro- moted, the skin becomes fine and clear, and the mind, partaking of the elasticity which the body acquires, is disposed to serenity and cheerfulness. An agent, which can produce in the frame effects so salutary, must well be deserving of careful study. The rules of exercise may be considered under four heads, as they apply to the sports of boys, the education of girls, the habits of adults, and the wants of age. It may be well, however, preliminarily to explain, that there are certain conditions, without which exercise does not carry with it the full share of benefit it is calculated to produce. 104 EXERCISE. In the first place, Air and Exercise should go together. The same bodily exertion in a close room does not refresh and invigorate as when taken in the open air; in a street, as in the fields; for there are many degrees, of which, however, the lowest is still a good. A walk in the streets of a metropolis is better than sitting at home, although not equal, in the renovation it affords, to a walk or ride in the country; an hour's fencing at Angelo's or Hamon's is far better than an hour passed at a chess-club, although not equal to a match of cricket at Lord's. Secondly, Exercise to be thoroughly beneficial requires a mind at ease. Exercise taken in the performance of professional duties hardly tells restoratively,—it fatigues without strengthening. Even a walk or a ride, alone, taken for the sake of exercise, is wonderfully unrefresh- ing. The mind must be cheerful and amused, that exer- cise may do its salutary office. Thirdly, Exercise must bear a proportion to the other calls upon the strength. It is itself exhausting; but when the system can bear it, the reaction which follows is a source of strength. So care must be taken not to exhaust the entire capital from which nature recruits herself. The capabilities of the frame may be drawn upon in many dif- ferent ways, but all contribute to the same exhaustion. Every one rises in the morning with a certain quantity of disposable force, or, to use a common' expression, of nervous energy. This may be .consumed in bodily exer- cise, in study, in mental anxiety, even in digestion; the student, who has been busily employed at his desk all the morning, in the afternoon rises from his chair with tired legs ; he has as yet taken no exercise, but in another way his strength has been drawn upon, and the long walk, which EXERCISE OF BOYS. 105 otherwise would invigorate, would now exhaust only and fatigue. The following is a paradoxical instance of exhaustion produced on the principle which has been explained; when the opposite effect would have been anticipated:— Captain Franklin, speaking of an occasion when his party, worn with cold, fatigue, and famine, had the for- tune to kill a cow out of a herd of musk oxen, observes, " This was the sixth day since we had had a good meal; the tripe de roche, even where we got enough, only serv- ing to allay the pangs of hunger for a short time." " We were detained all next day by a strong southerly wind and snow. We restricted ourselves to one meal this day, as we were at rest, and there was only meat remaining suf- ficient for the morrow." The consequence, however, of this temperate indulgence in fresh and nourishing food was, that on recommencing their toils, " the whole party complained more of faintness and weakness than they had done before; their strength seemed to have been impaired by the recent supply of animal food." It is evident that the nutriment which the worn party had received from their two days' good meals, had not made up for the direct exhaustion produced by the call upon their digestive forces to chymify so much animal food. Their stomachs had consequently tired their legs and arms. Exercise of Boys.—Young animals have a natural dis- position towards bodily exertion; they frisk and bound in a thousand gamesome ways, finding a reason in every thing for indulging their sportive humour. It is enough that they have life and are young, to lead them to perpetual motion. It is the same with children, whose noisy play springs from their exuberant spirits, which are beneficently 106 EXERCISE. given them for their enjoyment: but not for that alone, but to supply motives for the requisite practice and strengthening of their limbs, their body, their lungs. The games of boys are well adapted to their physical condition, and the first lessons they have to learn. Their frame is light as yet; they have to learn to carry it about, and transport it from place to place; to exercise their legs, rendering them by use secure and ready implements of locomotion. The perpetual falls of children (for their protection against which the ends of their bones are as yet a soft cartilage only) show that they are but learners how to walk, run, jump. The appropriate games of their age are games of running, the hoop, prisoners' bars, and the like. To these the military exercise is a good adjunct, whrch completes their knowledge of walking, else liable to be careless and slovenly, giving their carriage uprightness, firmness; to their step precision;—the frame raised to its full height, perpendicular; the shoulders well thrown back, the head erect;—in motion the limb advanced straight, the toe pointed outward, the whole limb inclined inward to keep the line of progression straight, the body poised for an appreciable period in the measured step upon the opposite limb,—a physical lesson of great use, but from prescription overrated.* We admire it in its result:—the extended line of soldiery, its exactness, its pliancy, the precision of its simultaneous movements, nothing inhar- monious, out of place, or interfering. But we forget that • I speak with reference to what is commonly understood by the ex- pression, military exercise,/not of the varieties of gymnastics which have been of late years judiciously introduced into the drill of the army. EXERCISE OF BOYS. 107 the character of the whole does not belong of necessity or likelihood to its individual parts: a sword-blade is flexi- ble, elastic; but cut it into a dozen pieces, each would be hard, square, rigid. The line of soldiery is a machine, and the soldiers are its constituent parts. The training of each is for the co-operation of the whole, not to pro- mote individual variety of strength and action, not to bring out in each all the resources of his frame. Contrast the single soldier, detached from the line, with an Indian warrior; in the gestures, and crouching and supple walk of the latter,—the body playing upon its bent joints as upon springs, each posture elastic, prepared to throw out on the instant all the energies of the frame, promising the agile bound of the panther, it is evident that for every purpose of attack or evasion the Indian is individually the best fitted, as he so much the more completely com- mands the resources of his muscular frame. There is nothing in what is called the military exercise which brings out these qualities. They have to be learned in some other school. This school is not exactly what are called gymnastics; the exercises which pass under that name are inappropriate to young children; to the strongest, in- deed, they do no harm, or may not; but children not the strongest are liable to be strained by them, and to have the seeds of permanent structural weakness sown by their influence. The same objection does not apply to systems of exercises, in which the frame is thrown into a succes- sion of attitudes, with gestures of more or less rapidity or force. Any quantity of exercise may be thus obtained; and there is this safety in such exercises, that we may be sure Nature has not overweighted the body; and this ad- vantage, that by means of an organized system of exer- 108 EXERCISE. cises, every class of muscles, every region of the trunk, each weaker or neglected part, may in its turn be sub- mitted to strengthening discipline. As boys advance in age, their frame fashions itself to a new character, and new elements of strength are put forth. The chest expands, the arms become firm and muscular. The sports of young men are correspondingly altered; cricket now, and rowing, single-stick, fencing, tennis, well fitted to draw out the resources of the frame, appropriately take their turn. In the practice of such exercises, it is desifable to re- collect that Nature has made the left side of the person the feeblest, and that the customs of society discourage its use on any thing like an equality with the right. The occasion, therefore, is not to be neglected, which such sports afford of strengthening the weaker part; so in these exercises, in fencing, single-stick, tennis, the left hand should be frequently used in alternation with the right. I have already given the best reason for strengthening the left side of the body; but that applies to delicate frames alone. To the strong it has this advantage, that their physical powers are positively increased; which is desira- ble while their frames are perfect,—and still more so when, as it may occasionally happen, the right arm is temporarily disabled. Dancing can hardly be recommended as an exercise; although as a source of social amusement it has a high value. As a means of forming the carriage of the body it is also excellent. Locke himself recommends that chil- dren be taught to dance as soon as they are capable of learning it, for this purpose,—and because it gives chil- dren manly thoughts. Certain it is that the carriage of EXERCISE OF GIRLS. 109 a child cannot be improved without its character profit- ing.* Physical Education of Gfirls.—Girls, as children, are healthier than boys. This fact, which, if it has not been any where remarked, is indisputable, may be accounted for in the following manner. Girls, as young children, are nearer in mind and body what they are to be perma- nently, than boys. Their shape has les3 to alter, (the pelvis being already in early childhood proportionately larger,) their voice, complexion, delicacy of skin, have hardly to be modified. It is presumable that their caste of temperament, thus early decided, not temporary, un- settled, or intended for further material change, has a strength in its anticipated maturity which the childhood of the opposite sex does not possess. There is but one disease to which female children are liable, and that is Education; as soon as the age arrives at which they are to be artificially trained to feminineness of mind and manners and accomplishment, their strength and health are endangered. While boys are encouraged to pursue sports of increasing exertion, their sisters, whose bodily strength not keeping pace with theirs, nevertheless requires exercise equal in proportion for its maintenance, are forbidden all that they need. The consequence is, * Dancing will probably not again contribute to make a Lord Chan- cellor ; but some of the advantages which we learn that the possession of the art conferred in the East, it may still convey even in England. "Their conversation (continued the princess Scheherazade) happen- ing to turn upon diversions, and the different ways of making merry, the calendars arose, and danced after their fashion; which augmented the good opinion which the ladies had conceived of them, and procured them the esteem of the caliph and his companions."—Arabian Nights,—the thirty-third. 10 110 EXERCISE. that they are liable to become fragile and delicate.. How their health is progressively impaired, this is not the place to teach. It is my present object only to point out in what its alterations originate, and how they may be pre- vented. But there is one alteration which follows so im- mediately and mechanically from neglect of exercise, and which tends so completely to counteract the objects for which the system of artificial culture is pursued, that I may not pass it unnoticed. This is weakness of the back followed by curvature of the spine. I enter indeed upon this subject the more readily, that it has not been adequately explained even by the latest writers. Every one is indeed aware that general weak- ness of the entire structure of the back is the consequence of the neglect of exercise; but how it happens that that weakness produces lateral curvature, I think has not as yet been shown. All, again, are aware that vertical pres- sure is insufficient to produce the effect observed; this might cause the bones to become broader ahd flatter, but could not bend the back laterally. The difficulty has been to get at the origin of lateral curvature; or to bring the back into that kind of sinuous flexure, in which common pressure would cause the weakened column to become serpentine. The first feature in the inquiry, which presents itself, is the almost uniform elevation and fulness of the right shoulder, and right side of the chest, which accompanies curvature of the spine. Why this feature is not universal will be subsequently explained. But for the present let us attend to the fact of its remarkable frequency. The principle, to which this will be traced is thus ex- pressed by Donald Walker:—" The one-sidedness with CURVATURE OF THE SPINE. lit tvhich almost all the acts of life are performed, is the ge- neral cause of the greatest and most universal deformity, arid its prevention requires an equal and similar use of the other side." Hitherto, however, the connexion be- tween the general fact and the common feature of spinal curvature has not been shown. Mr. Coulson, in a recent work upon this subject, ani- madverts upon the views propounded by the late Mr. Shaw. "In consequence," says Mr. Shaw, "of the alteration in the state of the shoulders being the first symptom of deformity observed, it is generally but erroneously sup- posed that the dorsal part of the spine is the first distorted. Indeed those who have lately written on this subject have fallen into this error, and have described the curve at the loins as the last which is formed. " In cases of diseased vertebrae there may be a curve only between the shoulders, but it invariably happens in the common lateral curvature, that where one shoulder is protruded, there is also a curve at the loins; and I have shown by diagrams in the preceding volume that this curve is not only the first formed, but that those in the upper part of the spine are consequent upon it." Mr. Coulson observes upon these passages, that those who describe the curvature in the loins as the last which is formed, " are right, though they did not clearly see the cause," and adds, that Mr. Shaw's practical observa- tions tend, "in spite of his hypothesis, to prove that the first curve is formed at the right shoulder." It is evident, therefore, that while Mr. Shaw attributed the initial curve to the loins, Mr. Coulson is disposed to look for it in the back and shoulder. The latter writer, 112 EXERCISE. however, puts forward, with a full general conception of its importance, the principle already quoted,—the general influence of the right-sidedness of our habits upon curva- ture of the back. •But neither Mr. Shaw's nor Mr. Coulson's ideas are strictly just. The two curvatures are not successive, but necessarily simultaneous; neither has priority; in health and strength both of these curvatures, producing serpen- tine flexure of the spine, continually occur, and disap- pear with the next change of posture. In the weak, they become permanent, and are progressively aggra- vated. To trace the mischief in its progress:— The steps by which the spine ordinarily gives way are these. The child, kept at its music-stool, or books, or drawing, has a weakened and aching back. The muscles of the spine have not been invigorated by the sportive exertions, and the various changes of attitude, which nature dictates. Wearied by its task, the next change is to stand listlessly beside its governess, or in a drawing- room. What is the posture which it assumes ? It is of course that which gives greatest ease to the languid mus- cles. The child stands with its weight supported upon one leg, the body swayed to that side, the knee of the other side bent, and the hip lowered. The limb which it uses on this occasion for support is almost always the right limb; for this simple reason, that it is the strongest. And the child assumes the position at all times, because it is one of change from its former more rigid position and because, in addition, the fascial structure of the limb takes off, in that posture, some of the strain from the muscles. CURVATURE OF THE SPINE. 118 Let me, in passing, observe, that what has been already said, sufficiently indicates the source of one minor kind of displacement that is not unfrequent. The right ankle constantly rested on grows inwards,—that is to say, the joint gives inwards, its ligaments being elongated by the perpetual strain. In like manner, or from the same cause, the knee will give inwards,—one limb becoming in-kneed. The child thus weakened by its habitual inexertion, and tired by the discipline of the morning, is standing supported on its right leg. To judge of what is happen- ing to its back at the same time, place before you a healthy child, and having instructed it to rest its weight alter- nately on both its legs, and, as in the position supposed, upon one only, observe its back when the alternation to the latter takes place. You may distinctly see that the straight line of its back becomes, in the second case, a serpentine flexure, the ordinary flexure of curvature. The mechanical elements of the change are equally obvious. At the time that the weight of the frame is transferred to the right limb, the left side of the pelvis is seen to sink; but the spinal column is attached at right angles to the middle of the pelvis; if the whole length of the column continued vertical to its base, the child would have fallen tewards the unsupported side; the column, to avoid this consequence, is instinctively bent at the upper part of the loins to the right, to throw the weight well over to the right side; but the degree of flexion required for this purpose would carry the neck considerably out of the perpendicular; another contrary bend is therefore requi- site, which begins in the middle of the back, and termi- nates at the root of the neck. These are the elements 10* 114 EXERCISE. of the simultaneous changes which ensue,—the inclina- tion of the pelvis to the left, the flexure of the lower part of the spine to the right, of the upper part towards the left. They may be thus experimentally produced in the flexuous spine of the healthiest child, as quickly redressed, and the spine restored to straightness. They are thus likewise inseparable, not successive, but simultaneous parts of one action. Let us now apply the preceding observations to children with backs weakened in bone, sinew, muscle. This posi- tion of rest, this standing-at-ease, to which they are more prone than other children, and which becomes habitual, brings the spinal column into the following relation to the weight of the body, arms, and head. It is no longer a straight pillar of support; but, so long as the posture is maintained, a flexuous one. That would matter little, if all the elements of the column were strong and rigid. But they are weak, debilitated, disposed to yield, and they give accordingly; and the flexures become, not the tem- porary yieldings of elastic joints, but permanent givings and yieldings of weakened textures. Once begun, the change can but progress, and the greater the obliquity at each part, the greater the mechanical inability of the spine to resist the growing evil. The only difficulty that remained in the theory of spi- nal curvatures, was that which I have attempted to ex- plain. When a curvature of the spine in the back is convex towards the right side, it necessarily follows that the right shoulder will be elevated, that the right side of the chest will be fuller, that the left shoulder will drop, the left breast be flat. It is easy, again, to understand how the case may be RULES AGAINST CURVATURE. ' 115 exactly reversed; how the habitual inclination may be to rest on the left leg, with a parallel train of consequences. Again, it is evident that the serpentine curvature, the common origin of which I have explained, may be fa- voured by, or even entirely proceed from other causes; how an invalid in bed may be bent with a convexity towards the side on which she lies; how the spine may be twisted slightly on its axis by one or other habitual motion; how the posture employed in writing or drawing may give rest and pressure to one side and shoulder, ex- pansion and elevation to the other; how the trivial cir- cumstance of the dress of children hanging on their shoulders, and so contrived as to be always ready to fall off, will almost necessitate the practice of perpetually hitching up one shoulder to support the dress, and of letting the other drop within it. The description of the steps by which weakness of the back leads to curvature, explains at the same time the means of preventing the latter, or of remedying its early threatenings. 1. In the first place, a child should be broken of the habit of standing on one leg in preference to the other. It should be made to stand on both alternately. Mr. Jenkins, whose ingenious instructions have been of so much use to the youth of the last five-and-twenty years, observed to me that there was one sure receipt for pro- ducing crookedness: "For this purpose," he remarked, "a child should bolt its food, and habitually stand on one leg:"—the evils proceeding from the mischievous combination of bad digestion with faulty habits of pos- ture are well conveyed in this apophthegm. 2. All other postures are to be avoided which tend to 116 EXERCISE. give predominance to one side, or to incline it always to the same side. 3. Exercises which promote the strength of the back should be systematically employed; exercises, however, in which the limbs are not weighted, but which consist in the assumption of a succession of attitudes. Much natural grace, and ease of posture and gesture, are col- laterally obtained by such practices, when judiciously selected. To mention one that is highly useful;—sup- pose the child to stand with its feet together, and with its face turned against the low end of a sofa the level of which reaches some way above its knees; let it then raise its hands to meet above its head, and bring them down to the horizontal line of its face: and then let it bend the body forward till the hands touch the sofa, and rise again, and repeat the exercise several times in suc- cession. 4. The dress of a girl should not bind her chest, but should be, in fact, as light and incompressive as that of a boy, and as much indulgence in play and sportive amuse- ment allowed as may be consistent with the habits it is right to encourage. 5. In sitting, when already tired, the child should rest well back on her chair, the spine resting against the back of the chair, thoroughly supported by it, and the seat of the chair reaching to the bend of the knees. Her feet should be equally supported. Such are the precautions necessary to be observed against spinal curvature; and they are sufficient to pre- vent it. To remove it entirely, when it exists to any great extent, is impossible; to remedy it in part during growth, always practicable; to obliterate it at its commencement, not less so. The partial introduction, however, of other EXERCISES OF MEN. 117 principles of treatment becomes necessary where curva- ture has begun. In a note to an excellent article on physical education by Dr. Barlow, of Bath, in the Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine, Dr. Forbes adds, of his own observation, that in a school which he had inspected, not one female child that had resided there two years had a straight spine !— a serious comment on the text,—not to exclude from the « education of girls that enjoyment of air and exercise which nature claims for them. II. OF THE EXERCISE PROPER FOR ADULTS. " The wise for health on exercise depend, God never made his works for man to mend." Cicero is described by Plutarch as being', at one period of his life, extremely lean and slender, and having such a weakness in his stomach that he could eat but little, and that not till late in the evening. He travelled to Athens, however, for the recovery of his health, where his body was so strengthened by gymnastic exercises as to become firm and robust; and his voice, which had been harsh, was thoroughly formed, and rendered sweet, full, and sonorous. Of Julius Caesar, the same author informs us that he was originally of a slender habit of body, had a soft and white skin, was troubled with pains in his head, and subject to epilepsy; but by continual marches, coarse diet, and frequent lodging in the fields, he struggled against these diseases, and used war, and the exercises and hardships therewith connected, as the best medicine against these indispositions. Sydenham exemplifies the utility of exercise, by the case of a learned prelate (Dr. Seth Ward, bishop of Sa- 118 EXERCISE. lisbury,) who having applied himself intensely to his studies for a long time, was at length seized with a hypo- chondriac disorder, which, by its long standing, depraved all the ferments of the body, and destroyed the digestion. After having tried all sorts of medicines in vain, he was at last persuaded by Sydenham to try riding on horse- back, beginning with short journeys, as being "best suited to the weak condition to which he was reduced, but gradually lengthening them as he gained strength, and not to mind either meat or drink or the weather, but to take up such accommodations as are to be met with upon the road, like a common traveller. In short, he continued this method, till at length he rode twenty or thirty miles a-day, and finding himself much mended in a few days, he was en- couraged by this wonderful success to continue this course for several months, in which space of time he had rode many thousand miles; so that at length he was not only free from his disorder, but became strong and brisk.* Mr. Holcroft, in his answers to Sir John Sinclair upon the subject of training, observes, "The experiments which I have made upon myself, though they never have been followed with perseverance and consistency, tend to prove that exercise, at every period of life, is greatly ad- vantageous, provided it be not taken to excess; it seems as if it might be gradually increased to what would be thought a wonderful degree, even in old age; and that with its increase the faculties strengthen, and an approach to youth returns." It is a common impression that the effects of high training are attained at an expense of constitution ; and that the frame which is raised by constant exercise to its " Swan's Sydenham, p. 444. EXERCISES OF MEN. 119 utmost strength wears out the sooner for it. This appears to be erroneous. Sir John Sinclair says, " It is remarked that running horses when trained do not wear out sooner than other horses; on the contrary, they bear fatigue much better. Nor does training game-cocks shorten their lives; on the contrary, they live longer than common poultry." The reader may be curious to know what amount and kind of exercise constitutes high training. The principal objects for which, in this country, per- sons have submitted to this preparation, are feats of pe- destrianism and pugilism; the training for both is nearly the same; its purpose, one which is technically called to improve the wind, that is to say, the power of sustaining continued exertion. The pedestrian, who may be supposed already in tole- rable condition, enters upon his course of training with a regular course of physic, which consists of three doses (Glauber's salts are generally preferred, and from one to two ounces are taken each time, with an interval of four days.) Having gone through this course of physic, he commences his regular exercise, which is gradually in- creased as he proceeds in training. When the object in view is the accomplishment of a pedestrian match, his. regular exercise must be from twenty to twenty-five miles a-day. He must rise at five in the morning, run half a mile at the top of his speed up-hill, and then walk six miles at a moderate pace, coming in at about seven to his breakfast. After breakfast, he must again walk six miles at a moderate pace, and at twelve lie down in bed without his clothes for half an hour. On getting'up he must walk four miles, and return by four to dinner. Im- 120 EXERCISE. mediately after dinner he must resume his exercises by running half a mile at the top of his speed, and walking six miles at a moderate pace after it. He should go to bed about eight. After three or four weeks the exercise is still more severe. But besides his regular exercise, a person under training ought to occupy himself during the intervals in every kind of exertion which tends to activity; cricket, bowls, and the like, in order that during the whole day the mind and body may be occupied. The sensible effects produced by training, independently of the increased facility of muscular exertion, are, the loss of fat, the increased size and hardness of the mus- cles, the skin becoming clearer, smooth, well-coloured, and elastic. He can draw a deeper inspiration, and hold his breath longer than before; he feels himself light and corky ; his mind is clearer, his attention ready, his senses acute. Such are the well-attested and certain advantages attainable by any one not advanced in life and of good constitution, through the judicious and systematic adoption of rules of bodily exercise. The condition of the body may be raised to a high tone of health and vi- gour, and the mind may be rendered clear, unclouded, cheerful. Unfortunately, this animal perfection can only be obtained at its price, (much time and leisure, namely,) which places it practically out of general reach. But there are some to whose occupations it is congenial; and it is interesting to observe, how highly it has been prized and fostered, and what a beneficial influence, in an earlier stage of society, was obtained by the cultivation of that bodily superiority, which seems under favouring circumstances naturally to ally itself with mental excellence. EXERCISES OF MEN. 121 Sully recommends in the strongest manner to military youth those sports and exercises which form a graceful carriage, and give strength to the limbs: "I was," says he, " always of the same opinion as Henry IV. concern- ing these exercises. He often asserted that they were the most solid foundation, not only of discipline and other military virtues, but also of those noble sentiments, and that elevation of mind, which give one nature superiority over another." It is related by Herodotus, that when Xerxes invaded Greece, he found the Grecians employed in celebrating the Olympic festival, and that the prize for which they contended was no more than a chaplet of wild olive. Tigranes, the son of Artabanus, exclaimed, " Alas, Mar- donius! against what kind of men have you led us to fight 1 men who engage in a combat with each other, not for gold or silver, but only for superiority of virtue and glory." The Olympic games, re-instituted by Iphitus, 776 years B.C., were celebrated every five years. Ten months of preparatory training were requisite; of which one was devoted to exercise in the stadium, in the presence of the judges, in order to qualify the competitor for the arduous trial. Free citizens only, whose characters were irreproachable, and who in other respects had complied with the rules of the institution, were permitted to contend. So important was the prize of victory, that none but men of spotless reputation were allowed to enter the lists, which were carefully guarded against the intrusion of unworthy or improper persons. "To conquer at Olympia," says Cicero, "was greater and more glorious than to receive the honour of a Roman triumph." 11 122 EXERCISE. There was scarcely a town of any consideration in Greece and in her colonies settled along the coasts of Asia and Africa,—in the Ionian and iEgean islands,— in Sicily and in Italy, in which there was not a gymnasium, or school of exercise, maintained at the public expense. The gymnasia were spacious buildings of a square or oblong form, surrounded on the outside with piazzas, and containing a large area, where the exercises were per- formed. Places for training in bad weather,—porticoes, baths, chambers for oil and sand, with* groves of trees, and seats or benches, encompassed the stalia. The in- ternal structure of these edifices was adapted to the con- venience of those who frequented them either for exercise or pleasure; and they were the resort of rhetoricians, philosophers, and men of learning, who here read their lectures, held their disputations, and recited their several productions. The contests at the Olympic games were in running, leaping, wrestling, throwing the discus, boxing: the foot- race held the foremost rank. These are humble elements of national greatness. But in an enervating climate the, disposition to indulgence is natural and powerful; and in the superstition of the Greeks there was little check to licentiousness. The games, diffused by multiplied insti- tutions through the whole people, and deriving a sacred character from their junction with religious ceremonies, exerted a separate and direct and important moral in- fluence. In those who prepared to contend in them, they compelled the observance of' temperance and sobriety. A natural association, or the skill of a lawgiver, had de- termined that an essential part of the preparatory train- ing should be a blameless life and character. Sculpture, which had her studio in the gymnasium, gave deathless EXERCISES OF MEN. 123 existence to the victor. Architecture raised her column and portico, which echoed to lofty philosophy, and from whence ascending, the music of the golden harp, cele- brating the triumphs of heroes, floated around Olympian Jove. Ev- 8m 8' ava Gxarttcp Aioj aistos, ii- xilav rtT'tpuy' a.fifo'tepia- dsv gc&atat;, 'Ap^os olavZv XSXOK.fW- 7iw 6' srii ot w^sXow 'Ayxvfaji xpaiti, yhstydpviv (A8v xfaaiotpov, xaT't^svaj- o 8e xviaotiuv fTypw vZiiov aiwpEt, rtatj 'Pcrtatfft xatar/xo/jt-cvoi. The real, stripped of the associated, utility of athletic exercises still remains. The extent, however, to which they should be pursued, even by those who can command time, is endlessly vari- ous ; so much depending upon temperament, habit, dia- thesis ; so much on the powers of digestion; so much on the natural development of the muscular frame; so much on the fortuitous customs of early youth; so much on the period when age, with its stealthy pace, first overtakes us: there is no doubt that many, forgetting that after forty their forces are declining, impair and exhaust them by taxing their digestive and athletic powers to the same extent that in youth they were used to do without detri- ment. Looking to the whole human race, it is certain that the average exercise used is excessive, and more harmful than beneficial. It has often to be discouraged. Yet is there no perfect health without a due proportion of this ingredient. When it is mingled with amusement it is most salutary. 124 EXERCISE. By those who have leisure, cricket, the chase, shooting, and the higher branches of angling, are capable of being used to contribute, not to recreation alone, but to health of body and mind. These sports have their seasons, a circumstance in itself most advantageous. Part of the year spent in graver occupation with lesser exercise;— another in which active bodily exertion is united with a mind unbent, present the wholesomest alternation. Of the two common forms of exercise, walking is best adapted to the strongest; riding to the more delicate. The alternation of the two is best. Exercise on horse- back is peculiarly fitted for women, who else hardly learn what is meant by exercise. The glow of health, and bril- liancy of complexion, which a gallop* produces, nothing else imparts to a lady's cheek. The revival of archery, and its introduction as a fa- shionable amusement, are in every way commendable. The following is the indignant reclamation of Latimer against its disuse in his time, when, indeed, fresh recol- lections gave it an importance it were vain to attach to it now. Like the Grecian foot-race, British archery had once influenced national character; and proficiency in it had been an aspiration of noble hearts. " Men of Eng- land in times past," observes the Bishop, "when they would exercise themselves, (for we must needs have some recreation,) were wont to go abroad in the fields for shoot- ing. The art of shooting hath been, in times past, much esteemed in this realm: it is a gift of God that he hath given us to excel all nations withal; it hath been God's instrument, whereby he hath given us many victories * I have looked in vain for the etymology of the word gallop, and conjecture it to be atlXovoc, the Homeric epithet of Iris. EXERCISES OF MEN. 125 against our enemies. I desire you, my lords, even as you love the honour and glory of God, and intend to re- move his indignation, let there be sent forth some sharp proclamation to the justices of peace, for they do not their duty. Charge them, upon their allegiance, that this singular benefit of God be practised, and that it be not turned into bowling, glossing, and dicing within the towns; for they be negligent in executing these laws of shooting. In my time, my poor father was diligent to teach me to shoot, as to learn me any other thing, and so I think other men did their children. He taught me how to draw, how to lay my body in my bow, and not to draw with strength of arms, as other nations do, but with strength of the body. I had my bows bought me, ac- cording to my age and strength; as I increased in these, so my bows were made bigger and bigger; for men shall never shoot well, except they be brought up to it. It is a godly art, a wholesome kind of exercise, and much com- mended in physic."* EXERCISE OF THE AGED. Habits of bodily exercise should be carried as far as . possible into old age. The circulation is becoming more languid, the hands and feet are generally cold, and a grow- ing torpor spreads over the system. Walking is then the best exercise; it is safer than riding, and warms the feet more. Being driven, in a carriage not too easy, is appropriate exercise for the aged, the feet being pro- tected from the cold. In this exercise the body is pas- sive, but not the less benefited by it. It is the same * Fruitful Sermons preached by the Right Reverend Father, and con- slant Martyr, Master Hugh Latimer. London, 15_,6, p. 69. 11* 126 EXERCISE. with friction, whether applied by the hand, or flannel, or a rough towel, or a flesh-brush. Friction produces a glow upon the skin, and gives local briskness to the cir- culation, and warmth. Age may be called a general palsy; and nothing serves so well to restore vigour after partial palsy as friction. Of the different modes of applying friction, that by the hand is best, for it extends below the surface. Any thing rough cannot be used with much pressure, or it will irritate and inflame the skin. Whereas the palm of the hand, which is smooth and soft, may be safely rubbed upon the limbs with a force which penetrates and gives motion to the muscles and internal parts, and excites the circulation in them. Perhaps the application of oils to the skin in health has been too much neglected. It is probable that this practice, conjoined with friction, might give suppleness and warmth to the joints and limbs of the aged. In Captain Barclay's feat of pedestrianism, already referred to, the greatest suffering which he experienced was from pain in the calves of his legs. This Mr. Jack- son tells me would probably have compelled him to re- linquish his task, if he had not been advised (by him) to have his legs rubbed with a strong camphorated oil. Dr. Rush remarks, " Old men tread upon the whole base of their feet at once in walking, and therefore wear out fewer shoes." The strain upon the ankles, which, with their knees, are weak, is thus avoided, and the step is more secure. The same author observes that "old men resemble children in being soon fatigued by walk- ing, or exercise, and in being as soon refreshed by rest." Of exercise he remarks, "Gentle exercise is of great SLEEP. 127 consequence in promoting the health of old people. It should be moderate, regular, and always in fair wea- ther." He adds, " I have not found sedentary employments to prevent long life, when they are not accompanied by intemperance in eating and drinking. This observation is not confined to literary men, nor to women only, in whom longevity without much exercise of body has been frequently observed. I met with one instance of a wea- ver ; a second of a silversmith; a third of a shoemaker, among the number of old people whose histories have sug- gested these observations." CHAPTER III. OF SLEEP. Dr. Whewell, in his Bridgewater Treatise, observes, in reference to sleep, "Man in all nations and ages has taken his principal rest once in twenty-four hours, and the regularity of this practice seems most suitable to his health, though the duration of the time allotted to repose is extremely different in different cases. So far as we can judge, this period is of a length beneficial to the human frame, independently of the effect of external agents. In the voyages recently made into high northern latitudes, when the sun did not rise for three months, the crews of the ship were made to adhere with the utmost punctuality to the habit of retiring to rest at nine, and rising at a quarter before six; and they enjoyed, under circumstances 128 SLEEP. apparently the most trying, a state of salubrity quite re- markable. This shows that, according to the common constitution of such men, the cycle of twenty-four hours is very commodious, though not imposed upon them by external circumstances." "No one can maintain, with any plausibility, that the period may be lengthened or shortened without limit. We may be tolerably certain that a constantly recurring period of forty-eight hours would be too long for one day of employment and one period of sleep with our present faculties; and all whose minds and bodies are tolerably active will probably agree, that, independently of habit, a perpetual alternation of eight hours up and four in bed would employ the human powers less advantageously than alternations of sixteen and eight." " The succession of exertion and repose in the mus- cular system, of excited and dormant sensibility in the nervous, appears to be fundamentally connected with the muscular and nervous powers, whatever the nature of these may be. The necessity of these alternations is one of the measures of the intensity of those vital energies; ano\ it would seem that we cannot, without assuming the human powers to be altered, suppose the intervals of tranquillity which they require to be much changed." * That sleep, the natural period of the alternation of which with a period of exertion, independent of, yet so curiously adjusted to, the length of a diurnal revolution, Dr. Whewell has shown to be an additional proof of the * "The arbitrary quantity, the length of the physiological and of the astronomical fact, is the same. Can this have occurred otherwise than by an intentional adjustment ?" Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise, p. 37. SLEEP. 129 existence of God, is felt by every one to prove His be- neficence,—whether in the soothing influence with which it steals over us, lapping the senses and tired thoughts in forgetfulness, or in the renovation and alacrity of spirit with which we rise refreshed from it. Repose is not less necessary to the animal frame than exercise. The latter uses, the former restores. It is on their alternation and right balance that strength depends. We can give repose to a strained or weary limb by lay- ing it horizontally and without motion, to an aching joint by a posture of ease and stillness, to the stomach by ab- stinence,—but not by means exactly parallel to these can we give rest to the mind. It is in vain that in complete bodily tranquillity we strive to give composure and quiet to our waking thoughts; their play continues to excite, and disturb, and exhaust; for mental rest, more is wanted,— for the repose of the nervous system, there must be sleep. What is the condition of the mind during sleep? The first question which presents itself, on entering into this inquiry, is, whether the current of ideas is ever en- tirely suspended: whether that endless flow of changing thought, which characterizes our waking hours, is even in the deepest sleep stagnant and motionless. There are strong reasons for believing that such complete intermis- sion of mental action does not take place. We breathe, and the effort probably arises from the call of a sensation, which we so relieve. We compute the flight of time during sleep, and if we have business to transact that much interests our thoughts, wake at an unusual hour, before the required hour of waking, and out of the seemingly deepest repose. It is 130 SLEEP. not, however, unlikely, that in this instance, where some kind of conscious observation must have been watching, our sleep has really been imperfect. Opposite as are waking and deep sleep, no two phenomena are more wonderfully chained together by links of insensible transi- tion. Many have thought that dreams belong to this inter- mediate state. Lord Brougham, who has given the most definite shape to this hypothesis, observes, after enume- rating instances of lengthy dreams, the whole of which, however, must have been comprised in an infinitely short space of time, as they originated in the impression that awoke the dreamer, "There seems every reason to con- clude that we only dream during the instant of transi- tion into and out of sleep." For my own part, I am disposed to adopt the opposite opinion, and think that in sleep we always dream; though we lose the recollection of those dreams (by far of course the greater number) which are not from their exciting na- ture more strongly impressed than common on our minds, or which do not occur so near waking as to be associated at no great remoteness with our waking thoughts. Either hypothesis, however, is equally unsusceptible of proof. What appears to me most to merit attention in this sub- ject is the fact of the non-interference of our dreams, whether occasional or constant, with our bodily or with our mental rest and refreshment. This, I think, is ex- plained by, and explains the objects of, the most curious phenomena of dreaming. In dreams, that which most strikes us are their mon- strous and capricious combinations, and our want of sur- prise at their improbability. Thought suggests thought SLEEP. 131 perfectly at random; the laws of mental crystallization seem suspended or confounded; any side of any element of thought appears capable of attracting the unlikeliest relation of another. Yet we seem to see nothing extra- ordinary in the fantastic creations. A check is absent in dreaming, which our waking rea- son uses. When awake, we recollect our just relation to every event and person presented to our senses or to our thoughts: something like our true position is constantly before us. In dreams this is quite forgotten,—wife, chil- dren, home, are not ours; while the friends whom we have lost meet and converse with us, as if they were our daily companions. Our fancy experiences no check from reality: the link which unites its operations with the past and the present and the future is temporarily unloosed. The mind may be said in sleep to be put out of gear. When we dream, the engine continues to work, but the whirl of thought has no bearing upon our practical being. It does not use our memory of the past, or touch or in- fluence our present purposes. Our every-day existence is veiled from the play of our associations: our anxious and responsible nature, with all its thoughts and cares, is wrapt in oblivion. Imagination, so dimly lighted is the cell where Reason sleeps, looks upon our tired hopes, and fears, and wants, and does not recognise them. Sir John Franklin remarks, when his party was in the extremity of physical exhaustion and physical suffering,* • What that severity of suffering was, the following example will bring to the reader's memory. " In the evening, there being no tripe de roche, we were compelled to satisfy, or rather to allay, our cravings of hunger by eating a gun-cover, and a pair of old shoes." 132 SLEEP, —"Although the sensation of hunger was no longer felt by any of us, yet we were scarcely able to converse on any other subject than the pleasure of eating." But their dreams at this period, while they were starving, were of plentiful repasts. It may be difficult to go deeper than the observation of the fact and its final cause. Its purpose is Rest. This Nature effects in sleep, by detaching our mental powers from our recollections: the former may move rapidly, or be quiescent,—it matters not:—the resistance is removed,—the engine whirls on without strain or ef- fort,—the machinery of our being is unloosed from it. It would be pursuing the analogy too far, to conjecture that this fact explains the rapidity of thought in dreams. Still, however, we may try another cast on this topic. We will in our dreams; and what we will seems to be accomplished; we seem to move, but without real bodily motion; we seem to speak, but without really uttering a sound,—the mental powers do not draw after them cor- poreal actions. We equally seem to see others move, and to hear others speak. We are, then, it is evident, in both cases, attending only to the play of our imagination. We really are neither perceiving nor willing. We are absorbed by the flow of our fancy alone. But why has it this unaccustomed force of reality, and why do we not detect the absurdity of its combinations? One reason certainly is, that the external world is now shut out. Thought has retired within itself. The principal ave- nues of sensation are closed; the bodily sensibility has become duller: the outward impressions, which in our day-dreams are still present to check the wandering mind, are no longer there to moderate its flights. SLEEP. 133 Perhaps all the phenomena of sleep and of ordinary dreams maybe explained by the supposition that the faculty of attention is suspended in sleep, or that sleep consists in a suspension of the act of attention. It is, however, not easy to define rigorously and satisfactorily _what attention means. In the waking state we are, as it were, asleep to all other impressions, when the atten- tion is concentrated on one. Condition of the Brain during Sleep.—No physiological inquiry is more pregnant than this. A case is related by Blumenbach, of a person who had been trepanned, and whose brain was observed to sink when he was asleep, and swell out when he was awake,__ a proof that the cerebral circulation is more languid when we sleep than when we are awake. The brain is not moved and excited by the same eddy and tumult of the blood during sleep as during the hours of waking. Ac- cordingly, all the circumstances which hurry the circula- tion, such as mental contention, thought, joy, anxiety, bodily exertion, excite the heart's action, and are anti- dotes to sleep. It is not equally easy to prove, but on reflection it ap- pears no less certain, that the nervous power of the brain is lowered in sleep; that the depression of the cerebral circulation is accompanied by depression of cerebral energy. But how else are we to account for the slowness or suspension of digestion during sleep, the feebleness of the heart's action, the susceptibility of cold ? " The steam has been turned off," and the body is relaxed; its func- tions (a fact best perhaps shown in hybernating animals) are half at a stand-still; that which imparts force and activity to every function is no longer generated in ade- 12 134 SLEEP. quate power and quantity; the brain, the main source of nervous energy, is in repose. The bearing of these conclusions, if just, upon cerebral disease, is of great importance. Brain attacks generally come on during the night, and during sleep. That is to say, they mostly supervene at the time when the power of the brain is lowered. They are then, in some degree, connected with depression of the cerebral forces. They are favoured by weakness and exhaustion of the brain. The attacks to which I refer are epilepsy, apoplexy, palsy; the common impression respecting which is, that they proceed from determination of blood to the brain, or from some kind of force or pressure operating actively to disturb the functions of the organ. I believe, on the contrary, that in the majority of cases, especially in ad- vanced life, these seizures, taken as a class, result from cerebral failure, from weakness, depression of power, temporary or permanent, of some part or the whole of the brain. It does not contravene the preceding conclusion, that these complaints are liable to be primarily induced by action in the head;—that where they do not result from alteration of structure, they often may be traced to habits of full living and strong excitement, which have frequently thrown the blood in hurried and violent circulation through the brain:—and that besides, in many instances, a loaded and laboured circulation goes with, and gives increased danger to such attacks;—and that nothing is more likely to benefit the latter class of cases than diminution, by means of cupping, of the quantity of blood in the vessels. But grouping together all cerebral seizures that take the form of fits, I believe that the cases in which cere- SLEEP. 135 bral congestion is a feature are the exceptions; and that it is most important the practice grounded on this prin- ciple should be recognised, that diminishing the quantity of the blood is not the appropriate remedy for cerebral seizures. The majority of such cases are sudden failure of the powers of the brain, which lowering the circulation will but additionally depress. I might make this remark in its practical bearing more general. It is certain that in many acute attacks and cases of insidious congestion life is saved by bleeding. But how many are there not, in which the chance of life is lessened by the same means ? The mildest form of epilepsy is best described by the term leipothymia* desertion of mind. It consists in sudden failure of consciousness, frequently unattended with giddiness, often so transient, that the patient does not fall, but recovers in time to save himself. When such slight attacks occur in the night, the patient, before sleeping tranquilly, starts up abruptly, awakened by the consciousness that he is rallying from such a sudden ob- livion. These attacks are often attended with a feeble or failing pulse, sudden perspiration, every sign of phy- sical and nervous weakness; they are cerebral debility, and at the moment, stimulants should be used, to rouse the languid brain and heart. Influences which promote or prevent Sleep.—The best preparation for sleep is sixteen to eighteen hours of varied mental and bodily occupation, enough to tire, not to ex- haust ; the mind not having been over-excited, the body not over-fatigued, and the spirits at the close equable, or if out of moderation, rather depressed than exhila- rated. * Leipoihymia, \avsiv, to leave, Sv^oc, the mind. 136 SLEEP. It is told of Napoleon, that he could, at any time, com- pose himself to sleep at will. The fact seems wonderful, but, if true, it is no wonder. The mind and body, in such a case, constantly used to the utmost, would con- stantly be in need of repose. If we imagine, in such a case, a consciousness of talent equal to any emergency, combined with perfect physical and moral courage, and a clear view of all the contingencies of the hour,* the ques- tion is not, what should enable, but what is to prevent, a soldier dropping asleep at the first convenient oppor- tunity. The mind has, more to do with the prevention of sleep than the body. Different persons, however, take diffe- rent views of what is mentally composing. Dr. Macnish observes, " a person would more readily fall asleep, lis- tening to a profound piece of argumentation, than to a humorous and fanciful story; and probably more have slumbered over the pages of Bacon and Locke than over those of Shakspeare and Milton." I confess that I feel disposed to reverse the terms of the antithesis, being in the habit of taking refuge in a poem, or a novel, from the state of full mental waking which I find reflection produce. Dugald Stewart remarks, "It is well known that there is a particular class of sounds which compose to sleep. The hum of bees, the murmur of a fountain, the reading of an uninteresting discourse, have this tendency in a remarkable degree: If we examine this class of sounds, we shall find that it consists wholly of such as are fitted to withdraw the attention of the mind from our own thoughts, and are at the same time not sufficiently in- teresting to engage its attention to themselves." * Una vez a. la guerra nos enganermos. —Spanish Proverb. SLEEP. It is found that heat produces two contrary effects in respect to sleep; it disposes us to sleep in the day-time, but interrupts sleep at night. In the day-time it op- presses, relaxes, weakens;* at night it stimulates. In hot weather, the entire quantity of sleep taken is less than in cold weather. On a change of weather in winter, one is sometimes kept awake, till he remembers that the clothes on his bed are too warm for the thaw which has succeeded. Cold promotes sleep. In the winter we sleep more than in summer. This arises from two causes; our habits are of more active exertion in winter, which exhausts; and the cold itself, by requiring a larger supply of heat from us, likewise consumes our strength, not to mention the disinclination to leave the pleasant repose of our beds, during which sleep again overtakes us. Nature, if I may be allowed the expression, has stepped out of her path to give this element of animal nature, namely, the relation of sleep to cold, development. Many animals hybernate, or fall into a winter-sleep, during which they take no nutriment, but remain torpid, their breathing and circulation being extremely languid, and their nourishment turning upon the absorption of their summer fat. In these animals, the temperature falls during hybernation, to obviate the effect of which, they ensconce themselves under shelter, and many of them ac- cumulate materials around them to exclude the cold. It is singular that exposure to intense cold wakens a hyber- nating animal. For cold as a mortal agent, destroys by producing "sleep that knows no waking." The hyber- *" A heated church and a dull sermon, are almost sure to produce sleep."—Philosophy of Sleep. By Robert .Macnish, 12* 138 SLEEP. nating animal is first awakened by cold, then sinks under its influence into a new sleep, and dies. In Captain Cook's first voyage, the effects of cold in- ducing this sleep are strikingly instanced. The scene occurred in the island of Terra-del-Fuego.—Dr. Solander, Mr. Banks, and several other gentlemen, had ascended the mountains of that cold region for the purpose of bo- tanizing and exploring the country. " Dr. Solander, who had more than once crossed the mountains which divide Sweden from Norway, well knew that extreme cold, es- pecially when joined with fatigue, produces a torpor and sleepiness that are almost irresistible. He, therefore, conjured the company to keep moving, whatever pain it might cost them, and whatever relief they might be pro- mised by an inclination to rest. 'Whoever sits down,' said he, 'will sleep; and whoever sleeps, will wake no more.' Thus at once admonished and alarmed, they set forward; but while they were still upon the naked rock, and before they had got among the bushes, the cold be- came suddenly so intense, as to produce the effects that had been most dreaded. Dr. Solander himself was the first who felt the inclination, against which he had warned others, irresistible; and insisted upon being suffered to lie downi Mr. Banks entreated and remonstrated in vain; down he lay upon the ground, although he was covered with snow, and it was with great difficulty that his friend kept him from sleeping. Richmond, also, one of the black servants, began to linger, having suffered from the cold in the same manner as the doctor. Mr. Banks, therefore, sent five of the company, among whom was Mr. Buchan, forward, to get a fire ready at the first con- venient place they could find; and himself, with four SLEEP. 139 others, remained with the doctor and Richmond, whom, partly by persuasion and entreaty, and partly by force, they brought on; but when they had got through the greatest part of the birch and swamp, they both declared they could go no farther. Mr. Banks again had recourse to entreaty and expostulation, but they produced no ef- fect. When Richmond was told that if he did not go on he would in a short time be frozen to death, he answered that he desired nothing but to lie down and die. The doctor did not so explicitly renounce his life; he said that he was willing to go on, but that he must first take, some sleep, though he had before told the company to sleep was to perish. - Mr. Banks and the rest found it impos- sible to carry them; and there being no remedy, they were both suffered to sit down, being partly supported by the bushes; and in a few minutes they fell into a profound sleep. Soon after, some of the people who had been sent forward, returned, with the welcome news that a fire was kindled about a quarter of a mile farther on the way. Mr. Banks then endeavoured to awake Dr. Solander, and happily succeeded. But though he had not slept five minutes, he had almost lost the use of his limbs, and the muscles were so shrunk, that the shoes fell from his feet: he consented to go forward with such assistance as could be given him, but no attempts to relieve poor Richmond were successful." The following remarks by Dr. Macnish, in relation to this subject, are extremely interesting. The practical rule is excellent, and the fact explains how animals may hybernate in snow. " If a person is unfortunate enough to be overtaken in a snow-storm, and has no immediate prospect of extrica- 140 SLEEP. tion, he should, if the cold be very great, and the snow deep, sink his body as much as possible in the latter, leav- ing only room for respiration. By this plan, the heat of the body is much better preserved than when exposed to the influence of the atmosphere, and life has a greater chance of being saved; for the temperature of the snow is not lower than that of the surrounding air, while its power of absorbing caloric is much less. It is on this principle that sheep live for such a length of time enve- loped in snow-wreaths, while, had they been openly ex- posed, for a much less period, to a similar degree of cold, death would inevitably have ensued." Dr. Darwin mentions that a person placed upon a mill-stone, revolving rapidly, is thrown into sleep. I cannot find the facts upon which this statement is grounded. But I conclude that pressure upon the brain, and stupor, would be the natural physical and phy- siological consequences of such an experiment.—Dr. Macnish observes, " By lying flat upon a mill-stone while performing its revolutions, sleep is soon produced, and death without pain would be the result, if the experiment were greatly protracted." Sir John Sinclair says, "The celebrated engineer, Brindley, often saw the experiment tried, of a man extending himself across the large stone of a corn-mill, and gradually falling asleep by the stone whirling round, before the stone had gained its full velo- city." A hearty meal produces somnolency. The effect pro- bably ensues from the temporary exhaustion of the brain, caused by the determination of the blood and nervous energy to the stomach. The sleep which follows is heavy and disturbed. It should not be indulged in. It carries SLEEP. 141 no refreshment with it. The labouring digestion re- quires the stimulus of waking to help it. A hearty meal should therefore never be taken late at night;—then, in addition to the reasons against it, which have been stated, the system is already exhausted by the day it has toiled through. A good meal at night, however, may be taken with another view. Suppose you have to watch, and not to sleep: it is certain that food is, to a certain extent, a substitute for sleep, and in that case, may be used as such. This means, however, can be resorted to by those only whose digestion is strong. I have al- ready described (p. 59) the extraordinary quantity of food which Captain Barclay consumed in his match of one thousand miles in a thousand hours. It was the strength of his stomach (after his courage and endurance) which carried him through that match. The food he chymified was a substitute for sleep. It has been remarked that those who eat heartily, and have strong digestive powers, usually sleep much. Those who do so, try their constitutions severely, and fall into dangerous plethora. The habit becomes gross and over- loaded, and exposed to a troop of illnesses. One mode of relief is occasionally present in such cases in the shape of profuse perspiration. But this, as it is highly relax- ing, lowers the tone of the system, and weakens the per- son who so indulges, in body and in mind. Preparation for sleep.—A sleeping apartment should be well ventilated: it is therefore desirable in winter to have a fire in a bed-room, or in a dressing-room opening into it. The bed had better stand detached from the wall for the same purpose. The curtains should not be drawn close; the quantity of covering should be regula- 142 SLEEP. ted by the temperature of the weather. Dr. Rush ob- serves, " Warm bed-clothes are especially proper to pre- serve or increase the heat of old people. From the neglect of this observance, they are often found dead in their beds in the morning, after a cold night, in all cold countries." The late Dr. Chovet, of New York, who lived to be eighty-five, slept in a baize night-gown, under eight blan- kets and a coverlet, in a stove-room, many years before he died. It is best to sleep in a linen or cotton night-dress, which should be loose at the wrist and neck. Half the physical refreshment of sleep depends upon the laying aside the weight and constriction of ordinary dress. It is best to sleep on a mattress,—but in this, as in every thing else, change is preferable: in winter a feather- bed not too soft, in summer a hair mattress, may be used. The shutters should be closed, in winter for warmth, in summer to save the eyes from the morning light. The means that we use to induce sleep are founded upon principles which have been already explained. We close the avenues of sensation,* as far as we are * During sleep, the exclusion of impressions is carried still farther. The pupil is instinctively diminished to a most minute aperture. This fact, which I do not think had been before observed, I learnt when living as house-surgeon in the Middlesex Hospital, in 1818. A mother brought an infant for advice, which had fallen out of a window some hours pre- viously: its breathing was gentle, and it seemed to have nothing the matter with it, but the eyes were half open, and the pupils were highly contracted. In those days, contraction of the pupil was supposed to be a sign of concussion of the brain: and upon my noticing to some one standing by, this circumstance in the infant, the mother told me, that when asleep its eyes were always so. Upon examining the state of the pupil in sleep in several instances, which my situation gave me the op- portunity of doing, I found that contraction of the pupil is universal in sleep. SLEEP. 143 able; we dispose our bodies in a posture of complete re- laxation, and ease, and passive support, and endeavour to divert our minds from all subjects that excite activity of thought or disturbance of feeling. We strive to for- get ourselves, by detaching our minds from thought, and endeavouring to be lost in the sensation of physical rest. When sleep shuns us, and the mind falls into exciting trains of thought, the best plan is to rise, and read for a short time some work of a light and amusing character, that has no connected argument or story to engage the mind. The following rules relate to the posture to be main- tained in sleep. They are from the Chinese. In sub- stance they are excellent. "As soon as you are in bed, you should lull the heart to sleep; I mean, you should compose it, and cast aside every thought which may banish sleep. Lie upon either side, bend your knees a little, and sleep in that posture; which will prevent the dissipation of the vital and animal spirits, and keep the heart in good case. Every time you awake, stretch yourself in bed. This will render the course of the spirits, and the circulation of the blood, more free. 'Sleep not in the posture of a dead man,' says Confucius; that is, lie not on your back. Let .not your hands rest upon your breast or heart, and then you Avill have no frightful dreams, or fancy that some yen, or evil spirit, oppresses you, and holds you, as it were, be- numbed, so that you cannot help yourself by shaking or changing posture."* When our sleep is disturbed, either from indigestion, * Chan Seng. 144 SLEEP. or uneasy thoughts, or uneasy bodily posture, a variety of sensations occur, to which we experience nothing pa- rallel when awake. The most agreeable of these sensations is that of flying; it is unattended with any idea of exertion, but consists in a sense of easy motion, in which we seem to glide, sup- ported upon the air. Another sensation, which is much more common, is that of tumbling over and over; it has some analogy to the preceding; there is the same idea of want of support present, but instead of floating in the empyrean, we ap- pear to fall headlong perpendicular, and awake startled. Nightmare is a sense of oppression at the chest, felt during sleep, arising either from indigestion or from the posture in which we lie. It is always attended with a vague sense of terror, and of inability of exertion. Any kind of frightful dream may go with it. The extremity of suffering wakes us; and there is generally a brief but appreciable interval, between the imperfect recovery of our recollection of where we are, and the cessation of the seeming powerlessness. Immediately after being awake, we exert volition, move, and the uneasiness is at an end. A frightful dream alone is not nightmare. It becomes so when joined with an ideal effort at exertion, and a per- suasion that it is impossible to make it. Quantity of Sleep.—The quantity of sleep required by grown-up people ranges between four and nine hours. This has partly to do with peculiarity of constitution. With some the mind and body work quietly and without irritability; others, going through the same round of business and amusement, are more exhausted: the latter SLEEP. 145 require longer sleep. But use has much to do with this, as with other functions; and many suppose a much longer period of repose necessary to them than their health ac- tually requires. Too much sleep is relaxing. The best rule, for those who are in health and sleep well, is to rise after their first sleep,—when one feels refreshed, and can rise at once with alacrity. Upon indulging in a second sleep, a free perspiration often ensues, and one wakes relaxed, and heavy from sleep, and exhausted. Women require more sleep than men; those of the nervous and sanguine temperaments more than the phleg- matic and the bilious. The necessary quantity of sleep for adults varies from four to nine hours; from seven to eight is the want of the majority.* Persons under train- ing sleep from eight to ten hours. Those who sleep nine or ten hours from indolence, probably sleep less concentratedly, and have not the same intensity of repose which those have, who, sleep- ing only when it is necessary, drop sound asleep at once. Infants, for the first month, pass almost their whole time in sleep; or they alternately take nourishment and repose. The quantity of nourishment necessary for their growth fatigues them, and they sleep to recruit their di- gestive powers. It is the same with those who are re- covering from exhausting illness. They often require the same quantity of sleep, the same light and frequent meals. Till the age of three years, children require sleep * General Elliot, who was extremely abstinent, living upon bread and rice and water, never slept more than four hours out of the twenty-four. Frederick the Second, and John Hunter, slept five. 13 146 SLEEP, during the day, and pass half of their time in sleep. The period of sleep is then to be gradually reduced; a child at seven should not sleep more than nine hours. With weakly children, it is important to bear in mind the ex- hausting character of more prolonged, or, as it really is, renewed sleep. They should rise early; and.if more sleep is necessary for their strength, they may lie down and take repose for a short period during the day. Children should never be wakened suddenly; their nervous system, tremblingly sensitive, is liable to receive injury from the lightest causes. Great care should be taken to exclude from, or to prevent arising in, the minds of children, those superstitious fears, and that terror of the dark, which they are so disposed to fall into. When age begins, the. quantity of sound sleep lessens. In extreme age the tendency to longer sleep returns, and part of the day is passed in somnolency, the more necessary, that the rest at night is frequently broken. The celebrated De Moivre slept twenty hours out of the twenty-four, and Thomas Parr latterly slept away by far the greater part of his existence. Dr. Rush observes of the wakefulness of old people, —" Such is the excitability of the system in the first stages of old age, that there is no pain so light, no anx- iety so trifling, and no sound so small, as not to produce wakefulness in old people. It is owing to their imperfect sleep that they are sometimes as unconscious of the mo- ment of their passing from a sleeping to a waking state, as young and middle-aged people are of the moment in which they pass from a waking to a sleeping state. Hence we so often hear them complain of passing sleepless nights. SLEEP. 147 This, no doubt, frequently is the case: but I am satisfied, from the result of an inquiry made upon this subject, that they often sleep without knowing it, and that their complaints in the morning, of the want of sleep, arise from ignorance, without the least intention to deceive." Dreaming is universal among old people. The re- collection of their dreams has to do with their imperfect sleep. Period for Sleep.—It is unnecessary seriously to argue that the night is the proper time for repose in temperate climates, for no one will deny that we must exist alter- nately in waking and sleeping, or will doubt that day is the proper time for the former. Our eyes are formed to use by day; Nature, in her brilliancy of colouring, can be seen then only; and the direct action upon the skin, of the light and heat of the sun, is necessary to perfect health. But we have still a choice to make. For in the winter there is more darkness, in the summer less, than the necessary period of repose demands. Are we to bor- row hours of waking from the evening or the morning of the long winter's night ? The common sense of the world has decided that the latter is preferable. Those who are engaged in business are, through this habit, beforehand with the day: nothing need then be hurried; the offices of the day may be well thought over, and every necessary arrangement planned. Nor is there any better time, if one has superfluous leisure, for literary pursuits, than the early morning hours. It is indeed too much the custom, and sometimes hardly avoidable, to throw one's studies late into the night, when there is no interruption, and there happens to be spare time. This practice, however, forms a most injurious combination 148 SLEEP. with a life of business, as it destroys sleep, that is so needed. The mind, instead of wholesomely tiring towards eleven, is wakened up, stimulated afresh by its own ex- ertions, and hour after hour glides by; and when at length one's couch is sought, the busy thoughts cannot detach themselves from our pursuits, the mind cannot be put out of gear. One whose time is his own, may, if he pleases it, convert night into day, day into night; and if during some part of the day he takes wholesome exercise in the open air, and his diet is moderate, one cannot say that his health will necessarily suffer by this substitution of an artificial for the natural period; but the probability is, that the habits of life which would co-exist with such in- dulgence would be irregular, and that therefore it would be indirectly more injurious. One who combines with late hours of study habits of active business in the day, will certainly, whatever his original strength, find both his health and mental powers early impaired. ' The period of the twenty-four hours, to one who has been watching, when repose is most imperiously called for, (suadentque cadentia sidera somnum,) is the early morning before daybreak, or from three to five. The same period is likewise the coldest in the night, or feels so, to the traveller on the mail, who can hardly resist the pressure on his wearied eyelids, and wakes perpetually, when his head, nodding forward, warns him of his danger. In this climate, under common circumstances, there is no occasion for sleep during the day; when, however, great exertion and exhaustion render it necessary, it should not immediately follow a meal; such second sleep is best, perhaps, when taken one hour after dinner, or SLEEP. 149 two, according as that repast has been more or less light. The sleep should likewise be short, and not exceed a quarter to half an hour. A short nap at this period is much more refreshing than a protracted one; it is a kind of Morphic luncheon, which should not be too heavy. After much fatigue it is an excellent thing to lie down and sleep half an hour before dinner. In tropical climates, in which the mid-day temperature at the hottest season precludes exertion and disposes to sleep, the practice of sleeping in the afternoon is at all events natural; but though tranquillity is then necessary, sleep is not so, and as a constant practice, the habit had better not be indulged. There is no greater blessing than sound, light, un- broken sleep for the period, whatever that may be, of five, six, seven, eight hours, during which we require sleep. But some have an unlucky wakefulness, which, without depriving them of rest, yet renders more hours in bed necessary than will suffice with sound sleep, and makes many of those hours uneasy and irritative. Can nothing be done for persons who are thus troublesomely wakeful ? Occasionally the wakefulness may be traced to a cause which may admit of removal. The individual may dine late and too heavily; or eat supper; or he may go to bed on a perfectly empty stomach, and be wake- ful from inanition, or he may have cold feet, or his bed- clothing be too warm: in these cases sublatd causa tollitur effectus. In the same way, reading and writing on sub- jects involving much reflection, late in the night or till the time of going to bed, may prevent sleep by keeping the mind in too active a state. For the removal of the latter and of parallel causes of 13* 150 SLEEP. wakefulness, mental anxiety and the like, there was a Mr. Gardner, who called himself the hypnologist, and advertised an adequate method. But this method was no more than the schoolboy's principle of counting a hundred. Mr. Gardner told you, that all you had to do was to attend steadily to the sensations which go with your breathing; and that in a short time you would lose sight of the thoughts which were keeping you awake; and that then you would drop asleep. No doubt the idea, though not new, is quite philosophical and sound, and I have often used it to get rid of an uneasy train of thought; though I cannot say that I ever succeeded in dropping asleep through its means. A lady once a'sked me if I could explain a curious fact which she had observed of herself. I should observe that she is highly delicate and nervous. She assured me that she slept twice as well if she lay north and south, with her head to the north. Luckily I was able to answer her question. For I had read Von Reichenbach's account of the Od force, published in an appendix to the 53d volume of Wohler and Liebig's Chemical Annals. The Essays have been translated into English. He too found that nervous persons are tranquillized and sleep better, when laid in the magnetic meridian with their heads to the north. For the Od force, which is distributed universally in na- ture, but is in special activity in the living frame, in many respects coincides with magnetism, and our head has a negative or northward polarity, the feet a positive or southward one. It is the emanation from us of this Od force, which renders the mesmeric passes so soothing, that they tran- quillize most people who try their efficacy, and put many SLEEP. 151 into a sort of sleep;—but proper sleep it is not; it is a form of trance. Of this fact there is no doubt. Let me give an instance. A young lady wrote me in the year 1840, from Reading, that she had suffered for many months with tic douloureux; that the attacks lasted the whole night, and utterly prevented her sleeping; that she had fallen away, lost strength and health, and feared she was going into a decline; but the main object of her letter was to know if there was any danger in trying mesmer- ism. I told her by all means to make the experiment. She was accordingly mesmerised by a near relation, a young gentleman then staying with them. She called on me some weeks afterwards, telling me how much she had to thank me for my advice; that from the first even- ing she had been mesmerised she had slept each night through; that she now suffered very little or nothing in the day-time, and expected to be shortly quite well. Within a month, however, she called upon me again, to say that she was again in despair. Her cousin had been obliged to return to Oxford, and her sleeplessness and pains had returned. Then I asked, if there were not in the family some healthy middle-aged woman, nurse or housekeeper. Such a person she said there was, so I begged her to send the person to me the following morn- ing, when I gave her a lecture of five minutes' duration, in which I explained to her exactly how to practise the mesmeric passes. A fortnight afterwards I had the satis- faction of again seeing the patient, who called upon me, full of hope and spirits, to tell me, that the housekeeper put her still more soundly to sleep than her cousin had done, and that she was sure she was now getting perma- nently well. I heard no more of her, so I conclude she 152 BATHING. recovered. I have here nothing to do with the psychical wonders of mesmerism. If the reader wishes to see a rational explanation of them, I beg to recommend to him the perusal of my "Letters on the Truths contained in Popular Superstitions." Opium I hardly dare recommend for mere wakefulness, unaccompanied by indisposition and pain, so liable is it to be misused, like tobacco, or intoxicating drinks, when once resorted to, to calm the nerves. Yet there are some with whom the drug agrees, who are only soothed and not excited by it; and who are able to discontinue its use at any time by a vigorous effort. The latter is my own case, who exist only through the soothing effects of opium. But I have already once discontinued its use; and continu- ally, when I have a pleasant group around me, that fills my mind with pleasant thoughts, I disregard a little pain and wakefulness, and reduce again my usual dose, one half- AJ^^S- *-'**^ 4-U.JU'*^^j~, f * A-t <* &/*> *Vr/t. '+* ^'^ '/'''• CHAPTER IV. OF BATHING. " In the fable of restoring Pelias to youth again, Medea, when she feigned to do it, propounded this way of accomplishing the same; that the old man's body should be cut into small pieces, and then boiled in a cal- dron with other medicaments." Lord Bacon, whose words these are, adds, " There may, perhaps, some boiling be required to this matter, but the cutting to pieces is not needful." BATHING. 153 Personal cleanliness is at once so conducive to health, so essential to social comfort, and so naturally allied to purity of mind, that it deserves to be esteemed a physical virtue. The English are eminent for its practice, which has been, of late years, and is still becoming, diffused through humbler and larger circles. A late amiable and excellent man, and useful member of society, and amusing humorist, seems, indeed, to have doubted its absolute necessity, and to have believed in the existence in the human body, not only of a capability of becoming soiled, but of an internal counter-acting self-purifying principle. The means by which Mr. Walker supposes that this prin- ciple may be brought into activity is, the observance of abstemiousness in diet, the cleansing effects of which in his own person are thus described by the author of "The Original." " I felt a different being, light and vigorous, with all my senses sharpened. I enjoyed an almost glowing existence. I cannot help mentioning two or three instances in proof of my state, though I dare say, they will appear almost ridiculous, but they are nevertheless true. It seems that from the surface of an animal in perfect health there is an active exhalation going on which repels impurity; for when I walked on the dustiest roads, not only my feet, but my stockings, remained free from dust. By way of experiment, I did not wash my face for a week, nor did any one see, nor I feel the difference." I have not heard that Mr. Walker's spontaneous clean- liness doctrine has made proselytes. If such there are, it may be important to suggest to them that this effort of Nature to keep them clean, shows what her wishes are; and that it behooves them, as Naturse ministros et inter- 154 BATHING. pretes, to follow out and second her intentions, by using those common means which the rest of the world find re- quisite for their own comfort and that of others. It may be safely presumed that the dirt-repelling principle is not weakened, but strengthened, by the adventitious means which are ordinarily employed to remove from the skin all obstructing impurities. The virtue and blessing of cleanliness is within the reach of all whom fortune has raised above abject poverty. The elements are not costly;—a large basin, and a foot- tub, soap, water, and towels, are all that is strictly es- sential. The following are the rules for their use:— At night, warm water should b« employed; in the morning, cold. Some are in the habit of using cold water at night; this is a physiological error. The frame, after the exhaus- tion of the day, is in a state to be the better for the sooth- ing influence of warm bathing. The whole person should, preparatory to retiring to rest, be laved with warm soap and water; and afterwards a moderate glow should be produced by gentle drying with towels. After a day of unusual fatigue, every one must remember the comfort he has derived from this process. Pleasurable bodily resto- ration, less in amount, no doubt, but the same in kind, follows the regular practice of warm ablutions. I have heard it alleged that cold water used at night has the ad- vantage of preventing the feet from becoming tender. The reverse is the fact: tenderness of the feet, I know from observation, is much sooner and more surely remedied by the daily use of warm water than of cold. It is need- less to remark, that the direct purpose of bathing is better BATHING. 155 obtained by warm than by cold water. Nevertheless there are some who are compelled to use cold water for their feet at night: if they use warm water, there is no re- action : and their feet and ankles become painfully chilled and deficient in circulation. But the morning is the proper season for the employ- ment of cold water; the temperature of which, however, should bear a relation to the time of year and to the temperature of the weather, as well as to the strength of the person using it. Sometimes, therefore, it is better to use water in the morning tepid; just as at night it may happen, for various reasons, to be desirable to avoid the relaxing effects of water too warm. A person in health and strength is the better for having the entire person bathed with cold water in the morning, followed by suffi- cient friction to produce a general healthy glow. In these simple directions, two effects are contemplated; one, niceness of the person,—the other, a stimulating or soothing influence on the nerves, or on the system gene- rally. Both of these effects are capable of being attained to a still greater extent by the use of baths, which form the subject next to be considered. There are many kinds of baths, and varieties of bathing; but they may be conveniently arranged in three classes;—the first, air and vapour baths; the second, warm and hot water baths; the third, cold and shower baths. Of these, the first alone deserves consideration as a means of personal cleanliness; the second and third are inferior aids for this purpose to simple soap and wa- ter. Water by itself, warm or cold, is either not cleansing, or very imperfectly so. Warm, and cold baths likewise, may be said in fact to be employed almost exclusively 156 BATHING. medicinally, or with a view to their general influence upon the system, not for ablution. And even the vapour- bath, complete and perfect as it is as a means of purify- ing the surface, yet exerts so powerful an agency upon the system, as to be seriously injurious, when used as a habit of cleanliness, from its collateral influence upon the health. The vapour-bath, where it is most used, combines the full effects of transpiration and complete opening of the pores with ample lavation afterwards. The following is Mr. Willis's lively account of the process, as it is prac^ tised in Turkey, where it has a completeness and luxury unknown elsewhere.* J "Went ashore at Castle Europe, with one or two of the officers, to take a bath. An old Turk, sitting upon his hams at the entrance, pointed to the low door at his side, without looking at us, and we descended by a step or two into a vaulted hall, with a large circular ottoman in the centre, and a very broad divan all round. Two tall young Mussulmans, clad in turbans and waist-cloths only, assisted us to undress, and led us into a stone room, several degrees warmer than the first. We walked about here for a few minutes, and as we began to perspire, were taken into another, filled with hot vapour, and, for the first moment or two, almost intolerable. It was shaped like a dome, with twenty or thirty small windows at the top, several basins at the sides, into which hot water was pouring, and a raised stone platform in the centre, upon which we were all requested, by gestures, to lie upon our backs. The perspiration at this time was pouring from us like rain. I lay down with the others, and a Turk, a * Willis's Pencillings by the Way. BATHING. 157 dark-skinned, fine-looking fellow, drew on a mitten of rough grass-cloth, and laying one hand upon my breast to hold me steady, commenced rubbing me, without wa- ter, violently. The skin peeled off under the friction, and I thought he must have rubbed into the flesh re- peatedly ; nothing but curiosity to go through the regu- lar operation of a Turkish bath prevented my erying out 'Enough!' He rubbed away, turning me from side to side, till the rough glove passed smoothly all over my body and limbs; and then, handing me a pair of wooden slippers, suffered me to rise. I walked about for a few minutes, looking with surprise at the rolls of skin he had taken off, and feeling almost transparent as the hot air blew upon me. In a few minutes my Mussulman beckoned me to follow him to a smaller room, where he seated me on a stone beside a font of hot water. He then made some thick soap-suds in a basin, and with a handful of fine flax soaped and rubbed me all over again, and a few dashes of the hot water from a wooden saucer completed the bath. " The next room, which had seemed so warm on our en- trance, was now quite chilly. We remained here until we were dry, and then returned to the hall in which our clothes were left, where beds were prepared on the divans, and we were covered in warm clothes, and left to our re- pose. The disposition to sleep was almost irresistible. We rose in a short time, and went to the coffee-house oppo- site, when a cup"of strong coffee, and a hookah smoked through a highly-ornamented glass, bubbling with water, refreshed us deliriously. "I have had ever since a feeling of suppleness and lightness,, which is like wings growing at my feet. It is 14 158 BATHING. certainly a very great luxury, though, unquestionably, most enervating as a habit." An accomplished physician, my friend and colleague, Dr. Leighton, observed to me, that the most remarkable physical character of the Russians, among whom he resided, is their early senility. Very soon after forty they be- come in appearance aged. This observation, however, applies to the lower and middling classes, not to the no- bility. Dr. Leighton informed me that the impression which he formed, living at St. Petersburg, as to the cause of this peculiarity, was, that it proceeded from the habi- tual use of the vapour bath. The higher classes use the vapour-bath occasionally as a luxury; the lower classes use it as their exclusive mode of purification. The ser- vant makes an item in his wages of the price of the weekly bath, which he takes winter and summer. The interior of the public baths in St. Petersburg is laid out in benches of different heights, and the steam is produced by water flowing over heated stones. The different elevation of the benches gives the bather a choice of tempera- ture, the lower the cooler, the higher the more intense. After perspiring profusely, the bather resorts to another room, where water is poured upon him, hot, temperate, or cold, or each in succession, as he may prefer. Ex- posure to cold, and rolling in the snow after the bath, are used or practised by few. The effect of this strong alternation is bracing and agreeable, but requires custom and good stamina to sustain it. Alternate exposure to heat and cold, produced either by successive immersions in baths of different temperatures, or by the affusion of cold water immediately upon quitting the hot-bath, was among the practices in use among the ancients. Hippocrates, BATHING. 159 when speaking of regimen in diseases, and even in acute disorders, adverts to the precautions which the affusion of cold water in coming out of the bath demanded, ac- cording to the different kinds of affections to which the body had been exposed; and Galen treats of the same subject. Since writing the above, I have had more opportunities of looking into the subject of baths and their uses. Let me briefly state the conclusions at which I have arrived. I shall be flattered if the reader condemn me as a very superficial person in this instance; it will prove, at least, that I have been clear and intelligible. In the first place, no one should take any bath (neither should he run a match, nor set to work at business) on a full stomach. Two, three, to five hours, should intervene between a meal and the bath. Secondly, the advantage derived from a bath is not through its primary impression upon the system, but i& to be traced to the secondary effect which follows this. In many instances this secondary and healing effect super- venes, however, during the use of the bath. First, of warm baths. The temperature of a warm bath ranges from 94° to 100° of Fahrenheit. The temperature which is required in different cases varies, and must be determined by the self-observation of the patient. In a warm bath the patient is to feel neither chilly nor hot, but comfortably and snugly warm. He should remain in the bath about half an hour. As little of his own heat is wasted by evaporation, he will soon begin to perspire on the face and head. The sensations when in the bath are simply agreeable,—the warmth, the pleasant support to the limbs, 160 BATHING. given by the buoyant water. On coming out of the bath, the patient is to be well and carefully dried; then to dress quickly; or to go to bed and lie down, well covered up. At this time he is highly susceptible of cold. The pores are open. He feels refreshed, cooled, in a tranquil state of agreeable relaxation. Such a bath is eminently sooth- ing after much fatigue; and may be well followed by a light repast; then rest in an easy chair, and a novel; and then a long night's sleep. But for a course of such baths. Such a course is only to be taken in summer, and in good hot summer weather, as in a German summer, when the pores continue open the whole day afterwards, and the skin in constant ac- tion. Then many an overloaded system, through this im- mense efflux from the skin, is lightened and cleared, in- ward congestions are removed, and health is thus restored. Often with this treatment there is combined the drinking of copious draughts of some saline mineral water. The latter treatment is quite empirical. The quantity of saline liquid fills the blood-vessels, and heats the body; and in four to five weeks some crisis, as it is called, fol- lows ;—a febrile attack, a cutaneous eruption, diarrhoea, or what not,—and if the patient has stamina to bear it, he comes out of the contest with his ailment only ex- tinguished, with his health improved, and his life left him. Of sweating baths. The ordinary forms of sweating baths are the hot-air and vapour bath. They are very expeditious in their ope- ration, In a quarter of an hour to twenty minutes the patient has largely and amply perspired. Being then dried, he feejs himself lighter and weaker than before; and BATHING. 161 is in a state very susceptible of cold. Such a bath, which at once lowers the strength, and throws the skin into full action, is useful, occasionally taken, to athletic persons, who have not the opportunity of enjoying their usual ex- ercise. It suits men who come up to town in the spring, and no longer having the exercise of hunting; especially in the cold weather of the spring. But it is essentially unsuitable to persons of weak frames, and to those who labour under congestion of the head or under heart dis- ease. Sweating, produced by packing in blankets in a warm room, is a more tedious but a safer operation than the preceding. It is one of the sanatary inventions due to Priesnitz to have generalized the rule of using cold-bathing, or cold- washing, at the close of the sweating process. This is a most admirable expedient. The cold, instead of being felt more severely because you are hot, is to your sensa- tions all the more grateful, and to the body most salutary. It obviates the lowering effect of the previous sweating; which becomes through this combination a simply purify- ing process, cleansing and altering the blood. The form of cold bath to be used varies with the condition of the patient,—from immersion in a plunge bath to rubbing down in a dripping sheet. The above combination is the basis of the hydropathic treatment of gout. Of cold baths. In taking a cold bath for health, all unnecessary shock, violence of plunge, and the like, are to be avoided. The patient is to step quickly but lightly into the bath, and then gently to sink his head under the water for a second or two. Some derive the most advantage from cold bath- 14* 162 BATniNG. ing when they do not wet the head at all. But these are exceptions. The patient should remain in the bath from one to two minutes. When in the bath he should move about and rub himself, but not with hurry and violence. The first effect of a cold bath is depressive; but reac- tion almost immediately commences; so that the body be- comes warm while you are yet in the cold water. You are then to be well dried and rubbed with towels, and should take some exercise to prevent the glow subsiding and the first chill of the bath returning. The temperature of a cold bath should be from 50° to 60°. In rivers or in the sea in summer time the tem- perature of the water is much higher; then for pleasure the strong and healthy are in the habit of remaining in the water half an hour or more. This is for the most part safe. But that is all. This is not sanatary bath- ing- Priesnitz's two most clever modifications of cold bath- ing are the wet sheet and the site-bath. Being rubbed in the wet sheet is the mildest form of a cold bath, The cold water is diluted: with the sheet, and the simultaneous friction compels instant reaction. The cold sitz-bath, instead of driving blood to the head, by the instantaneous reaction which follows, drives blood from the head. Being partial, it does not chill the frame so much as a general bath; and may therefore be taken twice or more frequently during the day. The best description of Priesnitz's method is to call it a species of training for health. The system can be thus either purged by sweating, or invigorated by cold baths, just to the extent its needs require. It can be raised or lowered just as it may be necessary, so as to BATHING. 163 reach again the exact tone of health. That alone is suf- ficient to dismiss how many complaints! But as these means admit of being infinitely varied to suit different constitutions, so do the partial appliances of the method admit of numerous modifications to suit different special complaints. If the reader wishes to know more of hydropathy he may consult my treatise on that subject. I will, however, venture to add in this place a few remarks on the hydro- pathic treatment of fever, which my increased experience has furnished me with. In fever the primary agency of the cold bath is the thing used. The heated system is to be cooled. The systematic use of the cold water treatment of fever origi- nated with Dr. Currie of Liverpool, who in his reports published towards the close of the last century, gave an account of the great success which had attended his prac- tice. His method consisted in pouring four or five buckets of cold water over the patient on the recurrence of the exacerbation of the fever, when the patient's skin was hot and dry, the pulse frequent, the system excited. The patient was then dried and laid in bed. This discipline, if resorted to in the first twenty-four, forty-eight, or seventy* two hours of an epidemic, seldom required to be repeated, and never failed to produce a cure. As its immediate results, the pulse sank, the temperature of the body fell, the patient felt relieved and comfortable, and the skin broke forth into healthy perspiration. And this continues the best practice to be pursued in the case above supposed. But Priesnitz adopts a diffe- rent course. His patient is packed in a wet sheet, the cooling effect of which is immediately grateful. Thus 164 BATHING. packed, however, in a quarter of an hour he becomes again heated; when the wet sheet is changed, and packing re- newed. After several repetitions of the process, the pa- tient is finally washed with cold water and laid in a dry bed. This method again is generally successful. And there are cases to which it is specially applicable. One of these is rheumatic fever; in which such a discipline combined or not with the use of colchicum, of opium, of calomel even, promises to be eminently valuable. Another case, in which Priesnitz's fever practice is superior to Currie's, is the advanced stage of common fever. A stout middle-aged man-servant had been several days suffering with continued fever. An exacerbation took place every forenoon about eleven o'clock. At that hour I had him packed in the wet sheet; the first time in two successively; after half an hour cold water was poured over him. Each day he was better; in a few days well. A gentleman was recovering from continued fever, but he could not sleep at night, being then irritable, restless, feverish. I had him packed in a wet sheet at nine in the evening for half an hour; then washed with cold water. The same processes were repeated at seven the next morning. The very first night he slept well. By the fourth day every symptom of fever had vanished. Here is another case in fever. A gentleman arrived much fatigued through travelling several days in succes- sion; he complained of a dull pain in his head; had no appetite; his strength was gone; he had pain in the back and legs; frequent pulse; the skin was hot and dry; but he felt cold, and chilly, and shiverings ran down*his back and limbs. He said he had just the feelings which had ushered in a nervous fever the preceding spring. I had PRESERVATION OF THE TEETH. 165 him packed in blankets for two hours and a half, till he had most profusely perspired, and felt his head relieved and himself generally better; then cold water was poured over him; he was dried and put to bed; he had a good night. On waking, his head was still uncomfortable, But one repetition of the process removed every feeling of illness. The reader will pardon me (so important is the discus- sion of this subject from the repugnance of physicians to entertain it) introducing the mention of one still more interesting case. A gentleman thirty years of age had been seven years resident in Michigan, where he had had the small-pox, followed by epileptic fits, and had for the latter five years suffered constantly more or less with intermittent fever. He was of a full habit, his face full and high-coloured, his pulse frequent and weak. Every fourth day, in the afternoon, he had either an at- tack of fever or the menace of one, Now hydropathy generally makes epilepsy worse, although it will cure a fever. But luckily Mr. Williamson of Wickham was then staying with me. So I begged him to mesmerize the patient to protect him from epilepsy, while I had him packed every afternoon in the wet sheet for the fever. In six weeks the patient had got rid of both complaints; he* has continued permanently well. I know not under what other head than the present to introduce rules for the conservation of different parts. "To restore teeth in age," observes Lord Bacon, "were magnate naturce; it may be thought of."—What the philosopher anticipated, modern art has accomplished; and an element towards lengthening the duration of life 166 PRESERVATION OF TnE TEETn. has been added by the increased power of masticating and improved digestion, which the aged thus obtain. However, Dr. Rush remarks, "I have not found the loss of teeth to affect the duration of human life so much as might be expected. Edward Dunker, who lived to be one hundred and three years old, lost his teeth thirty years before he died."* Dr. Sayre, of New Jersey, mentions one man, aged eighty-one, whose teeth began to decay at sixteen; and another of ninety, who had lost his teeth thirty years. In age, the gums, by becoming hard, perform in part the office of teeth. Nevertheless, it is a most important object to preserve the teeth, which Nature gives us, as long as possible. For this purpose the teeth should be brushed at least three times a day, water with the chill off being always used; and the more effectually to clean the teeth, as well as to strengthen the gums, it is desirable to employ, night and morning, a tooth-powder (consisting, for example, of an ounce of prepared chalk, half a drachm of myrrh, and two drachms of orris-root.) The tooth-brush should be mo- derately soft. Perhaps the spread of habits of personal niceness can- not be better exemplified than by the following extract from Sir John Sinclair's Treatise, published only thirty years ago. " The Chinese recommend it as an important rule to <" Dr. Rush observes, " I have not observed baldness or gray hairs, oc- curring in early or middle life, to prevent old age." One of the in- stances given by Dr. Sayre, is an account of a man of eighty-one, whose hair began to assume a silver-colour when he was only one-and-twenty years of age. PRESERVATION OF HEARING. 167 wash the mouth, and to rub the gums and teeth with a brush, before going to bed. This gives the mouth and tongue an agreeable freshness; and, though the practice seems at first a little troublesome, you will soon become accustomed to it, and feel uncomfortable if it is omitted, more especially as it has a tendency to promote sound sleep." The ears often require attention in childhood, and in persons advancing towards age. In strumous children a discharge of matter is liable to take place from the ear, which, unless checked, leads to thickening and early deaf- ness. Syringing the channel of the ear with warm milk and water, and lightly cleansing it with soft lint, is always the safest, and generally the best method of locally treat- ing this ailment; which sometimes, however, requires other means to dry up the moisture. In aged persons the cerumen of the ear, drying and accumulating, often occasions a deafness, which may be removed by the re- moval of the wax: this cannot be done by the ailing per- son himself. Deafness is hereditary in some families, coming on usually between twenty and thirty years of age. Deaf- ness of one ear is exceedingly common. Instruments to assist hearing have been much improved of late. The best instrument for conversation with a single person is the ear-trumpet with an elastic tube; for society, the ear cornets recently introduced are very convenient and use- ful. All persons moderately deaf hear with facility a single person speaking, while they are distracted by the buzz of general conversation, of which they hear nothing. There is a singular difference, however, among the deaf; and unexplained, as to this point. Some hear best in 168 PRESERVATION OF SIGHT. perfect silence and tranquillity; others, on the contrary, have their hearing improved when their frame is in the greatest jar and vibration, as in a carriage driven over the Stones. Deaf persons distinguish more easily the words of familiar voices than of strangers; and their hearing is really capricious, being influenced, not by their attention alone, but by some unexplained cause be- sides. The eyes require the greatest care. In the morning, in the afternoon, after exposure to sun or dust, or to the glare of snow, and at night, it is desirable to bathe the eyelids with tepid water, drying them gently with a soft towel. The eyelids should never be rubbed. After first using warm water, bathing the eyelids with very Cold water is strengthening and salutary. When the eyes are weak, the use of coloured spectacles, under strong lights, is a proper precaution. For a long time green spectacles were in use to screen the eyes, but the disagreeable colour which they impart to objects caused them to be superseded by blue glasses. There is, however, a great objection even to blue specta- cles ; they do not mitigate the blue rays, which fall upon the retina in their natural intensity, so as to distress the sight when directed towards white surfaces strongly illu- minated,—such as snow, or stuccoed houses, or the flag- stones of pavements under a summer sun. To obviate this inconvenience and prejudicial effect, Mr. Dollond, of St. Paul's Church-yard, has made, at my request, gray spectacles, the effect of which is extremely pleasant, when the sight is weak. The same object had been aimed at in the introduction of gauze spectacles; but these are found to have a different but equally serious disadvantage, PRESERVATION OF SIGHT. 169 they heat the eyes. The gray glasses which I recommend are a pure black diluted. This is not as easily obtained as might be supposed; for almost all the black glass in use for beads, and the like, black as it appears, is either a deep red or a deep blue. No one should keep his eyes directed to a fire, or lamp, or candle, (which one has a natural tendency to do,) or habitually sit facing a window with a bright light, or ex- pose his. eyes to sudden and violent transitions from light to darkness, or the reverse. Candles are better than lamps with shades, to read by, because they avoid this alternation, and their light is less intense. A medium should be sought in artificial light between that which is so bright as to fatigue, and so imperfect as to strain, vision. The use of glasses is, if possible, to be avoided. The sight admits of being strengthened by exercise. Vision which is slightly defective, or disposed to short-sighted- ness, may be recovered, and its sphere extended by use; whereas, the constant employment of glasses is sure to contract its range more and more. This is very evident in those who use a single eye-glass; in that case the vision of the right eye (being the eye to which the glass is com- monly applied) gradually becomes more defective than that of the left. The increase of short-sightedness in the present day is owing to the joint influence of increased habits of reading, and the use of glasses. On the other hand, the occasional use of glasses, by either young or old, whose vision is defective, contributes to strengthen the sight; in one way, by relieving the nerve from the strain of imperfect vision; in another, by teach- ing the retina what perfect vision is. 15 ( 170 ) CHAPTER V. OF CLOTHING. The use of clothing is to protect us against cold and damp,—or rather against cold: for wet is only a mode of applying cold, in which, however, its agency is more than usually deleterious; first, because moisture in some man- ner relaxes the frame, and renders it more susceptible than usual of lowering impressions; secondly, because it accidentally happens, that the occasions on which cold and damp are united are generally of an enduring kind. But what can be more capricious than the effects of cold ? We shrink from casual exposure to rain, or drafts of air, or wet feet; and instances are perpetually occurring, wherein the neglect of such caution has produced, in seem- ingly healthy persons, serious, or even fatal, attacks of illness: the chill received produces depression of nervous power, and of the circulation;—reaction follows, partial, concentrated, sometimes destructive. In other instances, it seems as if the human frame were iron, and impassive to cold, neither lowered by it, nor reacting. Take for instance the circumstances men- tioned in the following passage from Sir John Franklin's Narrative, which seem to have produced no ill effects on those who encountered them:— " Having searched for a part where the current was most smooth, the canoe was placed in the water, at the head of a rapid, and St. Germain, Solomon, Belanger, and I, embarked in order to cross. We went from the shore very well, but in mid-channel the canoe became CLOTHING. 171 difficult to manage under our burden as the breeze was fresh. The current drove us to the edge of the rapid, when Belanger unluckijy applied his paddle to avert the apparent danger of being forced down it, and lost his balance. The canoe was overset in the middle of the rapid. We fortunately kept hold of it, until we touched a rock where the water did not reach higher than our waists; here we kept our footing, notwithstanding the strength of the current, until the water was emptied out of the canoe. Belanger then held the canoe steady, whilst St. Germain placed me in it and afterwards em- barked himself in a very dexterous manner. It was im- possible, however, to embark Belanger, as the canoe would have been hurried down the rapid, the moment he should have raised his foot from the rock on which he stood. We were, therefore, compelled to leave him in his perilous situation. We had not gone twenty yards, before the canoe, striking on a sunken rock, again went down. The place being shallow, we were again enabled to empty it, and the third attempt brought us to the shore. In the mean time, Belanger was suffering extremely, im- mersed to his middle in the centre of a rapid, the tem- perature of which was very little above the freezing-point, and the upper part of his body covered with wet clothes, exposed, in a temperature not much above zero, to a strong breeze. He called piteously for relief, and St. Germain, on his return, endeavoured to embark him, but in vain. The canoe was hurried down the rapid, and when he landed he was rendered by the cold incapable of further exertion, and Adam attempted to embark Belanger, but found it impossible. An attempt was next made to carry out to him a line, made of the slings of the men's loads. This 172 CLOTHING. also failed, the current acting so strongly upon it as to prevent the canoe from steering; and it was finally broken and carried down the stream. At length, when Belanger's strength seemed almost exhausted, the canoe reached him with a small cord belonging to one of the nets, and he was dragged perfectly senseless through the rapid. By the direction of Dr. Richardson, he was instantly stripped, and being rolled up in blankets, two men undressed them- selves, and went to bed with him: but it was some hours before he recovered his warmth and sensations. As soon as Belanger was placed in his bed, the officers sent over my blankets and a person to make a fire. Augustus brought the canoe over, and in returning he was obliged to descend both the rapids before he could get across the stream; which hazardous service he performed with the greatest coolness and judgment. " It is impossible to describe my sensations as I wit- nessed the various unsuccessful attempts to relieve Be- langer. The distance prevented my seeing distinctly what was going on, and I continued pacing up and down upon the rock on which I landed, regardless of the cold- ness of my drenched and stiffening garments. The canoe, in every attempt to reach him, was hurried down the rapid, and lost to view amongst the rocky islets, with a rapidity which seemed to threaten certain destruction; once, indeed, I fancied that I saw it overwhelmed in the waves. Such an event would have been fatal to the whole party. Separated as I was from my companions, with- out gun, ammunition, hatchet, or the means of making a fire, and in wet clothes, my doom would have been speedily sealed. My companions, too, driven to the necessity of coasting the lake, must have sunk under the fatigue of CLOTHING. 173 rounding its innumerable arms and bays, which, as we have learned from the Indians, are very extensive. By the goodness of Providence, however, we were spared at that time, and some of us have been permitted to offer up our thanksgivings, in a civilized land, for the signal de- liverances we then and afterwards experienced." The causes which enabled Franklin's toil-worn party to survive this and similarly severe physical trials were three: use, abstemiousness running hard upon starvation, and strong mental tension,—the resolution to struggle on against every chance, sustained or produced by the ex- ample of their intrepid chief. It is curious to contrast with this picture of physical endurance, the precautions taken against cold in the process of developing by high training the utmost resources of physical strength. During training, the dress is scru- pulously changed after each period of exercise; flannel or calico is always worn next the skin:—and even for his noon repose, the athlete undresses and betakes himself to bed. I inquired why these precautions are used of Mr. Jackson, who told me that their object was "not to throw away a chance," in other words, to avoid the smallest risk of rheumatism or cold: but it is far from improbable, that with the high feeling and full vigour of a person under training, an increased tendency to inflammatory attacks exists; and that these precautions are of more consequence then than otherwise. Certainly those who feed highly, even when they at the same time take a fair proportion of exercise, are more liable to ordinary inflammatory attacks from exposure to cold, than those whose habits are abstinent. There is, no doubt, a mean, which is the most desira- 15* 174 CLOTHING. ble. The following extracts show, that the direct influ- ence of cold upon their sensations, was heightened in Sir John Franklin's party by the greatest rigours of privation, which they encountered. "During the whole of our march we experienced that no quantity of clothing could keep us warm, while we fasted; but on those occasions on which we were enabled to go to bed with full stomachs, we passed the night in a warm and comfortable manner. " Our plentiful cheer (a remark occurring towards the close of their toils) gave such power of resisting the cold, that we could scarcely believe otherwise than that the season had become milder." The influence of use, in enabling the frame to resist cold, Dr. Edwards has illustrated by some very decisive experiments. At the end of the cold season animals are more hardy than at its setting in. They are found to have acquired the power of forming an increased quantity of heat; the supply has been enlarged with the demand. The subject of animal heat remains, indeed, involved in great mystery. Physiologists cannot be said to know why it is necessary that a uniform temperature should be maintained in our frames: a temperature, too, the standard of which varies in different animals, that might be considered nearly upon a par in completeness of in- ternal organization. The standard temperature of the human body is 98°, or one or two degrees higher; judg- ing from Dr. Beaumont's observations, we may conclude that the temperature of the blood has been usually under- rated, and is really 100°, as in sheep and oxen; the tem- perature of the cetaceous mammalia is 104°; of birds 107°. It is perhaps easy, if we give a loose to conjee-* CLOTHING. ,175 ture, to imagine, knowing in how great a degree tem- perature influences chemical changes, that a definite heat is requisite for the thousand fine operations that are si- multaneously going on in the animal frame. But as yet the relation of that heat to any of these changes has not been determined. The source of the vital heat is still less understood. Its production bears, it is true, a re- markable relation to the quantity of oxygen consumed in breathing; yet it has been satisfactorily proved, by the experiments of Sir Benjamin Brodie, that breathing is not the source from whence heat is immediately derived. The nervous system, as the part which is least understood in the economy, and the influence of which is the most mysterious, is that to which speculative persons in medi- cine delight to refer what they do not understand. Ac- cordingly, the last definite idea which has prevailed upon this subject is, that the brain and nerves furnish animal heat. There is, however, every reason to suppose this opinion erroneous. The instances in which the tempera- ture of the animal body rises the highest are, where nerves or the spinal marrow have been divided. The greatest heat has been produced where the agency of these parts has been excluded. Add to this striking fact, that plants exhibit in a wonderful degree the power of forming heat, while they are supposed, with reason apparently, to want any thing like a nervous system. The truth seems to be, that the relation of temperature to the nerves is the same with the relations of all the functions of vegetative life and growth. The powers which produce them are the vegetative powers of the frame; the influence of the nerves is limited to regulating the rate of production, by ascer- taining the quantity wanted, and communicating the want to the recruiting energies of the body. 176 , CLOTHING. In early infancy the frame is highly susceptible of cold, and requires the greatest protection against it by clothing and external warmth. Dr. Edwards has shown experi- mentally that the power of producing heat in warm-blooded animals is at its minimum at birth, and increases progres- sively to adult age; and instead of young animals being warmer than adults, they are generally a degree or two colder, and part with their heat more readily. In two healthy infants, from two hours to a few days old, the mean temperature was observed by Dr. Edwards to be only 94°-55 Fahr., that of adults being 97° or 98°; and in a seven months' child, three hours after birth, he found the temperature so low as 86°-6, although the child was well clothed and near a fire. The following instance is a more serious corroboration of the physiological prin- ciple. In France it is customary to carry infants, a few days after birth, to the office of the Maire for registra- tion ; Dr. Edwards ascertained that the number of deaths of infants in France, is greater in winter than in summer, in the northern than in the southern provinces, and in parishes where the inhabitants are scattered at distances from the residence of the Maire, than where they are congregated near him. Old people are extremely sensible to cold; they are easily chilled; their warmth not easily restored; and many of the ailments, which terminate their existence, directly proceed from cold. Dr. Rush mentions (in addition to facts already given on the same authority,) that the ser- vant of Prince de Beaufremont, who came from Mount Jura to Paris at the age of 121, to pay his respects to the first National Assembly of France, shivered with cold in the middle of the dog-days, when he was not near a CLOTHING. 177 good fire. The National Assembly directed him to sit with his hat on, to defend his head from the cold. But while, influenced by these and parallel facts, we conclude it to be right, carefully to fence from cold young children and the aged by warm clothing, what rules are to be laid down for the intervening periods? If the frame should, on the one hand, be protected against injurious cold,—on the other hand, is there not a risk, by using too much precaution, of rendering the body relaxed, delicate, and unusually susceptible, against the occasions, which chance will bring round, of unavoidable exposure. In persons of a good constitution, this risk appears to me of more moment than the other: and I have little doubt that the greatest security against illness which cold produces, is obtained by the habit of disre- garding cold and exposure to weather. One thing only is to be carefully avoided, which is the continuing in wet clothes after bodily exercise is over. It is, in fact, then only that wet and cold are dangerous. We may conclude it to be best, in this climate, to clothe boys with flannel, to protect them against the damp pro- duced by exercise. Under training, a common person habitually wears flannel, as well as changes his dress as soon as his violent exercise is over. The latter precau- tion cannot be taken with boys; the first may be suffi- cient. It is, of course, no valid argument against taking this precaution that many boys thrive and continue in the hardiest health who have not taken it. The question is, whether a larger proportion would not escape illness by pursuing it. The capricious nature of our climate is the considera- tion which turns the scale in the favour of the care which 178 CLOTHING. has been recommended, joined with the numbers who perish of pulmonary disease: to which, who can say how much incautious exposure to cold may not have contri- buted? In the beginning of winter, and in the bitter north-easterly winds of our spring, no one escapes colds. This is owing less to the severity, than to the alternations of our climate. We seldom thoroughly fence ourselves against cold, for the next day may be mild and genial; or if we have made adequate provision against tempera- ture, a few days of open weather throw us off our guard. Almost every one of a strong constitution, and not more careful than others, incurs seasoning colds, more or less severe, not, however, without a perfect recollection, and often observation at the time, of the circumstances which cause the chill, of which the reaction is his inflammatory seizure. In general, cold is caught by the feet,—the shoes wet and not changed; even stockings too thin, or the adop- tion of French boots in place of English, or any cause as trivial, I have known produce severe colds. Ex- posure to the night-air carries with it particular hazard. Every one should, on such occasions, muffle his face with a handkerchief, so that the chill of the air he breathes may be taken off. For the use of persons with delicate lungs, Mr. Jeffreys has invented a very scientific and useful instrument, which he calls a respirator, well adapted to the same object; it may be worn without interfering with the voice, yet serves as a sufficient warmer of the air that is breathed. There are many who may venture to take exercise in the open air in cold weather with this protection, who hitherto have not, or ought not, to have encountered it. CLOTHING. 179 It is in hot climates that the prejudicial effects of night-air are principally experienced; the cool is luxuri- ous, but it is death. The principal dangers of a hot cli- mate are from cold. The late General Pye, who was some time Governor of Honduras, told me many years ago, that for his time he had preserved an unexampled salubrity among the troops under his command by compelling them to attend strictly to their clothing, never to mount guard at night without their great coats, and the like. The following story to the same purpose is so perti- nent that I shall quote it in the words of the very able writer, with whose opinions upon this subject I have no difference. It describes the salutary precautions, (and their favourable result,) adopted by Captain Murray, R. N., when ordered to a West India station:— " Conceiving most of the West Indian diseases to arise from exposure to damp, after the body had been acted upon, and laid open to its influence, by the great heat during the day, he laid in, before leaving England, a dou- ble set of flannels, for every man on board; and, on ap- proaching the warm latitudes, he desired one set to be served out and regularly worn. Many of the crew, trou- bled by the irksomeness at first felt, were highly dissa- tisfied, and stated that they were not obliged to wear flannel, and that they would not do so. Captain Murray got rid of this difficulty by putting them in mind that they were bound to obey orders under pain of being treated as mutineers: and instantly wrote an order in regular form, that no man in the ship should be seen without flannels: and this order was of course obeyed during the remainder of their service; and, as will pre- sently be seen, with the very best effect. 180 CLOTHING. " Another powerful cause of disease, in warm climates, is the practice in which seamen indulge, on being relieved on the night-watch, of turning into their sleep in their damp or wet clothes. This also Captain Murray re- solved to avoid; and accordingly, made it an invariable rule, that before the officer whose watch had just finished should go to sleep, he should see every man who had been on watch with him change his damp clothes for dry ones, before turning into his hammock. This, Captain Murray said, detained the officer perhaps ten minutes; but the effect was exceedingly gratifying. The detri- mental influence of sleeping in connexion with any thing damp, was very great; more so than was generally sup- posed; and was nowhere, he said, better shown than by the increased salubrity which immediately followed even the amputation of the long tails which sailors formerly wore. When these were wetted by rain, by spray, or even by damp alone, it was impossible to dry them in many hours; and, even when the crew changed their clothes, the long cold damp tail was always there in close contact with the back, infusing rheumatism, fever, inflammations, and other grievous afflictions, through the medium of the spinal column, and its numerous nerves, into all the organs of the body. All of which evils were greatly diminished by the abstraction of the offending cause. "Moisture acted upon by heat, is the bane of warm climates: and heat alone is infinitely less pernicious. Captain Murray on this account abolished the practice of daily washing and scrubbing the decks, so long looked upon as a first duty in a man of war; and which kept up a perpetual or at least a constantly-recurring source of v CLOTHING. 181 humidity. From the time he left England till his return, a period of three years and a-half, the lower decks had not been once wet, but were kept clean by holy-stoning and dry scrubbing; and by avoiding these most.active causes of disease, he succeeded in spending upwards of three years, in the ordinary duties of a West India sta- tion, without losing a man; and so far from disliking the station, he thinks it one of the most eligible that is to be found for an active and enterprising officer: and in confor- mity with this view, begged, as already stated, to be sent back there from the North American station." The importance of considering dress in the physical education of female children has been already adverted to. Unless some special reason is present, it should be such as to produce no compression. Their health and strength should be so maintained by proper exercise and repose, as to remove all necessity of extraneous sup- port. But like every rule, this is made to be occasion- ally broken; the frames of some must be carried through temporary delicacy by the very means which would en- feeble hardier ones. There are other relations of a miscellaneous character in which clothing may be viewed. The manners of a nation bear a natural ratio to their clothing; both originally take an impress from the same cause. The close-buttoned dress goes with the apathetic bearing of the Northern European; his arms folded close to his side help to keep him warm. The profusion of ac- tion and expansive gestures of the Southern match with his lighter dress and flowing garb, favouring the percola- tion of air and coolness. But in times of continued peace and free intercourse, national differences insensibly dis- 16 182 CLOTHING. appear. The characteristic gestures of each are recip- rocally exchanged or modified. This is partly the inten- tional adoption of what strikes as pleasing and in good taste on the part of our neighbours, partly the instinc- tive operation of the imitative principle.* Dress, again, like handwriting, or the manner of knock- ing at a door, bears a relation to individual character.! When overstudied or eccentric, it denotes some in- firmity of conceit or taste; when neglected, want of a due estimate of the value of the conventional rules of society. Attention to dress, in connexion with the habits recom- mended in the chapter immediately preceding, should be the more cultivated by the young, that they may not neglect these practices in age. In clothing, the capricious element which constitutes Fashion, becomes tangible and susceptible of analysis. Fashion is the same compound, whether displayed in dress, expression, or manners. What gives its value to fashion is, partly, association. " The finest instance of the imitative principle occurs in singing-birds, which, brought up with another kind, learn their notes, instead of prac- tising those of their species. The most humorous instance is this:—if, when three or four persons are sitting at a table, and engaged in conver- sation, you, seemingly without design, take up the snuffers and slowly open them to the utmost and shut them several times, one or two will have to struggle against an imitative yawn. It must have been from a conviction of the universality of this principle, that Colonel Crockett's friend declared, that he could grin like a hyaena till the bark would curl off a gum log. t Dress, to a certain extent, reacts upon character. This principle, in one extreme, furnished an image to the Earl of Douglas, when wounded and made prisoner at the battle of Shrewsbury:—"Poortith takes away pith," the Earl observed, "and the man sits full still that has a rent in his breeks." CLOTHING. 183 That pleases, which is used by those who possess social rank and mental refinement, simply because it is theirs. Fashion, besides, is ever changing; and change is agreeable in itself;—and the last fashion has already lost its distinguishing character, through the participation of the general. But what determines fashion, from the colour of a cravat to the inclination of a bow, from the mode of drinking wine, to the choice of the wine you drink? In the smallest minutiae of external bearing, an harmonious progression, and infinite series of agreeable impressions, is obtained or studied. Is it accidental what next suc- ceeds? I imagine quite the reverse; that takes only as fashion, which, having a certain analogy to the last custom, forms a natural and graceful transition; its merit being half in itself, half in its relation to the last. So the varied colours and shape of a bonnet are in the order of Nature, and succeed each other by definite laws, which cannot be violated with impunity. Perhaps the strongest exemplification of the power of fashion is to be seen in Sir Samuel Meyrick's gallery of ancient armour, in which, during a single reign, the same mutations in the shape of the breast-plate are to be seen, as of late in ladies' sleeves: the tempered Milan steel was as pliant to the caprice of fashion as blonde or sarcenet. Dress has even a relation to literature. The linen that is part of it becomes the vehicle of letters. The in- vention of printing would have been of little use without the invention of paper; that is to say, of a cheap material on which to print. It is remarkable, that the modern inundation of cheap literature is on the eve of receiving a check through this cause. The flood of cheap know- 184 AIR AND CLIMATE. ledge has nearly reached its highest level, and before long must begin to subside; unless, in the progress of art, some equivalent is discovered for linen rags. Cot- ton mixed with linen has been tried, but it prevents or lessens cohesiveness, and renders the paper rotten and perishable. The culture of flax for this purpose would not answer, as it supposes a much higher price of paper than the present. The present low cost of paper results from its being formed of the refuse rags of Europe. But these will shortly be unattainable in sufficient quantity ; American literature robs us of a portion, and at the same time our own demand is increasing. The principal supply of rags, again, is from Germany; but the literary fertility of Germany increases with our own, and the German publisher now claims, for home consumption, the worn-out blouse of his countryman.* The diffusion of knowledge will thus be checked, because population, or its linen clothing, does not increase in the same ratio with the disposition to write books. CHAPTER VI. OF AIR AND CLIMATE. I. GENERAL PROPERTIES OF THE ATMOSPHERE, ETC. The atmosphere essentially consists of two elements, namely, nitrogen and oxygen, in the proportion of seventy- * The best paper that has been made, was contrived for the American notes, which, as their currency required them to possess the greatest durability, were made of Russia linen and Bandana handkerchiefs. AIR AND CLIMATE. 185 nine parts of the former to twenty-one of the latter. Such Gay Lussac found to be the chemical constitution of the air at the height of two miles above the surface of the earth; and such it is likewise found to be in the heart of the most thickly-peopled metropolis. The law which determines the mixture of the two gases in these proportions is not known, but it has prodigious force and rapidity of operation. In a crowded assembly, a vast amount of oxygen is disappearing at every moment, being absorbed in breathing, and a nearly equally large amount of carbonic acid is given out. Yet the only difference, when the air of the room is tested, as regards these elements, is, that one or two parts of carbonic acid are found in a hundred of the atmospheric mixture. The air in cities contains two foreign elements, which" are noxious to health, although generally in a far less degree than would be supposed. The first, which is dependent on the coal consumed, (and bears a direct proportion to it,) is acid sulphurous vapour. The chemical operation of this element in Lon- don struck M. de la Rive very forcibly, who was led to its consideration by observing the extent to which the iron rails in London are corroded, where they are soldered into the stone. The decomposition arises from voltaic action: two metals, the iron and the lead, are in contact; an acid liquid is wanted to complete the pile; this is the rain-water, loaded with the fumes of combustion.* It may be presumed that asthmatic persons to whom the air * I leave the above passage as it stood in the former edition; but the cynical reflection has been justly made to me upon it, that the joints of the rails which are so corroded are the lower ones, and of those the cor- ner ones only. 16* 186 AIR AND CLIMATE. of London is noxious, suffer from the sulphurous vapour irritating the lungs. The carbon which floats in smoke is perfectly innocuous. The other contaminating element of the atmosphere of cities is animal matter, either of exhalation or decom- position. The former is detrimental, and is, I suppose, in great measure the cause of the depressing character which belongs to the air of great cities. The exhalations in hospitals display this influence in its most concentrated form, owing to the number contained in the same space, and the occasional peculiar unwholesomeness and quantity of exhalation. Accordingly, patients, who are received into hospitals for slight ailments, seldom pass two or three weeks in the wards without experiencing a slight attack of fever, that is evidently brought on by the atmosphere they breathe. This fever, when the weather changes to warm and moist, or cold and moist, often puts on the character of erysipelas. I have known the exhalations from the sick on one or two occasions to be so poisonous as to produce on the instant violent vomiting, followed by dangerous fever. One of the worst forms of spreading disease is termed hospital gangrene. Dr. Hennen, in his Military Surgery, observes that by an analysis of the air in wards affected with this contagion, M. Brugmanns ascertained that there exists in it a peculiar animal mat- ter highly disposed to putrefaction. The decomposition of animal substance {not of a mor- bid origin,) does not appear to be equally prejudicial to health. The medical student, who is diligent in his at- tendance in hospitals, is often compelled to desist by ill health; which had not happened to him, when prosecuting anatomy. M. de Noe mentions, in his Mimoires relatifs PROPERTIES OF THE ATMOSPHERE. 187 a VExpedition Anglaise de Vlnde en Egypte, how little injurious to health the mass of putrefaction attending the oyster-fishery in a hot climate is found to be:—"Although millions of oysters are putrefying under a burning sun, in the very midst of a dense and promiscuous mass of human beings, filling the atmosphere with a most intole- rable stench, sickness is hardly known." In like manner, in the process of grinding bones in this country for ma- nure, a smell the most dreadfully offensive attends the operation, yet the men who are constantly inhaling this odour, are exceedingly healthy. Butchers, tripe-men, tanners, candle-makers, are all exposed more or less to the effluvium from animal matter, in various degrees of decomposition, and yet are far from being unhealthy; or rather, the degree of unwholesomeness in these cases bears no proportion to the offensiveness of the effluvia; and although all accumulations of animal matter should be viewed with suspicion, and removed or obviated, it is singular in how small a degree, unless much and long confined or combined with the produce of living exha- lation, or of vegetable matter, they ordinarily prove de- leterious. The air of cities is to a certain extent necessarily con- taminated with the products of combustion, and with the effluvia of animal exhalation and decomposition. But the citizen is comparatively exempted from the agency of other noxious qualities of the atmosphere, which in the country go with particular soils and exposures. To those, however, who have dwelt in a temperate cli- mate, and in a reclaimed soil, the first impression which the notion of a country residence conveys, is of whole- someness and salubrity. Who is there, the most habi- 188 PROPERTIES OF THE ATMOSPHERE. tuated to a course of active life and successful occupa- tion in a great city, but recollects having experienced improvement in health and spirits through breathing the air of the country? Even the calm language of philoso- phy, in describing the advantages of particular localities, conjures up images which recreate and soothe the imagi- nation. "The goodness of the air," says Lord Bacon, "is bet- ter known by experience, than by signs. We hold that air to be best where the country is level and plain, and that layeth open on all sides; so that the soil be dry, and yet not barren or sandy, which puts forth wild thyme, and eyebright, and a kind of marjoram, and here and there stalks of calamint; which is not altogether void of wood, but conveniently set with some trees for shade; where the sweetbrier-rose smelleth something musky and aro- matically; if there be rivers, we suppose them rather hurtful than good, unless they be small, and clear, and gravelly." " It is certain that the morning air is more lively and refreshing than the evening air; though the latter be pre- ferred out of delicacy." " We conceive, also, that the air stirred with a gentle wind, is more wholesome than the air of a serene and calm sky; but the best is the air blowing from the west in the morning, and from the north in the afternoon." There are adventitious points which add to the salu- brity resulting from a purer air. The wind which blows over the ocean imbibes an infinitely minute portion of the element, and certainly acquires a tonic and strength- ening character by this means; nor is it impossible that where chalybeate springs abound, the air partakes of NOXIOUS AGENCIES. 189 their quality. A locality, again, may be dry or humid ; the former from elevation or a porous soil; the latter from being low and surrounded by hills, or from a close and clayey soil preventing the dispersion of the super- ficial moisture. Humidity with warmth is relaxing, and detrimental to the weak and the nervous; while humidity joined with cold appears one of the most generally noxious agents that operate on the frame. To avoid damp, to seek an exposure not too bleak, but yet open to a free visitation of air, is the natural rule. But here, as in every thing, change is the most important consideration. Even change to an intrinsically less healthy situation may on this prin- ciple be beneficial. Perhaps the alternation of town and country, of a residence in the interior, and on the coast, diversifies the year most wholesomely. It is reasonable to conclude that the high lands of the interior, Malvern, for instance, are the wholesomest sum- mer-residence ; in the late autumn, when the air loses its freshness, and is tainted with the falling leaf and decay- ing vegetation, the sea-side; in the winter and spring, a town residence, avoiding at once the untempered severity of cold which belongs to our northern and easterly winds in the country, and the malaria arising from our drying fields, threatening the intermittent of the spring. II. NOXIOUS AGENCIES OF AIR AND CLIMATE GENERALLY CONSIDERED. 1. The simplest atmospheric differences are those of barometrical pressure. At an altitude of a few thousand feet above the level of the sea the air becomes incon- veniently thin. Its tenuity does not allow enough oxygen 190 AIR AND CLIMATE. to be inhaled into the lungs at the ordinary rate of breath- ing, and the breathing becomes hurried. This thinner atmosphere again does not make adequate pressure on, or give adequate support to, the delicate vessels and tis- sue of the lungs. Accordingly on taking exercise the vessels of the lungs become gorged, the breathing hurried and embarrassed, spitting of blood sometimes ensues, and headache, palpitation of the heart, and faintness, are often present. All persons do not experience these effects. Persons with large chests and of vigorous fibres escape them. But as a rule it is evident that great elevations are directly as ill fitted for human life as they are for the production of the food which sustains it. And mankind congregates on the broad outspread and fertile plains of alluvial dis- tricts, which are the best fitted for the cultivation of all the arts in the alphabet, from agriculture to war inclu- sively. Yet there are intermediate positions, which seem singularly favourable to the well-doing of the smaller groups which inhabit them. These are the less consider- able elevations of mountainous countries, where pasture and arable land are still found. In these altitudes the traveller experiences new pleasurable sensations; a light- ness and elasticity of frame and spirits unknown to him before, and the inhabitants, simple, hardy, hospitable, of independent character, of moral habits,—such for how many centuries were the Swiss, — evince the qualities which naturally grow out of habitual and productive la- bour, a thin and scattered population, the rare visits of friendly strangers, the protection afforded by their moun- tain fastnesses against hostile neighbours. However, freedom of intercommunication they say is at last to civi- NOXIOUS AGENCIES. 191 lize the world," which hitherto perhaps has shown its purest developments where the promiscuous intercourse with strangers has been most excluded. These moun- tainous regions have a disease of their own,—nostalgia, —the longing of the heart for home, in those who are banished from them. Besides the obvious moral causes of this strong feeling, there is a physical one which deserves being pointed out. In mountainous regions we are in the presence of Nature, and we feel her power and her attrac- tion. In the plains she disappears; and all around us is the art of man. He who has been accustomed to gaze on Nature, to make friends of the giant hills, which every where filled his vision, and reflected associatedly all his thoughts, feelings, history, when banished from their presence feels an intolerable blank. His eyes and heart find nothing to rest on; the world around him is flat as are his spirits. 2. Another simple difference in climate is that of tem- perature. The sun and air, that image health to our northern fancies, in tropical climates, the one turns the other into a sirocco or an oven. After continued expo- sure to the sun's rays in India the soldier staggers and falls, struck with a coup-de-soleil; the effects are like those of a blow on the head, his condition is a sort of concus- sion of the brain. It may be fatal in a few minutes or hours, or may lead more lingeringly to cerebral inflam- mation. The first effect is extreme depression just from the brain being baked. The conqueror of Scinde, towards the close of that glorious campaign, experienced a coup- de-soleil; the temperature was'at that time 127° in the tents; he wrote of the event, that when he is to die, he wishes it may Be of a coup-de-soleil; for that it was merely 192 AIR AND CLIMATE. like a deadly sleep coming on; the only uneasiness was a feeling of fatigue in the limbs as if after great exercise, and the worry of the doctors preventing him from sleep- ing. So the effects of a coup-de-soleil bear much analogy to those of extreme cold, the principal of which is an op- pressive and irresistible drowsiness and indisposition to make the slightest exertion. To Europeans residents in either, cold climates appear much more bearable than hot. But this is probably owing to the easiness of warding off cold compared with the difficulty of banishing heat. And even in hot climates the principal danger lies in exposure to chills and cold. To the natives hot climates seem to impart full life and energy, while cold climates dwarf the race and keep it in nomadic barbarism. Civilization is a child of the sun. It is a paradoxical fact, which I do not remember to have seen explained, that Europeans going to India feel the heat of the first summer less severely than that of the after ones; and so with the cold of Canada. One would have expected the difference to be most felt when new, and that use would accustom the body to it. But on looking at home we may remember that the heat of the latter part of our own summers is more oppressive than the first heats were; and that it is towards the close of winter and the early spring that we complain most of cold. The truth is there is a wonderful auxiliary in the body, which enables us for a long time to resist and counteract a new strain on its forces, but in time the strength of the spring gives, and we feel and suffer from the injurious impression which we can no longer ade- quately contend against. For mere temperature England is about the most fa- NOXIOUS AGENCIES. 193 voured land in the world. Our summers are not so hot, no days so cold, but that we may be safely out in them at all hours. Nor are we forced to use in winter those warming contrivances which make a house close. 3. Dryness and moisture of the air are most important qualities in it. The air may be too dry. It is this parching quality of our easterly winds which makes the spring in England so trying. They abstract from the lungs too much heat by evaporation; and they furnish not the proper quantity of moisture for pulmonary absorp- tion. So the blood is too thick, and inflammatory attacks are rife. On the other hand, moisture in excess in the air is a still more injurious qualification. A little increase of moisture with moderate warmth, however, seems to be the reverse of noxious. In this state of the atmosphere, which is that which immediately precedes warm rain, I always feel myself in higher spirits than in other weather: it is in it too that fish bite most eagerly, and that kittens run after their tails. Moisture with greater atmospheric warmth is singularly depressing: the heat is intensely felt, for the moist air prevents the natural relief by the perspiration evaporating. Animals made the subject of experiment quickly die in a heated atmosphere full of moisture. The frightful death of the sufferers in the black hole at Calcutta, preceded by palpitation of the heart, oppression of the chest, violent headache, and de- lirium, was mainly caused by this combination. But the worst combination is that of moisture with cold. For the moisture retains its relaxing quality, (in virtue of which the hair goes out of curl, and meat putre- fies in moist weather,) and therefore exposes the body 17 194 AIR AND CLIMATE. defencelessly to the noxious agency of cold. Accordingly Baron Larry remarks of the sanatary condition of the French troops in the campaign of Friedland, that as long as the frost continued very few instances of frost-bites occurred; but that on the thaw supervening most of the sentries were attacked with mortification of the toes. He mentions likewise that after the battle of Dresden, when the weather was cold and damp, locked jaw prevailed among the wounded to an unheard-of extent. A moist state of the atmosphere, particularly if combined with cold, seems to render the body peculiarly susceptible of all morbific influences. It may possibly besides, in such instances as the spread of cholera, assist in increasing the quantity of the morbific matter. 4. The air may become the vehicle of minute particles of matter, which being thus imbibed into the lungs pro- duce consumption mechanically. This is actually the case in various manufactures. The most remarkable in- stance is the mortality among those whose business it is to grind needle-points. Now, however, a mask of magne- tized wire is commonly used, which arrests the steel-dust in its passage. On its introduction, however, this con- trivance was stoutly opposed by the men on the ground that it would diminish their wages. 5. The air may be laden with corrosive or irrespirable gases from the chimneys of manufactories, or generated in confined drains and cesspools, or with the vapours of mercury or lead; and thus be the vehicle of conveying chemical poisons into the system. 6. The air becomes unwholesome when many healthy people are congregated in the same apartment. The breath and common exhalations of the body make it thus NOXIOUS AGENCIES. . 195 noxious. Many are highly sensitive to this impression and become faint in a crowded room; others experience headache; and all feel jaded and depressed through its influence; and are relaxed, and more accessible to dis- ease. This is to be obviated by ventilation; but hitherto ventilating contrivances seem all to have failed. But the best way to ventilate a carriage or one's study in a very cold day, is from time to time to throw open all the win- dows for a minute. No one catches cold in that brief space of time. Why cannot this principle be applied to the ventilation of large apartments; and a full and free ingress of air be occasionally admitted for two or three minutes, instead of a constant flow of keen and cutting draughts ? 7. It is questionable whether the common exhalations of animal refuse be as unwholesome as they are offen- sive. But when confined a long time they certainly be- come poisonous, and capable of generating or promoting fever and the like. 8. The air conveys the material of certain animal poisons. Formerly the plague and even syphilis were supposed to be conveyed through the air. Now it is known that most morbid poisons require to be applied in substance to the body, as in the instances of plague, vac- cination, &c. Still the idea holds that the matter of cer- tain morbid poisons may be conveyed atmospherically,— that of scarlatina, of hooping-cough, of measles, for in- stance. The term infection used to be employed to ex- press the spread of contagion through matter thus floating in the air. How is cholera communicated from one hu- man being to another? Certainly it is thus communica- ted. At Boppard last autumn only one case of cholera 196 AIR AND CLIMATE. commenced in the town. This happened in the instance of a boatman. Now he had, a few days before, received into his house a boatman from Cologne labouring under the disease. The sick man certainly brought it to his friend. They both died of it. But the complaint spread no further. Then, I ask, how is cholera in such cases communicated? Is actual contact necessary, as for the propagation of the plague ? 9. The air is often the vehicle of miasms with which contagion and infection are not concerned. It seems most likely that cholera is generally such a miasm, and that it mostly pursues an atmospheric course like a blight. The researches of the Bristol junta of phy- sicians throw the most plausible light on this matter. They go to make out that the infectant in cholera is a minute fungus of easy and rapid multiplication in the air and in the water; but which likewise is found in the ex- cretions of cholera patients. On this view the disease may have originally had an atmospheric origin; though it may still admit of transport and augmentation by the infected human body. Possibly other miasms may be traced to a similar material cause. Among these the principal has been denominated ma- laria, the source of our common ague. But this is a sub- ject so important as to demand a chapter to itself. III. MALARIA. "It has long been familiar to physicians, that there is produced by wet lands, or by marshes and swamps, a poisonous and aeriform substance, the cause not only of ordinary fevers, but of intermittents; and to this unknown agent of disease the term marsh-miasma has been applied. Nor is such knowledge confined to physic. Throughout MALARIA. 197 the world it is a fact known to the vulgar, and even to the less enlightened ^nations ^familiar to the Negroes of Africa, familiar to the lower orders of France, Italy, Holland, and elsewhere, and not less known to at least our own rural population, occupying districts of this cha- racter"; since every labourer in Lincolnshire or Essex knows that his ague is the produce of his fens. This is the unseen, and still unknown, poison to which Italy applies the term Malaria.* "The fairest portions of that fair land are a prey to this invisible enemy, its fragrant breezes are poison, the dews of its summer evenings are death. The banks of its refreshing streams, its rich and flowery meadows, the borders of its glassy lakes, the luxuriant plains of its overflowing agriculture, the valleys, where its aromatic shrubs regale the eye and perfume the air, these are the chosen seats of this plague, the throne of Malaria. Death here walks hand in hand with the resources of life, sparing none: the labourer reaps his harvest but to die, or he wanders amid the luxuriance of vegetation and wealth, the ghost of man, a sufferer from his cradle to his im- pending grave; aged even in childhood, and laying down in misery that life which was but one disease. He is even driven from some of the richest portions of this fertile, yet unhappy country; and the traveller contemplates at a distance, deserts, but deserts of vegetable wealth, which man dares not approach, or he dies." * Malaria, by Dr. Macculloch. " We may take the average of life among ourselves, in round numbers, at fifty. In Holland it is twenty- five; the half of human life is cut off at one blow, (and the executioner is Malaria;) and there are districts in France where it is but twenty-two, twenty, eighteen." 17* 198 AIR AND CLIMATE. Such is the picture drawn by Dr. Macculloch of the influence of these noxious exhalations which, under the names of marsh-miasma, or malaria, display their baneful agency from India to the Pole; to which many of the effects commonly attributed to temperature are really owing; and which solicit, perhaps, the more considera- ' tion, that their cause and nature are still involved in great obscurity. The effects which are produced by malaria include al- most every class of disorder; the intermittent of the spring, the remittent form of autumn, glandular and vis- ceral weakness and disease, sallowness of complexion, hypochondriasis, a worn frame, and early senility, charac- terize its inroads. What is the source of the agent which leads to this train of evils ? There is reason to believe that the poison which acts thus fatally on the human frame is the produce of vege- table decomposition. The evidence in support of this opinion is of two kinds. In the first place, it is certain that poisons have been produced (independently of situa- tion) by the effluvia of vegetable matter acted on by water. In the second place, all the instances of local miasma prominently agree in this,—that vegetable matter in dif- ferent stages of decomposition may be proved, or reason- ably presumed, to exist in the soil which has originated them. Of course, these arguments derive their conclu- siveness from the proved or supposed insufficiency of ani- mal matter or of unorganized matter alone, to produce the effects to be accounted for. One of the most striking instances of the deleterious influence of vegetable matter under decomposition, of fre- MALARIA. 199 quent occurrence in many parts of Europe, -and far from rare in our own country, is found in the process of soak- ing flax and hemp. The proofs of the pernicious nature of these operations are numerous and decisive. Of pointed facts beyond number, related both in France and Italy, we find in Sancini, that numerous severe epidemics in the latter country have been traced to these operations, and among the rest a noted one at Ferentino, and another at Orvieto, which lasted many years. In the former country, out of similarly numerous cases, some intermittents broke out in the plain of Foray in 1823, after October, (a very rare occurrence,) and were traced to this cause. And we have the assurance of M. Bourges, that it is invariably pernicious, while he describes one very marked case, where fevers occurred in a dry, sandy, and otherwise healthy and elevated situation, being regularly renewed with the steeping and drying of the hemp, and disappearing when that season was over. In Germany, also, where this manufacture is extensively carried on, it seems to have been most satisfactorily proved, that fevers, and of a very bad kind, are the result. Dr. Rush and other writers give examples of fevers originating from the decomposition of coffee, potatoes, pepper and other vegetables. Instances of the sickliness of ships from the leakage of sugar in a damp hold; and the particular occurrence of a fever which committed fearful ravages on the crew of the Pyramus frigate, from the action of bilge water on chips and shavings left from the repairs of the magazine, (as mentioned by Burnett,) may be adduced to support the same conclusion; nor is the following circumstance without its weight: "In the 200 AIR AND CLIMATE. Campagna of Rome, it is remarked, that if the labourers cut down certain plants (a bushy thistle chiefly) a fever is the consequence. The malaria seems, (as it is thought) to be entangled within it, and to be let loose by this dis- turbance."* The facts which have been mentioned go some way to reconcile the understanding to the idea, that illnesses may be produced by the influence of vegetable effluvia. On the other hand, we recollect that every field contains vegetable matter in every degree of decomposition, and in connexion, in succeeding seasons of the year, with every variety of temperature and moisture. Something, therefore, is theoretically wanting to concentrate and give energy to the poison. The little which is yet known of its laws will be best understood from a series of in- stances exemplifying its influence. They will convey, at the same time, a sufficient lesson as to the practical im- portance of these inquiries. Fortunately, indeed, the temperature of our own climate, and its generally re- claimed soil, render this subject, relatively, of less mo- ment to us than to the inhabitants of many other coun- tries. Nevertheless, a mitigated malaria exerts its in- fluence among some of the most favoured English scenes. "No one fears a summer evening, even a mild summer night, without a dew, yet here often lurks malaria. In a land of meadows, and parks, and ponds, and woods, to * The following instance, communicated to me by the patient, I be- lieve to exemplify the action of vegetable miasma. T. E., aged forty- two, one morning after breakfast, on stooping to open a plate-chest which had been made of green wood, and kept closed some time, was so power- fully affected by the close smell which issued from it, as to fall back- wards, but without losing his senses or striking hte head. On recovering, he found he had undergone a paralytic seizure. MALARIA. 201 take a pleasant walk by the banks of the river or the lake, to watch the trout rise at the evening flies, to saunter among wet grass till the moon rises, listening to the nightingale, is thought to be, and possibly with justness, teeming with the seeds of malaria." It is believed that the conditions most favourable to the production of malaria are warmth, and the stage of evaporation from the soil which approaches to dryness. The following examples, however, will best convey to the reader a general notion of what has been ascertained respecting the sources of malaria. 1. Marshes of Fresh Water (of which it may be as- sumed to be the common character, that the land should be partially inundated, that it should be dry in some places and not in others, and that it should be boggy and soft, from the mixture of earth and decayed vegetables,) are the notorious sources of miasm, or malaria. To take an extreme example, (and one contravening the popular opinion that the rushy pools and petty swamps common on high mountains are innocuous,) Dr. Macculloch mentions that a considerable body of labourers were em- ployed in excavating a pond on a moor of this nature, in Wales, situated a thousand feet above the level of the sea. In the course of the work, within a very short time, nearly one half were incapacitated by the ague. Or to show the influence of the same cause, by the con- sequences of removing it, an author, whom I have in an- other section quoted, remarks, "A gentleman who died about ten years ago, at an advanced period of life, told me, that six miles west from Edinburgh the country was so unhealthy in his youth, that every spring the farmers and their servants were seized with fever and ague, and 202 AIR AND CLIMATE. required regularly to undergo bleeding and a course of medicine, to prevent attacks, or restore them from their effects. At the time these visitations were believed to be necessary and unavoidable; after, however, said my in- formant, an improved system of agriculture and draining was established, and vast pools of stagnant water, for- merly left between the ridges of the field, were removed, dunghills carried to a distance from the houses, and the houses themselves made more spacious and commodious, every symptom of ague and marsh-miasma disappeared from the district, and it became highly salubrious." There was a pond at Woolwich occupying an old gravel- pit on the common, close to a house belonging to the late Dr. Hutton, and occupied by General Stehelin, its whole extent being but a few square yards. It was remarked, for a long course of years, that the inhabitants of this house suffered under perpetual agues: and it was not until this pond was destroyed by the alteration of the common, that the disease disappeared. A gentleman purchased an estate in the northern part of New York, in a remarkably healthy region, for the sole purpose of spending his summer in a salubrious and delightful spot. Occasionally, some one or more of his family were visited with protracted fevers, while the whole country round continued healthy, for which no satisfac- tory reason could be assigned. This gentleman was an acute observer, and at length made the discovery that after the wind had blown some time from the same quar- ter, some member of his family was sure to suffer. Pur- suing his investigations, he discovered, at no great distance from his house, in a sort of hollow or basin, formed by hills on three sides, a body of stagnant water, in a most MALARIA. 203 offensive state. The side of the valley or basin next the house was open, there being an eminence barely sufficient to keep the water confined; thus the wind, in passing through this funnel-formed reservoir, became loaded with poisonous effluvia, which produced its. usual effects on those exposed to its influence. After a trifling expense of draining, no other case of the same disease occurred. Ditches and drains are equivalent to marshes. The soil of Walcheren is a mixture of clay and sand: and it appears to be from the drains chiefly, a few pools being also present, that its most pestiferous air is produced. The soil of the Campagna of Rome is a dry soil, and the malaria seems to be produced by the drains. This prin- ciple furnishes a channel through which the origin of ma- laria is directly introduced into cities, towns, and houses. In houses, it is evident that every form of miasm, from vegetable decomposition, to animal exhalation and con- tagion, is liable to be accumulated; and these combina- tions have given rise to the destructive fevers, by which the districts of cities, in which cleanliness and ventilation have been disregarded, have been frequently ravaged. But the most striking instances are those where poison lurks in a single house, or in a single corner, through the want of dissipating ventilation alone. The following anecdote is from Dr. Hennen's Military Surgery. "After some days spent in marching, I got into a house, and fixed my bed in a room with thirteen other officers, where we were properly secured from the inclemency of the weather. My berth was considered as particularly enviable, being a very dry, sheltered corner; I still used my blanket sack, but the violence of the rains prevented the possibility of exposing it to the air. On the third 204 AIR AND CLIMATE. day I was attacked with irregular chills and febrile heat, and before the tenth, my life was in danger from a com- bination of typhus and dysentery, and nothing but imme- diate removal to London preserved it. Three persons who, in succession, used my blanket, and got into a snug corner, were attacked in the same manner, while all those who slept under the windows, or in the more exposed parts of the building, escaped the febrile affection." 2. The influence of Salt-water Marshes is exemplified by those of Normandy, of the French shores of the Me- diterranean, of both shores of the Adriatic, &c. It has again frequently been remarked in Holland, that the severest seasons of fevers have followed casual irrup- tions of the sea, and also that, on these occasions, there has been produced a degree of putrefaction, attended with an insufferable smell, unusual in other cases. In England, there are few tracts more productive of malaria, which is even of a virulent nature, than Heme Bay, and the river banks in general about Reculver, where the water is salt, and the whole is covered twice a day. 3. The power of woods in generating malaria, is not less notorious than that of marshes, at least, in the tropi- cal climates. The jungles and the jungle-fevers of India are as familiar, even to the multitude, as the ditches and fever of Walcheren. The jungle, it must, however, be remarked, is a low and dense brushwood, or a thicket of reeds and grass; and it is often, consequently, as the residence of moisture and decaying vegetation, analogous to a marsh. Yet the production of fever does not seem limited to this particular species of woods in India; since, according to the testimony of Buchanan, confirmed by that of others in several parts of the East, fevers are MALARIA. 205 produced among the opener and larger forests, in Mysore and elsewhere, and are, in fact, the usual concomitants of all woods. To bring this home to our own country,— if any one will examine the districts of Sussex and Kent, which produce endemic fevers, of Hampshire and Essex, (occurring in the latter in the centre and on the borders of Epping Forest, the ground high, the soil in some parts gravelly,) he will find reason for believing that close and wet woods are, in this climate, a source of malaria. 4i Dr. Rush observes that, in Pennsylvania, epidemics invariably follow the clearing and cultivation of forest- land, and that they do not disappear till after many years of continued agriculture. The same remark has been made in France; and the district of Bressi (Lyonnaise,) which was comparatively healthy when full of woods, has been nearly depopulated since they have been cut down. Reversely it follows, that the planting of trees will some- times check the production of malaria, by protecting wet lands from the action of the sun, as well as by absorbing and dissipating the moisture. 5. Lands subjected to drainage (sometimes even for the very purpose of subduing or exterminating malaria) have become even more noxious than before. Upon draining the marsh of the Chartreux, near Bourdeaux, a succession of bad fevers, before unknown, commenced immediately upon the drainage, showing themselves first in that part of the town which lay nearest to the land reformed, and lasting through many years; proving so severe in 1805, that twelve thousand people were affected, out of whom three thousand died in five months. The simple effect of disturbing the soil, and so laying bare fresh surfaces to evaporation, was remarked upon 18 206 AIR AND CLIMATE. by M. de Prony, in the course of a series of operations conducted by him, under the orders of the French go- vernment, in the Pontine Marshes. The history of this district conveys instructive physical lessons. " The present insalubrity of this territory is so dread- ful, that for a space of fifteen leagues in length by five in breadth, there is not a single town, a bourg, or even a village. This vast plain of the Pontine Marshes was, however, one of the principal elements of the power of the Volscians, "who must have had a very numerous po- pulation to afford the destruction caused by their com- bats with the Romans. That population, however, found abundant means of subsistence in the culture of an emi- nently fertile plain, a cultivation which produced all that is grown in the savannahs of the New World, and which seasoned the land, and rendered it habitable. When Rome triumphed over the Volscians, that is to say, when the latter were for the greater part exterminated, the vast efforts and continual care which the cultivation of the Pontine Marshes required, and the draining off the waters, having entirely ceased, nature resumed there her former insalubrity, and the Pontine Marshes were no longer habitable, "When the censor Appius set about constructing a public road from Rome to Terracina, he opened it in a straight line from the environs of Alba to the latter town, crossing the marshes through their whole length. It is one of the greatest undertakings of the kind exe- cuted by the Romans. The solidity and the extent of the work are equally worthy of attention; and this road, which is now continued from Terracina to Brundusium, is still, after twenty-three centuries, one of the most re- markable monuments of the Roman power. MALARIA. 207 " The soil on which this road was constructed had so little consistence, that it sunk four feet under the mere pressure of the materials of the road. The road was formed upon a foundation of turf, which could be exca- vated without disengaging the putrid miasmata, and the deleterious gases. Such is the statement upon this sub- ject of a skilful Italian engineer (M. Scaccia,) who, by order of the French administration, was commissioned to make a cut to the Appian way, for the purpose of con- structing a bridge. "This cut, before the whole of the bridge was erected, became a centre of emanation for the foul air, and great numbers of the workmen fell ill, three of whom, from Terracina, died. The chief workman, who directed the building of the piers, and who had never been ill at Ter- racina, where he was employed the whole year, was seized with an atonic malady, from which he had not re- covered upwards of two years afterwards. M. de Prony was himself twice attacked by the fever in 1822, through remaining two or three hours upon the ground. The concentration of the foul air which took place in this soil could not, as it appeared, be produced, except by the exhalations from the turf placed in contact with the sur- rounding air, already filled with exhalation, the abun- dance of which was indicated by the diminution of volume in the dried turf." A principal difficulty in the theory of malaria arises from the capriciousness of its influence in respect to dis- tance from the point where it is generated. As a gene- ral law, malaria is more pernicious in proportion to the proximity to its source. In some instances, however, it is found to affect places at some distance, especially if 208 CLIMATE. they are situated on an eminence, with the same, if not with greater intensity, than those in the vicinity: thus the neighbourhood of Versailles is powerfully influenced by the marshes of St. Cyr; and at Neuville-des-Dames, above Chatillori on the Indre, fevers are more prevalent than close to the marshes where the malaria is produced. The most extraordinary instance of the kind known, is mentioned by Dr. Macculloch to occur in Malta;—the malaria, which is originated on the beach below a cliff, produces no effect on the spot itself, while it affects, even to occasional abandonment, the village situated above. The distance to which marshy emanations may extend by gradual diffusion has been calculated by Monfalcon to be 1400 or 1600 English feet of elevation, and from 600 to 1000 feet in a horizontal direction. In Europe, these limits, he supposes, cannot be exceeded; but in equatorial regions, the activity of the_poison is much more extend- ed; and in the West Indies, vessels at the distance of 9000 feet from the marshy coast have felt their baneful effects. The diffusion of malaria is assisted by damp and fog; and hence, the evening and the night and the early morning are the seasons when its influence is most sensi- ble upon human beings that pass within its reach. IV. CLIMATES SUITED TO THE STRUMOUS DIATHESIS. The conditions which render a climate the most suita- ble to persons in whose constitutions struma lurks, are freedom from vicissitudes of weather and temperature, and a pure, warm, dry atmosphere. When these are present, on the one hand the lungs (wherein mischief is most to be dreaded) are not irritated; and on the other, CLIMATE. 209 the surface of the body (upon the sympathetic influence of which upon the rest so much of health depends) is maintained in constant, equable, and healthy action. The task before me is to point out those situations in our own and in foreign climates, where the advantages described are best attained. With this object, I shall freely avail myself of the observations drawn up for The Cyclopedia of Medicine, (article, Climate,) by Sir James Clark, whose experience and judgment render him our first authority:— English Climates.—The great desideratum in this coun- try is to find a mild climate and sheltered residence for our pulmonary and other delicate invalids during the winter and spring. Our warmest winter-residences in England are mostly found on the southern and south-western shores: it is their vicinity to the sea which in a great degree renders them warmer than the inland parts in their respective vicinities. The mild region of England admits of a natural divi- sion into four districts, or groups, each having some pe- culiar features in its climate which characterize it and distinguish it from the others, both as regards its physi- cal and medical qualities. These are,— 1. The south coast, comprehending the tract of coast between Hastings and Portland Island, including the Isle of Wight; 2. the south-west coast, from the latter point to Cornwall; 3. the district of the Land's End; and 4. the western group, comprehending the places along the borders of the Bristol Channel and estuary of the Severn. South Coast.—The superiority of the climate of this district exists chiefly during the months of December, 18* 210 CLIMATE. January, and February. In March the temperature of this coast, and that of the interior (e. g., the vicinity of London,) is nearly the same. In April and May, the temperature of the interior rises above that of the coast, and continues higher, though in a less ratio, through the summer months. In October the mean temperatures are again equal, and in November that of the coast begins to exceed the interior. The only places on the south coast deserving of particular notice, are, Undercliff in the Isle of Wight, and Hastings and Brighton on the coast of Sussex. Undercliff is decidedly the most sheltered and warmest of these places, and it has, moreover, this convenience over most of our other winter residences, that it also af- fords a good summer-climate, a circumstance of consi- derable importance to many invalids. Hastings follows Undercliff in point of shelter and warmth during the winter and spring months. Its situa- tion at the base of a range of steep hills, which protect it in a considerable degree from the north and north-east winds, renders it a milder and more sheltered residence during this season than the other parts of the coast of Sussex. Brighton differs materially in the character of its climate from both these places. It is more exposed to northerly winds, but the atmosphere is drier and more bracing. While inferior to Undercliff and Hastings as a residence in diseases of the respiratory organs, accom- panied with much irritation, it offers advantages over both to invalids of a relaxed and nervous habit who are not very excitable. Autumn is the season during which the climate of this place possesses the greatest advan- tages. CLIMATE. 211 South-west Coast.—The winter climate of the south coast of Devon has lbng been noted for its mildness. The temperature of its more sheltered spots during the months of November, December, and January (when the difference is greatest,) is, on an average, about five de- grees higher than that of London during the same period: whereas, on the south coast the difference scarcely ex- ceeds two degrees. This superiority of temperature over London at both places, occurs chiefly during the night; though the days are proportionally warmer, and the tem- perature more steady on the south-west than on the south coast. In making this comparison, however, between these two districts, it is right to observe that Undercliff is not taken into the account, for want of sufficient data. Various places on the coast of Devonshire are held in repute. The principal of these are Torquay, Dawlish, Sidmouth, and Exmouth. Land's End.—The only place in this district deserving particular notice is Penzance, which has long been fre- quented by invalids on account of the mildness of its winters. The predominant characters of the climate of the Land's End, and whole south-west coast, are softness and humidity. West of England.—Clifton has several local advan- tages, and possesses the best climate in the part of the country where it is situated. Compared with that of the south-west coast, it is more exciting, more bracing, and drier, but not so mild. It is therefore less suited for pulmonary and other diseases, accompanied with much irritation, and with a tendency to inflammation. On the other hand, it is well adapted to invalids of a relaxed, languid habit. 212 CLIMATE. After this survey of the best winter-climates in Eng- land, it may be expected that some notice should be taken of our more salubrious summer-residences. On this sub- ject, however, it is not necessary to go into detail, as there is no lack of healthy situations to which our inva- lids may repair with advantage during this season. In the selection of a summer, as of a winter-residence, the same circumstances require attention, both as regards the character of the climate and the nature of the invalid's disease. The milder and more sheltered situations must be chosen, even during this season, for delicate and very sensitive invalids; while for the relaxed and enervated, and those possessing less sensibility, the bracing air of the higher and drier localities will prove more suitable. To a large class of invalids, our sea-side watering-places offer a variety of excellent situations; and for those cases in which sea-bathing promises benefit, they deserve a preference over the interior, especially during the latter part of the summer and autumn. Several of our inland watering-places, independently of the advantages to be obtained, in many cases, from the use of their mineral- waters, afford good summer-climates; and, indeed, some of them, more on this account than any other, have be- come places of fashionable resort. Among these we may mention Malvern, Cheltenham, Leamington, Tunbridge, Wells, Matlock, Buxton, &c. The climate of the islands of Guernsey and Jersey re- quires some notice, as they are occasionally resorted to by invalids from this country. The climate of these islands resembles, in its general characters, that of the coast of Devonshire; it is somewhat warmer, but not more steady, and is more exposed to high winds. CLIMATE. 213 Jersey, of the two islands, is in all respects the best suited for invalids. The summer-climate of these islands is delightful. Foreign Climates.—The climate of the south of France Has long been held in repute, but all the southern pro- vinces of that country are far from possessing the same climate; those situated on the eastern frontier being very different in this respect from those on the western. South-west of France.—Under this division may be comprehended the tract of country which extends from Bourdeaux and Bayonne to Toulouse. The transition from the climate of the south-western shores of our own island to that of the south-west of France is easy and natural, inasmuch as they exhibit a striking similarity in their general characters. Taking the south-west of France generally, the mean annual temperature is only about 4° higher than that of the south-west of England. Both climates are soft and rather humid, and agree and disagree, generally speaking, with diseases of the same character. Pau is the only place in this district of France which has a claim to be particularly noticed. This little town, which has been a good deal frequented of late years by invalids from this country, is pleasantly situated at the base of the Pyrenees; and when its close vicinity to that range of lofty mountains is considered, it certainly pos- sesses a far milder winter and spring climate, and is much less subject to high winds and extensive transitions of temperature, than might be expected. One remarka- ble circumstance in the character of its climate is the mildness of the spring, and its comparative exemption from sharp cold winds during that season. In this 214 CLIMATE. respect it bears a very favourable comparison with the climates of the south of Italy. While Pau is 6° colder than Rome during the winter, it is only 2J° colder in the spring. Compared with the warmest parts of Eng- land, the same superiority of its spring-climate holds good. Penzance during the winter months is 3° higher than Pau, but 5° lower in the spring. This mild charac- ter of the spring constitutes the great advantage of the climate. Pau is also very free from fogs, and possesses a dry soil. Its chief fault is the unsteadiness of its tem- perature. It may, however, be considered, upon the whole, the most favourable residence for invalids in the south-west of France, as far as we have had the means of judging. The difference between the climate of Pau and that of the best situations in England is not great. It is drier and warmer in the spring, and the northerly winds are much less trying to invalids than in this coun- try. One advantage possessed by it is its vicinity to the delightful watering-places among the higher Py- renees, which offer to the invalid who has passed the winter at Pau a healthy summer-climate without the in- convenience of a long journey. South-east of France.—Under this division is included that extensive tract of country which stretches along the shores of the Mediterranean, from Montpellier to the banks of the Var, the boundary stream between France and Piedmont. The climate of this district is warmer and drier, but more irritating and exciting than that of the south-west. It is also subject to sudden vi- cissitudes of temperature, and to frequent harsh cold winds. This great liability to cold piercing winds, more especially the north-west {mistral,) which often continues CLIMATE. 215 to blow with considerable force for many days together, renders the whole of this country an improper residence for patients suffering under, or peculiarly disposed to, inflammation, or irritation of the respiratory organs. The custom, therefore, which has long prevailed, of send- ing consumptive patients to the south of France, may be considered a grievous error; an error which the ob- vious character of the climate, and the result of ample experience of its effects should have long since corrected. Mmtpellier.—This place has now so completely lost the character which it once possessed as a mild climate, that a more improper residence could scarcely be se- lected for a person disposed to pulmonary disease. Its high exposed situation renders it liable to all the evils of this climate in a remarkable degree; and it is, moreover, well ascertained that pulmonary inflammation and phthisis are among the most prevailing diseases of the place. Marseilles.—Although less exposed than Montpellier, this is an equally improper residence for consumptive invalids. • Hylres possesses the mildest climate in the whole of this district; and this advantage it owes chiefly to its sheltered situation at the base of a range of hills which protect it, in a considerable degree, from northerly winds. Nice.—This place has long been celebrated for the mildness of its climate, and continues to form the favour- ite resort of a numerous class of invalids, both from this and other northern countries. Although situated in the same line of coast as Provence, Nice is superior to it in several respects. In the general qualities of its climate it certainly resembles that of the south-east of France; 216 CLIMATE. but it has some important local advantages over the best parts of that country. By its steep and lofty range of mountains it is protected from the northerly winds, and especially from the mistral, which we have stated* to be so prevalent, and which experience proves to be so in- jurious to delicate invalids in Provence. This circum- stance gives a comparative degree of softness to the climate; but it is still rather exciting. Nice is not exempt from cold winds, especially during the spring: indeed, the prevalence of these constitutes one of the principal objections to the climate of this place in pul- monary diseases generally. For consumption, even in its earlier stages, Nice is an unfavourable situation in a very large proportion of cases. The summer at Nice is too hot for any class of invalids. Italy.—The climate of the so^uth of Italy differs little in actual temperature from that of Provence and Nice, but it is softer, more humid, and less exciting. On the other hand, the sirocco, which is scarcely felt at the latter places, forms an objection to the Italian climate, though this objection is not of much weight during the winter. The only places which we consider deserving of notice as winter climates in Italy are, Pisa, Rome, and Naples. The climates of Pisa and Rome resemble each other in their general qualities. Rome is somewhat warmer in the winter; it is also drier than Pisa, though more humid than Nice, and the parching climate of Provence. About one-third more rain falls at Rome than in the latter country, and the number of rainy days is considerably greater. Taking into account all the qualities of the climate of Rome, we consider it one of the best of Italy: CLIMATE. 217 to the invalid capable of taking exercise in the open air, it affords advantages over both Naples and Pisa. Pa- tients, on the other hand, who can bear little exposure to the air, and who must, therefore, confine themselves to the most sheltered situations, will find in the Lung'Ar- no in Pisa, a residence possessing advantages, perhaps, over every other place in Italy. Naples differs somewhat in the character of its climate from both the last-named places. Independently of the effect which its immediate vicinity to the sea may have in modifying the climate, it is more subject to winds, and the air is more exciting than that of Pisa or Rome. As a residence for invalids labouring under pulmonary ir- ritation, or chronic rheumatism, it is inferior to both; nor are we aware of any cases in which it ought to be considered a more favourable climate. The beauty of the scenery around Naples, however, and the gaiety and excitement of the place and climate altogether, prove very attractive to strangers generally, and render it a very agreeable winter-residence for persons who visit Italy rather as a recreation than for the removal of actual disease. Madeira.—The minute and careful observations of the late Dr. Heineken, and of Dr. Renton, for a series of years, have afforded us sufficient data to form an accurate estimate of the climate of this island; and although our materials for enabling us to judge of the other Atlantic islands are much less complete, they leave little doubt in our minds that Madeira is superior to any of them, while it affords conveniences in other respects as a residence for invalids possessed by none of them. The height of the central ridge of mountains which compose the greater 19 218 CLIMATE. part of this island, although it may detract somewhat from its warmth during the winter, contributes greatly to temper the heat of its summer. It gives Madeira the advantage of a cool land-breeze during the night, which, alternating with a refreshing sea-breeze in the day, mode- rates the summer-heat in a very material degree; while the trade-winds which prevail at this season in the lati- tude of Madeira, contribute also to its coolness and sa- lubrity. The invalid, moreover, by choosing for his summer-residerfce an elevated situation in the interior, finds a climate considerably cooler than that of Funchal, which is situated on the sea-shore, and affords the best winter-residence. Comparing Madeira with the south-east of France and Italy, we find that, although its mean annual temperature is only about six degrees higher than that of these places, this temperature, is very differently distributed through- out the year, the range being far less at Madeira than in the most favoured spots in the south of Europe. Thus, while the winter is twelve degrees warmer than in Italy and France, the summer is five degrees cooler; and while the mean annual range at Madeira is only fourteen degrees, it is nearly double this at Pisa, Rome, Naples, and Nice. In the equable distribution of heat through- out the year, it possesses a similar superiority over the same places; for example, while the mean difference of temperature of successive months at Madeira is only two degrees, at Rome and Nice it is four, and at Pisa and Naples five degrees. In the progression of temperature during the day, it maintains the same superiority; the mean range for twenty-four hours being ten degrees by the register CLIMATE. 219 thermometer, while at Nice it is nine degrees, at Rome ten degrees, and at Naples thirteen degrees, by the com- mon thermometer. In steadiness of temperature from day to day, (a very important quality in a climate,) Madeira excels all those places greatly. There is also a considerable difference in respect to the dryness of the two climates. Nearly the same quantity of rain falls at Madeira as at Rome; but there are only seventy-three days on which any rain falls, while at Rome there are one hundred and seventeen days. The rain at Madeira also falls at more regular seasons, chiefly in the autumn, the atmosphere being generally dry and clear for the remainder of the year. The annual range of atmospheric pressure is very small, which is the case also at Rome and Naples. From this comparison, the superiority of the climate of Madeira over that of the south of Europe will be at once seen. "When the health of children is naturally delicate, or when it has been rendered so by some of the diseases of childhood, such as measles, hooping-cough, scarlet-fever, &c, no measure with which we are acquainted will prove so effectual in restoring the health as a change to a dry and warm climate." "Again, about the period of puberty, or a little before this time, a change to a southern climate for one or two winters is a measure which, if judiciously advised, and carefully executed, will seldom fail to improve the gene- ral health of delicate persons, and favour the full deve- lopment of the system which takes place at this period of life; and when there exists a disposition to tubercular disease, it will tend materially to obviate it. We beg, 220 CLIMATE. however," continues Sir James Clark, "to observe that we speak of the effects of climate in those cases, not so much as a single remedial measure, as a measure which, while it contributes powerfully of itself to improve the health, favours the operation of a proper regimen, and such other remedies as the circumstances of the par- ticular case may require." " The third period of human life, in which the powerful influence of a mild climate in ameliorating the health may be remarked, occurs at a more advanced age. The first two occur while the body is yet in progress to ma- turity;' the third when it has passed the zenith of its power. In the first instance, a mild climate enables a delicate frame to attain more certainly its full maturity: in the latter it prevents it from sinking prematurely into decrepitude, and enables it to prolong its existence until the period marked for its natural decay." "From about the age of fifty to that of sixty, though not unfrequently at a much earlier period, either when the system is naturally weak, or the causes of disease have been powerfully applied, the impaired condition of health now alluded to usually supervenes. This state is marked rather by anomalous disorder of various func- tions, indicative of a premature decay of the powers of life, than by any formal disease acknowledged in our system of nosology. • The activity of the mind and the bodily vigour have sunk many degrees, without any evi- dent cause, and the individual, both in appearance and feeling, seems rapidly lapsing into premature old age and its accompanying infirmities. This disordered state of the health has been termed the Climacteric Disease; but, as has been already remarked, it occasionally occurs HEALTH OF MIND. 221 long before the period of life at which this change of the constitution is stated to occur naturally." " The causes which lead to this condition of the health are various: as for instance, an anxious and sedentary life, long-continued and close mental application, or ir- regular and intemperate habits of living; and oftener still, it is the consequence of the combined influence of several of these causes. From whatever cause it origi- nates, a change for one or two years to a milder climate will prove of the greatest benefit in restoring the invalid to his wonted health." CHAPTER VII. OF HEALTH OF MIND. "Great joys attenuate and diffuse the spirits and shorten life; familiar cheerfulness strengthens the spirits by calling them forth, and yet not resolving them. "Impressions of joy in the sense are naught; rumina- tions of joy in the memory, or apprehensions of them in hope, or fancy, are good. "Joy suppressed, or communicated sparingly, doth more comfort the spirits than joy poured forth and pub- lished. "Grief and sadness, if it be void of fear, and afflict not too much, doth rather prolong life." The preceding are from the maxims laid down by Lord Bacon for the government of the mind, with a view to the preservation of health. Of such rules the common 19* 222 HEALTH OF MIND. principles are to use the powers of the understanding, but not without intervals of leisure; to shun great eleva- tion or depression of the spirits; to cultivate evenness of disposition. A wonderful thing it is, that Nature has in this respect given the body advantage over the mind. The practices which draw out all the resources of the bodily frame, which give sound sleep, good digestion, strength of bone and sinew, tend likewise to the main- tenance of health. It is not so with the mind. It is certain, that if mere duration of existence were the ob- ject principally deserving human consideration, the mind should not be -strained to its full powers of efficient exer- tion. To secure length of days, it cannot be denied that an indifference to great aims, and a succession of light and frivolous pursuits, are better means than unrelaxed efforts at high and useful achievements. Wisdom lies midway, and counsels us to occasional wholesome recrea- tion. Or rather, wisdom tells us that a wise and virtuous man ought to act in reference to his health, just as a shrewd and vicious man does; that is to say, he ought so to husband his powers for a prolonged term of useful life, as the cool profligate tends his own for a long and un- disturbed career of vice. So mere amusement becomes a subject of rational study. I have already adverted to social relaxation. There is health of mind in unbent hilarity. There is health, again, in those bodily sports which combine amuse- ment with exercise. There is health of mind in the sim- ple contemplation of external nature, for all,—but most for those who seek the mighty mother, to recruit worn thoughts, and wearied spirits— God made the country, and man made the town. HEALTH OF MIND. 223 —To throw off the long coil of busy care, to wake, and hear the murmur of the groves, to breathe the fresh breath of the early morning,* to look upon the pastoral upland, the flowing river, the blue sky,—when thought seems to stand still, and the heart floats in tranquillity and light, reflected from the physical world. Some of the magnificence of nature, poetry strikingly conveys,—so Milton,—so often—as in this picture— The winds, the waves, and all the finny drove, Beneath the moon in mazy morris move. Or iEschylus— SI Atoj alOrjp xai i!azvrti!tpoi, rtvoai, Jlota/xtov is rt^you), liovtunv it xvpaiuv Avrip<,6(iov y&aafia. And somehow the mere images thus reflected in poetry strike upon the heart healthily and refreshingly, and make Our bosom's lord sit lighter on his throne. An artist told me that he had passed some weeks of the last summer in an excursion up the Rhine, and into Switzerland. Nothing, he said, could be more softly beautiful and romantic than the varied succession of vine- clad hill and ruined tower; but the steamboat gave him short time for sketching the gliding panorama. But Switzerland ;-^he looked from Vevai, at sunset, towards Meillerie; the lower part of the mountains was massed in deep blue shade, reflected upon the liquid waters of the lake: above, the light was thrown back in vivid red: while higher still, the snowy peaks were traced in trans- parent amber, like the sky beyond them, from which their * Auf, bade, schuler, unverdrossen, Die irdsche brust in morgenroth.—Goithe. 224 HEALTH OF MIND. clear and sharp-cut outline alone divided them. He tried to sketch that scene, but his eyes filled with tears.* Nature is beyond art. For Nature is divine art. Yet human art may select and combine her elements, and re- produce some of her conceptions. Architecture is a fine amplification of two ideas in na- ture: a development of the thoughts expressed in Fin- gal's cave, and in the arched and leafy forest. To learn its powerful influence on the imagination, let any one visit York Cathedral, for an interior;—or, -which is not less deeply moving, view in bright moonlight, at some silent hour, the magnificent elevation of St. Paul's. If he would know what sculpture can convey, let him gaze on the Theseus, and admire, not the faultless ana- tomy it displays, but the greatness of style; not the wondrous beauty of drawing, but the ease, and simplicity, and grandeur of expression. These thoughts are, for the imaginative, a bright occa- sional spring of delight and refreshment. Let us now look to humbler and more general amusements. The exclusive pursuit of what is commonly understood by amusement, is sometimes to be recommended for health of mind. To those who have been the subjects of in- sanity, or who inherit a strong tendency to it, a wise physician prescribes occupations, which else would be frivolous ; such, for instance, as travelling with no object but change of scene. Nor is it the least grievous ele- * This may seem to have little to do with health; but the artist of whom I speak, a very young man, undertook this tour for the restora- tion of his health; and I have no doubt, that the benefit which he has ex- perienced, is in part attributable to the influence of the new and whole- some mental excitement on his bodily frame. HEALTH OF MIND. 225 ment of that fearful malady, that in those disposed to it, the mind must be denied all strong and manly exercise, and has sedulously to be led away from serious thought. It is said that cards, which form so common a diver- sion, and, if used with discretion even a wholesome one, for some active-minded and for many idle persons, were invented for the amusement of a deranged monarch. The game of chess has a different character. It must be classed among amusements; yet it seems to call out the utmost reach of thought of which the player is capa- ble. The thought, however, so employed is wasted: the game, of Indian extraction, reminds us of their carved spheres of ivory,—displaying art, as exquisite, and as useless. Mr. Lewis assures me, that the talent for playing chess bears no relation to the general talent of the player. It may therefore be compared to musical or arithmetical genius. The more so, that a great chess-player, like one possessed of any other partial talent, is sure not to have an understanding in other respects below the average. Every one, Mr. Lewis observed to me, has an individual maximum of talent for chess, to which, by study and prac- tice, he may be brought, but beyond which he cannot pass. It is singular that Nature should have given an arbitrary measure of talent, incommensurate with general ability, and sometimes so powerful as to amount to genius, for a thing so vain. For more important objects, the powers of the mind have, no doubt, the same natural limitations; only that for these there is no measure by which the force of dif- ferent individuals can be compared, no mental dynamo- meter, as at chess. 226 HEALTH OF MIND. Any one who believes in the above proposition in re- gard to chess, may make the game an agreeable relaxa- tion. When beaten, his amour propre may be saved by the reflection that he is perhaps inferior at chess only. He may thus breathe his mind at chess as he might his body at fencing, without incurring the risk of painful hu- miliation. There are two important lessons to be learned at chess. The first is the value of acquired knowledge. A per- son who has studied the game of chess and knows it, will beat with ease and certainty one of much more talent for the game, who understands its general principles only. The second is, encouragement never to give up a losing game, but still to struggle on for success, playing only with increased caution and thought, as the difficulties muster around you. In life, as at chess, no one can an- ticipate the remote consequences of every position, and the skilful management of disastrous circumstances may be the road to prosperity. Such, more or less justly delineated, is the value of this class of amusements. Let me now, still pursuing the same object, try another cast. There exists in well selected imaginative literature a source, through which the mind is raised to contemplate lessons of excellence in human nature and conduct; in which moral worth is made the theme of interesting nar- rative; in which virtue is presented in its brightest and most attractive colours. Let us look at the mental in- fluence of the fairest lessons of romance. There are persons so happily gifted in mind and health, that their spirits keep an equal and uninterrupted course, never rising to excess, never sinking to depression; whose HEALTH OF MIND. 227 thoughts and dispositions are so truly balanced, through the concurrence of good natural tendencies with fortur nate associations in early youth, that in their path through life they shun, as from a necessity, all that is un- becoming, and keep, without an effort, the even tenor of their way, secure from within, assailable only by the accidents of Nature. The prosperity of those who form this rare and gifted class, as it is viewed without envy, for their inherent superiority is allowed, so does it give a useful tone to the aspirations of commoner natures, rendering some approach to excellence easier, by display- ing at once its attainment and its reward. But not less useful is the lesson, when the same temper and frame of mind are viewed under adversity and disappointment, bearing up with equanimity against the reverses of our lot, and submitting with dignity to sacrifices of lei- sure, habit, ease; toiling with serenity, where less per- fect minds are broken with peevishness and discontent; suppressing each temptation to seek by a less lofty path shelter and a haven; sustaining that tone of temper, feeling, judgment, which else might have been thought the favoured offspring of prosperity. In both of these aspects, and equally admirable in both, the character shone of a great departed genius, whose life presented, both in fortunate and adverse circumstances, an admira- ble and rare alliance of the greatest intellectual gifts with the highest tone of moral and social worth. Thus he lived, whom I have been carried away to cite as a noble actor in the scene of human life, when his writings alone are my present lawful theme. With an ima- gination rivalling that of Shakspeare in fertility, he has peopled our recollections with shadows of human nature, 228 HEALTH OF MIND. in which, with more than historic truth, its springs of action are unveiled, what is worthy in it displayed, and held up for imitation by the instinctive bent of the poet's mind. Second, perhaps, to our great dramatist in the profound analysis of the human heart, and less powerful in portraying its sterner energies, where the flight of his va- rious invention soars the highest, than in representing the softer grandeur and sublimity of which it is suscep- tible, as elsewhere its pathos and its humour,—the Raf- faelle at once and Wilkie of his art, as Fielding was the Hogarth, and Shakspeare the Michael Angelo of a higher, —his uniform and perhaps unconscious bias appears to have been to impart to all his works a moral tendency; when his conceptions are the loftiest, such is most strongly their tone.* * Let me give one striking instance in which the value of mental dis- cipline and self-correction, and the serenity of mind, with length of days, resulting from these efforts, are contrasted by Scott with the sunniest light of earthly happiness, in lessons of such truth and force, that the latter is pale and ineffectual in the comparison. I advert to the exquisite characters of Minna and Brenda in The Pirate, in which Brenda is the object of every blessing of fortune, and has every-day felicity. " But Minna,—the high-minded and imaginative Minna,—she, gifted with such depth of feeling and enthusiasm, yet doomed to see both blighted in early youth, because, with the inexperience of a disposition equally romantic and ignorant, she had built the fabric of her happiness on a quicksand in- stead of a rock,—was she, could she be happy ? Reader, she was happy; for whatever may be alleged to the contrary by the skeptic and the scorner, to each duty performed there is assigned a degree of mental peace, and high consciousness of honourable exertion, corresponding to the difficulty of the task accomplished. That rest of the body which succeeds to hard and industrious toil, is not to be compared to the re- pose which the spirit enjoys under similar circumstances. * • * « Her thoughts, however, were detached from the world, and only visited it with an interest like that which guardian angels take for their charge, on behalf of those friends with whom she lived in love, or of the poor HEALTH OF MIND. 229 The uniform characteristic of the novels of Sir Walter Scott is the moral wholesomeness which pervades them. The sympathies of his readers are always enlisted on the side of Nature, correct feeling, and true principle. No false or affected sensibility, no anatomy of vice, nothing to lower the moral standard of humanity, deforms his pages. Yet is such reading dangerous, when, instead of being adopted as an occasional relaxation, use has made it a necessary resource. It wastes feeling, it detaches the aspirations from reality, and uses that mental warmth which is wanted for the vigorous conduct of the business of life. The in- habitants of the Peninsula are constitutionally romantic; their torrid imagination does not link with the course of sober exertion. "Every man in Portugal," the Duke of Wellington wrote in one of his despatches in 1810, "is sufficfently alive to the danger and very anxious to avert it; there is plenty of enthusiasm; there are cries of 'Viva,' and illuminations, and patriotic songs, and feasts every where; but that which is wanting, is the plain, sim- ple performance of his duty by each in his station." There may be some, in whom the disease which novel- reading produces is taken root, to whom the following re- marks by a very forcible writer on this subject may not be unprofitable;— "Even though reminded of the necessity of intervening whom she could serve and comfort. Thus passed her life, enjoying from all who approached her an affection enhanced by reverence, insomuch that when her friends sorrowed for her death, which arrived at a late period of her existence, they were comforted by the fond reflection that the humanity which she then laid down was the only circumstance which had placed her, in the words of Scripture, 'a little lower than the an- gels !'" 20 230 HEALTH OF MIND. means, the man of imagination will often be tempted to violate their relation with ends, by permitting himself to dwell on those happy casualties which the prolific sorcery of his mind will promptly figure to him as the very things, if they would but occur, to accomplish his wishes at once, without the toil of a sober process. If they would occur,—and things as strange might happen, —he reads in the newspapers that an estate of ten thou- sand pounds per annum was lately adjudged to a man who was working on the road. He has even heard of people dreaming that in such a place something valuable was concealed; and that on searching or digging that place, they found an old earthen pot. full of gold and silver pieces of good King Charles the Martyr. Mr. B. was travelling by the mail-coach, in which he met with a most interesting young lady, whom he had never seen before; they were mutually delighted, and were married in a few weeks. Mr. C, a man of great merit, in obscu- rity, was walking across a field, when Lord D., in chase of a fox, leaped over the hedge, and fell off his horse into a ditch. Mr. C, with the utmost alacrity and kind solici- tude, helped his lordship out of the ditch, and recovered for him his escaped horse. The consequence was inevi- table ; his lordship, superior to the pride of being morti- fied to have been seen in a condition so unlucky for giving the impression of nobility, commenced a friendship with Mr. C, and introduced him into honourable society and the road to fortune. A very ancient maiden lady, of large fortune, happening to be embarrassed in a crowd, a young clergyman offered her his arm, %nd politely attend- ed her home; his attention so captivated her, that she bequeathed to him, soon after, her whole estate, though she had many poor relations. HEALTH OF MIND. 231 " That class of fictitious works called novels, though much more like real life than the romances which preceded them (and now with some alterations, partly come into vogue again) is yet full of these lucky incidents and adventures, which are introduced as the chief means toward the ulti- mate success. A young man, without a fortune, for in- stance, is precluded from making his addresses to a young female in a superior situation, whom he believes not in- different to him, until he can approach her with such worldly advantages as it might not be imprudent nor de- grading for her to accept. Now how is this to be accom- plished? Why I suppose, by the exertion of his talents in some fair and practical department; and perhaps, the lady, besides, will generously abdicate, for his sake, some of the trappings and luxuries of rank. You really sup- pose this is the plan; I am sorry you have so much less genius than a novel-writer. This young man has an un- cle, who has been absent for a long time, nobody knew where, except the young man's lucky stars. During his absence, the old uncle has gained a large fortune, with which he returns to his native land, at a time most opportune for every one but a highwayman, who attacks him in the road through a wood, but is frightened away by the young hero, who happens to come there at the instant to rescue and recognise his uncle, and to be, in return, recognised and made the heir to as many thousand as the lady or her family could wish. "Now, what is the intended impression of all this on the reader's mind? Is he to think it very likely that he too has some old uncle, or acquaintance, at least, return- ing with a ship-load of wealth from the East Indies; and very desirable that the highwayman should make one 232 HEALTn OF MIND, such attempt more; and very certain that in that ease be shall be there in the nick of time, to catch all that fortune sends? One's indignation is excited at the immoral ten- dency of such lessons to young readers, who are thus taught to regard all sober, regular plans for compassing an object with disgust or despondency, foolish enough to expect them, and to be melancholy when they find they may expect them in vain." There are elements which find an especial place in fic- titious composition, to which I am unwilling not to take the opportunity of adverting, as the source of the enter- tainment which they convey is an amusing subject of philosophical speculation. These elements are, Humour and Wit. Humour is the sentiment which excites us to laugh. It appears to me impossible to refer all the instances which provoke laughter to one principle. But the follow- ing are perhaps the most common elements of humour. One is to suppose a relation, where there is none; as in the complaint, " I never was so flea-bitten; no wonder the place is called Stony Stratford." A second arises from a disproportion between the idea intended to be conveyed, and the image used to express it. The illustrative image may be either too great, or too little for the occasion. The former is more commonly employed in humour. American humour, which consists in exaggeration, is allied to this kind. Will Wimble, in the Spectator, flings his watch into the river, and puts the pebble he held into his watch-pocket. In the American tersion, the absent man boils his watch for three minutes, looking at the egg in his hand for the time: and to go to rest, puts his coat HEALTH OF MIND. 233 and waistcoat to bed, and flings himself for the night across the back of a chair. A third is stating a relation between two ideas by an expression which conveys a contradictory relation. This is the essence of bulls. So I remember hearing an Irish- man observe, that the Harrow-road is the prettiest outlet by which you approach London. A fourth is abruptness of transition, or inequality of thought, as:— Next, great Dalhousie, like the god of war, Lieutenant-General to the Earl of Mar. Or in the American, "As long as from July to eternity, I guess." In music, lilting tunes played fast excite hu- morous thoughts, seemingly from the suddenness of the transition; for the same played slow are often pathetic. A fifth, a most singular element in humour, is the per- ception of infirmity, or of trifling injustice or injury sus- tained. So children jeer a deformed person, and scream with delight at the personal outrages committed by a clown in a pantomime.* Voltaire's, Sterne's and Mr. Hook's- humorous writings have the common point of employing this principle. There is a close connexion between pathos and humour. Those who in fictitious composition are masters of the one are equally so of the other. This arises from the source of humour last mentioned. Pathos is produced by using judiciously the elements of real and unavoidable suffering; this kind of humour, by touching trifling, conventional, and remediable distresses. No * So again, when laughter is provoked in the thoughtless by remarks which offend decency, or religion, its source is in the perception of the outrage perpetrated on what mankind respect. 20* 234 HEALTH OF MIND. wonder that the tact for discriminating the ingredients of the one kind of misery, should go with quickness in dis- cerning those of the other. What is called humour in character, is a partial in- firmity or simplicity, detectable to a greater or less extent in all minds. This kind of humour is finely caught in Don Quixotte, and in The Antiquary. Humour of this kind differs from caricature in preserving the true relation between what is sound and what is ex- travagant. Farce, or caricature, is the expansion of the infirmity of character, and the suppression of the re- deeming part. Most of Moliere's humour is of the last order. Ridicule is said to be the test of truth; it is so to a certain extent. Ridicule eliminates the ridiculous, while it does not hurt what is really just or great. Humour then is the sentiment of the ludicrous. Wit is felicity of expression,— What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed. There are two sorts of pure wit. One is independent of fancy, and consists in the neatness with which a remark is turned; it is recognised, for instance, when a second idea is conveyed in a remark that has a first and more ob- vious meaning. A. princess (my memory fails me as to more than the point of the anecdote,) inquired of a stranger, newly arrived at her court, whether a celebrated lady in his own country was not the greatest beauty in Europe: there was wit in the traditional answer,—that he thought so yesterday. So too in the comment, when some one spoke of the walk of St. Denis to Paris without his head, " Et pourtant ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute." HEALTH OF MIND. 235 The other kind depends upon, or involves fancy. But fancy may be brilliant and illustrative, without being wit. It becomes wit, when the elements of the illustration which fancy furnishes are proportional. Wit again may exist without humour; although humour is so commonly united with wit, that many suppose there cannot be wit apart from it. Where wit and humour co-exist, the result may be com- pared to fine chasing in gold or silver. The humour is the precious metal, the wit the skill of the artist. So humour exists in all stages of civilization; but wit only co-exists with refinement. We may thus exemplify the relation of fancy to wit, and at the same time the independence of the latter on humour. To say that his mistress is fair, but cold to his suit, is a lover's lament in a pastoral. To say that her neck is "Pario marmore purius," is poetical fancy. To say that her bosom is as fair as marble, and as cold, is poetical fancy proportionalized into wit. So again,— Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night, God said, Let Newton be, and all was light. Or, wit of this kind is the expression of a relation be- tween ideas by images which convey a second accidental relation, that must be to a certain extent parallel with the first: So wit may be described as thought seen through a medium of double refraction. Any secondary relation proportionalized serves to constitute wit. But the less obvious, and, the less far-fetched, and the closer the pa- rallel, the finer the wit. A secondary relation often effectively used is the con- nexion of two thoughts by an antithetical transposition 236 HEALTH OF MIND. of their machinery. For example,—there is certainly no wit in saying that a man invents his statements of mat- ters of fact, while he borrows his humour; but there is the finest in Sheridan's sarcasm, that such a one " relied on his imagination for his facts, and on his memory for his jokes." Again, to impute to a statesman, that in early life he practised extempore speaking at a debating club, which met at a baker's; and in the next sentence to tell him that his motive for quitting his party was place, would be a sorry diatribe. But there was wit, (no matter how little reason) in Fox's Parliamentary sarcasm against Burke, —"After all, it was not surprising, that a statesman who went to the baker's for his eloquence, should come to that house for bread." The feeblest secondary relations are those which are furnished by a similarity of sound, or double meaning in the words employed. These are of two kinds, allitera- tions and puns. The first was occasionally employed by Pope, as a means of giving smartness to common images; as in the line,— Puffs, powders, patches; bibles, billet-doux. Puns are either extremely dull jests, or owe their effect to the humour involved in them. One of the neatest on record, is the remark made on the freights of French books thrown into the sea, under Napoleon's licensing system, that they were in usum Delphini editions. Sarcasm is censure conveyed in humorous thought, or witty expression; the latter are barb and feather to the arrow. In irony, humour is often present; but its essence as HEALTH OF MIND. 237 wit consists in the antithetical opposition of the meaning expressed, to the meaning intended. The pleasure derived from the highest wit is renewed as often as it is presented to the mind. Commoner wit sparkles only for the moment, and is fiat on repetition. Its temporary effect again depends on the apparent ra- pidity of its conception: hence that most delights, which is suggested by remarks made by another. In the following instance from Addison, (paralleling a period in English history from the Grecian mythology,) the effect depends upon the difficulty overcome in string- ing together so long a series of proportional images, each singly having no very striking appositeness. Wise Phidias thus, his skill to prove. Through many a god advanced to Jove. And taught the polished rocks to shine With airs and lineaments divine, Till Greece, amazed, and half afraid, The assembled deities surveyed. Great Pan, who wont to chase the fair, And loved the spreading oak, was there; Old Saturn, too, with up-cast eyes, Beheld his abdicated skies; And mighty Mars, for war renowned, In adamantine armour frowned; By him, the childless goddess rose, Minerva, studious to compose Her twisted threads; the web she strung, And o'er a loom of marble hung; Thetis, the troubled ocean's queen, Matched with a mortal next was seen, Reclining on a funeral urn, Her short-lived darling son to mourn ; The last was he, whose thunder slew The Titan race, a rebel crew, That from a hundred hills allied, In impious league their king defied. 238 HEALTH OF MIND. " If the last preceding observations are at all admissible into the present treatise, it is because mental recreation and amusement are conducive to bodily health. But I have now to speak of the rules which promote that which is before bodily health, namely Health of Mind. I propose to arrange my remarks under the heads of self- control, and intellectual cultivation. "How," says Foster, "while called to the contempla- tions which absorb the spirits of Heaven, could you be so patient of the task of counting the flies of a summer's day?" I. OF SELF-CONTROL. "It conduceth unto long life," says Lord Bacon, "and to the more placid motion of the spirits, which thereby do less prey and consume the juice of the body; either that men's actions be free and voluntary, that nothing be done invitd Minerva, but secundum genium; or, on the other side, that the actions of men be full of regulations and commands within themselves; for then the victory and performing of the command giveth a good disposition to the spirits, especially if there be a proceeding from degree to degree: for then the victory is the greater. An example of the former of these is in a country life; and of the latter, in monks and philosophers, and such as do continually enjoin themselves." In the passage which I have quoted Lord Bacon sup- poses the mind to be capable of reaching by degrees such self-discipline as to control the impulses, which would di- vert it from the course it most approves. How is this power of self-discipline to be cultivated, or what does it mean ? Every one has a certain consciousness of freedom SELF-CONTROL. 239 of deliberation, election, willing; every one blames himself when he has done wrong; and finds excuse for others in the strength of the temptations to which they have yielded. The power of willing what our judgment approves, how is it to be strengthened? Is it to be trained and en- couraged as an original and active principle of our nature, or is it rather to be sought as the passive effect of the operation of other elements ? I believe the safest practical morality to be that of the necessitarian theory; whatever one's inward conviction of our free-will and liberty of action, {and no one ever divested himself of the persuasion that he was a free agent,) the safest rules I believe to be such as would be efficient, if there were no free-will. The practical value of such rules is evident from this consideration: if they can com- pel a creature of necessity to virtue, h fortiori they will assist a free agent already half-disposed to it. The following story, which may be presumed to be an ingenious fiction, amusingly shows how even the adoption of the necessitarian theory would carry with it no per- suasion of an exemption from responsibility to human laws. A gentleman, so the story runs, was used at his own table to discuss and to advocate the theory of neces- sity, which appeared so satisfactory to a lad who waited, that he stole some plate, on the presumption that he could not help it, and, therefore, could not be blamed for it. His master, however, detecting the theft, proceeded to chastise the boy; who defended himself by protesting that he was blameless, upon his master's favourite theory, —that he had learned from him that he had no liberty of choice, and that the robbery he had committed was upon compulsion. His master, notwithstanding, proceeded with 240 HEALTH of mind. the punishment he had commenced, observing, that the lad's views were perfectly correct; and that he, his mas- ter, acting under a similar necessity, could not help flog- ging him, for the social wrong which he had committed. In the case supposed, the boy, we may presume, must logically have admitted his master's right to punish to be equal to his own to commit theft. The practical rule for the cultivation of self-control, is, not to seek after mental independence, but to divest our- selves, as speedily as possible, of all that looks like liberty of choice, submitting ourselves with implicit obedience vassals to morality and religion. Practically, self-control is not to be considered as an improved free-agency. It is not the power of doing (or not doing) what, on consideration, we approve, or con- demn. It is not the endeavour to become master of one- self, reserving the power of afterwards selecting one's course of thought and action. Such an expectation is visionary and delusive. Rational self-control is founded on and to be obtained by the adoption of rules of conduct, —from a perception of their moral rectitude, and reve- rence for the sanctity of religion, — which, acquiring through time the force of habit, render the desertion of our duties abhorrent to our nature. In human laws and social government, the proclivity of human nature to error has to be so truly measured, that the punishments menaced against irregularity and vice may exactly counterpoise the disposition to wrong, while the prospects held out of honourable reward tend equally to encourage virtue. In the education of children, motives and habits should, from the earliest years, be accumulated around them, SELF-CONTROL. 241 gradually to wall in, as it were, that straight and nar- row path in which their duty lies. In that self-education which is, or ought to be, the most important object of life, it should be our constant study to shun those slight deviations from the standard of right which are the first steps toward vice, and to strengthen around us habits of moral discipline. All our duties, moral and divine, are contained under four great principles, in respect to which our study should be to have no choice, but to yield an absolute obedience to their dictates: these are, Veracity, Justice, Charity, Piety. Veracity.—The practice and opinions of the world in reference to truth, are full of anomalies. A child be- lieves every thing that is told to it; but all children pro- bably, unless brought up with the utmost caution, would pervert truth under fear of the consequences of declaring it. The baser materials of society are in the same con- dition ; they are constantly being deceived, and deceiving. Upon this ground it has been bitterly said, that speech was given to man to enable him to disguise his thoughts. It is singular, again, but certain, that falsehoods are more easily received and admitted by the world, than truths if they are novel: the reason may be this; a new truth is generally improbable, or it would have been discovered before,—whereas, falsehood is framed of circumstances, and for occasions, which render it likely of belief. In the affairs and judgments of men in all ranks, falsehood, again, is generally mixed with truth. As gold is not turned to the purposes of life without alloy, neither is truth. The merchant often maintains his credit by ficti- tious representations of his circumstances; the physician 21 242 HEALTH OF MIND. cheers his patient's spirits by representing his case as less desperate than it is; and for the purposes of justice, it is practically found that the best way of coming at the truth is to engage an advocate on each side, to colour his case as unfairly as art and ingenuity and the suppression of facts can effect. But what is the just view of the preceding instances, and what is the true value of veracity ? The former are in- stances, in which, unfortunately, expediency is put before principle ; they are instances, which the more they are reduced in number, the better for human nature. They are painful exceptions to the rule of right, which the mo- ralist will not defend, though extenuated by the casuist on the plea either of pious fraud, or of duplicity licensed for its convenience by general consent and adoption. But what, again, is the value of veracity? Without veracity there would be no faith among men, nothing cer- tain beyond one's own experience; knowledge would be a blank. To lower the standard of veracity is to depreci- ate the currency, throughout the world, of science, philo- sophy, morality, religion. Whoever disregards its sa- cred obligation, sinks in his own esteem, and becomes to others, in proportion to his abandonment of truth, an ob- ject of merited scorn and contempt. Justice.—"The word Justice," observes Mr. Stewart, "in its most extensive signification, denotes that dispo- sition which leads us, in cases where our own temper, or passions, or interests, are concerned, to determine and to act without being biassed by partial considerations." No quality is more esteemed among mankind than the present: so difficult is it to avoid errors of judgment even when the intention is good, where the passions or the SELF-CONTROL. 243 interests are concerned. Practically there is the simple law, "Do unto others as you would be done by,"—which, directing you to place yourself in the position of the op- posite party, will generally guide you to a right conclu- sion. Candour is the application of justice to the ordi- nary commerce of life. Perhaps nothing more captivates the imagination than the exercise of justice by one in possession of absolute power. During the French expedition to Egypt, the following incident occurred, which is the more striking, as he who figured to advantage in it, became afterwards notorious for his disregard of this virtue. "A tribe of roving Arabs had slain a peasant, and Bonaparte had given directions to search out and punish the murderers. One of his oriental counsellors laughed at the zeal which the general manifested on so slight a cause. ' What have you to do with the death of this Fellah, Sultan Kebir?' said he, ironically: 'was he your kinsman?' 'He was more,' said Napoleon, 'he was one for whose safety I am accountable to God, who placed him under my government.' '"He speaks like an inspired person,' exclaimed the sheiks, struck with the beauty of the principle which they habitually violated." Honesty is just dealing in respect to property, the not withholding from another that which is his. The right to property is a human instinct sanctioned by the divine law. Charity.—The sentiment and practice of benevolence is given us seemingly to temper the inequality of fortune; at the same time that in the smaller duties to which it 244 HEALTH OF MIND. extends, it diffuses itself like oil upon the waves, and soothes and allays the ruffled surface which the tumult of conflicting interests tends to produce. He who is strictly honest, and whose exertions have been defeated, not by his own imprudence, but by the uncontrollable course of accident, has a claim which is never denied, on the be- nevolence of his more fortunate fellow-creatures. The comfort of social life depends upon the sedulous adop- tion, of the same spirit in trifles. Suavity of disposi- tion, and kindliness of temper, leading us to live in cha- rity with all, contribute not more to the enjoyment of others than to our own. He who would know tranquillity of mind must learn to forgive those who have injured him. He that would know happiness must cultivate a gentle heart. Piety.—In his contribution to Captain Franklin's Nar- rative, Dr. Richardson observes, speaking of the time of their greatest hardship and peril: " Through the extreme kindness and forethought of a lady, the party, previously to leaving London, had been furnished with a small collection of religious books, of which we still retained two or three of the most portable, and they proved of incalculable benefit to us. We read portions of them to each other as we lay in bed, in addi- tion to the morning and evening service, and found that they inspired us on each perusal with so strong a sense of the omnipresence of a beneficent God, that our situa- tion, even in these wilds, appeared no longer destitute: and we conversed not only with calmness, but with cheer- fulness, detailing with unrestrained confidence the past events of our lives, and dwelling with hope on our future prospects. Had my poor friend been spared to revisit SELF-CONTROL. 245 his native land, I should look back to this period with unalloyed delight." There are occasions, parallel to that on which Dr. Richardson so sensibly experienced the comforts of re- ligion, which, sooner or later, fall to the lot of all, and in which all seek its sustaining aid:—in the bereavement of those whom we have loved, on the bed of sickness, in overwhelming earthly calamity, the creature seeks his Creator. Seasons, again, are there, and scenes, in which external Nature wakes the same thoughts within us:—in the still- ness of the night,—in the silent early morning,—when solitarily gazing from some eminence over the illimitable ocean,—in the depths of forests,—a feeling of awe creeps over the frame: man is alone with his God. One may, when under these impressions, abstract their intrinsic deep and moving influence from his settled faith, and distinguish something of the primitive mysterious impulse to acknowledge the unseen and all-pervading Power. But what are the elements which reflection and know- ledge add to that first impulse, to constitute the religion of a rational being? What is the interval between the swell of the surge and music of waters, echoing in the cave where the wild Indian bends to Nature's God,—and the pealing organ and choral voices, rolling their flood of harmony through the stately temples which Faith has dedicated to Heaven? 1. Rational man, examining the natural world, discovers in every thing the most striking suitableness of structure and disposition to important objects, that are so compassed and attained,—a wonderful agreement and reciprocal 21* 246 HEALTH OF MIND. fitness, which it is analogically impossible to refer to an accidental concourse of atoms. He is compelled, by the laws of his belief, to attribute the existence of the world, such as he views it, to an Intelligent Cause,—to the operation of infinite power guided by sovereign wisdom. 2. Examining the constitution of his mind, he finds an unalterable disposition to venerate truth and justice. We deem that excellence to be part of His nature, who gave the approbation of virtue such deep root in our bosoms; and we construe those inherent dispositions as the moral law of God written in our hearts. 3. Looking around the world, we see that happiness is its prevailing character; that enjoyment and life are primarily blended in the dispensations of nature. Nay, that where pain and bodily distress exist, the intervals of suffering convey sensations of delight unknown to the more fortunate. We acknowledge the beneficence of God to be the natural subject of thanksgiving and humble prayer. 4. And who is there who would not desire more ardently than any other conceivable object to know the intentions of his Maker by him ? Has God declared his will? Has He made a Revelation of his designs to- wards us, and of the means we may employ to propitiate his mercy and sustaining help, towards creatures so frail as man? It was seen afar by prophetic vision—then followed the accomplishment of prophecy, and the de- clared promise and means of redemption. They have been received by the wise and the good. The dawn of true religion was slow indeed, and overcast; but at length the mists of superstition and error dispersed, and the sun of Christianity shed its benign influence on the children of our planet. SELF-CONTROL. 247 In the section which remains to complete this slight volume, I proposed to advert to intellectual cultivation and the active pursuits of life. But the objects which I have last touched upon have in some remarkable examples superseded all others, and have afforded a sufficient and exclusively absorbing occupation for the strongest minds. Of these, perhaps, the most remarkable is that of the philanthropist, Howard, in whom a pursuit exclusively moral was united with a force of character and determi- nation never surpassed,—adequate to, and perhaps even more imposing than his beneficent purposes. " The energy of his determination was so great, that if, instead of being habitual, it had been shown only for a short time on particular occasions, it would have ap- peared a vehement impetuosity; but by being uninter- mitted, it had an equability of manner which scarcely appeared to exceed the tone of a calm constancy, it was so totally the reverse of any thing like turbulence or agitation. It was the calmness of an intensity kept uniform by the nature of the human mind forbidding it to be more, and by the character of the individual for- bidding it to be less. The habitual passion of his mind was a measure of feeling almost equal to the temporary ex- tremes and paroxysms of common minds: as a great river, in its customary state, is equal to a small or moderate •one when swollen to a torrent. "The moment of finishing his plans in deliberation, and commencing them in action, was the same. I won- der what must have been the amount of that bribe, in emolument or pleasure, that would have detained him a week inactive after their final adjustment. The law which carries water down a declivity, was not more un- 248 HEALTH of mind. conquerable and invariable than the determination of his feelings toward the main object. The importance of this object held his faculties in a state of excitement which was too rigid to be affected by lighter interests, and on which, therefore, the beauties of nature and of art had no power. He had no leisure feeling which he could spare to be diverted among the innumerable va- rieties of the extensive scene which he traversed; all his subordinate feelings lost their separate existence and operation by falling into the grand one. There have not been wanting trivial minds, to mark this as a fault in his character. But the mere men of taste ought to be silent respecting such a man as Howard; he is above their sphere of judgment. The invisible spirits, who fulfil their commission of philanthropy among mortals, do not care about pictures, statues, and sumptuous build- ings; and no more did he, when the time in which he must have inspected and admired them, would have been taken from the work to which he had consecrated his life. The curiosity which he might feel was reduced to wait till the hour should arrive, when its gratification should be presented by conscience, which kept a scrupu- lous charge of all his time, as the most sacred duty of that hour. If he was still at every hour, when it came, fated to feel the attractions of the fine arts but the second claim, they might be sure of their revenge; for no other' man will ever visit Rome under such a despotic conscious- ness of duty, as to refuse himself time for surveying the magnificence of its ruins. Such a sin against taste is very far beyond the reach of common saintship to com- mit. It implied an inconceivable severity of conviction, that he had one thing to do, and that he who would do intellectual culture. 249 some great thing in this short life, must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces, as, to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity. " His attention was so strongly and tenaciously fixed on his object, that even at the greatest distance, as the Egyptian pyramids to travellers, it appeared to him with a luminous distinctness, as if it had been nigh, and be- guiled the toilsome length of labour and enterprise by which he was to reach it. It was so conspicuous before him, that not a step deviated from the direction, and every movement and every day was an approximation. As his method referred every thing he did and thought to the end, and as his exertion did not relax for a mo- ment, he made the trial, so seldom made, what is the ut- most effect which may be granted to the last possible efforts of a human agent: and, therefore, what he did not accomplish, he might conclude to be placed beyond the sphere of mortal activity, and calmly leave to the immediate disposal of Omnipotence." II. of intellectual culture and practical exertion. Besides their use in forming our moral nature, the intellectual powers require to be cultivated for the or- dinary business of life; on a reasonable occupation in which health of mind as much depends, and much in the same way, as health of body on physical exercise. Intellectual culture presents two aspects; it may be considered both in the stage of preparation, and in its results; in the process of tuition, and in its application to the enlargement of knowledge and to the conduct of affairs. 250 health of mind. The advantages of education are commonly under- valued. We see men, who, by sheer force of native talent, and without tutorage or instruction, raise them- selves to eminent success in various walks, and not merely in the course of their business, but in their judg- ment of general affairs, exhibit enlarged and liberal minds, and express their thoughts with that correctness of language and logical arrangement, which we had ex- pected to find exclusively the result of a liberal educa- tion. In considering these instances, we are apt to overlook the benefit which the parties have derived from living in a highly-educated community, the current lite- rature of which they have access to, and profit by, at the same time that they are progressively winning their way in its higher circles. Every man in England, whose industry and abilities raise him above the condition of a mere labourer, has thus before him and within his reach, materials of knowledge and reflection, which he may make, if he possess energy and talent enough, the first step towards the highest fortunes. What is commonly called a regular education has two especial uses. Intellectually, it is of service to persons of ordinary abilities, by giving them a common table-land of thought and knowledge with those of the greatest. Morally, it benefits all alike, by early associating reflec- tion with our duties, and thus converting good natural impulses into principle. Intellectual education may be said to have a threefold object;—to impart the habit of application and a taste for study,—to give the mind access to every variety of knowledge,—to develop and improve the understanding. intellectual culture. 251 The first point is more easily attainable than commonly attained. The characteristic endowment of the human understanding is curiosity, or the thirst after know- ledge ; it is not to be created; it is there already; but it requires the most careful encouragement and direction. The second point is of prodigious importance— Dimidium facti, qui bene caepit, habet. How many in middle life would prosecute various studies, of which they feel the want, if they had already com- menced them. The difficulty of beginning deters them. In languages, ancient and modern, in history, in mathe- matics, in mental philosophy, in physics, in natural his- tory, the mind of a youth at sixteen years of age should already be well imbued; and the order in which I have enumerated these studies is perhaps the best in which they can be successively commenced. The third point is to be attained by considering in what intellectual excellence consists;—which being under- stood, it should be easy in individual cases; by fostering those elements which seem backward and deficient in vi- gour, to give the mind its full expansion. One distinction in the capacities of men is, that some are of a practical, others of a speculative turn. What- ever course of life an individual is destined to pursue, it is most desirable that both these casts of thought should be united in him. It is important to discern in a child. whether he is of quick perceptions and ready associations, or more contemplative and disposed to reflection. Which- ever is the weaker part, it should be strengthened with sedulous care. 252 health of mind. Another distinction, which tallies to some extent with the preceding, is, that some have a ready recollection of instances, while others use and recollect principles only. The profession of the law has a tendency to increase the first intellectual habit, philosophic pursuits to encourage the last. Neither are so good as both; the first, with a subtle discrimination of differences, is not a less useful quality than a ready perception of resemblances, and turn for generalizing. Some minds have a great, others a little cast of thought, which may be incommensurate with their general powers of reflection. Sir James Mackintosh has somewhere dwelt on this distinction between greatness of understanding and greatness of talent: it is founded upon a moral differ- ence. Where the basis of character is a narrow selfish- ness, every subject of reflection is likely to assume a con- tracted cast, from being exclusively considered in its bear- ings upon personal advancement or gratification. He alone whose views and wishes comprehend the good and happiness* of others can possess a great understanding. There is a wonderful difference among men as to their love of truth; I do not here mean as to their veracity, or * When one adverts to freedom from selfishness as an element of cha- racter, one is led by a natural transition to think of the mind of Woman. Women are intellectually, as in voice and complexion, improved children. Children are remarkable for their quickness of observation and their imi- •tativeness; likewise for their facile changes of mood and humour. The tact, and pliancy, and variety of a woman's mind are the expansion of these germs. Women, in general, have inferior powers of reflection to men. This arises in a great measure from their not having been culti- vated. When in a woman's mind acquirement and reflection are united with the quickness of perception,and delicacy,and moral elevation, which are her own, who is there disputes her sovereignty ? intellectual culture. 253 to their power of discovering new truths, but as to their turn for being dissatisfied with any thing short of truth. Many seem to read and think only to form consistent opinions. Others are not satisfied, whatever their scope of mind, without they arrive at knowledge. Certainly, the effect of party spirit is to promote the former dispo- sition of intellect. Certainly nothing tends so much to correct it, as the pursuit of inductive philosophy. Or, intellectually considered, the love of truth bears a constant proportion to the natural force of the under- standing, and its early discipline in the pursuit of truth. Mathematical science belongs to the greatest efforts of the human intellect. It is pure reason. Therefore it bears no direct and serviceable relation to the alloyed thought of common speculation. So pure mathematics render the mind skeptical on other matters, without giving it strength to resolve its doubts. It is not so in the ap- plication of mathematics to physical science. One can imagine nothing more conducive to that love of truth which I am here speaking of, than such inquiries, which form the highest branch of inductive philosophy. It is not my intention to advert to the mental peculi- arities which constitute partial talent. It is certain that some are born poets, others orators, painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, that some have a readier turn for the exact sciences, others for metaphysical research, others for sciences of mere observation; or rather that such persons are born with talents which, properly culti- vated, lead them to a superiority in either one of these pursuits singly. But independently of peculiarity of talent, but of course modifying its results, there may be seen in all understand- 22 254 health of mind. ings three elements, which co-exist in different individuals in different proportions. The greatest understandings are those which unite them all in their highest degree. These elements are justness, comprehensiveness, origi- nality. By justness or soundness of understanding, I mean that quality which renders one's conclusions generally right, or more frequently right than those of others rea- soning upon the same facts; or which enables a single mind to anticipate the collective judgment of the world. It may be equally displayed, and is equally important, in science and in business. It does not imply an enlarged mind, though it is a necessary element of the greatest; but it necessarily implies some portion of originality. A just understanding is one which gives no predominance to any one relation of a question, but sees all its bearings in their true proportions. Its balance and weights are accurate. By comprehensiveness I mean the habit of taking en- larged views; the capacity of embracing the most exten- sive subjects; a mind with a wider horizon. Such an un- derstanding is not necessarily a just understanding. Originality, or inventiveness, is the power of forming new combinations, of discovering new paths of specula- tion, or new truths, of contributing to the increase of knowledge, or to the enlargement of thought. It is the rarest gift, the most beneficial to the world, not always to its possessor. What is called genius is great inventive power. It is always partial. But who shall measure its limits and circumscription ? There must be something mournful in the possession intellectual culture. 255 of the finest genius, when directed to the advancement of science, or to the improvement of the social or moral condition of our race. It must feel itself alone; it must know that with its furthest flights its time has no sym- pathies ; that those who are to appreciate its force are not its living associates,—that its blossom will be gathered on its grave. It may be said that practically there are two ways of applying inventiveness; one wisely, the other foolishly. Invention begins by conjecturing relations of phenomena before unthought of.* He who is wise, and has this gift, when he has moulded a new hypothesis, bends all his acumen to discover a flaw in it. If he is not successful, he has reason to think that others will not be more so. The unwise person, on the other hand, who has a fertile mind, when he has fallen on a promising conjecture, uses his ingenuity only to find arguments in its support; such a one is of course commonly wrong, and his misapplied talent only tends to lead him further into error. The conclusions of such a one are like those of which Seneca said, uIsta pro ingenio finguntur, non ex scientise vi." This is the best practical rule for one of an inventive mind. Let him use equal subtlety to disprove, as to establish, the views which open on his fancy. But that subtlety may become more penetrative, and the path of * No writer has hitherto shown as well as the Rev. Baden Powell the use of analogy, in suggesting hypotheses in philosophical inquiries and as an important element in the inductive process. I refer to his views, a3 expressed in his valuable treatise recently published, " On the Con- nexion of Natural and Divine Truth." But analogy, though generally the surest guide, and probably the most philosophical quality, of the un- derstanding, will sometimes mislead; and the most inventive minds use this source of suggestion as one only among many. * 256 health of mind. inventive reflection may be made more easy and secure by using the guidance of experience and wisdom. To those to whom such studies are new, and not less to those who have long cultivated them, Sir John Herschel's Introduc- tion to the Study of Natural Philosophy most admirably explains and exemplifies the steps of that inductive method which Bacon unfolded, by reference to the leading dis- coveries in the history of physical science; at the same time, that it not less admirably paints the indirect advan- tages which accrue from such pursuits, and that worthy intellectual delight, and true mental recreation and solace, which these sources furnish. "A mind, which has once imbibed a taste for scientific inquiry, and has learnt the habit of applying its principles readily to the cases which occur, has within itself an in- exhaustible source of pure and exciting contemplations: one would think that Shakspeare had such a mind in view, when he describes a contemplative man as finding— Tongues in trees,—books in the running brooks, — Sermons in stones,—and good in every thing. Accustomed to trace the operation of general causes, and the exemplification of general laws, in circumstances where the uninformed and uninquiring eye perceives neither novelty nor beauty, he walks in the midst of wonders: every object which falls in his way elucidates some prin- ciple, affords some instruction, and impresses him with a sense of harmony and order. Nor is it a mere passive pleasure which is thus communicated. A thousand ques- tions are continually arising in his mind,—a thousand subjects of inquiry presenting themselves, which keep his faculties in constant exercise, and his thoughts perpetu- intellectual culture. 257 ally on the wing, so that lassitude is excluded from his life, and that craving after artificial excitement and dis- sipation of mind, which leads so many into frivolous, un- worthy, and destructive pursuits, is altogether eradicated from his bosom. "It is not one of the least advantages of these pur- suits which, however, they possess in common with every class of intellectual pleasures, that they are altogether independent of external circumstances, and are to be en- joyed in every situation in which a man can be placed in life. The highest degrees of worldly prosperity are so far from being incompatible with them, that they supply additional advantages for their pursuit, and that sort, of fresh and renewed relish which arises partly from the sense of contrast, partly from experience of the peculiar pre-eminence they possess over the pleasures of sense in their capability of unlimited increase and continual repe- tition without satiety or distaste. They may be enjoyed, too, in the intervals of the most active business; and the calm and dispassionate interest with which they fill the mind renders them a most delightful retreat from the agitation and dissensions of the world, and from the conflict of passions, prejudices, and interests, in which the man of business finds himself continually involved. There is something in the contemplation of general laws which powerfully persuades us to merge individual feel- inc, and to commit ourselves unreservedly to their dis- posal ; while the observation of the calm, energetic regu- larity of nature, the immense scale of her operations, and the certainty with which her ends are attained, tends ir- resistibly to tranquillize and re-assure the mind, and ren- der it less accessible to repining, selfish, and turbulent 258 HEALTH OF MIND. emotions. And this it does, not by debasing our nature into weak compliances, and abject submission to circum- stances, but by filling us, as from an inward spring, with a sense of nobleness and power which enables us to rise superior to them, by showing us our strength and innate dignity, and by calling upon us for the exercise of those powers and faculties, by which we are susceptible of the comprehension of so much greatness, and which form, as it were, a link between ourselves and the best and noblest benefactors of our species, with whom we hold communion in thoughts, and participate in discoveries which have raised them above their fellow-mortals, and brought them nearer to their Creator." But as life is not meant to be passed in contemplations even the most lofty, still less in recreations even of the most spiritual kind, as the human intellect is not to be exclusively dedicated to science and learning, however worthy this application of it may be,—let me advert to the additional, and yet greater employment of the highest parts and abilities, which may find place in the conduct of affairs, where speculation does not stop in thought, but has to govern action. To convey the impression which I desire, I shall present the reader not with general re- marks, but with examples.* I shall for this purpose, in • To exemplify the three elements of intellect before distinguished, in their application to the conduct of affairs, one would choose for the first instance, one, to whom (combined with unexcelled genius in that field where he has most shone) men are agreed in attributing singular justness of thought and clearness of judgment in all. For comprehensiveness, without equal justness, though with every quality greatly endowed, one might select Burke. For inventiveness, for boldness and promptness of combination, Napoleon; not that his grasp of thought was less, nor his judgment less true; but that neither of these elements in him had fair INTELLECTUAL CULTURE. 259 conclusion of the present volume, introduce portraits drawn by kindred talent, of two of the most noble spirits that have adorned our history. The first is the character of an English nobleman, whom civil discord drew from literary and philosophic retirement to shed his blood in the field. The second is the character of William Pitt, drawn by the Marquess Wellesley. 1. I pass over Lord Clarendon's account of Lord Falk- land's early life, which has less interest than the extract which follows. " With these advantages (of rank and a good estate) he had one great disadvantage, (which, in the first en- trance into the world, is attended with too much preju- dice,) in his person and presence, which was in no degree attracting or promising. "His stature was low, and smaller than most men; his motion not graceful; and his aspect so far from inviting, that it had something in it of simplicity; and his voice, the worst of the three, and so untuned, that, instead of reconciling, it offended the ear, so that nobody could have expected music from that tongue; and sure no man was less beholden to nature for its recommendation into the world; but no man sooner, or more, disappointed this general and customary prejudice; that little person and play, being warped by a vulgar ambition, and debased by his insensi- bility to the obligations of justice and truth. So Caesar and Alexander were greater. Yet not so grand in their fate,—not Caesar's rivalling that imposing destiny,—which after Moscow, and after Leipsic, and after Waterloo, — when the last resources of his gigantic accumulation of power had been put forth and crushed,—displayed him the exile-captive of St. Helena,—a single mind, sentinelled in that Atlantic fortress by Europe's fears. 260 HEALTH OF MIND. small stature was quickly found to contain a great heart, a courao-e so keen, and a nature so fearless, that no com- position of the strongest limbs, and most harmonious and proportioned presence and strength, ever more disposed any man to the greatest enterprise; it being his greatest weakness to be too solicitous for such adventures; and that untuned tongue and voice easily discovered itself to be supplied, and governed, by a mind and understand- ing so excellent, that the art and weight of all he said carried another kind of lustre and admiration in it, and even another kind of acceptation from the persons pre- sent, than any ornament of delivery could reasonably promise itself, or is usually attended with; and his dispo- sition and nature were so gentle and obliging, so much delighted in courtesy, kindness, and generosity, that all mankind could not but admire and love him. " Though his father's death brought no other conve- nience to him but a title to redeem an estate, mortgaged for as much as it was worth, and for which he was com- pelled to sell a finer seat of his own; yet it imposed a burden upon him of the title of a viscount, and an increase of expense, in which he was not in his nature too provi- dent or restrained. Having naturally such a generosity and bounty in him, that he seemed to have his estate in trust for all worthy persons who stood in want of supplies and encouragement, as Ben Jonson and many others of that time, whose fortunes required, and whose spirits made them superior to, ordinary obligations, which yet they were contented to receive from him, because his bounties were so generally distributed, and so much with- out vanity and ostentation, that except from those few persons from whom he sometimes received the characters INTELLECTUAL CULTURE. 261 of fit objects for his benefits, or whom he intrusted, for the more secret dividing them to them, he did all he could that the persons themselves who received them should not know from what fountain they flowed; and when that could not be concealed, he sustained any ac- knowledgment from the persons obliged with so much trouble, that they might well perceive that he was even ashamed of the little he had given, and to receive so large a recompense for it. "As soon as he had finished all those transactions which the death of his father had made necessary to be done, he retired again to his country life, and to his se- vere course of study, which was very delightful to him, as soon as he was engaged in it: but he was wont to say that he never found reluctancy in any thing he resolved to do, but in his quitting London, and departing from the conversation of those he enjoyed there, which was in some degree preserved and continued by frequent letters, and often visits, which were made by his friends from thence, whilst he continued wedded to the country; and which were so grateful to him, that during their stay with him, he looked upon no book, except their very conversation made an appeal to some book; and truly his whole con- versation was one continued convivium philosophicum or convivium theologium, enlivened and refreshed with all the facetiousness of wit, and good humour, and pleasant- ness of discourse, which made the gravity of the argument itself, (whatever it was,) very delectable. His house where he usually resided (Tew, or Berford, in Oxford- shire,) being within ten or twelve miles of the university, looked like the university itself, by the company that was always found there. There was Dr. Sheldon, Dr. Morley, 262 HEALTH OF MIND. Dr. Hammond, Dr. Earles, Mr. Chillingworth, and, in- deed, all men of eminent parts and faculties in Oxford, besides those who resorted thither from London, who all found their lodgings there as readily as in the colleges, nor did the lord of the house know of their coming, or going, nor who were in his house, till he came to dinner, or supper, where all still met, otherwise there was no troublesome ceremony, or constraint, to forbid men to come to the house, or to make them weary of staying there; so that many came thither to study in a better air, finding all the books they could desire in his library, and all the persons together, whose company they could wish, and not find in any other society. Here Mr. Chil- lingworth wrote, and formed, and modelled his excellent book against the learned Jesuit, Mr. Nott, after frequent debates upon the most important particulars; in many of which he suffered himself to be overruled by the judg- ment of his friends, though in others he still adhered to his own fancy, which was skeptical enough even in the highest points. "In this happy and delightful conversation and re- straint he remained in the country many years; and until he had made so prodigious a progress in learning, that there were very few classic authors in the Grreek or Latin tongue, that he had not read with great exactness; he had read all the Grreek andXafiw fathers; all the most allowed and authentic ecclesiastical writers; and all the councils, with wonderful care and observation; for in re- ligion, he thought too careful and too curious an inquiry could not be made, amongst those whose purity was not questioned, and whose authority was constantly and con- fidently urged, by men who were farthest from being of INTELLECTUAL CULTURE. 263 one mind amongst themselves, and for the mutual sup- port of their.several opinions, in which they most con- tradict each other; and in all those controversies he had so dispassioned a consideration, such a candour in his nature, and so profound a charity in his conscience, that in those points in which he was in his own judgment most clear, he never thought the worse, or in any degree declined the familiarity of those who were of another mind, which, without question, is an excellent temper for the propagation and advancement of Christianity. With these advantages of industry, he had a memory retentive of all that he had ever read, and an understanding and judgment to apply it seasonably and appositely with the most dexterity and address, and the least pedantry and affectation, that ever man, who knew so much, was pos- sessed with, of what quality soever. "But all his parts, abilities, and faculties, by art and industry, were not to be valued, or mentioned, in comparison of his most accomplished mind and manners; his gentleness and affability were so transcendent and obliging, that it drew reverence, and some kind of com- pliance, from the roughest, and most unpolished, and stubborn constitutions, and made them of another temper in debate in his presence, than they were in other places; he was in his nature so severe a lover of justice, and so precise a lover of truth, that he was superior to all pos- sible temptations for the violation of either; indeed so ri- gid an exactor of perfection, in all those things which seemed but to border upon either of them, and by the common practice of men were not thought to border upon either, that many who knew him very well, and loved and admired his virtue, (as all who did know him must love 264 HEALTH OF MIND. and admire it,) did believe that he was of a temper and composition fitter to live in Republicd Platonis than in Fsece Romuli; but this rigidness was only exercised towards himself; towards his friend's infirmities no man was more indulgent. In his conversation, which was the most cheerful and pleasant that can be imagined, though he was young (for all I have yet spoken of him doth not ex- ceed his age of twenty-five or twenty-six years) and of great gaity in his humour, with a flowing delightfulness of language, he had so chaste a tongue and ear, that there was never known a profane or loose word to fall from him, nor, in truth, in his company; the integrity and cleanliness of the wit of that time not exercising itself in that license before persons for whom they had any esteem." To this admirable picture I add, from another part of Clarendon's works, the concluding scene of Lord Falk- land's life.. " When there was any overture or hope of peace, he would be more erect and vigorous, and exceedingly soli- citous to press any thing which he thought might promote it; and sitting among his friends, often, after a deep si- lence and frequent sighs, would, with a shrill and sad ac- cent, ingeminate the word Peace, Peace ; and would pas- sionately profess, 'that the very agony of the war, and the view of the calamities and desolation the kingdom did, and must endure, took his sleep from him, and would shortly break his heart.' This made some think, or pre- tend to think, ' that he was so much enamoured of peace, that he would have been glad the king should have bought it at any price,' which was a most unreasonable calumny. As if a man, that was himself the most punctual and pre- INTELLECTUAL CULTURE. 265 cise in every circumstance that might reflect upon con- science or honour, could have wished the king to have committed a trespass against either. And yet this sense- less scandal made some impression upon him, or at least he used it for an excuse of the daringness of his spirit; for at the leaguer before Gloucester, when his friends pas- sionately reprehended him for exposing his person unne- cessarily to danger, (for he delighted to visit the trenches and nearest approaches, and to discover what the enemy did,) as being so much beside the duty of his place, that it might be understood rather to be against it, he would say, merrily, ' That his office could not take away the privilege of his age; and that a secretary at war might be present at the greatest secret of danger;' but withal alleged seriously, ' That it concerned him to be more ac- tive in enterprises of hazard than other men, that all might see that his impatiency for peace proceeded not from pusillanimity, or fear to adventure his own person.' "In the morning before the battle, as always upon ac- tion, he was very cheerful, and put himself into the first rank of the Lord Byron's regiment, then advancing upon the enemy, who had lined the hedges on both sides with musqueteers; from whence he was shot with a musquet in the lower part of the belly, and in the instant falling from his horse, his body was not found till the next morning; till when there was some hope he might have been a prisoner; though his nearest friends, who knew his temper, received small comfort from that imagina- tion. Thus fell that incomparable young man, in the four-and-thirtieth year of his age, having so much de- spatched of the true business of life, that the eldest rarely attain to that immense knowledge, and the youngest en- 23 266 HEALTH OF MIND. ter not into the world with more innocency: whosoever leads such a life, needs be the less anxious upon how short a warning it is taken from him." 2. Letter of the Marquess Wellesley, describing the Character of William Pitt. . ..." In attempting to convey my recollections of Mr. Pitt's character in private society, I cannot separate those qualities which raised him to the highest public eminence from those which rendered him a most amiable companion. Both proceeded from the same origin, and both were happily blended in the noble structure of his temper and disposition. "Mr. Pitt's mind was naturally inaccessible to any ap- proach of dark, or low, or ignoble passion. His com- manding genius and magnanimous spirit were well des- tined to move in a region far above the reach of those jealousies, and suspicions, and animosities, which disturb the course of ordinary life. Under the eye of his illus- trious father he had received that ' complete and gene- rous education which fits a man to perform justly, skil- fully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.' "Such an education, acting on such a natural disposi- tion, not only qualified him to adorn the most elevated stations in the counsels of his country, but furnished him with abundant resources to sustain the tranquillity and cheerfulness of his mind. "He had received regular and systematic instruction in the principles of the Christian religion, and in the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England, and in every branch of ecclesiastical history. His knowledge INTELLECTUAL CULTURE. 267 in those subjects was accurate and extensive. He was completely armed against all skeptical assaults, as well as against all fanatical illusion; and, in truth, he was not merely a faithful and dutiful, but a learned member of our Established Church; to which he was most sincerely attached, with the most charitable indulgence for all dis- senting sects. "No doubt can exist in any rational mind that this early and firm settlement of his religious opinions and principles, was a main cause of that cheerful equanimity which formed the great characteristic of his social inter- course, and which was never affected by adversities or troubles. " He was perfectly accomplished in classical literature, both Latin and Greek. The accuracy and strength of his memory surpassed every example which I have ob- served ; but the intrinsic vigour of his understanding carried him far beyond the mere recollection of the great models of antiquity in oratory, poetry, history, and philo- sophy. He had drawn their essence into his own thoughts and language; and, with astonishing facility, he applied the whole spirit of ancient learning to his daily use. "Those studies were his constant delight and resort; at Holwood in Kent, (his favourite residence,) and at Walmer Castle, his apartments were strewed with Latin and Greek classics; and his conversation with those friends who delighted in similar studies, frequently turned on that most attractive branch of literature; but he was so adverse to pedantry, or affectation of superior know- ledge, that he carefully abstained from such topics in the presence of those who could not take pleasure in them. In these pursuits, his constant and congenial companion 268 HEALTH OF MIND. was Lord Grenville, who has often declared to me that Mr. Pitt was the best Greek scholar he ever conversed with. Mr. Pitt was also as complete a master of all English literature as he was undoubtedly of the English language. I have dwelt on this branch of Mr. Pitt's ac- complishments, because I know not any source from which more salutary assistance can be derived, to chase from the spirits those clouds and vapours which infest vacant minds, and, by self-weariness, render retirement melancholy and intolerable. "But Mr. Pitt amply possessed every resource which could enliven retirement. No person had a more ex- quisite sense of the beauties of the country. He took the greatest delight in his residence at Holwood, which he enlarged and improved (it may be truly said) with his own hands. Often have I seen him working in his woods and gardens with his labourers, for whole days together, undergoing considerable bodily fatigue, and with so much eagerness and assiduity, that you will suppose the culti- vation of his villa to be the principal occupation of his life. "He was very fond of exercise on horseback, and when in the country frequently joined the hounds of his neigh- bourhood, both at Holwood and Walmer Castle. "At the latter place he lived most hospitably, enter- taining all his neighbours, as well as the officers of the neighbouring garrisons, and of the ships in the Downs; and he was most attentive to his duties of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, which called him frequently to Dover, and sometimes to other ports. " But in all places, and at all times, his constant de- light was society. There he shone with a degree of INTELLECTUAL CULTURE. 269 calm and steady lustre, which often astonished me more than his most splendid efforts in Parliament. His man- ners were perfectly plain, without any affectation: not only was he without presumption, or arrogance, or any air of authority, but he seemed utterly unconscious of his own superiority, and much more disposed to listen than to talk. He never betrayed any symptom of anxiety to usurp the lead, or to display his own powers, but rather inclined to draw forth others, and to take merely an equal share in the general conversation: then he plunged heedlessly into the mirth of the hour, with no other care than to promote the general good-humour and happiness of the company. His wit was quick and ready, but it was rather lively than sharp, and never envenomed with the least taint of malignity: so that, instead of ex- citing admiration or terror, it was an additional ingredi- ent in the common enjoyment. He was endowed, be- yond any man of his time whom I knew, with a gay heart and a social spirit. With these qualities, he was the life and soul of his own society; his appearance dispelled all care; his brow was never clouded, even in the severest public trials; and joy, and hope, and confidence, beamed from his countenance in every crisis of difficulty and danger. "He was a most affectionate, indulgent, and benevo- lent friend, and so easy of access, that all his acquain- tance in any embarrassment would rather resort to him for advice than to any person who might be supposed to have more leisure. His heart was always at leisure to receive the communications of his friends, and always open to give the best advice in the most gentle and plea- sant manner. 23* 270 HEALTH OF MIND. "It is a melancholy but a grateful task to pay this tri- bute to the memory of my departed friend. Aut me amor negotii suscepti fallit,—or the character which. I have endeavoured to draw is not less just and true, than it is amiable and excellent; and I cannot resist the conclusion that a pure and clear conscience must have been the ori- ginal source of such uniform cheerfulness and gaiety of spirit. The truth which I have asserted, I possessed ample means of knowing. From the year 1783, to 1797, I lived in habits of the most confidential friendship with Mr. Pitt. " In the year 1797,1 was appointed Governor-General of India, and in the month of September in that year, I went to Walmer Castle to meet Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas, and to receive my last instructions. I found Mr. Pitt in the highest spirits, entertaining officers and country gentle- men with his usual hospitality. Amongst others, Admi- ral Duncan was his constant and favourite guest. His fleet was then in the Downs, preparing for the memora- ble victory of Camperdown. The Admiral was a lively and jovial companion, and seemed to be quite delighted with Mr. Pitt's society. I embarked for India early in the month of November, 1797, and I returned to Eng- land in 1806. ***** "On my arrival in England, in January, 1806, Mr. Pitt was at Bath; I wrote to him, and I received from him a very kind invitation to meet him at Putney-hill. I met him accordingly in the second week in January, and I was received by him with his usual kindness and good humour. His spirits appeared to be as high as I had ever seen them, and his understanding quite as vigorous and clear. INTELLECTUAL CULTURE. 271 "Amongst other topics, he told me, with great kind- ness and feeling, that since he had seen me, he had been happy to become acquainted with my brother Arthur, of whom he spoke in warmest terms of commendation. He said, ' I never met any military officer with whom it was so satisfactory to converse. He states every difficulty before he undertakes any service, but none after he has undertaken it.' "But, notwithstanding Mr. Pitt's kindness and cheer- fulness, I saw that the hand of death was fixed upon him. This melancholy truth was not known nor believed by either his friends or opponents. In the number of the latter, to my deep affliction, I found my highly respected and esteemed friend, Lord Grenville; and I collected that measures of the utmost hostility to Mr. Pitt were to be proposed, in both houses, at the meeting of Parliament. "I warned Lord Grenville of Mr. Pitt's approaching death. He received the fatal intelligence with the utmost feeling, in an agony of tears, and immediately deter- mined that all hostility in Parliament should be suspended. Mr. Pitt's death soon followed.* "If any additional evidence were required of the ex- cellence of his social character, it would be found abun- dantly in the deep sorrow of a most numerous class of independent, honest, and sincerely attached friends, who wept over the loss of his benevolent and affectionate tem- per and disposition, with a.degree of heartfelt grief which no political sentiment could produce. Many of these were assembled at the sad ceremony of his funeral: with them I paid the last offices to his honoured memory. We * Parliament met on the 21st, Mr. Pitt died on the 23d of January, 1806. 272 HEALTH OF MIND. attended him to Westminster Abbey. There the grave of his illustrious father was opened to receive him, and we saw his remains deposited on the coffin of his vene- rated parent. What grave contains such a father, and such a son ? What sepulchre embosoms the remains of so much human excellence and glory? " * * Quarterly Review, October, 1836. THE END. LINDSAY & BLAKISTON'S PUBLICATIONS. MORFIPS^CKEMic^^^ TIGAL MANIPULATIONS, WITH fnttr InraM nnit &ttirattj-tl)m SllusfrntinnsF. A MANUAL OF THE MECHANICAL AND CHEMICO-MECHANICAL OPERATIONS OF THE LABORATORY} CONTAINING A COMPLETE DESCRIPTION OF THE MOST APPROVED APPARATUS, WITH IS. STRCCTIONS AS TO THEIR APPLICATION AND MANAGEMENT, BOTH IN THE MANUFACTURING PROCESS AND IN THE MORE EXACT DETAILS. OF ANALYSIS AND ACCURATE RESEARCH. BY CAMPBELL INIORI'IT, Practical and Analytical Chemist; Author of "Applied Chemistry," &c. Ac. ASSISTED BY ALEXANDER MUCKLE, Chemical Assistant in Professor Booth's Laboratory. IN ONE VOLUME, OCTAVO. Extract of a Letter from Prof. J. C. Booth, Practical ana Analytical Chemist. "I regard it as a very valuable addition to a Chemical Library, whether to that of an experimental or manufacturing ohemist; for, while the business of the former is wholly experimental research, the latter is frequently forced to enter into the same field, in order to improve his processes. Although I have been a witness of the author's untiring in- dustry in preparing'this work, yet, upon examining it in its present state, I am surprised to find it so complete in all its parts. I know that there is a large amount of original matter contained in it, the result of the author's observation and experience; and that ivhicb. has been derived from other sources, has been judiciously and harmoniously culled from a very extensive Chemical Library. T therefore think that every one connected with Chemistry, in any of its numerous departments, should have a copy of this work in his library. I intend using it freely in my course of instruction in Experimental Chemistry, and shall recommend it to my students." This work is one that ought to be in the hands of every student of Pharmacy and Chemistry. Tt contains a variety and amount of information for whioh he will seek in vain in any of the professed treatises on Chemistry. The author has had in his mind thi admirable treatise of Professor Farraday, and has given in a condensed form nearly all that is valuable for ordinary use in that work, besides much original matter, and much collected from other sources—all of which has been rendered far more useful and intelli- gible by the aid of excellent illustrations— American Journal of Pharmacy. To every one who desires to become familiar with the operations of the laboratory, or wirh those of physical science in general, we recommend this work, as it will be found upon trial to recommend itself strongly. It contains descriptions of the newest apparatus, the most approved method of research, and the most recent results of scientific investi- gation, in place of old and exploded utensils, modes, and tables, and is well worthy ol adoption in all laboratories of instruction.—Journal of the Franklin Institute. LINDSAY & BLAKISTON'S PUBLICATIONS. CHEMICAL ANALYSIS, QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE. BY HENRY M. NOAD, LECTURER ON CHEMISTRY AT ST. GEORGE'S HOSPITAL, Author of "Lectures on Electricity," "Lectures on Chemistry" $e. WITH NUMEROUS ADDITIONS, BY CAMPBELL MORFIT, PRACTICAL AND ANALYTICAL CHEMIST; Author of "Chemical and Pharmaceutic Manipulations," and co- editor of the "Encyclopedia of Chemistry." WITH ILLUSTRATIONS, IN ONE VOLUME, DEMY-OCTAVO. The scientific reader will find in this volume an amount of information not to be found elsewhere in a form so convenient and accessible. Mr. Morfit has added to it much ori- ginal matter, especially with reference to the latest investigations in chemical analysis. The arrangement of the volume, which contains nearly six hundred pages, is such as to give it all the value of an encyclopedia, so far as to afford easy reference to any one branch or topic.—Commercial Advertiser. This is a work of great accuracy and research; ana with Mr. Morfifs additions, is a complete manual both of qualitative and quantitative analysis, in organic and inorganio chemistry. This, and Mr. Morfit's " Chemical and Pharmaceutical Manipulations," no- ticed not long since, are indispensable manuals for all engaged in experimental and manu- facturing chemistry; ahd are, indeed, valuable auxiliaries even to those engaged in experimental research. It has numerous tables and other illustrations, and is printed and bound in a style that does much credit to the publishers.—Saturday Courier. The importance of analytical chemistry as a handmaid to the arts, is a sufficient reason why we should hail with pleasure the publication of works devoted to that branch of science. \ve believe that, if for no other reason than the ability it confers of detecting adulterations, apothecaries should give a portion of their time to acquiring a knowledge of analysis. The book before us is one of several that have been published on the sub- ject, and treats of it in a manner calculated to facilitate the labours of the student. Several additions have been made by the American editor, to improve the work, and bring it down to the time of publication.—American Journal of Pharmacy. LINDSAY & BLAKISTON'S PUBLICATIONS. A CHEAP AND USEFUL BOOK. <% Complete fSmilical Hempt 98fl?k. FOR THE HOUSEKEEPER, AGRICULTURIST, MANUFACTURER, AND TRADESMAN; CONTAINING THREE THOUSAND RECEIPTS, IN ALL THE USEFUL AND DOMESTIC ARTS. Price in Paper, 50 cts.; in Leather, 75 cts. EXTRACT FROM THE PREFACE. "In preparing this work for the public, the aim of the publishers has been to furnish, m a smaH compass and at a reasonable rate, a book comprehending the most recent disco- veries of science, in a form convenient for practical use. With this view, the editor has drawn freely upon the most distinguished and universally received Pharmacopoeias and Dictionaries of Science, includiug those of London and Edinburgh, as well as the most authentic works of the kind published in this country. From all these sources, he has taken whatever could be of practical use to the Manufacturer, the Tradesman, the Agri- culturist, or the Housekeeper." This is one of the best works we have met with for a long time. Its purpose is useful. Its language plain. It contains hundreds and thousands of receipts.—Saturday Museum. This work is all that is claimed for it by the title, and should find its way into general Use. It is the result of many years of observation and research, and the receipts it pre- sents are culled from the experience of various nations. Care has also been taken in it.« preparation to avoid the use of difficult technical language, and in this way to render it strictly a volume of practical utilty.—Pennsylvania Inquirer. As its title indicates, this book is a perfect compendium of useful information, and its arrangement is such as to render a reference to any given subject, convenient and easy. The price is sufficiently reasonable to place it within the reach of every artisan and housekeeper, and no one should neglect providing himself with a copy.—Saturday Post. We can only add, that the editor and compiler has consulted, in the production of this Vade Mecum of Domestic Economy, the most distinguished Pharmacopoeias and Diction- aries of Europe and America. It is issued in a cheap form, and must prove a valuable aid to the tidy housewife, and, indeed, to almost all classes of society.—Saturday Courier. It is devoid of technical terms, and written in plain language, so that each receipt may be easily understood. We therefore recommend it as a book of much practical utility.— Chronicle. This book is all that it imports to be, and within its compass are gathered valuable re- ceipts of all kinds, adapted to all the wants of life, collected with care, and arranged so that the reference to them if easy, while the manner in which they are expressed, is simple, clear, and concise. As a book of reference, it is one of the most valuable publications of the season.—United Stiles Gazette. LINDSAY & BLAKISTON'S PUBLICATIONS. A Valuable Work for Druggists, Manufactuiersj &fc« % Dragph (&mml jUcript Sforit, BY HENRY BEASLEY. CONTAINING NUMEROUS RECIPES FOR PATENT AND PROPRIETARY MEDI- CINES, DRUGGIST'S NOSTRUMS, &c. FACT1TITI0US MINERAL WATERS, AND POWDERS FOR PREPARING THEM ALSO, NUMEROUS RECIPES FOR PERFUMERY, COSMETICS, BEVERAGES, DIETETIC ARTICLES, AND CONDIMNETS, TRADE CHEMICALS, MISCELLANEOUS COMPOUNDS, USED IN THE ARTS, DOMESTIC ECONOMY, 4C. &C. WITH MANY OTHER USEFUL TABLES AND MEMORANDA. ALSO, A COPIOUS VETERINARY FORMULA AND MATERIA MEDICA, &C. NOTICES OF THE PRESS. This work has been prepared by one whose previous publications give evidence of hia ability to do so. The work must be very useful to practical chemists and druggists, and may not be without its advantage in private families, living remote from medical aid, or where the ordinary articles of medicine in use in families may not be always accessible. The work is handsomely printed, and well bound ; and, from the extensive range it takes, must find large numbers who will have constant use for it.—Baltimore Patriot. Druggists will find this an invaluable manual, and many others engaged in every other occupation, will find it a convenient and valuable guide in the preparation of various arti- cles for the sick room, the toilet, or the table. It is a most thorough and carefully-pre- pared work.—Evening Bulletin. An indispensable manual to many traders, manufacturers, and dealers generally, con- taining the receipts for a great variety of articles; and, of course, to test their adul- teration. The veterinary department is full; the chapters on patent medicines, distilled preparations, and trade chemicals, contain much information not only for special use, but for profitable consideration by the community at large.—Literary World. A useful work, designed to enlighten the public mind upon a variety of matters which have generally been beyond access to the people. It will also prove serviceable to pro- fessional men, druggists, and others.—Baltimore Sun. A NEW AND IMPORTANT EDUCATIONAL WORK. WILLEMENfS CATECHISM OF FAMILIAR THINGS: THEIR HISTORY, AND THE EVENTS WHICH LED TO THEIR discovert; with a short explanation or SOME OP THE PRINCIPAL NATURAL PHENOMENA. FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES. BY EMILY ELIZABETH WILLEMENT. CAREFULLY REVISED BY AN AMERICAN TEACHER. Extract from the Preface. "I wish especially to direct the attention of parents and teachers to the ne- cessity of possessing a work calculated to save them much fatigue in the respon- sible office of education. The subjects contained in it may seem in themselves unimportant or insignificant. But do not children often ask a variety of ques- tions on those very subjects at times when the parent or teacher is not at leisure to answer them properly?—questions on the most simple subjects, asked in such a manner as to puzzle the cleverest. Besides, is there one thing used by us in the daily business of life without its historical interest? Decidedly not; although, from their commonness, many are passed by as unimportant. I con- sider that to trace them to their source is not only amusins, but highly instruc- tive ; for there is scarcely one which is not connected with some epoch import- ant in the history of the world." OPINIONS OP THE PRESS. This very neat little book contains a mass of valuable information, condensed In the form of questions and answers, relating to familiar things, about which children, and even grown persons, need to be instructed — the history of familiar things and the events which led to their discovery, with explanations of natural phenomena, &.C. &c. For example: there are chapters explanatory of Dew, Rain, Atmosphere, Lightning, Twilight,*Aurora, 't is especially attractive, and will well repay perusal. It treats of the vario vhenomena of nature, the leading chaiaeteristics and general history of the of ects of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, and the fundament; truths of the arts and sciences. The language of the writer is simple and per- spicuous, and will therefore interest juvenile readers.—City Item. This is a work of very deep interest, and of great value. The mineral, the animal, and the vegetable kingdoms, all pass under review, and are treat d in a manner to develop and impress the great facts, connected with each, on the mind of the student. The arts and sciences also come in for a place, and are treated in a similar manner. Children, youth, and families, as a whole, may gather much instruction by this book, on the important topics alluded to.-' Christian Chronicle. We have here a great mass of information condensed within very narrow limits, touching almost every thing that we have to do with in common HA There is hardly any thing connected with our food or raiment, our dwelling our occupations, or our amusements, but what is here very intelligently ani agreeably discoursed upon, even to the comprehension of a child. If clnldre study it well, there is a great chance that they will be wiser in some thing than their parents.—Puntan Recorder. The work is just such an one as we have long thought would be very accept able to the public, and especially to school teachers. It or something as nea) like it as possible should be in every school in the land.—Courier. It is designed for use in schools and families, and furnishes a most excelleni and agreeable method of imparting useful knowledge on all familiar subject. their history, their character, &c—Bulletin. This little work well deserves extensive circulation; for truly it contain? "muitum in parvo" of such information as is most likely to arrest the attention of youthful minds. The style is easy and pleasant, all technical phrases care- fully omitted, and the book well adapted to its purpose of providing "an impor tant auxiliary in the dissemination of useful and entertaining knowledge."- Sartain's Magazine. This book presents a mass of information, in a condensed form, on all kind of things which enter into the every-day concerns of .life; the air we breathe. the food we eat, the raiment we are clothed with, the habitations we dwell inj the constitution of our mortal frame, arts, commerce and manufactures, are cleverly treated of by Question and Answer, and form a mine of useful informa- tion. We recommend it to the attention of parents and tutors.—Essex Standard A vast quantity of information is so admirably condensed, and so much reallj useful knowledge is conveyed in so pleasing and intelligible a style, that we cai honestly award praise We congratulate Mrs. Willement upon having success- fully accomplished her task, and heartily recommend her meritorious and un pretending work.—Norfolk Chronicle. A useful contribution to the cause of Learning made easy.—Athenamm. A compact and well-printed edition of a most useful book for children ; an indeed, a book of reference for all.—Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper. We confidently recommend it to all who are intrusted with the education ildren —Ipswich Express.