If they are really afraid of starving, after the trial of a few
weeks, let them eat a few times of something else; but they must soon
return to the starvation plan.

I have usually preferred cakes of Indian meal, or wheat meal unbolted
and baked very hard, to gruel or pudding. The reason is, that I consider
mastication very essential to good digestion, especially in the case of
dyspeptics. I believe the small quantity of Indian meal that goes into
two pints of gruel, or even of pudding, were it firmly baked, would hold
out and sustain the health and strength of an individual much longer
than gruel; and it will, by most persons, be preferred.

One of my dyspeptic patients, a young man of great resolution, was put
upon ten ounces a day of thin Indian-meal cake, or johnny cake; and it
wrought wonders. The prescription was made about twenty years ago, and
no young man under forty years of age, in Massachusetts, is more
efficient, at the present time, than he.

To another young man, similarly afflicted, I recommended eight ounces of
the same kind of food. He was from a family that had long known me, and
that appeared to confide in me. I have never heard from him since. My
conjecture is that he refused to follow the directions, and hence did
not wish to communicate with me any farther. He may be still a
dyspeptic, as the consequence, though it is certainly possible he may
have obeyed the prescription, to the saving of his health.

Some have supposed that a quantity of food so small, is not sufficient
to keep alive an ordinary adult; but they are mistaken. Much smaller
quantities than eight ounces have proved sufficient for this purpose, in
a great many instances. Three or four ounces have been found adequate to
every want, in these circumstances.

As I regard this as a highly important point, I will endeavor to
establish it by two or three facts, which have come, in part, under my
own observation. The first appeared in the _Boston Medical and Surgical
Journal_, for 1851, and in several other papers. The other is from a
Philadelphia paper, and is as reliable as the former. It is, however, of
much later date; viz., December, 1853.

Jervis Robinson,[K] of Nantucket, was a ship-master, born in 1800. In
1832, he became a most miserable dyspeptic. For three or four years he
relied on the popular remedy of beef-steak three times a day, and with
the usual consequences. It made him worse rather than better.

In the year 1836, a