ought
never to depart, always to rise from table with some remains of
appetite: for, when the stomach is loaded with more food than it can
easily digest, a crude and unassimilated chyle is taken into the
blood, pregnant with diseases. Nor is the quantity the only object
of attention; the quality of the food is to be carefully studied;
made dishes, enriched with hot sauces, stimulate infinitely more
than plain food, and therefore exhaust the excitability, bringing on
diseases of indirect debility; such as the worst kind of gout,
apoplexy, and paralytic complaints. "For my part," says an elegant
writer, "when I behold a fashionable table set out in all its
magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and
lethargies, with other innumerable distempers, lying in ambuscade
among the dishes." Let it be therefore laid down as a rule by those
who wish to preserve their health, and I have nothing to say to
those who are indifferent on that head, to make their chief repast
on one plain dish, and trifle with the rest.

It is by no means uncommon for a medical man to have patients,
chiefly among people of fashion and fortune, who complain of being
hot and restless all night, and having a foul taste in the mouth
every morning: on examination it is found, that in nineteen cases
out of twenty, it has arisen from their having overloaded their
stomachs, and at the same time neglected to take proper exercise;
for it must always be observed, that more may be eaten with safety,
nay, more is even necessary, when a person takes a good deal of
exercise.

When people take little exercise, and overload their stomachs, there
lies within them a fermenting mass of undigested aliment; and it is
not surprizing that this should irritate and heat the body during
the night. This is likewise the foundation of stomach complaints,
flatulencies, and all other symptoms of indigestion; which more
frequently proceed from intemperance in eating and drinking than any
other cause. The benefits arising from temperance are set in a
striking light in the following allegory, which may be found in the
Adventurer.

Esculapius, after his deification or admittance among the gods,
having revisited his native country, and being one day (as curiosity
led him a rambling,) in danger of being benighted, made the best of
his way to a house he saw at some distance, where he was hospitably
received by the master of it. Cremes, for that was the master's
name,