best remedy, the doctor says,
for overstuffing is exercise. A person who uses great bodily exertion, can
eat and drink more without suffering from it than one who leads an
inactive life; a fox-hunter, for instance, in comparison with an alderman.
Want of exercise and too much nourishment must make a man either fat or
ill. If the extra hydrogen and carbon are not burnt out, or otherwise got
rid of, they turn to blubber, or cause some disturbance in the system,
intended by Nature to throw them off, which is called a disease. Walking,
riding, running, increase the breathing--as well as the perspiration--and
make us burn away our carbon and hydrogen in proportion. Dr. Truepenny
declares that if people would only take in as much fuel as is requisite to
keep up a good fire, his profession would be ruined."

"The good old advice--Baillie's, eh?--or Abernethy's--live upon sixpence a
day, and earn it," Mr. Bagges observed.

"Well, and then, uncle, in hot weather the appetite is naturally weaker
than it is in cold--less heat is required, and therefore less food. So in
hot climates; and the chief reason, says the doctor, why people ruin their
health in India is their spurring and goading their stomachs to crave what
is not good for them, by spices and the like. Fruits and vegetables are
the proper things to eat in such countries, because they contain little
carbon compared to flesh, and they are the diet of the natives of those
parts of the world. Whereas food with much carbon in it, meat, or even
mere fat or oil, which is hardly any thing else than carbon and hydrogen,
are proper in very cold regions, where heat from within is required to
supply the want of it without. That is why the Laplander is able, as I
said he does, to devour train-oil. And Dr. Truepenny says that it may be
all very well for Mr. M'Gregor to drink raw whisky at deer-stalking in the
Highlands, but if Major Campbell combines that beverage with the diversion
of tiger-hunting in the East Indies, habitually, the chances are that the
major will come home with a diseased liver."

"Upon my word, sir, the whole art of preserving health appears to consist
in keeping up a moderate fire within us," observed Mr. Bagges.

"Just so, uncle, according to my friend the doctor. 'Adjust the fuel,' he
says, 'to the draught'--he means the oxygen; 'keep the bellows properly at
work, by exercise, and your fire will seldom want poking.' The doctor's
pokers, you know, are pills, m