Hints for the table: or, the economy of good living / [Anon].

  • John Timbs
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hints for the table: or, the economy of good living / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    24/188 page 8
    Mr. Mayo also observes, that nothing1 produces thirst so much as quenching it, or grows more readily into habit than drinking. Much liquid weakens the stomach, and produces flatulence and fat. There is a great difference between bitters and tonics. Where weakness proceeds from an excess of irritability, there bitters act beneficially; because all bitters are poisons, and operate by stilling, and depressing, and lethargizing the irritability. But, where weakness proceeds from the opposite cause of relaxation, there tonics are good; because they brace up and tighten the loosened string. Bracing is a correct metaphor. Bark goes near to be a combination of a bitter and a tonic ; but no perfect medical combination of the two properties is yet known.—Coleridge. The acidity of the stomach, and other symptoms of indigestion which follow occasional indulgence in wine, may, to a great extent, be prevented by a dose of magnesia at bed-time, which saturates the acid in the stomach, and allays the febrile action. John Hunter used to say, that most people lived above par, which rendered the generality of diseases and accidents the more difficult of cure.* Baron Maseres who lived to be near ninety, and who never employed a physician, used to go one day in every week without dinner, eating only a round of dry toast at tea. Sir Humphry Davy in his Salmonia, is understood to record the following, as the opinion of the late Dr. Babing- ton, on the erroneous idea, that high living is requisite to sustain us against the fatigues of sporting. “A half-pint of wine for young men in perfect health is enough, and you will be able to take your exercise better, and feel better for this abstinence. How few people calculate upon the effects of constantly renewed fever in our luxurious system of living in England! The heart is made to act too powerfully, the blood is thrown upon the nobler parts, and with the system of wading, adopted by some sportsmen, whether in * Sir William Temple says, the only way for a rich man to be healthy, is, by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he was poor; which are esteemed the worst parts of poverty.
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