Lectures on digestion and diet.

  • Thackrah, Charles Turner, 1795-1833.
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on digestion and diet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    tions. I would not intrude on the feast of Sancho, nor give a malediction to the dishes, which a hearty appetite longs to devour. Human life is not burdened with pleasures. Give, then, to the senses, those delights which nature designed. But allow me to remind you, that slight excesses constantly repeated, reduce the best stomach to the debility of the worst ; that in- temperance in the quantity or quality of the food, materially abridges enjoyment,—first, by gradually di- minishing the sensibility of the palate, even to stimuli the most grateful and pungent,—and secondly, by ex- citing, surely, though slowly, a state of the digestive organs, utterly incompatible with health or comfort. I cannot conclude this Lecture without a memorial of Stark. Though his experiments are little known, “ they may be considered as the corner-stone of a great “ building, to be finished at some after-period of time, “ when men shall be found of equal fortitude, perse- “ verance, and self-denial, actuated by a similar zeal for “ the promoting of useful knowledge.” They were made more than 50 years ago ; yet they still stand alone. For seven or eight months, Dr. Stark subjected himself to courses of experiment, which he trusted would elucidate the effects of different kinds of food on the animal economy, and prove, to use his own words, “ that a pleasant and varied diet is equally conducive to health, with a more strict and simple one.” At one period, he lived on bread and water; at another, on bread, sugar and water; at a