3 o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and lamp-light. The patient begins to fret under the weight of his 

 afflictions, but still declines to remove the cause. To out-door exercise 

 he objects, not on general principles, but on some special plea or other. 

 He has to husband his strength. The raw March wind would turn his 

 cough into a chronic catarrh. The warm weather would spoil his ap- 

 petite and aggravate his vertigo. The truth is, that of the large quan- 

 tum of comestibles ingested only a small modicum is digested, and that 

 the system begins to weaken under the influence of indirect starvation. 

 Business routine prevents the dyspeptic from changing his meal-times. 

 He can not reduce the number of his meals; people have to conform to 

 the arrangements of their boarding-house. The stomach needs some- 

 thing strengthening between breakfast and supper. The truth is, that 

 the exertions of the digestive organs alternate with occasional reactions, 

 entailing a nervous depression which can be (temporarily) relieved by 

 the stimulus of a fresh engorgement. Business reasons may really 

 prevent a reduction of working hours, and domestic duties a change 

 of climate or of occupation. The daily engorgement in the mean while 

 goes on as before. 



Nature then resorts to more emphatic protests. Sleep comes in 

 the form of a dull torpor that would make a nightmare a pleasant 

 change of programme. The digestive laboratory seems to have lost 

 the disci'etion of its automatic contrivances ; the process of assimilation, 

 in all its details, obtrudes itself upon the cognizance of the sensorium, 

 and urges the co-operation of the voluntary muscles. Contortions and 

 pressing manipulations have to force each morsel through the gastric 

 apparatus ; the lining of the stomach has become sentient, and shirks 

 its work like a blistered palate. Special tidbits can be traced through 

 the whole course of their abdominal adventures. Undigested green 

 peas roll on like buckshot hot from the smelting-pan of a shot-tower. 

 A grilled partridge crawls along like a reluctant crab, clawing and 

 biting at each step. Nausea and headache strive to relieve themselves 

 in spasmodic eructations. Vertigoes, like fainting-fits, eclipse the eye- 

 sight for minutes together. Constipation, often combined Avith a mor- 

 bid appetite, suggests distressful speculations on the possible outcome 

 of the accumulating ingesta. The overfed organism is under-nour- 

 ished to a degree that reveals itself in the rapid emaciation of the pa- 

 tient. The general derangement of the nervous system reacts on the 

 mental faculties, and impairs their efficacy even for the most ordinary 

 business purposes, till the invalid at last realizes the necessity of re- 

 form. He tries to reduce the number of his meals ; but the length- 

 ened intervals drag as heavily as the toper's time between drinks. He 

 hopes to appease his stomach by a change of diet, but finds that the 

 resolution has come too late ; the gastric mutiny has become indis- 

 criminate, and protests as savagely against a Graham biscuit as against 

 a broiled pork sausage. He tries pedestrianism, but finds the remedy 

 worse than the evil. The enemy has cut off his means of retreat ; the 



