Comments on Corpulency. J|| 



vice versd — from which it will appear, the domestic ordering of 

 diet is as important a matter of administration as the Materia 

 medica ; and that the Roman general who boiled his own tur- 

 nips, would, if he had had a cabbage to boil, have boiled it in 

 two successive waters, as he had doubtless discovered that vege- 

 tables were **/ac?e" and flatulent, unless freed from much 

 noxious matter by culinary process. 



Cicero says *^ old age has no precise or determinate boun- 

 dary," — and many philosophers have thought, that men might 

 live, like the patriarchs of old, for centuries, if they took proper 

 means. Proper means ! What do they mean by proper means ? 

 The answer is — cookery and diet. 



" Caro animata cur vivit et non putrescit ut mortua ? Quia quotidie renovatur." 



Sanctorius. 



Hippocrates, the great father of the medical and chirurgical 

 art, laid much stress, and wrote largely upon diet. But, during 

 the last century, medical men thought it necessary to apologise 

 for treating on these subjects : since, however, local complaints 

 have been found to be intimately connected with constitutional 

 influences, surgery has taken an enlarged sphere, and they are 

 now entertained as both proper and pleasant. 



Fashion, which holds an undivided empire over the frivolous 

 concerns of life, extends its influence even to the healing art. 

 Thus we find fashionable complaints — fashionable remedies — . 

 fashionable seats of disease — and fashionable plans of treatment. 

 Haifa century ago, " nervous complaints " were the ton. These 

 were superseded by ** liver complaints," — and these again have 

 yielded the palm to '* stomach complaints. " *' Duodenal com- 

 plaints " are beginning to be talked of in London — while the 

 hypochondriacs of Bath have their fashionable localities : so 

 that, at present, the seat of alimentary complaints depends on 

 the accidental circumstance of the patient's residence. 



Formerly, we sought the phenomena of insanity in the head 

 and brain — the causes of cough in the lungs and pleura ; — but, 

 "nous avons change tout cela," we look into the head for 

 the causes of hooping-cough, and for the causes of insanity 

 we search the bowels and stomach. In fact, the stomach 

 is charged (now a-days) with one-half the complaints of man- 

 kind ; and, amongst others, the complaint in Question, viz, 



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