THE 



QUARTERLY JOURNAL 



OP 



SCIENCE, LITERATURE, AND ART. 



Facts towards a History of Eating, Drinking, and Sleeping. 

 By William Wadd, Esq., F.L.S. 



L Eating. 



Philosophers, who have puzzled themselves how to define 

 man, so as to distinguish him from other animals, have defined 

 him as '' animal risibile" — as a '• buying and selling animal"— 

 an animal that makes bargains. Some have even defined man 

 to be a tree, bottom upwards, the brain being the root. The 

 author of the *' Sublime and Beautiful" settled the question in 

 a different way : he said, *' man is an animal that cooks its 

 victuals ! " thereby proving the justness of the proverbial 

 axiom, '^ there is reason in roasting eggs." 



These speculations, however, were all done away by another 

 set of philosophers, who thought they had reconciled all diffi- 

 culties, when they characterized him by his stomach : but alas ! 

 this theory, like the others, vanished, when it was discovered 

 that the human stomach occasionally possessed the powers of 

 the brute stomach. 



This wonderful power of the human stomach, technically 

 termed by doctors '^ fames canina" — ** fames lupina and buli- 

 ma," has been considered by some as a disease, and if we be- 

 lieve Forestus, is of very ancient date ; for he records, that in 

 Syracuse *^ there was an universal disease, called the ' hungry 

 sickness,' in which people did desire continually to eat, and never 

 were satisfied ; of this," he says, *« multitudes died.*" And 

 Bonetus, has a chapter on the subject, *'De Fame pra^ternat- 

 urali." 



* Forest. Obs. Med. Part 3. 

 OCT.— DEC 1828. S 



