370 Analysis of Scientific Books. 
fluence upon mental and bodily health ; his brevity is our apo- 
logy for the preceding digression, and our end will be attained 
should it lead his attention to the subject. 
To revert, with our author, to the diet of the sick; it should 
never combine too much nutriment in too small a space, “ lest 
fermentation, instead of digestion,” says Dr. Paris, ‘“ should 
ensue :” a position, this, in which we do not exactly coincide ; 
for asick person’s stomach will often only endure very small 
quantities of very condensed nutriment, and of that “ a little and 
often,” is generally no bad maxim. Sir William Temple’s 
notion, however, ‘‘ that the stomach of a valetudinarian is like 
a school-boy, always doing mischief when unemployed,” errs 
upon the other side ; for the healthy conversion of aliment into 
blood is incompatible with the unceasing activity of the stomach: 
periods of rest are required; for when in health, we loathe 
food during that important part of the digestive process in which 
chyle is forming and absorbing, and if itbe taken, it does infi- 
nite mischief; whereas, increase of appetite during this stage 
of assimilation is symptomatic of disease, as we see in certain 
mesenteric affections, and in diabetes. These views, Dr. Paris 
tells us, have induced him to treat those affections in a different 
manner from that generally pursued; his plan consists in en- 
forcing longer intervals between each meal, which should be 
scanty, and in quantity short of what the appetite may require : 
In this way the peitforng absorbents are induced to perform their duties ; 
but it is a practice which, from the extreme anxiety of friends and rela- 
tions, the feelings of craving and hunger expressed by the patient, and the 
mistaken but universal prejudice respecting diet, it is always painful to 
propose, and generally impossible to enforce; where, however, circum- 
stances have given me full control, the advantage of the plan has been 
most decisive. Vol. I. p. 273. 
To these remarks, succeed a variety of useful observations 
upon the general management of remedies, upon the advantages 
derived from particular mixtures and combinations, and upon 
the most agreeable and efficacious forms of prescription, in 
which simplicity is, as far as possible, very properly inculcated. 
We have often been struck with the complexity of a physician’s 
prescription, and have been quite unable to guess at his object 
and intention in assembling a phalanx of apparently discordant; 
and often inert, articles of the Materia Medica. Dr. Paris has 
helped us out of this difficulty. Iwas once told, he says, by a 
practitioner in the country, that the quantity, or rather com- 
plexity, of the medicines which he gave his patients, for there 
never was any deficiency in the former, was always increased in 
a ratio with the obscurity of their cases; ‘ if,” said he, ‘ I fire 
a great profusion of shot, it is very extraordinary if some do not 
hit the mark.” Sir Gilbert Blane has related as good a story.* 
* Medical Logic. Edit. 2, p. 192. 
