LETTERS TO BROTHER JOHN. 23 



bowels, thoroughly and properly cooked. But when 

 a man, without any one very painful symptom in 

 particular, felt himself generally indisposed, weakly, 

 disinclined to action, low-spirited, and oppressed 

 after eating; it was then said that his food had not 

 been properly digested in plain English, not pro- 

 perly stewed by the stomach ; but that it had been 

 left by that organ very much in the same state in 

 which the shins of beef would be found after having 

 been stewed over a bad tire, and in a cracked di- 

 gester which let out the steam. He was said to be 

 afflicted with indigestion ; which signifies the unequal 

 distribution of particles by stewing, or simply im- 

 perfect stewing. Or, if his physician chanced to be 

 somewhat of a pedant, the more learned word 

 dyspepsia was used, which signifies difficult 

 boiling. 



You see, therefore, that when these queer words, 

 digestion, indigestion, dyspepsia, digestive, &c. &c. 

 were first introduced, viz. when physicians looked 

 upon the stomach as little more than a living stew- 

 pan, they had each a very distinct and definite 

 meaning, and were used with perfect propriety. I 

 mention this merely to account to you for the intro- 

 duction of these strange words into medical language. 

 That these words are still used by medical men, is 



