LETTERS TO BROTHER JOHN. 139 



a contrivance, if the office which it fulfils were 

 not in the last degree essential ! 



What mischief, therefore, do those persons inflict 

 upon themselves what a wide door for the admis- 

 sion of all sorts of evils do those persons throw 

 open who, perpetually stimulating the pyloric valve 

 by the unnatural stimuli of ardent spirit and highly- 

 seasoned sauces, enfeeble, wear out, and eventually 

 destroy its sensibility ; so that whatever the caprice 

 of the palate throws into the stomach, is tumbled, 

 right or wrong, assimilated or unassimilated, good, 

 bad and indifferent, altogether, without let or 

 hindrance, into the bowels ! for the sentry-box is 

 deserted the watchman is dead. 



When I contemplate this state of things, I think 

 I see a whole army of diseases marchmg in file out 

 of the stomach, through the pyloric gateway, into 

 the citadel of the bowels. I see pale-faced and 

 bloated Dropsy with his swollen legs li vid Asthma 

 struggling for breath grotesque and tottering 

 Palsy yellow-visaged Jaundice red-eyed Deli- 

 rium Fever, with his baked lips and parched 

 tongue, looking piteously around, and crying 

 " Water ! water ! " limping Gout, grinning with 



pain musing Melancholy hideous Insanity! 



But let us drop 'the curtain over a picture so hor- 



