DIGESTION AND FOOD. 49 



indigestion and pain will surely follow. Very frequently, 

 during convalescence from fevers, the appetite returns before 

 the power of digestion. The body is wasted with disease, 

 and wants a great quantity of nourishment to restore its loss. 

 The fever has gone ; the stomach is free from nausea, but 

 yet it is uneasy, and craves a. large supply of nutritious food. 

 But it has not regained its full strength. It can no more 

 digest a full allowance of hearty food than the muscles or 

 limbs can perform the full day's labor of a man in health. If 

 the convalescent should eat a strong man's food, as appetite 

 suggests, pain and weariness will fall upon his digestive or- 

 gans as inevitably as they would upon his limbs if he should 

 do a strong man's work. 



94. Appetite and taste are not the same. It is a mistake 

 in our self-management to confound the one*with the other. 

 One is a desire for food corresponding to the wants of the 

 system ; the other is mere pleasantness of the food while in 

 the mouth. In domestic economy, when the array of suc- 

 cessive dishes of various kinds comes before us, when all are 

 delicious and tempting, and pleasant to the palate, there is 

 danger of eating of one, and then another, to gratify the taste, 

 even after appetite has been satisfied. It is, therefore, impor- 

 tant to distinguish between the sensation of the stomach 

 which implies the want of nutriment, and which is real hun- 

 ger, and that mere sensation of the mouth which implies 

 merely the want of something pleasant to the palate, and 

 which is factitious hunger. 



95. There are remarkable instances of absence of appe- 

 tite under disease or excitement. Sometimes persons in a 

 high state of mania, with the mind violently excited or ab- 

 sorbed, have endured entire abstinence from food or drink for 

 three days. During this time, they could not be persuaded 

 to take a morsel to eat or a drop of fluid. In these and sim- 

 ilar cases, there were undoubtedly want of nourishment in the 

 body, and power of digestion in the stomach. The appetite 

 was suspended, because the brain had its attention intently 

 fixed upon its delusions and distress. But when the excite- 



5 



