DIGESTION AND FOOD. 61 



fresh or salt, 18 oz. bread or flour, or 12 oz. hard bread, or 

 l Ib. corn meal, a day besides 8 qts. of peas or beans, or 10 

 Ibs. of rice, for every hundred days. 



125. The, quantity of food must vary with the habits of 

 the individual, and with the energy and quantity of exercise. 

 Some have a much greater nutritive power than others 

 Some extract more nutritive chyle from a given amount of 

 food than others. Fleshy persons are not always great 

 eaters, nor are all lean persons proportionately limited in 

 their quantity of food. On the contrary, there are many 

 instances of great corpulence connected with an extremely 

 small diet, and some cases where the greatest temperance in 

 food does not prevent or diminish the fatness. On the other 

 hand, there are some persons whose appetite is ever ready, 

 and digestion apparently good, and who consume much more 

 than the average quantity of aliment, and yet are miserably 

 lean. 



126. A young woman, whose body was full, round, and 

 almost fat, came under my observation a few years ago, on 

 account of neuralgia. The pain was, for a long time, fixed 

 in the stomach, and then she could only eat a single cracker, 

 or an equal amount of bread, weighing less than one ounce 

 a day. Yet her nutritive powers were so good, that, with 

 this small quantity of food, she maintained her full condition, 

 and showed no sensible loss of flesh. She continued this 

 spare diet for about six weeks, and, in all this time, retained 

 her healthy plumpness of form. She was not strong, and 

 yet she was not very weak. She was not confined to her 

 bed, nor to her chamber, but was able to be about the house, 

 and perform the light household work. In her best state of 

 health, she was a small eater; but she was then strong and 

 vigorous, active and fleshy. 



127. The requisite quantity of nutriment varies more with 

 quantity and energy of action which the system is called 

 upon to sustain. All motion is connected with waste from 

 the body ; the vitalized particles exhaust their vitality in the 

 process of action, and a change then takes place. The old 



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