DIGESTION AND FOOD. 63 



sustain a life full of vigorous and laborious action, is too 

 much for the inactive and sedentary life, and even becomes 

 oppressive and injurious. 



130. Hence men complain of indigestion and of loss of 

 health in other ways, when they have become less active. 

 The real ground of difficulty is not so much that their new 

 occupations are necessarily injurious to digestion, as that the 

 quantity, and often the quality, of food is not adapted to their 

 altered habits. In the new occupation, there is less action, 

 arid consequently less waste, and of course less use and 

 demand for food, and, necessarily connected with these, less 

 digestive power. When these new conditions are disre- 

 garded, and the old habits of eating continued, the stomach 

 is overburdened, and dyspepsia follows, with its usual train 

 of evils. 



131. It is not unfrequent at Cambridge and doubtless it 

 is the same at other colleges for some of the most industri- 

 ous students to leave on account of ill health. These unfor- 

 tunate invalids are more among the older than among the 

 younger members of the classes. And the reason is plain. 

 Most of these were not originally destined to literary pursuits, 

 and were engaged, in their earlier years, on their farms, or 

 in their workshops, or other spheres of active employment. 

 They were generally strong and healthy, but, having a de- 

 cided inclination for the study of books, they changed their 

 active habits of body for the quietness of the student's life. 

 But their appetite and diet continued the same, and thereby 

 they fell. Others were younger, and went through college 

 with less suffering and fewer failures of health. These had 

 never been laborious, nor had they acquired the habits of 

 eating which laboring men should have. Their habits were 

 always adapted to their present circumstances, and conse- 

 quently they were spared, at least, this cause of ill health. 



132. Men arid women who have reached the fulness of 

 stature, cannot safely indulge the habits of eating which were 

 proper for them while they were growing. The quantity of 

 food which was necessary to supply the growth in youth, is 



