184 

 plaints are brought on. It is curious that the want 

 of food and the excess of it should both produce the 

 same disease. It is very seldom that a dog is badly 

 kept for a considerable lengtb of time, but that he 

 contracts mange ; and it is also seldom that a dog is 

 permitted to eat to excess for n continuance, but 

 that he becomes mangy. However, if the same 

 cleanliness and care were to be observed in both the 

 cases, the lean dog would have the least mange, 

 and his also would be of a kind nmch more easy of 

 cure. 



To feed judiciously, the phvsioloirY of diirestion 

 should be understood. All the juices of the body, 

 and indeed all the solids of the body as well, are 

 furnished from the blood ; and these juices are in a 

 continual state of waste, and the solids in a continual 

 state of wear, by exertion, and this in proportion 

 to the exertion used ; consequently, there must be 

 some means of recruiting this waste of the fluids, 

 and some means of repairing this wear of the solids. 

 Nature has intended that tiiis should be done bv 

 food, which consists of solid and iluid substances 

 taken into tlie mouth, which are there masticated 

 and broken down into small masses by the teeth, 

 and mixed into a paste with the saliva, which makes 

 a soft pulp, fitted to be acted upon when it is passed 

 from the mouth into the stomach by the act of 

 swallowing. 



Having passed into the stomach, it there meets 

 with a strong solvent juice generated by tlie stomach, 

 and caiied gastric juice ; by mixing with which it 

 becomes animalized, and, in fact, wholly altered. 

 In a complete pultaceous mass it is passed into the 



