To 



Simple aqueous drinks promote digestion, by facilitating the solution 

 of the solids; by serving as a vehicle to their divided parts; and when 

 rendered active by saline or other substances, as spirituous liquors are by 

 alcohol, they are further useful in stimulating the organs, and exciting 

 their action. 



The least compound drinks are possessed, in different degrees, of this 

 double property of dissolving solid aliments, and of stimulating the diges- 

 tive organs. The purest water is rendered stimulating by the air, and by 

 the salts which it contains, in different proportions; and, to the want of 

 that stimulating quality is to be attributed the difficult digestion of dis- 

 tilled water. 



The drinks best suited to the wants of the animal economy, are those 

 in which the stimulating principles are blended, in due proportions, with 

 the water which holds them in solution. But almost all the fluids which 

 we drink, contain a certain proportion of nutritious particles. Wine, for 

 example, contains these nutritive particles in greater quantity, as it is the 

 produce of a warmer climate, and as saccharine matter predominates in 

 its composition. Thus, Spanish wines are in themselves nourishing, and 

 are perhaps fitter to satisfy hunger than to allay thirst, while the acidu- 

 lous Rhenish wines, which are merely thirst allaying, scarcely contain 

 any cordial quality. Between the two extremes are the French wines, 

 which possess, in a nearly^equal degree, the treble advantage of diluting 

 the fluids, of stimulating the organs, and of furnishing to the animal eco- 

 nomy materials of nutrition. 



IV. Of hunger and thirst. By the words hunger and thirst are meant two 

 sensations, which warn us of the necessity of repairing the loss which our 

 body is continually undergoing from the action of the vital principle. 

 Their nature, as is well observed by M. Gall, is not better known than 

 that of thought. Let us endeavour to explain the phenomena by which 

 they are attended. 



The effects of a protracted abstinence are, a diminution of the weight 

 of the body, a dimunition which becomes sensible in the course of twenty- 

 four hours 5 a wasting of the body from the loss of fat, discoloration of 

 the fluids, especially the blood, loss of strength, excessive sensibility, 

 sleeplessness, with painful sensations in the epigastric region*. 



Death from inanition is most easily brought on, in those who are young 

 and robust. Thus, the unfortunate father, whose horrible story has been 

 related by Dante, condemned to die of hunger, and shut up with his chil- 

 dren in a dark dungeon, died the last, on the eighth day, after having wit- 

 nessed, in the convulsions of rage and despair, the death of his four sons, 

 unhappy victims of the most execrable vengeance every recorded in the 

 history of man. Haller has related, in his great work on physiology, 

 several instances of prolonged abstinence : if we are to give credit to 

 these accounts, some of which are deficient in the degree of authenticity 

 required to warrant belief, persons have been known to pass eighteen 

 months, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and even ten years, without ta- 

 king any nourishment. In the Memoirs of the Edinburgh Society is 

 found the history of a woman who lived on whey only for fifty years. The 

 subjects of these cases are mostly weak, infirm women, living in obscuri- 

 ty and inaction, and in whom life, nearly extinct, just showed itself in an 



* See APPENDIX. Note 1. 



