Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 401 



elements taken with our aliments. There is a prodigious struggle in 

 the system, while the contest lasts, in trying to eject noxious elements 

 which are dangerous; and quite frequently the power fails before 

 the object is accomplished, and the patient dies. 



Gourmands dwell with delight on venison which has been kept till 

 a putrefactive process has actually commenced. It is tender in that 

 condition, but it carries with it, into the stomach for distribution, the 

 seeds of many aches and twinges, that the high-liver cannot account 

 for. The longevity of the whole country is modified ; and many per- 

 sons would reach three-score and ten, were they not so intensely car- 

 niverous, who die before they are forty years of age. 



Good food in abundance, the test of quality and quantity being a 

 normal appetite, conduces to health and long life. Multitudes die 

 prematurely in consequence of abusing their digestive organs by com- 

 pelling them to do more work three times a day than can be accom- 

 plished without impairing the apparatus by which assimilation is per- 

 formed. 



If fluids of any kind are taken in faster than they can be disposed 

 of by appropriate organs, direct disease follows. Diseases of the kid- 

 neys are greatly on the increase in this country since excessive beer- 

 drinking has become common. Those glands whose special office is 

 to separate, from the circulating blood, properties that are injurious to 

 the individual, are so excessively overtaxed, they fail altogether, and 

 death often claims a victim, who, under ordinary circumstances, by 

 simply conforming to natural laws of his organization, might have 

 reached the age of seventy or eighty years. 



Precisely the same sad result occurs from overworking those deli- 

 cate membraneous sacks and tubes in which solid food is dissolved 

 before it can be distributed. Too much, at any time, especially if of 

 a character requiring a greater quantity of gastric juice than is 

 secreted when the receiving organ is very much distended, either 

 brings on an instantaneous apoplexy, or engenders chronic derange- 

 ments, which embitter life, and sever the vital cord long before the 

 sufferer would have died, by living in conformity to the dictates of 

 reason, to say nothing of our natural instincts, which guide safely till 

 morbid cravings obtain the ascendency. 



Civilization, with its refinements, drags many woes in its train. 

 One of them is excessive meat eating. If more of it is taken than is 

 required for nourishment, no one knows so well as a medical prac- 

 titioner how often persons die from being over-fed. Horse-tongues 

 are frequently sold here for buffalo tongues, and who knows the dif- 

 [Inst.] 26 



