Art. VI. — Food and its Digestion. By Howard Town- 

 send, M.D. 



[Read before the Albany Institute, — Feb. 1865.] 



Though this is a subject belonging more strictly, and 

 more appropriately, perhaps, to a lecture in the amphi- 

 theatre of the Medical College, yet one feels somewhat 

 emboldened to present it to a cultivated society like that 

 of our Institute, when we learn that even the public at 

 large has taken so great an interest in such like subject, 

 that a clever little pamphlet lately published in London, 

 entitled A Letter on Corpulence, by William Banting, has 

 already passed to its 3d edition, and into the hands of 

 some 50,000 individuals. "Bought up," as a late review 

 expresses it, "at the book-stalls as light pleasant reading, 

 in preference to the creation of novelists or the narratives 

 of travelers." 



This letter on corpulence, though evidently not written 

 by a scientific man, most clearly and cleverly expresses 

 the views of a man of more than ordinary mind, possess- 

 ing no little originality, who, to quote his own language, 

 thinks " that of all the parasites which afflict humanity, 

 he knows not, nor can imagine anything more distressing 

 than that of obesity," and he further adds, "Having just 

 emerged from a very long probation in this affliction, I am 

 desirous of circulating my humble knowledge and expe- 

 rience for the benefit of my fellow-men, with the earnest 

 desire that it may lead to the same comfort and happiness 

 which I now feel under the extraordinary change." 



"Obesity," he continues, "seems very little under- 

 stood by the faculty, or by the public generally, or else 

 the faculty, long ere this, would have hit upon the cause 

 of so lamentable a disease, and applied effective remedies 



