observations from which we may conclude that in those countries where
the healing art is most neglected, the mean duration of man's life is
shorter than in those where it is most cultivated? And how is it
possible this should be the case, if we inflict more diseases upon
ourselves than medicine can supply us with remedies! The extreme
inequalities in the manner of living of the several classes of
mankind, the excess of idleness in some, and of labour in others, the
facility of irritating and satisfying our sensuality and our
appetites, the too exquisite and out of the way aliments of the rich,
which fill them with fiery juices, and bring on indigestions, the
unwholesome food of the poor, of which even, bad as it is, they very
often fall short, and the want of which tempts them, every opportunity
that offers, to eat greedily and overload their stomachs; watchings,
excesses of every kind, immoderate transports of all the passions,
fatigues, waste of spirits, in a word, the numberless pains and
anxieties annexed to every condition, and which the mind of man is
constantly a prey to; these are the fatal proofs that most of our ills
are of our own making, and that we might have avoided them all by
adhering to the simple, uniform and solitary way of life prescribed to
us by nature. Allowing that nature intended we should always enjoy
good health, I dare almost affirm that a state of reflection is a
state against nature, and that the man who meditates is a depraved
animal. We need only call to mind the good constitution of savages,
of those at least whom we have not destroyed by our strong liquors; we
need only reflect, that they are strangers to almost every disease,
except those occasioned by wounds and old age, to be in a manner
convinced that the history of human diseases might be easily composed
by pursuing that of civil societies. Such at least was the opinion of
Plato, who concluded from certain remedies made use of or approved by
Podalyrus and Macaon at the Siege of Troy, that several disorders,