the circumstances I have already mentioned. Among the causes which
excite the body, and support life, I have formerly mentioned food,
or the matters taken into the stomach. It is from these matters that
all the animal solids and fluids are formed; these are stimuli,
which if totally withdrawn, we could not exist many days. These
stimuli are subject to the same laws with all the others which act
upon the body. When they act properly in concert with the other
powers, they produce the healthy state; but if they act in an undue
degree, whether that action be too great or too little, disease will
be the consequence. When they act too feebly, the excitability will
accumulate; and diseases of debility, attended with a very great
degree of irritability, will take place: this has been instanced in
those who have been without food for some time. Persons who have
been shut up in a coal-work by the falling-in of the pit, and have
consequently been without food for some days, have had their
excitability so much accumulated, as to be intoxicated with a bason
of broth.

To this source we may attribute many of the diseases with which the
poor are afflicted; but they are by no means so common as diseases
of an opposite nature, which arise from a too free use of food. I
shall confine myself here to the consideration of what is more
strictly called food, and afterwards consider the effects of strong
liquors.

When we take food in too great quantity, or of too nourishing a
quality, it will either produce inflammatory diseases, such as
pleurisy; or by exhausting the excitability, it will bring on
stomach complaints, gout, and all the symptoms of premature old age.
This follows so evidently from the laws we have investigated, that