it is scarcely necessary to say more on the subject; and I am sure
there are few who have not seen examples of it.

Be therefore temperate in eating, and eat only of such foods as are
the plainest; and let a proper quantity of vegetable food be mixed
with animal. If you value the preservation of health, never satiate
yourselves with eating; but let it be a rule from which you ought
never to depart, always to rise from table with some remains of
appetite: for, when the stomach is loaded with more food than it can
easily digest, a crude and unassimilated chyle is taken into the
blood, pregnant with diseases. Nor is the quantity the only object
of attention; the quality of the food is to be carefully studied;
made dishes, enriched with hot sauces, stimulate infinitely more
than plain food, and therefore exhaust the excitability, bringing on
diseases of indirect debility; such as the worst kind of gout,
apoplexy, and paralytic complaints. "For my part," says an elegant
writer, "when I behold a fashionable table set out in all its
magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and
lethargies, with other innumerable distempers, lying in ambuscade
among the dishes." Let it be therefore laid down as a rule by those
who wish to preserve their health, and I have nothing to say to
those who are indifferent on that head, to make their chief repast
on one plain dish, and trifle with the rest.

It is by no means uncommon for a medical man to have patients,
chiefly among people of fashion and fortune, who complain of being
hot and restless all night, and having a foul taste in the mouth
every morning: on examination it is found, that in nineteen cases
out of twenty, it has arisen from their having overloaded their
stomachs, and at the same time neglected to take proper exercise;