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; for it must always be observed, that more may be eaten with safety, nay, more is even necessary, when a person takes a good deal of exercise. When people take little exercise, and overload their stomachs, there lies within them a fermenting mass of undigested aliment; and it is not surprizing that this should irritate and heat the body during the night. This is likewise the foundation of stomach complaints, flatulencies, and all other symptoms of indigestion; which more frequently proceed from intemperance in eating and drinking than any other cause. The benefits arising from temperance are set in a striking light in the following allegory, which may be found in the Adventurer.