Those parts suffer the most, which having but weak solids, they want external helps more than any others; hence those organs are most affected by inaction, which, being contained in the abdomen, perform the first digestion of the aliments: the strength of the stomach is diminish’d, the nature of the gastric fluid is chang’d, the aliments make a longer stay in it, and, not being sufficiently subdu’d by the animal force, they go through their spontaneous changes which they would have undergone out of the body. Most vegetables retain their tartness, which, by vellicating the nerves, occasions pains and convulsions; acid eructations arise, the cardia suffers pain, the throat is parched, and the teeth blunted. On the contrary, both flesh and eggs rot, and fat aliments grow rank: hence proceed putrid eructations, immoderate thirst, and continual fluxes; digestion is always difficult, troublesome, and malignant; the aliments cease to afford nourishment, nor do they any longer repair, but irritate and weaken. The exhaling vessels no longer pour forth a dewy, mild, and saponaceous lymph, but they throw out a thick glue, which affects the sick with a constant pain and sense of a heavy weight, and of cold at the stomach, and creates the utmost loathing. The consequence is the same when the intestines, being of the same structure with the stomach, suffer the same injuries: the action of respiration first begins to fail, whose alternate compressions, whilst it is accelerated by the muscular motion, compress and strain all the viscera of the abdomen; their irritability is lost, the body is generally costive; there is here likewise accumulated, a troublesome phlegm, the prolific mother of diseases. Thus it once happen’d to the celebrated JUSTUS LIPSIUS, professor of history at Leyden, who being long ill, and under the care of his illustrious colleague and friend HEURNIUS, found no relief till he had voided a substance resembling the intestines both in figure and colour; it was a tough and viscid phlegm, gradually collected in the whole tube of the intestines, through a sedentary life wasted by study; and this phlegm, turning to putrefaction, made a jakes of the whole body. The fomes of the disease being thus purg’d off, he was restor’d to health[26]. The collected excrements compress with their bulk the neighbouring parts, irritate the intestines by their corruption, and by absorbing the putrid matter infect the whole mass of blood. From all these causes put together arise those excruciating pains in the bowels which often torment the studious, and are with difficulty cur’d, as they are perpetually renew’d by errors in diet[27]. Hence that troublesome flatulency, so hurtful to sedentary men, which torments the learned a thousand different ways, and often passes for other disorders.