I have hitherto spoke only of solid food; liquors are not to be forgotten. In the last age a grievous error crept into physic, that health is the better, the more fluid the blood is; and by the advice of BONTEKOE chiefly a pernicious custom prevailed of drinking warm liquors both night and day, whereby the human species has greatly suffered, and those of the present age sorely lament the injury which their forefathers sustained in the last, by impairing the strength of their nerves. Grave authors, who knew better, and chiefly the illustrious DUNCAN, with BOERHAAVE, and the whole school of Leyden, have proscribed this error; and, if they have not reformed the abuse, have at least greatly checked it. But most valetudinarians still lie under the same prepossession, and, looking upon an over thick blood as the source of their disorders, have recourse to warm beverages, which others reject. It can scarce be told, it can scarce be believed, how many disorders proceed from this source: and I will take upon me to assert, that those pernicious bowls, overflowing with warm liquors, are the true box of Pandora, without even hope remaining at the bottom; for they are prolific sources of hypochondriac melancholy, which both adds strength to and is itself one of the worst of disorders. Nor is it to be wondered at, if warm beverages are more hurtful to studious men, who are naturally weak and feeble, than to others; for they are not troubled with an over thick, but, on the contrary, with too thin a blood. You are well aware, respectable auditors, that the density of the blood is as the motion of the solids: the fibres of the learned are relaxed, their motions are slow, and their blood of consequence thin. Bleed a ploughman and a doctor at the same time: from the first there will flow a thick blood, resembling inflammatory blood, almost solid, and of a deep red; the blood of the second will be either of a faint red, or without any colour, soft, gelatinous, and will almost entirely turn to water. Your blood therefore, men of learning, should not be dissolved, but brought to a consistence; and you should in general be moderate in the article of drinking, and cautiously avoid warm liquors.