2. A CORDIAL and STIMULATING DIET. Milk and vegetables, so proper in the inflammatory, are improper, when taken alone, in this state of consumption. I believe they often accelerate that decay of appetite and diarrh[oe]a, which form the closing scene of the disease. I have lately seen three persons recovered from the lowest stage of this state of consumption, by the use of animal food and cordial drinks, aided by frequent doses of opium, taken during the day as well as in the night. I should hesitate in mentioning these cures, had they not been witnessed by more than a hundred students of medicine in the Pennsylvania hospital. The history of one of them is recorded in the 5th volume of the New-York Medical Repository, and of the two others in Dr. Coxe's Medical Museum. Oysters, it has been said, have performed cures of consumption. If they have, it must have been only when they were eaten in that state of it which is now under consideration. They are a most savoury and wholesome article of diet, in all diseases of weak morbid action. To the cordial articles of diet belong sweet vegetable matters. Grapes, sweet apples, and the juice of the sugar maple tree, when taken in large quantities, have all cured this disease. They all appear to act by filling the blood-vessels, and thereby imparting tone to the whole system. I have found the same advantage from dividing the meals in this state of consumption, that I mentioned under a former head. The exhibition of food in this case, should not be left to the calls of appetite, any more than the exhibition of a medicine. Indeed food may be made to supply the place of cordial medicines, by keeping up a constant and gentle action in the whole system. For this reason, I have frequently advised my patients never to suffer their stomachs to be empty, even for a single hour. I have sometimes aimed to keep up the influence of a gentle action in the stomach upon the whole system, by advising them to eat in the night, in order to obviate the increase of secretion into the lungs and of the cough in the morning, which are brought on in part by the increase of debility from the long abstraction of the stimulus of aliment during the night. [27] Prunus Virginiana.