There are other familiar and well-established facts, which prove, that either from the influence of disease, from habits of life, or the nature of particular animals, life can go on for a length of time with little or no aliment. This is the case in fevers, in sea-sickness, in certain singular cases that have been recorded[122], in torpid animals, and in animals of cold blood. Though a man in health will die if deprived of food for a very few days, it does not follow that this is owing to the want of matter to repair the waste of the body. The craving for food, and the faintness from long abstinence, arise from the want of the accustomed stimulus, especially in those who are used to live well; and a person feels himself most refreshed by food and drink when newly taken in, and before it can be applied to the purpose of nutrition. As there is a continual waste and decay, however, both of our fluids and solids, some degree of reparation is absolutely necessary, especially to animals of warm blood; and such _ingesta_ as would give the stimulus of food, without being possessed of any nutritious principle, would indeed continue life for a certain time; but disease would ensue. The provision used at sea answers, in a great measure, to this description; for unless the powers of digestion and assimilation are remarkably strong, salt beef and biscuit, which have been long kept, do not contain much more nourishment than saw-dust, or the bark of a tree, and the disease induced by this diet is the scurvy. The nature and symptoms of the scurvy countenance this opinion: for as the means of renewing the animal matter of our bodies is withdrawn under this course of diet, nature, in consequence of an accommodating principle, observes a sort of frugality, and the animal œconomy adopts such measures as may be productive of the least possible waste and corruption of the fluids. Accordingly all the secretions become scanty; and, in particular, one of the first symptoms of this disease is a suppression of perspiration, as appears by the goose-skin that attends it. There is a paucity of urine. There is also a great languor in the circulation, which may be considered either as a means adopted by nature to prevent that vitiated and effete state of the fluids which a brisker action might induce; or it may happen from a want of that due supply of nourishment necessary to produce a vigorous action of all the functions.