The usual history of these victims is, that they began by over-feeding, took the condiment to force the stomach to do more than its healthful amount of work, using but a little at first. Then the stomach became tolerant of this little, and demanded more; then more, and more, and more, until at last inflammation, ulceration, torpidity, and finally the death of the digestive powers, accompanied with all that long train of miseries to which I have referred. India is their special fatherland. Englishmen, accustomed to an active life at home, and a climate demanding much fuel-food for the maintenance of animal heat, go to India, crammed, maybe, with Latin, but ignorant of the laws of health; cheap servants promote indolence, tropical heat diminishes respiratory oxidation, and the appetite naturally fails. Instead of understanding this failure as an admonition to take smaller quantities of food, or food of less nutritive and combustive value, such as carbohydrates instead of hydrocarbons and albumenoids, they regard it as a symptom of ill-health, and take curries, bitter ale, and other tonics or appetising condiments, which, however mischievous in England, are far more so there. I know several men who have lived rationally in India, and they all agree that the climate is especially favourable to longevity, provided bitter beer, and all other alcoholic drinks, all peppery condiments, and flesh foods are avoided. The most remarkable example of vigorous old age I have ever met was a retired colonel eighty-two years of age, who had risen from the ranks, and had been fifty-five years in India without furlough; drunk no alcohol during that period; was a vegetarian in India, though not so in his native land. I guessed his age to be somewhere about sixty. He was a Scotchman, and an ardent student of the works of both George and Dr. Andrew Combe. A correspondent inquires whether I class cocoa amongst the stimulants. So far as I am able to learn, it should not be so classed, but I cannot speak absolutely. Mere chemistry supplies no answer to this question. It is purely a physiological subject, to be studied by observation of effects. Such observations may be made by anybody whose system has not become ‘tolerant’ of the substance in question. My own experience of cocoa in all its forms is that it is not stimulating in any sensible degree. I have acquired no habit of using it, and yet I can enjoy a rich cup or bowl of cocoa or chocolate just before bed-time without losing any sleep. When I am occasionally betrayed into taking a late cup of coffee or tea, I repent it for some hours after going to bed. My inquiries among other people, who are not under the influence of that most powerful of all arguments, the logic of inclination, have confirmed my own experience.