by _preventing_ digestion, often delays or modifies the ill-feeling which would otherwise be experienced shortly after over-indulgence at the table. Hence gentle exercise in the open air will prove the least of two evils; an emetic, the best of all remedies. The liquids[66] being to a great extent absorbed, plethora is prevented or delayed because the solids remain undigested in the stomach! But this solid residue, favored by the internal temperature, begins to ferment, after a time, and causes more or less irritation and congestion of the mucous lining of the stomach, which gives rise to the sensation popularly called “hunger”; and thus every few hours, and when the patient impatiently awaits the call to dinner and thinks himself most in need of food, he is, in fact, in the very worst condition to take it. Ninety-five persons in every hundred have this disease (for it is nothing less than chronic dyspepsia) throughout life. The fact that the meal affords immediate relief argues nothing against this position; it is the seventy-five or eighty per cent. of water contained in and taken with the meal that relieves the congestion. It forms a poultice, so to say, for the congested mucous membrane of the stomach; but unfortunately it can not, as when applied externally upon a throbbing sore thumb, for example, be removed when it becomes dry. We see this disease at its worst in infancy, when meals are most frequent and excessive. [Footnote 66: In case of an ordinary “mixed meal,” water composes something near four-fifths of all; solids, pure and simple, one-fifth. Even roast beef is about three-fourths water, and vegetables the same.]