The stomach, more especially after long years of abusive treatment, is one of the least sensitive organs. “If it had nerves as sensitive as our finger-tips, our attention would be so much taken up with the ordinary digestion of food that we could not properly attend to our work or studies.” At first, in infancy, it is more sensitive, and any excess of food is thrown off, but ere many months the disorder grows worse and deeper-seated, and in the course of years stomachs become so diseased as to give no sign, except when unusually outraged. It may have sores without knowing it. Dr. Beaumont saw sores in St. Martin’s stomach after the latter had drunk liquor, but they occasioned no pain. “Cold sores,” chapped lips, parched or pimpled tongue or mouth, furred tongue, etc., etc., are but signs of serious disease of the stomach and intestines, and, consequently, of the entire organism. I have classed as one of the most natural and effective measures for the preservation of health or the cure of disease, _rest_; for diseased organs, rest[19] and light tasks; for the healthy person who desires to keep well, I have said, “rest when tired.” Unfortunately many people, and more especially consumptives, never know when they are tired, but work habitually, until they are exhausted. With the latter, this is usually set down to willfulness or lack of judgment. “She won’t listen to reason,” says the anxious husband. “She is always overdoing,” says another. Jockeys, describing horses thus affected, call them “pullers”: it is the same disease——indigestion. Reason being dethroned by the poisoned circulation in the brain, Nature, through muscular action, essays to excrete the toxic elements. This is _stimulation_ (see “Coffee.”) [Footnote 19: The various excretory organs, as the bowels, kidneys, liver, as well as the digestive apparatus, are relieved by fasting, or diminishing the food ration.] It is the stimulus imparted by the thrice daily ingestion of so many unnatural and indigestible articles that compose the mixed diet, which prevents so many from resting when they are tired. With others, however, the effect is quite the reverse: some are always complaining of a “tired feeling.” There is a genuine lack of vital force occasioned by lack of nourishment. When this feeling is experienced on rising, it is usually, almost invariably, at least in part, the effect of close sleeping-rooms. Many persons,——some who are fat, and called healthy, others, perhaps, lean,——are called “lazy” who are positively weak, too weak to work without great effort such as lookers-on know nothing about, although most people may have had similar feelings occasionally——the “after-dinner laziness.” This special form of disease has previously been spoken of. (See p. 34).