In thus punishing us with the pangs of indigestion as a warning to more reasonable conduct, Providence displays the purest beneficence. To place this in a clear point of view, let us suppose digestion to continue perfect, notwithstanding the daily reception of an excess of food into the stomach, the result would necessarily be the regular formation of an undue quantity of chyle; this, in its turn, would produce an excess of blood throughout the whole system; and the individual would thus exist with all his functions in a state of constant oppression, and in continual danger of the rupture of a bloodvessel, till, from mere fulness, some active disease would be excited, requiring the instant and vigorous use of the lancet for its relief, or very probably cutting short life. If, then, man cannot restrain his appetites, and effectually subject them to the control of reason, another check against continued aberration is required, and, fortunately for us, it is to be found in the refusal of the stomach to continue to digest much more than the quantity demanded by the wants of the body. In practical life we meet, in fact, with both results. There are some persons constituted with such vigorous powers of digestion that no quantity of food oppresses their stomachs. If they eat habitually more than what is required to supply waste and sustain the system, they speedily suffer from repletion, or some one or other of the diseases arising out of its existence, such as inflammation, apoplexy, rupture of bloodvessels, enlargement of the heart, or morbid growth in some organ of the body. In the greater number, however, of those who exceed in quantity, the stomach itself becomes enfeebled by the over-exertion to which it is subjected, just as the muscles do from excess of labour; and the consequence is impaired digestion, which prevents the food from being duly converted into chyle, and thus protects the system from the fulness which would otherwise be induced. Accordingly, it is a familiar truth, that those who eat most are not always the best nourished,--and that, on the contrary, the stoutest men are often those who eat comparatively little.