When, from the state of health or other causes, chicken-tea, beef-tea, veal-broth, or other kinds of soup, require to be given, their digestibility will generally be promoted by the addition of bread or rice to give them consistency, and by taking little or no other food along with them. Even vegetables, when taken alone, are sometimes digested without difficulty, where, if mixed with other substances, they disorder the stomach. Dr Abercrombie mentions a very remarkable instance of this kind in a gentleman who “had been for many years a martyr to stomach complaints, seldom a day passing in which he did not suffer greatly from pain in his stomach, with flatulency, acidity, and the usual train of dyspeptic symptoms; and, in particular, he could not taste a bit of vegetable without suffering from it severely. He had gone on in this manner for years, when he was seized with complaints in his head, threatening apoplexy, which, after being relieved by the usual means, shewed such a constant tendency to recur, that it has been necessary ever since to restrict him to a diet almost entirely of vegetables, and in very moderate quantity. Under this regimen, so different from his former mode of living, he has continued free from any recurrence of the complaints in his head, and has never been known to complain of his stomach.”[52] In this case, however, both the _very moderate quantity_ of vegetable food to which the patient restricted himself, and possibly also the gradual adaptation of the gastric juice to the nature of the food, had no small share in the subsequent improvement of his digestion.