The opinion is very prevalent, that mild drinks may be taken with most advantage about three or four hours after a solid meal; and, certainly, the almost universal use of tea or coffee about that time appears to sanction its soundness. Theoretically, too, we might expect this result; for digestion is then nearly over, and any food remaining in the stomach is already in a fluid state. Many objections, however, have been made to both tea and coffee as an evening beverage, but most of them seem to me to apply to their undue quantity and strength rather than to their temperate use. When made very strong, or taken in large quantity, especially late in the evening, they not only ruin the stomach, but very seriously derange the health of the brain and nervous system. The question of drink is of little importance as regards breakfast. During the night, the chief expenditure of the system--by perspiration, urine, and exhalation from the lungs--is of a fluid nature, and hence there is a marked and general preference of fluids as part of our first meal. In this country, accordingly, tea, coffee, and chocolate, are in almost universal use for breakfast, and no other liquid is required merely as drink. If, from the mode of life or other causes, thirst be excited in the forenoon, no valid objection can be urged against its moderate and reasonable gratification. The _temperature_ at which liquids are taken is a matter of perhaps greater consequence than it is usually considered. As regards the teeth, we have already seen that either very cold or very hot substances coming into contact with them are apt to be injurious. As regards the stomach, the same principle holds true; and when we consider the multitude and intricacy of its nervous connexions with other vital organs, we can scarcely be surprised at even sudden death being frequently caused by drinking ice-cold water when the body is weakened by profuse perspiration. Of the various subjects connected with digestion on which Dr Beaumont has thrown light by his experiments on St Martin, this is one of the few which he has omitted to investigate with his usual diligence and accuracy; a circumstance which is the more remarkable, because an incidental observation of his own seems, from its singularity, to have been well calculated to direct his attention to its consideration. On the occasion alluded to, when a gill of water, at the temperature of 55° Fahr., was received into the empty stomach, in which the thermometer previously indicated a heat of 99°, Dr Beaumont remarked that it immediately diffused itself over the interior surface, _and brought down the temperature to 70°_, at which it stood for a few minutes, and then began again to rise very slowly. _It was not till thirty minutes had elapsed, and all the water been for some time absorbed, that the mercury regained its former level of 99°._ This is an important fact, and it is curious that