Viewed, then, in its proper light, appetite is to be regarded as kindly implanted in our nature for the express end of proportioning the supply of nourishment to the wants of the system; and if ever it misleads us, the fault is not in its unfitness for its object, but in the artificial training which it receives at our own hands, and in our habitual neglect of its dictates. When we attend to its real indications, we eat moderately, and at such intervals of time as the previous exercise and other circumstances render necessary; and in so doing, we reap a reward in the daily enjoyment of the pleasure which attends the gratification of healthy appetite. But if we err, either by neglecting the timely warning which it gives, or by eating more than the system requires, mischief is sure to follow. In the former case, waste continues to make progress till the body becomes exhausted; and in almost exact proportion do the cravings of appetite become more and more intense, till they pass into those of uncontrollable _hunger_, which overthrows all obstacles, and seeks gratification at the risk of life itself. In the latter case, indigestion, gloomy depression, and repletion with its concomitant evils, make their appearance, and either embitter or cut short existence. Mischief sometimes arises also from people not being sufficiently aware that, in common with other sensations, appetite may be so far deranged by disease as to give very incorrect and unnatural indications. It often happens, for example, that a patient shivers and complains of cold, when we know by the thermometer that the heat of the skin is really above instead of below the natural standard. In like manner, in some morbid states of the nervous system a craving is often felt which impels the patient to eat, but which is not true hunger; and here food, if taken, is digested with great difficulty. Occasionally, on the other hand, no desire for food is experienced when the system really needs it, and when it would be digested with ease if introduced into the stomach. Esquirol alludes to cases of this description, and I have met with similar examples. Voison also mentions, that, in the Hospital of Incurables in Paris, there are some idiots so low in the scale of intelligence, as to make no attempt to take the food which is placed before them, although they eat and digest readily when fed by others. Sometimes, again, appetite is depraved in quality, and the patient desiderates the most nauseous and repulsive kinds of food, such as earth, chalk, coals, or excrement. There are states, too, in which the appetite is prodigiously increased, and the patient consumes incredible quantities of food,--which, however, are very imperfectly digested. Charles Domery, for instance, when a French prisoner at Liverpool, consumed, in one day, four pounds of cow’s udder and ten pounds of raw beef, with two pounds of tallow candles and five bottles of porter; and although allowed the daily rations of ten men he was