was, in 1800, for believing that all drinks but water would be laid aside in the progress of the century which is now passing. FOOTNOTES: [3] See a more recent letter from Dr. Harden, in the next chapter. [4] Besides, it is worthy of notice, that Dr. Preston did not long survive on his own plan. He died about the year 1840. CHAPTER IV. ADDITIONAL INTELLIGENCE. Letter from Dr. H. A. Barrows.--Dr. J. M. B. Harden.--Dr. J. Porter.--Dr. N. J. Knight.--Dr. Lester Keep.--Second letter from Dr. Keep.--Dr. Henry H. Brown.--Dr. Franklin Knox.--From a Physician.--Additional statements by the Author. During the years 1837 and 1838 I wrote to several of the physicians whose names, experiments, and facts appear in Chapter II. Their answers, so far as received, are now to be presented. I have also received interesting letters from several other physicians in New England and elsewhere--but particularly in New England--on the same general subject, which, with an additional statement of my own case, I have added to the foregoing. I might have added a hundred authentic cases, of similar import. I might also have obtained an additional amount of the same sort of intelligence, had it not been for the want of time, amid numerous other pressing avocations, for correspondence of this kind. Besides, if what I have obtained is not satisfactory, I have many doubts whether more would be so. The first letter I shall insert is from Dr. H. A. Barrows, of Phillips, in Maine. It is dated October 10, 1837, and may be considered as a sequel to that written by him to Dr. North, though it is addressed to the author of this volume. LETTER I.--FROM DR. H. A. BARROWS. DEAR SIR,--As to food, my course of living has been quite uniform for the last two or three years--principally as follows. Wheat meal bread, potatoes, butter, and baked sweet apples for breakfast and dinners; for suppers, old dry flour bread, which, eaten very leisurely without butter, sauce, or drink, sits the lightest and best of any thing I eat. But I cannot make this my principal diet, because the bowels will not act (_without physic_) unless they have the spur of wheat bran two thirds of the time. I have at times practiced going to bed without any third meal; and have found myself amply rewarded for this kind of fasting, and the consequent respite thereby afforded the stomach, in quiet sleep and improved condition the next day. And as to drink, I still use cold water, which I take with as great a zest, and as keen a relish, as the inebriate does his stimulus. I seldom drink any thing with my meals; and if I could live without drinking any thing between meals, I think I should be rid of the principal "thorn in my side," the acetous fermentation so constantly going on in my epigastric storehouse.