It must be clearly understood that some are not benefited in disease by slops, but when they take them, their fever and pain grow manifestly worse, and it is plain that what is taken proves nourishment and increase to the disease, but wears away and enfeebles the body. Any men who in this condition take dry food, barley-cake or bread, even though it be very little, will be hurt ten times more, and more obviously, than if they take slops, simply and solely because the food is too strong for their condition; and a man to whom slops are beneficial, but not solid food, will suffer much more harm if he eat more than if he eat little, though he will feel pain even if he eat little. Now all the causes of the pain can be reduced to one, namely, it is the strongest foods that hurt a man most and most obviously, whether he be well or ill.

What difference then can be seen between the purpose of him we call physician, who is an acknowledged handicraftsman, the discoverer of the mode of life and of the nourishment suitable for the sick, and his who discovered and prepared originally nourishment for all men, which we now use, instead of the old savage and brutish mode of living? My own view is that their reasoning was identical and the discovery one and the same. The one sought to do away with those things which, when taken, the constitution of man in health could not assimilate because of their brutish and uncompounded character, the other those things which the temporary condition of an individual prevented him from assimilating. How do the two pursuits differ, except in their scopeOr appearance. The two pursuits are really one, but they appear to a superficial observer to differ. and in that the latter is more complex and requires the greater application, while the former is the starting point and came first in time?

A consideration of the diet of the sick, as compared with that of men in health, would show that the diet of wild beasts and of animals generally is not more harmful, as compared with that of men in health.The text here is very uncertain; I have combined that of Littré with that of Kéhlewein so as to give a good sense: The diet of men in health is as injurious to the sick as the diet of wild beasts is to men in health. Take a man sick of a disease which is neither severe and desperate nor yet altogether mild, but likely to be pronounced under wrong treatment, and suppose that he resolved to eat bread, and meat, or any other food that is beneficial to men in health, not much of it, but far less than he could have taken had he been well; take again a man in health, with a constitution neither altogether weak nor altogether strong, and suppose he were to eat one of the foods that would be beneficial and strength-giving to an ox or a horse, vetches or barley or something similar, not much of it, but far less than he could take. If the man in health did this he would suffer no less pain and danger than that sick man who took bread or barley-cake at a time when he ought not. All this goes to prove that this art of medicine, if research be continued on the same method, can all be discovered.

If the matter were simple, as in these instances, and both sick and well were hurt by too strong foods, benefited and nourished by weaker foods, there would be no difficulty. For recourse to weaker food must have secured a great degree of safety. But as it is, if a man takes insufficient food, the mistake is as great as that of excess, and harms the man just as much. For abstinence has upon the human constitution a most powerful effect, to enervate, to weaken and to kill. Depletion produces many other evils, different from those of repletion, but just as severe. Wherefore the greater complexity of these ills requires a more exact method of treatment. For it is necessary to aim at some measure. But no measure, neither number nor weight, by reference to which knowledge can be made exact, can be found except bodily feeling. Wherefore it is laborious to make knowledge so exact that only small mistakes are made here and there. And that physician who makes only small mistakes would win my hearty praise. Perfectly exact truth is but rarely to be seen. For most physicians seem to me to be in the same case as bad pilots; the mistakes of the latter are unnoticed so long as they are steering in a calm, but, when a great storm overtakes them with a violent gale, all men realise clearly then that it is their ignorance and blundering which have lost the ship. So also when bad physicians, who comprise the great majority, treat men who are suffering from no serious complaint, so that the greatest blunders would not affect them seriously—such illnesses occur very often, being far more common than serious disease—they are not shown up in their true colours to laymen if their errors are confined to such cases; but when they meet with a severe, violent and dangerous illness, then it is that their errors and want of skill are manifest to all. The punishment of the impostor, whether sailor or doctor, is not postponed, but follows speedily.

That the discomforts a man feels after unseasonable abstinence are no less than those of unseasonable repletion, it were well to learn by a reference to men in health. For some of them benefit by taking one meal only each day, and because of this benefit they make a rule of having only one meal; others again, because of the same reason, that they are benefited thereby, take lunch also. Moreover some have adopted one or other of these two practices for the sake of pleasure or for some other chance reason. For the great majority of men can follow indifferently either the one habit or the other, and can take lunch or only one daily meal. Others again, if they were to do anything outside what is beneficial, would not get off easily, but if they change their respective ways for a single day, nay, for a part of a single day, they suffer excessive discomfort. Some, who lunch although lunch does not suit them, forthwith become heavy and sluggish in body and in mind, a prey to yawning, drowsiness and thirst; while, if they go on to eat dinner as well, flatulence follows with colic and violent diarrhœa. Many have found such action to result in a serious illness, even if the quantity of food they take twice a day be no greater than that which they have grown accustomed to digest once a day. On the other hand, if a man who has grown accustomed, and has found it beneficial, to take lunch, should miss taking it, he suffers, as soon as the lunch-hour is passed, from prostrating weakness, trembling and faintness. Hollowness of the eyes follows; urine becomes paler and hotter, and the mouth bitter; his bowels seem to hang; there come dizziness, depression and listlessness. Besides all this, when he attempts to dine, he has the following troubles: his food is less pleasant, and he cannot digest what formerly he used to dine on when he had lunch. The mere food, descending into the bowels with colic and noise, burns them, and disturbed sleep follows, accompanied by wild and troubled dreams. Many such sufferers also have found these symptoms the beginning of an illness.