the root of which is Hebrew, and imports to inebriate. To these aliments must be added butter, honey, olive oil, eggs, and cheese.CHAPTER II.
ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF THE EARLY WRITERS ON DIET, &c.
MODERN writers on diet have added very little to the store of general information. The best of them are mere theorists and inexperienced speculators, and for the most part servile copyists, detailing from month to month what has been vulgarly known for centuries. Moses, who may be said to be the first, and perhaps the only original writer on dietetics, in his history of the world, points out to us the different extensions which man has successively given to alimentary matter, in a very rational though rather irregular manner—obeying the law of necessity, but yielding too easily to the attraction of pleasure; feeding upon the fruits which the trees lavished upon them in a happy climate, then upon herbs and grain which he obtained from a soil more niggardly, as regards the price of his labour; milk from his cattle, and at last upon their flesh itself; again, causing vegetable juices to ferment, and extracting the liquor, which reanimates all his exhausted forces, though the abuse of it inebriates him, and deprives him of his reason; he shows us the length of human life, diminishing in proportion as new wants have been discovered; and the necessity of seeking his support from among one or the other kingdoms of nature, and among a great number of different substances, becoming more urgent, at the same time that his vitality diminishes; he shows us his constitution, once deteriorated by his faults, perpetuating in his race an hereditary weakness, and the excesses of fathers sealing destruction upon their posterity. In fine, the longevity of certain hermits who, returning to a vegetable life, and the most scrupulous sobriety, have exceeded the ordinary term of human life, and the famous and often quoted history of Cornaro, seems to demonstrate to us that, really, by exceeding the bounds of actual want, and by giving way to pleasure, man has evidently contributed to abridge the duration of his life.
Nature has attached pleasure to want; but one of those guides lead almost always farther than the other. Reason was given to us to make them agree; but the man who has once yielded to the seductive influence of pleasure, is not very apt to be correct in the measure of his reason; he has quitted the tree of life: this once done, he is no longer permitted to cull its fruits.
The emblems of Egypt, where Moses had been brought up and instructed, and the fables of Greece, present us with the same origins, and always the most simple vegetable regimen, characteristic of the first ages of the world; different preparatives afterward altering the simplicity of the first food and men, at length attempting the life of animals, to seek in their devoured members the support of his own.
According to Mackenzie,* the following is the order in which the various articles made use of as food for man succeeded each other in the first ages: fruits, grain, herbs, bread, milk, fish, flesh, wine, and beer. The latter, according to Herodotus, was invented by the Egyptians, and it seems already to have been pointed out by Moses, since, in several passages in Leviticus (x. 9,) and in Numbers (vi. 3), their legislator speaks of inebriating liquors, different from wine, and which are expressed in the Greek text of the Septuagint, by the word the root of which is Hebrew, and imports to inebriate. To these aliments must be added butter, honey, olive oil, eggs, and cheese.
These first inventions were speedily followed by more refined preparations, according as sensuality became awakened, or as want compelled to proportion the resistance of the aliments to the already weakened and diminished activity of the organs. It is thus that Hippocrates, with a learned and exact hand, points out to us, in his treatise on primitive medicine, the history of the successive perfections with regard to food, and shows us man, instructed as much by pain as pleasure, to choose, prepare, and metamorphose the substances which serve him for nourishment; thus discovering, by his own experience, the first elements of health and medicine. To be brief, by admitting, with Moses, the hereditary weakness of the bodies of men by the abuse of enjoyments, it is conceived that a nourishment, salutary at first, becomes afterward too gross for enervated organs: it is then that the sense of the evil finds out the measure and modifications of the regimen; for, says Hippocrates, you will find neither measure, balance, nor calculation to which you can more safely apply than to the very sensations which the body experiences.* What becomes now of our modern system-mongers, and diet inventors?
If these sensations had been sufficient for the establishment of dietetic rules, there had been no necessity for the interference of art. For, on the authority already quoted, where none are ignorant, and all instructed, either through custom or want, the title of artist can be applied to no one. Nevertheless, the wants and infirmities of men increasing, and tradition growing insufficient to collect and hand them down, art has formed itself, and become necessary. Hippocrates, in proof of his reality, quotes the example of the gymnastic physicians, who, every day, he says, make fresh observations upon the meats and drinks which are capable of affording more strength and vigour to the body.
But the study of diet had, even before the time of Hippocrates, been carried to a great extent; for Herodotus observes of the Egyptians, that having remarked that the greatest number of diseases proceeded from the abuse of food, they took care every month to consecrate three successive days to make themselves vomit, and cleanse themselves with clysters, to pursue and seize health.* This custom of emetics was used among the Romans, rather as a means of favouring gluttony than to preserve health; and it appears, in several passages of Hippocrates, that during his time, the Greeks occasionally resorted to mild means, in order to excite vomiting, and to clear out the stomach. But Herodotus, a judicious and observing man, after having noticed that the Egyptians were the most healthy people of Africa, attributes their advantage less to these customs than to the uniform temperature of the climate they inhabited, “where,” says he, “the seasons are not subject to any vicissitudes.” Notwithstanding all this, and although the regimen of Pythagoras, and the institutions of Lycurgus, had preceded, by a great number of years, the age of Hippocrates and Plato; although Iccus, a physician of Tarentum, had some years before recommended the union of gymnastics with the most sober regimen, to preserve health; although he had acquired sufficient reputation as to have applied to him the proverbial expression of Iccus’s meal, in allusion to its simplicity; Plato, however, does not less on this account attribute to Herodotus the invention of medical gymnastics, and Hippocrates assigns to himself the honour of having determined with exactitude the proportions of regimen, either for a state of health or disease. This appears in his first and second books ‘of the regimen of men in health,’ and in that entitled ‘of regimen in acute diseases.’ In the latter, Hippocrates, in his own words, says, that the ancients have written nothing on diet worthy of being mentioned, and they have passed over this important article in silence. In his first book on diet, he begins by exposing how much the labours of the ancients on this subject have left behind them untouched; and at the end of this preamble: I will make known that which none of those who have preceded me even undertook to demonstrate. He afterward more particularly attributes to himself the merit of having determined the times and signs which precede deranged health, and the means of preventing the consequences by respective proportions of food and exercise.
The elegant and judicious Celsus, in the first book of his works, treats of the regimen of strong, healthy, and robust people, and afterward lays down suitable rules to people of a weak and infirm constitution; and lastly, those dictated by the seasons, or which are useful under different circumstances of life. In the first chapter he lays down two remarkable rules, which it would be well for those to whom they are directed to observe. His general rule is, that the healthy and well-formed man ought not to confine himself to any invariable law—a very wise precept, and from which a proposition results worthy of remark, which some authors have very unseasonably censured, from not having considered the spirit of it generally. It is this:—Modò plus justo, modo non amplius assumere; sometimes to exceed the just measure of necessity, sometimes to restrict oneself to that measure. This is indeed the true meaning of the word justo. Sebigius has paid no attention to it, when he reproached Celsus with being the apostle of gluttons and drunkards. He is certain that the strict and defined law of want, is not made for those who enjoy robust health, but for those only who are under the necessity of watching rigorously over themselves; and Sanctorius has said nothing which Celsus has not himself said in the following chapter, when he made this reflection:* Celsi sententia non omnibus tutta est.
The precepts of Celsus are principally directed to regimen, and the choice of foods and drinks, the use of baths, the proportions and mutual relations of meals and labour; on dietetics, vomits (syrmaism), and gymnastic exercises.
Among other writers on aliment, from the time of Hippocrates down to Galen, may be added Xenocrates, who lived under the reign of Tiberius, and who wrote a treatise on fish, included in the treatise of Photius; but which contains few useful things. Dioscorides, who lived under Nero, has inserted in his work, among the medicaments of which the principal part consists, different articles upon food and condiments, and their properties: it is particularly in the second and fifth books, where these articles are found, the general merit of which is, at best, of a slender nature. It is not among the hygienic authors, that Cœlius Apicius must be classed, although he has made a collection of culinary receipts of his time. He lived under the reign of Trajan: but Pliny, the naturalist, who lived under Vespasian and Titus, has left a natural history of alimentary substances, the properties attributed to them, and the customs of the Romans at that time, which leaves curiosity scarcely any thing more to wish for; and the charms of his style, the philosophical and profound reflections, with which his work abounds, compensate for the errors of credulity, with which he is but justly too often reproached.
Galen, the most illustrious man after Hippocrates, has left three books on the properties of food:—one, on the aliments which form good or bad juices; one, on attenuating regimen; another, on the exercise, called the little ball, a kind of game analogous to that of tennis.
To proportion the rules of health to the different circumstances in which individuals may be placed, Galen divides people into three general classes: in the first, he places those who are naturally healthy, vigorous, and masters, in consequence of their circumstances, of the time and care necessary to be devoted to their health. In the second, those of a feeble and delicate constitution. The third class, contains those to whom indispensable business, public or private, does not permit them to eat, drink, or exercise themselves, at regular hours.
The most distinguished works of the latter period, on the subject of the preservation of health, through the medium of a well-regulated diet, are that of Cornaro, on the advantages of sobriety, and that of Mercurialis on the Gymnastics of the Ancients: to which also may be added, Chancellor Bacon’s treatise, entitled Historia Vitœ et Mortis.
Cornaro claims considerable attention, because his book is the result of his own experience; because he proves, that man, by studying himself, and having strength of mind enough to place himself above the seductions of pleasure, only to follow the laws of reason and necessity, may bring his constitution to perfection, and re-establish his organs, which have been weakened by intemperance; because he teaches us—what we are not sufficiently acquainted with,—the difference there is between the measure of want, and that of pleasure—how much we are the dupes of our own sensations—above all, since the art of disguising the gifts of nature has created artificial wants and factitious appetites; and has called by the name of hunger every sentiment that is not clogged with satiety—in fine, the history of Cornaro may be placed among the number of beautiful experiments which have been made, with a view to ascertain the fixity of health through the medium of diet; consequently, it has contributed most to establish the principles, and to concur in the progress of the art.
Leonard Lessius, a celebrated Jesuit, who lived about the end of the sixteenth century, before the death of Cornaro, struck with the force and beauty of his example, wrote a work on the same subject, which he closes with a list of all the men known, whose sobriety of life has led them beyond the ordinary limits of human life. His book is entitled Hygiasticon, seu vera ratio valetudinis bonœ.
But Lessius is not the only individual whom Cornaro’s example induced to write on the preservation of health; Thomas Philologus, of Ravenna, had already written a treatise, entitled De Vita Ultra annos centum et viginti propagandâ—Venice, 1553. He quotes a time, when at Venice, he had seen several of its senators, a hundred years of age, show themselves in public, surrounded by those marks of respect and veneration due to their patriarchal age, their dignities, and their virtues; and he attributes to debauchery and intemperance the paucity of similar examples. He was the first who declaimed against churchyards for the interment of dead bodies in towns.
Cardan, a man to whom nothing was wanting, but as much judgment as he possessed wit and learning, has also written four books on the preservation of health. In the three first he treats of aliments, in the fourth of old age; the example of Cornaro is the object of his admiration, and the basis of his precepts; he censures Galen, and adduces as a proof for the justness of his reproaches, that this celebrated physician died himself at the age of seventy-five. Another proof of the deficiency of the justness of his extraordinary mind is, that he condemns exercise as prejudicial to health; and that, by comparing the longevity of trees to the ordinary duration of animal life, he attributes the long life of the first to their immobility.
In the last class we must not omit, among the productions of this age, the treatise in six books upon gymnastics, of Jerome Mercurialis. The three first of these books treat of the different objects relative to exercises, and of the different kinds of exercise in use among the ancients; the three last, of the effects of those exercises, and their utility in fortifying the body and preserving health. It is difficult to combine in one individual more erudition, and a better judgment, than is to be met with in this author: Haller, nevertheless, reproaches him with being too partial to the ancients; and that he has not only said any thing absolutely as regards the exercise in use among the moderns, but that he has even censured riding among the inconveniences hurtful to health; doubtless, says Haller, because this exercise was not among the number of those in which the ancients delighted.
It is towards the end of the period of which we are now speaking, that the treatise written by Bacon, entitled Historia Vitœ et Mortis, must be placed. His object is to find out the causes of natural death, and thereby to discover the means of prolonging, as much as possible, the ordinary term of human life.
The living man is continually losing, and continually repairing, the loss he sustains. In other words, the constituent parts of the living body are continually on the decay, and a variety of causes are incessantly carrying them off; several of its organs are constantly engaged in separating humours which pass off loaded with a part of its substance, consumed by the uniting action of air and caloric; while internal friction, by a pulsatory motion, detaches its particles. In this manner the animal machine is continually being destroyed; and, perhaps, at distant periods of life, it does not contain a single particle of the same constituent parts. But this reparative faculty becomes exhausted, and man dies. To diminish the activity of the causes which dissipate, attenuate, and destroy, to maintain the faculty which repairs, to soften and render pliable the parts whose inclination is opposed to the effects of the reparative faculty, would be the means of prolonging human life as much as the organization of our bodies would permit. It was on these simple ideas that the illustrious Bacon established plans of investigation worthy of meditation, and which may still, in our own time, furnish great and important subjects for reflection.
Bacon, in the greater part of the subjects which he has treated, has rarely put his own hand to the work; where he has not always showed extensive views, plans, or research, fertile in consequences, a great divestment of prejudices and ideas accredited by habit, a continual call to experience, a constant application to stick to nature, and to her alone for guide. He was truly a great man, and placed, in the order of time, between the revival of letters and that of the first progress of the physical sciences, he seems to have made his appearance to put an end at once to that barren admiration in which the ancients were held, and to cause the study of nature to succeed that of books, and to add to the riches reconquered by the patient scrutators of antiquity, the still more fertile products of an active observation, and an indefatigable experience.
At this time the circulation of the blood was not discovered; they had not learned to weigh the air, nor was any thing concerning the phenomena of the barometer known; the thermometer was not invented, and the means of experiment, imperfect and incorrect, only left for curious man to study nature, and appreciate its phenomena, the chance of hitting upon them, without any appearance of the power to submit them to observation and calculation.
Sanctorius made his appearance, and already he had conceived the first idea of a thermometer: that of a fixed point, from whence its gradation might commence, and from the application of this instrument to the examination of febrile heat. But that which rendered his name immortal was, the fine series of experiments which he made upon the insensible perspiration, which he conceived to exist, with as much genius, as he employed patience to execute it. He was the first who thought of comparing with the food taken in, the quantity of excrementitious matter evacuated, and to make a comparative estimate of them by weight, by weighing his own body under different circumstances relative to evacuations and meals; by which means, he correctly ascertained the quantity which escaped through the medium of insensible perspiration.
Sanctorius does not give the detail of his experiments. He only presents their results, which do not all appear exact, as have since been demonstrated by more recent experimenters.
With respect to the progress of public health in the theory of diet, there necessarily results from the improved knowledge of man, and from that of the things whose influence he may have experienced, knowledge worthy of farther cultivation.
Arbuthnot, and other authors, have produced very extensive works on diet, in which, if we except the first mentioned, there is more display of learning than real physical knowledge; such, for instance, are the treatises of Pisanelli, Nonnius, Melchior Sebiz: they are all, nevertheless, valuable, as uniting in one point of view, the labours of the ancients, and in making their doctrine well known. Others, such as that of Arbuthnot, with less prolix learning, present explanations too often wide of the truth, chemical knowledge of his time, and particularly analyses by fire: there is, nevertheless, a philosophical order in them, and well-regulated practical observations, which bespeak a wise and judicious mind. Chemistry, however, at length, by developing more simple means of analysis, facilitated still more the examination of animal and vegetable bodies, and the comparison of their distinctive qualities. It was then that all that was capable of being correctly made known on the peculiar nature of alimentary substances, on the varieties of aliment they contain, on the nature of mucous bodies, considered as mucilaginous, in saccharine substances, in fermentable juices, gelatinous matter, animal as well as vegetable, has been collected with equal judgment and learning, by the celebrated Lorry, in his treatise on diet.
Cullen, at the commencement of his Materia Medica, has likewise bestowed some excellent considerations upon different parts of alimentary matter.
It would be an unpardonable omission here not to mention, among the number of men whose works have eminently contributed to the perfection of eating and drinking, the name of Parmentier, whose labours, constantly directed to the public good, have made known the nature and use of many nutritive substances, particularly those of the farinaceous kind, and rescued from unmerited contempt one of the most abundant and useful articles of food, and which constitutes not only a general blessing to the poor of all countries, but a nutritive and wholesome source of dependence during times of scarcity,—we allude to the potato.
Botany, by the correctness of its descriptions, has taught us to distinguish useful aliment and agreeable seasoning, from the destructive poison, in a class of aliments too much sought after; and the observations of Paulet and Bulliard. on mushrooms and poisonous plants, ought not to be passed over without honourable mention. Nor should we forget to associate with these industrious and meritorious names those who, by their labours, have enlightened their fellow-citizens, by warning them against the dangers by which they are too often threatened, and which have called forth prohibitory laws against the use of vessels and utensils of copper and lead, under circumstances where those culinary articles are liable to be attacked by the alimentary matter which they are destined to contain, and thus be the means of conveying destructive germs into the system, under the deceitful external appearance of a salubrious nourishment and that of an agreeable fluid. The essays of Xavier, on this subject, have attracted particular attention from the medical chemists, by multiplying the means of recognising and destroying a perfidious enemy. The recent experiments of the French and other chemists, have taught us also the limits that ought to be observed between the useful and destructive properties of vegetable, mineral, and animal substances, not only as regards their medical, but likewise their dietetical properties.
And lastly, the eye of the anatomist directs itself successively over every animal, and comparing their structure with that of man, places upon a parallel all the systems which compose the apparatus of their life. From man even to the zoophytes, Cuvier, the French naturalist, has investigated and developed the structure of the viscera, the dispositions of the nervous and muscular systems. He demonstrates in what order of animals the nutritive liquid circulates by the contractile power of the heart and arteries, and is carried from the centre to the extremities and the surfaces, in order to be returned afterward towards the centre: in others, the same liquid, only stagnated in the interval of the viscera, appears to be stationary, and bathes the parts which it cannot nourish by moistening them. In the one and the other, he unfolds the structure of the organs by which the atmospherical fluid or ambient air, is made subservient to the mechanism of actual respiration; he shows us the universality of the respiratory function, superior even to that of the circulating one, and consequently with nutrition. Thus, the first object of the organization of living beings—the support of life—is seen, which, however simple or complicated its mechanism may be, always reduces itself to a single problem—that of placing in one perpetual relation the ambient fluid with the alimentary juice.
* Hist, of Preserving Health.
* Lib. c. Edit. Vander-Linden, sect. xvi.
* Euterp. sect. 77. Edit. Glascou.
* Sect. iii. Aph, 42. This sentence of Celsus is not safe for every one.