ies, and various other articles.

EVACUATIONS. Few things are more conducive to health than keeping the
body regular, and paying attention to the common evacuations. A proper
medium between costiveness and laxness is highly desirable, and can only
be obtained by regularity in diet, sleep, and exercise. Irregularity in
eating and drinking disturbs every part of the animal economy, and never
fails to produce diseases. Too much or too little food will have this
effect: the former generally occasions looseness, and the latter
costiveness; and both have a tendency to injure health. Persons who have
frequent recourse to medicine for preventing costiveness, seldom fail to
ruin their constitution. They ought rather to remove the evil by diet
than by drugs, by avoiding every thing of a hot or binding nature, by
going thinly clothed, walking in the open air, and acquiring the habit
of a regular discharge by a stated visit to the place of retreat.
Habitual looseness is often owing to an obstructed perspiration: persons
thus afflicted should keep their feet warm, and wear flannel next the
skin. Their diet also should be of an astringent quality, and such as
tends to strengthen the bowels. For this purpose, fine bread, cheese,
eggs, rice milk, red wine, or brandy and water would be
proper.--Insensible perspiration is one of the principal discharges from
the human body, and is of such importance to health, that few diseases
attack us while it goes on properly; but when obstructed, the whole
frame is soon disordered, and danger meets us in every form. The common
cause of obstructed perspiration, or taking cold, is the sudden changes
of the weather; and the best means of fortifying the body is to be
abroad every day, and breathe freely in the open air. Much danger arises
from wet feet and wet clothes, and persons who are much abroad are
exposed to these things. The best way is to change wet clothes as soon
as possible, or to keep in motion till they be dry, but by no means to
sit or lie down. Early habits may indeed inure people to wet clothes and
wet feet without any danger, but persons of a delicate constitution
cannot be too careful. Perspiration is often obstructed by other means,
but it is in all cases attended with considerable danger. Sudden
transitions from heat to cold, drinking freely of cold water after being
heated with violent exercise, sitting near an open window when the room
is hot, plunging into cold water in a state