hia.

I will answer your questions, numerically, from my knowledge of a case
somewhat in point, and with which I am but too familiar, as it is my
own. But, first, let me premise a few points in the history of my
health, as a kind of key to my answers.

It is about fifteen years since I was called a _dyspeptic_; this was
while engaged in my academical studies. Not being instructed by my
medical friend to make any alteration in diet and regimen, I merely
swallowed his cathartics for one month, and his anodynes for the next
month, as the bowels were constipated or relaxed. In short, I left
college more dead than alive--a confirmed dyspeptic.

In 1826, I commenced the practice of physic. From this time, to the
winter of 1831-2, I found it necessary gradually to diminish my
indulgence in the luxuries of the table--especially in animal food, and
distilled and fermented liquors. On one of the most inclement nights of
the winter of 1831-2, a fire broke out in our village, at which I became
very wet by perspiration, and the ill-directed efforts of some to
extinguish it. This was followed by a severe inflammatory attack upon
the digestive organs generally, and especially upon the renal region,
which confined me to the house for more than eight months; and, for the
greatest share of that time, with the most excruciating torture. On
getting out again, I found myself in a wretched condition
indeed--reduced to a skeleton--a voracious appetite, which could not be
indulged, and which had scarcely deserted me through the whole eight
months. I could not regain my flesh or strength but by almost
imperceptible degrees; indeed, loaf-sugar and crackers were almost the
only food I could use with impunity for the first year.

It is now nearly four years since I have eaten animal food, unless it be
here and there a little, as an experiment, with the sole exception of
oysters, in which I can indulge, but with all due deference to the
stricter rules of temperance. Still my appetite for animal food seems
unabated. I have ever been a man unusually temperate in the use of
intoxicating drinks; and by no means intemperate in the luxuries of the
table. I take no meat, no alcoholic or fermented drinks, not even cider;
and, for a year past, my health has been better than for three years
previous; and I think that about one third the amount of nourishment
usually taken by men of my age, might subserve the purposes of food for
_me_ better than a larger