o be used when
the constitution is deranged; whereas, in general, those which are
pleasant, or mild tasted, are proper for nourishing the body. We are
therefore excited or prompted to receive nourishment by the pleasant
smell or taste of the food; but the avidity with which we take it
depends much on the state of the stomach, and likewise on a certain
inanition or emptiness; for the coarsest food is grateful to those
who are hungry, and whose digestion is good; whereas, to those who
have lately eaten, or whose digestive powers are impaired, the most
delicate food affords little pleasure. While we are eating, the
saliva flows into the mouth more copiously, which excites a more
acute sensation of taste. This flow of saliva is likewise frequently
excited by the smell or sight of substances agreeable to the taste,
which causes an appetite, or desire of eating, similar to that caused
by an accumulation of gastric juice in the stomach.

In brute animals, who have not, like ourselves, the advantage of
learning from each other by instruction, the faculty of taste is much
more acute, by which they are admonished to abstain from noxious or
unhealthy food. This sense, for the same reason, is more acute in
savages than in those who live in civiilsed society, which, whatever
perfection it gives to the reasoning faculties of man, certainly
diminishes the acuteness of all our senses, partly by affording fewer
inducements to exercise them, and partly by our manner of living, and
by the application of substances to the organs of sense, which tend
to vitiate them, and render them depraved.

Taste is modified by age, temperament, habit, and disease; and in
this it obeys the general laws of sensation. Children are pleased
with the taste of what is sweet, and little stimulating; as we
advance in years the taste of more stimulating substances becomes
agreeable to us; so that we are admonished by this sense to take into
the stomach the kind of nourishment fitted to each period of life. We
often, however, counteract this salutary monitor by depraving our
sense of taste, by the too free use of vinous or spirituous liquors,
which so far deadens the sense of taste, that sweet substances become
unpleasant, and nothing but acrid and stimulating things can make an
impression on our diminished and vitiated sense of taste.

This sense, as well as others, is liable to be diseased. In order
that the sense may be perfect, it is necessary that the memb