eater relish by one who employs himself
in some rational pursuit, and only resorts to such amusements as a
relaxation, than by one who makes these amusements a business.

From the view we have taken of these complaints, it is evident, that
they are like other general diseases of the sthenic, or asthenic
kind; they seem to constitute a state of the body between
predisposition and disease; and they differ from most diseases in
this, that in most complaints the increase, or diminution of the
excitement is unequal in different parts of the body, and this gives
rise to the different forms of disease; but in nervous complaints the
excitement seems much more equably affected in different parts. These
complaints, as we have seen, may be divided into three classes;
sthenic; those of accumulated excitability; and those of exhausted
excitability: but though they are evidently distinguishable in this
manner, and require different modes of cure, I have never seen any
account of more than one kind in any medical writer: the same
remedies were prescribed for all, however different they might be.

Though medicines may relieve complaints of this kind, and
particularly those of the second class, yet from what has been said,
it must be evident, that much more may be done by regulating the
action of the common exciting powers. Indeed, this is the case in
most chronic diseases. Exercise and temperance will do infinitely
more than medicine. By their means, most diseases may be overcome;
but without them we may administer drugs as long as we please.

Voltaire sets this advice, which I have frequently inculcated, in so
strong a light, that it may perhaps carry more conviction than any
thing I can say. Ogul was a voluptuary, ambitious of nothing but good
living: he thought that God had sent him into the world for no other
purpose than to eat and drink: his physician, who had but little
credit with him, when he had a good digestion, governed him with
despotic sway, when he had eaten too much.

On feeling himself much and seriously indisposed by indolence and
intemperance, he requested to know what he was to do, and the doctor
ordered him to eat a basilisk, stewed in rose water, which he
asserted would effect a complete cure. His slaves searched in vain
for a basilisk; at last they met with Zadig, who was introduced to
this mighty lord, and spoke to him in the following terms.

"May immortal health descend from Heaven to bless all thy days!