[67] Broussais divides inflammatory dyspepsia into five parts or acts. That Leach of leeches, whose word once passed for more than it was worth, came at last to see himself and his sangsues utterly abandoned, and to have the mortification of lecturing in his old age to empty benches. “Quantum mutatus ab illo” of less than twenty years before, and who had been the cause of as much innocent bloodshedding as Napoleon himself, and used to kill his patients that his leeches might be fed!
[68] “Fungus qualiscunque sit semper malignus.”—Kirker, Lib. de Pest.
[69] “Apage ergo perniciosa isthæc gulæ blandimenta.”
[70] “Quot colores tot dolores, quot species tot pernicies.”
[71] M. Roques gives at the end of his treatise on funguses a long list of his mycophilous friends, including in the number many of the most eminent medical men of the French capital—if medical men are more careful of what they eat than their neighbours, which, however, is exceedingly doubtful.
[72] “To eat raw mushrooms” was a proverbial expression among the Greeks, as is shown by the passage which Athenæus quotes out of a play of Antiphanes, called the ‘Proverbs’:—Ἔγω γάρ ἂν τῶν ὑμετέρων φάγοιμί τι, μύκητας ὠμοὺς αὔτικ’ ἂν φαγεῖν δοκάω.
[73] Those who themselves know better, smile to read such passages as the following, which is to be found in old Gerard’s ‘Herbal’:—“Galen affirms that they (i. e. funguses) are all very cold and moist, and therefore do approach unto a venomous and mothering facultie, and engender a clammy and pituitous nutriment; if eaten, therefore, I give my advice unto those that love such strange and new-fangled meates, to beware of licking honey among thorns, lest the sweetnesse of the one do not countervaille the sharpnesse and pricking of the other.”
[74] A life of labour, no doubt, will make the sorriest fare sit more lightly on the healthy stomach, than the most dainty viands which have been received into an organ that is weakened and goaded by a life of dissipation and excess; but this does not prove sorry fare to be more wholesome than that of a richer kind. No! Dyspepsia is a disease of the rich; not because they live upon the fat of the land, but plainly because they indulge in too large a quantity at a meal. Let the peasant and the lord change places for a week; place the healthy rustic at the rich man’s table, and Dives again at the other board, what would be the results to both? Would not the poor man, think you, find indigestion in ragoût, fricassees, truffles, with light wine ad libitum to drink with them? and would not the rich man find that the fat pork and hard beer were worse poison than any of the made-dishes, against which he has been so lavish in his blame? In general, no doubt, to be “the happiest of mortals—to digest well” (Voltaire), men should look more to the quantum and less to the quale of what they eat; but they should pay some attention to this too.
[75] Ἢν δὲ πάντα ὅμοια ποιήσῃ οὐκ ἔχει τέρψιν. Π.Δ. Α. 10.
[76] That I did not always hold such an opinion as the above, to which I have since given in my adhesion, the following ode to Eupepsia, written in the days of theoretical inexperience, will sufficiently testify. I am now convinced that Hippocrates was right!—