“The time of sleep (says Mr. Lewis, with great reason) is that of nutrition, and not of digestion.” Accordingly he requires of his patients the greatest severity as to their supper: he prohibits to them, and never was a juster prohibition, all flesh-meats at that meal; he allows them nothing but a little milk, and some bread sippets, and that two hours before they go to bed that the first digestion may be over before they lie down to sleep. The Atlantics, who were strangers to an animal diet, and who never ate any thing that had life, were famous for the tranquillity of their sleep, and hardly so much as knew what dreams were.
MOTION.
Exercise is a point of absolute necessity. To the weak it is a pain to take it; and if they have any inclination to melancholy or dejection of spirit, it is not easy to determine them to motion; and yet nothing is more apt to augment all the evils that proceed from weakness, than inactivity; the fibres of the stomach, of the intestines, of the vessels, are lax; the humors every where stagnate, because the solids have no longer the strength to impress on them the necessary motion: thence are generated lodgments of matter, choaked up passages, obstructions, extravasations; coction, nutrition, the secretions, do not proceed; the blood remains aqueous, the strength diminishes, and all the symptoms of the disorder increase. Exercise prevents all these evils, by augmenting the force of the circulation; all the functions execute themselves as if there existed in the body a real strength for it, and this regularity of the functions does not fail soon to give it, so that the effect of motion is to supplement the vital forces, and to restore them. Another of its advantages, independent of the augmentation of circulation, is its enabling one to enjoy an air always new. A person that does not stir, soon corrupts the air which surrounds him, and becomes noxious to him: whereas a person in action is continually changing it. Motion may often supply the place of remedies, but all the remedies in the world cannot supply the place of motion.
The fatigue of the first days of attempting it, is a rock against which the faint heart of many of the sick is apt to split; but if they had the courage to conquer this first obstacle, they would soon be experimentally sensible, that to this case especially it is that that proverbial saying is truly applicable, Il n’y a que les premiers pas qui coûtent: “It is only the first steps that are hard to take.” I have been myself astonished at seeing to what a degree those who had not been disheartened at the first, acquired strength by exercise. I have seen persons fatigued with one turn in a garden, arrive, in a few weeks, at being able to take a walk two leagues, and be the better after it.
The exercise of walking on foot is not the only favorable one. For persons extremely weak, for such as have a complaint of their bowels or breast, riding on horseback is even better: but in a still greater weakness, the motion of a carriage, if not too easy an one, is preferable. When the weather does not allow of going out, some means of motions should be contrived, in the house, some not too laborious occupation, or some exercise of play; such, for example, as the battledore and shuttle-cock, which diffuses through the whole body an equable motion.
A return of appetite, of sleep, of chearfulness, are the necessary consequences of motion; but the precaution should be observed, of not taking any thing of a violent motion immediately after a meal, and not to eat while warm from exercise; which should be taken before a meal, with allowance of some moments of rest before the sitting down to it.
EVACUATIONS.
The evacuations are apt to be disordered along with the other functions, and their disorder increases that of the whole machine; it is then of importance to give attention thereto, in order to the earliest remedy. The evacuations which principally require observation are, the stools, the urines, the perspiration, and the saliva. The best way to keep them in due order, or to bring them to the point at which they ought to be at, is to govern one’s self by those precepts which I have laid down on the other objects of regimen: when those are heedfully attended to in practice, the evacuations, whose greater or the less regularity is the barometer of the better or worse state of digestions, proceed regularly enough. That evacuation which it is of the most importance to favor, as being the most considerable, is perspiration, which very easily goes out of order, in weak persons. It may be aided by having the skin very regularly rubbed with a flesh-brush, or a flannel; but when it is very languishing indeed, there is not a surer way to restore it, than to put the whole body immediately into woollen covering. And yet care should be taken to avoid too warm a dress, for fear of sweating, which is always detrimental to perspiration; the forced strainers remain the weaker, and perform their functions the worse: too cool a dress is also to be shunned, as that is an enemy equally to all cutaneous evacuations. The part which every person, and especially the weak, ought to keep the warmest, is the feet. This easy precaution would never be neglected, if the importance of it to the preservation of the whole machine was sufficiently known. Frequent catching cold of the feet disposes to the most terrible chronical diseases. There are many on whom it immediately produces bad effects. But those especially who are subject to disorders of the breast, to cholics, or to obstructions, cannot too much guard against these dangers. Those priests who used to walk bare-footed on the pavement of the temples were often attacked with violent cholics.
The saliva often is an over abundant secretion in weak persons; which is owing to a relaxation of the salivary organs. Now if the patients spit out continually this saliva, thence result two evils; the one, that they exhaust themselves by this evacuation; the other, that this humor, so necessary to the work of digestion, which without it operates but imperfectly, fails, and thereby renders it laborious and defective. I have already sufficiently explained myself on the dangers of a bad digestion, not to need here much insistence on those incident to an evacuation, on which the digestion so essentially depends. For this reason it is that Mr. Lewis forbids smoaking to his patients. Smoaking, among its other inconveniences, disposes to an abundant salivation, by the irritation it produces on the glands which furnish this secretion.
Might not the inhalation from one person to another, which I have precedently mentioned, be here recalled to mind as one of the means of cure? Capivaccio had judged it of use to the person under his care, that should lie between the two nurses that suckled him; and it is very probable that the inhalation of their atmosphere contributed perhaps as much as their milk to restore his strength.