A new and curious treatise of the nature and effects of simple earth, water, and air, when applied to the human body: how to live for many weeks, months, or years, without eating anything whatever / [James Graham].

  • James Graham
Date:
1793
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A new and curious treatise of the nature and effects of simple earth, water, and air, when applied to the human body: how to live for many weeks, months, or years, without eating anything whatever / [James Graham]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The more fimple the diet is, the better is the chyle ; for variety of meats and drink, doth beget various and divers fpirits, which have a condifl: amongft themfelves. By a moderate diet, the drength of the body is fupported, the. fpirits are more vigorous and aftive, humours attenuated, crudities and obftru<ftions prevented or opened, many infirmities checked and kept under; the fenfes preferred in their integrity, the ftomaeh clean, the appetite and digedion good, and the foul expanded, ele¬ vated and ferene. If you have as many aifeafes in your body, as a bill of mortality contains, this one receipt of temperance, abflinence, air, exercife, and'earth and water bathinS,will cure them all. The Caridians, by reafon of their fmgular temperance and fobrietv, are free from an infinite number cf indifpofitions whereunto other nations are fubjeft; nay, they are fo vigorous in the extremities of age, that when an hundred years old, they commonly beget chil¬ dren, and have no gray hairs. The prefent Egyptians, who are obferved (by Alpinus) to be the fatted men, and to have breads like women, owe much, as he con¬ ceives, unto the water of Nile, and their diet - rice, peafe, len¬ tils, and white cicers: and we read in Daniel, how pulfe and water made the four young men of the ^captivity, fairer in countenance* and tatter in flefh, than they which fared on the royal provlfion and wine from the king’s table. The Perfians, in their time the mod vigorous and the bed difci- plined people on earth, ate a little nafturtium, creffes, or wild mint, with their bread, and that was all the yiftuals that this brave nation ufed, when they made conqued of the world. The Thracian women, that they might bring forth drong and healthful children, ate nothing but milk and nettles. The Cynick in Athenaeus makes iterated courfes of Lentils, and prefers that diet before the luxury of Seleucus. But the oeconomy and order of living, and the feenes of human life are fince much changed ; if we live temperately, it is for ambi¬ tion, defign, and oftentation, not to ferve the intentions of nature. It is doried of Pope Sixtus, that before he arrived to that honour, he ate and drank nothing but bread and water, faying. Paw's & Aqua Bread and Water Eft Vita Beata. is a bluffed life. But having once feated himfelf in the porphyry chair he refufed to doop to fuch a coarfe fare when it was offered him, giving his reafon from the counterpofition of the words; • Aqua & Fanis I Water and Bread Eft Vita Cam's, j is the life of a Dog. Now a-days, indcad of water (which was the greated part of the drink in the Antediluvian world, and very congenial to the tem¬ per
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