Experience has taught me to believe that, these human beans are the most insidious enemies man, with a tendency to corpulence in advanced life, can possess, though eminently friendly to youth.
Few men have led a more active life - bodily or mentally - from a constitutional anxiety for regularity, precision, and order, during fifty years' business career, from which I had retired.
For the sake of argument and illustration I will presume that certain articles of ordinary diet, however beneficial in youth, are prejudicial in advanced life, like beans to a horse, whose common ordinary food is hay and corn.
I am now in that happy comfortable state that I do not hesitate to indulge in any fancy in regard to diet, but watch the consequences, and do not continue any course which adds to weight or bulk and consequent discomfort.
I am fully persuaded that thousands of our fellow-men might profit equally by a similar course to mine; but, constitutions not being all alike, a different course of treatment may be advisable for the removal of so tormenting an affliction.
For nightcap, if required, A tumbler of grog - (gin, whisky, or brandy, without sugar) - or a glass or two of claret or sherry.
He soon afterwards died, and, as the tendency to corpulence remained, I consulted other high orthodox authorities (never any inferior adviser), but all in vain.