stood, and since it has been ascertained that alvine evacuations are seldom proportioned to the quantity of ingested water, they have less insisted upon the necessity of immoderate drinking, and patients are in general desired not to overpass that degree of saturation, which borders on reluctance. Prodigious deeds are told of our vigorous ancestors, and good folks are inclined to consider the present moderate dose of seven or eight goblets, as a proof of the degeneracy of our species, of which Juvenal complained, about two thousand years ago, as having already commenced in Homer’s time:
Nam genus hoc vivo jam decrescebat Homero;
Terra malos homines nunc educat atque pusillos.
The fact is that patients offer very different capacities of swallowing and digesting mineral waters, as gluttons and drunkards beat sober people in eating, and in drinking wine or beer; and that we still see at Carlsbad individuals who would astonish their forefathers, if they saw them taking from thirty to fifty goblets as a daily portion. Such drinkers are rare, but they exist (Almanach for 1833, ch. IV). The capacity of our beakers being, since the middle of the eighteenth century, exactly the same (six ounces), our present observations are far more accurate than those of our predecessors, whose patients came to the wells, or drank at home, with all sorts of cups, so that we scarcely know now, when we read ancient authors, the size of their pocula, cyathi,
