Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/182

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CORPULENCE, DIET, AND SLEEP.
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ishment I consider to be worth seven thousand pounds sterling. It occurred to me that I must, by my voracity, have starved to death nearly one hundred persons! This is a frightful calculation, but irresistibly true; and I think, dear Murray, your wagons would require an additional horse each!"

Says Shelley, the poet:—

"On a natural system of diet, old age would be our last and our only malady; the term of our existence would be protracted; we would enjoy life, and no longer preclude others from the enjoyment of it; all sensational delights would be infinitely more exquisite and perfect; the very sense of being would then be a continued pleasure, such as we now feel it in some few and favored moments of our youth. By all that is sacred in our hopes for the human race, I conjure those who love happiness and truth to give a fair trial to the vegetable system. Reasoning is surely superfluous on a subject whose merits an experience of six months would set forever at rest."


    chicken soup, stewed oysters, beef, mutton, veal, ham, eggs in any form, game, poultry, and fish of all kinds, onions, celery, cresses, cabbage, tomatoes, radishes, squash, turnips, stale bread sparingly, toast sparingly, gluten biscuit, only three ounces of breadstuff per day. Grapes and oranges are allowed. As much water as the system needs should be indulged. On this point no rule can be given. Some people suffering from obesity drink but very little water, less, even, than they actually need. They should drink more freely. On the other hand, the obese person who makes it a habit of drinking several quarts of water a day should lessen the quantity considerably. Tea or coffee without milk or sugar is allowed. Sour wines may be taken occasionally, but sweet wines are prohibited. If digestion is reasonably good, none of the articles advised in the fore-