Kentucky Gazette

TEMPERANCE IN FOOD.

The position that temperance in food promotes clearness and vigor of intellect, requires only an appeal to the laws of physiology and the experience of mankind to demonstrate it. 'If the functions of the brain be not in a healthy and vigorous state, equally unhealthy and inefficient must be those of the mind. Now there is no organ of the body so easily affected by irregularity and difficulty of digestion as the brain. Excess in food, therefore operates directly to cloud and impede the movements of the intellect. This is so well understood by literary men generally, that they never attempt any difficult investigations, nor powerful mental efforts, soon after a hearty meal. Few however, are aware, that even slight excesses at the table, produce permanent depression and stupor of the mind. But where such excess is habitual, no elasticity of the mental powers is sufficient wholly to free them from the incubus that bestrides them. Like the overloaded bodily organs, the mind is gradually more and more weakened, until great efforts are out of the question, and the whole physical & intellectual constitution sinks into premature imbecility. But rarely is a man aware of the difficulty under which he labors, until he ceases to overload his stomach:-then he finds such a buoyancy, clearness, and vigor of mind to be the result, as to astonish and delight, while at the same time it mortifies him, to find how long his nobler part has been made the slave of his animal nature. Most strikingly coincident with these views, has been the history of intellectual greatness in every age. The Philosophers of ancient times were illustrious examples of temperance. In modern times, also, the princes of the intellectual world have almost all belonged to the sacred band.