Philanthropist

Intemperance.

It is said of Diogenes, that meeting a young man who was going to a feast, he took him up in the street, and carried him home to his friends, as one who was running into imminent danger, had he not prevented him. What would that philosopher have said, had he been present at the gluttony of a modern meal? Would he not have thought the master of a family mad, and have begged his servants to tie down his hands, had he seen him devour fowl, fish, and flesh; swallow oil and vinegar, wines and spices; throw down salads of twenty different herbs, sauces of a hundred ingredients, confections and fruits of numberless sweets and flavors? What unnatural motions and counterferments must such a medley of intemperance produce in the body! For my own part, when I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable distempers, lying in ambush amongst the dishes.