JOHN ARMSTRONG, a physician and poet, was superior merit. Its topics are judiciously chosen born about 1709 at Castleton in Roxburghshire, from all those which can add grace or beauty to a where his father was the parish minister. He was difficult subject; and as he was naturally gifted brought up to the medical profession, which he with a musical ear, his lines are scarcely ever harsh. studied at the university of Edinburgh, where he In 1760 Dr. Armstrong had interest enough to took his degrees. He settled in London in the double obtain the appointment of physician to the army in capacity of physician and man of letters, and he Germany, which he retained till its return. He then rendered himself known by writings in each. In resumed his practice in London; but his habits and 1744 his capital work, the didactic poem entitled manners opposed an insurmountable bar against The Art of preserving Health," made its appear-popular success. He possessed undoubted abilities, ance, and raised his literary reputation to a height but a morbid sensibility preyed on his temper, and which his subsequent publications scarcely sustained. his intellectual efforts were damped by a languid It has therefore been selected for this work; and it listlessness. He died in September, 1779, leaving may be affirmed, that of the class to which it be- considerable savings from a very moderate income. longs, scarcely any English performance can claim
ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book I. AIR.
DAUGHTER of Pæon, queen of every joy, Hygeia; whose indulgent smile sustains The various race luxuriant Nature pours, And on th' immortal essences bestows Immortal youth; auspicious, O descend! Thou cheerful guardian of the rolling year, Whether thou wanton'st on the western gale Or shak'st the rigid pinions of the North, Diffusest life and vigor through the tracts Of air, through earth, and ocean's deep domain. When through the blue serenity of Heaven Thy power approaches, all the wasteful host Of Pain and Sickness, squalid and deform'd, Confounded sink into the lothesome gloom, Where in deep Erebus involv'd the Fiends Grow more profane. Whatever shapes of death, Shook from the hideous chambers of the globe, Swarm through the shuddering air: whatever plagues Or meagre famine breeds, or with slow wings Rise from the putrid wat'ry element, 'The damp waste forest, motionless and rank, That smothers earth, and all the breathless Or the vile carnage of th' inhuman field; Whatever baneful breathes the rotten South; Whatever ills th' extremes or sudden change Of cold and hot, or moist and dry, produce;
They fly thy pure effulgence: they and all The secret poisons of avenging Heaven, And all the pale tribes halting in the train Of Vice and heedless Pleasure: or if aught The comet's glare amid the burning sky, Mournful eclipse, or planets ill combin'd, Portend disastrous to the vital world; Thy salutary power averts their rage, Averts the general bane: and but for thee Nature would sicken, nature soon would die. Without thy cheerful active energy No rapture swells the breast, no poet sings, No more the maids of Helicon delight. Come then with me, O goddess, heav'nly gay' Begin the song; and let it sweetly flow,
And let it wisely teach thy wholesome laws: How best the fickle fabric to support
Of mortal man; in healthful body how A healthful mind the longest to maintain." "Tis hard, in such a strife of rules, to choose The best, and those of most extensive use; Harder in clear and animated song Dry philosophic precepts to convey. Yet with thy aid the secret wilds I trace Of Nature, and with daring steps proceed Through paths the Muses never trod before.
Nor should I wander doubtful of my way, winds,Had I the lights of that sagacious mind
* Hygeia, the goddess of health, was, according to the genealogy of the heathen deities, the daughter of Escu'apius; who, as well as Apollo, was distinguished by the naine of Pron.
Which taught to check the pestilential fire, And quell the deadly Python of the Nile. O thou belov'd by all the graceful arts, Thou long the fav'rite of the healing powers, Indulge, O Mead! a well-design'd essay, Howe'er imperfect: and permit that I My little knowledge with my country share, Till you the rich Asclepian stores unlock, And with new graces dignify the theme.
Ye who aid this feverish world would wear A body free of pain, of cares a inind; Fly the rank city, shun its turbid air; Breathe not the chaos of eternal smoke And volatile corruption, from the dead, The dying, sick'ning, and the living world Exhal'd, to sully Heaven's transparent dome With dim mortality. It is not air
That from a thousand lungs reeks back to thine, Sated with exhalations rank and fell, The spoil of dunghills, and the putrid thaw Of nature; when from shape and texture she Relapses into fighting elements:
It is not air, but floats a nauseous mass Of all obscene, corrupt, offensive things. Much moisture hurts; but here a sordid bath, With oily rancor fraught, relaxes more The solid frame than simple moisture can. Besides, immur'd in many a sullen bay That never felt the freshness of the breeze, This slumb'ring deep remains, and ranker grows With sickly rest: and (though the lungs abhor To drink the dun fuliginous abyss) Did not the acid vigor of the mine, Roll'd from so many thundering chimneys, tame The putrid steams that overswarm the sky; This caustic venom would perhaps corrode Those tender cells that draw the vital air, In vain with all the unctuous rills bedew'd; Or by the drunken venous tubes, that yawn In countless pores o'er all the pervious skin Imbib'd, would poison the balsamic blood, And rouse the heart to every fever's rage. While yet you breathe, away; the rural wilds Invite; the mountains call you, and the vales; The woods, the streams, and each ambrosial breeze That fans the ever-undulating sky;
A kindly sky whose fost'ring power regales Man, beast, and all the vegetable reign. Find then some woodland scene where Nature smiles Benign, where all her honest children thrive. To us there wants not many a happy seat! Look round the smiling land, such numbers rise We hardly fix, bewilder'd in our choice. See where, enthron'd in adamantine state, Proud of her bards, imperial Windsor sits; Where choose thy seat, in some aspiring grove Fast by the slowly-winding Thames; or where Broader she laves fair Richmond's green retreats, (Richmond, that sees an hundred villas rise Rural or gay.) O! from the summer's rage, O! wrap me in the friendly gloom that hides Umbrageous Ham!-But if the busy town Attract thee still to toil for power or gold, Sweetly thou may'st thy vacant hours possess In Hampstead, courted by the western wind; Or Greenwich, waving o'er the winding flood; Or lose the world amid the sylvan wilds Of Dulwich, yet by barbarous arts unspoil'd. Green rise the Kentish hills in cheerful air; But on the marshy plains that Lincoln spreads Build not, nor rest too long thy wandering feet. For on a rustic throne of dewy turf, With baneful fogs her aching temples bound, Quartana there presides; a meagre fiend Begot by Eurus, when his brutal force Compress'd the slothful Naiad of the fens. From such a mixture sprung, this fitful pest With fev'rish blasts subdues the sick'ning land: Cold tremors come, with mighty love of rest,
Convulsive yawnings, lassitude, and pains That sting the burden'd brows, fatigue the loins, And rack the joints, and every torpid limb; Then parching heat succeeds, till copious sweats O'erflow: a short relief from former ills Beneath repeated shocks the wretches pine, The vigor sinks, the habit melts away: The cheerful, pure, and animated bloom Dies from the face, with squalid atrophy Devour'd, in sallow melancholy clad. And oft the sorceress, in her sated wrath, Resigns them to the furies of her train: The bloated Hydrops, and the yellow Fiend Ting'd with her own accumulated gall.
In quest of sites, avoid the mournful plain Where osiers thrive, and trees that love the lake Where many lazy muddy rivers flow: Nor for the wealth that all the Indies roll, Fix near the marshy margin of the main. For from the humid soil and wat'ry reign Eternal vapors rise; the spongy air For ever weeps: or, turgid with the weight Of waters, pours a sounding deluge down. Skies such as these let every mortal shun Who dreads the dropsy, palsy, or the gout, Tertian, corrosive scurvy, or moist catarrh; Or any other injury that grows
From raw-spun fibres idle and unstrung, Skin ill-perspiring, and the purple flood In languid eddies loitering into phlegm.
Yet not alone from humid skies we pine; For air may be too dry. The subtle Heaven, That winnows into dust the blasted downs, Bare and extended wide without a stream, Too fast imbibes th' attenuated lymph, Which, by the surface, from the blood exhales The lungs grow rigid, and with toil essay Their flexible vibrations! or inflam'd, Their tender ever-moving structure thaws. Spoil'd of its limpid vehicle, the blood A mass of lees remains, a drossy tide That slow as Lethe wanders through the veins Unactive in the services of life, Unfit to lead its pitchy current through The secret mazy channels of the brain. The melancholic fiend (that worst despair Of physic) hence the rust-complexion'd man Pursues, whose blood is dry, whose fibres gain Too stretch'd a tone; and hence in climes adust So sudden tumults seize the trembling nerves, And burning fevers glow with double rage.
Fly, if you can, these violent extremes Of air; the wholesome is nor moist nor dry. But as the power of choosing is denied To half mankind, a further task ensues; How best to mitigate these fell extremes, How breathe unhurt the withering element, Or hazy atmosphere; though custom moulds To every clime the soft Promethean clay; And he who first the fogs of Essex breath'd (So kind is native air) may in the fens Of Essex from inveterate ills revive, At pure Montpelier or Bermuda caught. But if the raw and oozy Heaven offend; Correct the soil, and dry the sources up Of wat'ry exhalation: wide and deep Conduct your trenches through the quaking bog; Solicitous, with all your winding arts, Betray the unwilling lake into the stream; And weed the forest, and invoke the winds
To break the toils where strangled vapors lie; Or through the thickets send the crackling flames. Meantime at home with cheerful fires dispel The humid air: and let your table smoke With solid roast or bak'd; or what the herds Of tamer breed supply; or what the wilds Yield to the toilsome pleasures of the chase. Generous your wine, the boast of ripening years; But frugal be your cups: the languid frame, Vapid and sunk from yesterday's debauch, Shrinks from the cold embrace of wat'ry Heavens. But neither these, nor all Apollo's arts, Disarm the dangers of the dropping sky, Unless with exercise and manly toil
Meantime, the moist malignity to shun Of burthen'd skies; mark where the dry champaigu Swells into cheerful hills; where marjoram And thyme, the love of bees, perfume the air; And where the eynorrhodon* with the rose For fragrance vies; for in the thirsty soil Most fragrant breathe the aromatic tribes. There bid thy roofs high on the basking steep Ascend, there light thy hospitable fires, And let them see the winter morn arise, The summer evening blushing in the West: While with umbrageous oaks the ridge behind O'erhung, defends you from the blust'ring North, And bleak affliction of the peevish East.
You brace your nerves, and spur the lagging blood. Oh! when the growling winds contend, and all
The fatt'ning clime let all the sons of ease Avoid; if indolence would wish to live, Go, yawn and loiter out the long slow year In fairer skies. If droughty regions parch
The skin and lungs, and bake the thick'ning blood; Deep in the waving forest choose your seat, Where fuming trees refresh the thirsty air; And wake the fountains from their secret beds, And into lakes dilate their rapid stream.
The sounding forest fluctuates in the storm; To sink in warm repose, and hear the din Howl o'er the steady battlements, delights Above the luxury of vulgar sleep. The murmuring rivulet, and the hoarser straîn Of waters rushing o'er the slippery rocks, Will nightly lull you to ambrosial rest. To please the fancy is no trifling good, Where health is studied; for whatever moves
Here spread your gardens wide; and let the cool, The mind with calm delight, promotes the just
The moist relaxing vegetable store
Prevail in each repast: your food supplied By bleeding life, be gently wasted down, By soft decoction and a mellowing heat, To liquid balm; or, if the solid mass You choose, tormented in the boiling wave: That through the thirsty channels of the blood A smooth diluted chyle may ever flow. The fragrant dairy from its cool recess Its nectar acid or benign will pour
To drown your thirst; or let the mantling bowl Of keen sherbet the fickle taste relieve. For with the viscous blood the simple stream Will hardly mingle; and fermented cups Oft dissipate more moisture than they give. Yet when pale seasons rise, or Winter rolls His horrors o'er the world, thou may'st indulge In feasts more genial, and impatient broach The mellow cask. Then too the scourging air Provokes to keener toils than sultry droughts Allow. But rarely we such skies blaspheme. Steep'd in continual rains, or with raw fogs Bedew'd, our scasons droop: incumbent still A ponderous Heaven o'erwhelms the sinking soul. Lab'ring with storms in heapy mountains rise Th' embattled clouds, as if the Stygian shades Had left the dungeon of eternal night, Till black with thunder all the South descends. Scarce in a showerless day the Heavens indulge Our melting clime; except the baleful East Withers the tender spring, and sourly checks The fancy of the year. Our fathers talk Of summers, balmy air, and skies serene. Good Heaven! for what unexpiated crimes This dismal change! the brooding elements, Do they, your powerful ministers of wrath, Prepare some fierce exterminating plague? Or is it fix'd in the decrees above That lofty Albion melt into the main? Indulgent Nature! O dissolve this gloom! Bind in eternal adamant the winds
That drown or wither; give the genial West To breathe, and in its turn the sprightly North: And may once more the circling seasons rule The year; not mix in every monstrous day.
And natural movements of th' harmonious frame. Besides, the sportive brook for ever shakes The trembling air, that floats from hill to hill, From vale to mountain, with incessant change Of purest element, refreshing still Your airy seat, and uninfected gods. Chiefly for this I praise the man who builds High on the breezy ridge, whose lofty sides Th' ethereal deep with endless billows chafes. His purer mansion nor contagious years Shall reach, nor deadly putrid airs annoy.
But may no fogs, from lake or fenny plain, Involve my hill! and wheresoe'er you build, Whether on sun-burnt Epsom, or the plains Wash'd by the silent Lee; in Chelsea low, Or high Blackheath with wintry winds assail'd; Dry be your house: but airy more than warm. Else every breath of ruder wind will strike Your tender body through with rapid pains; Fierce coughs will tease you, hoarseness bind your voice,
Or moist gravedo load your aching brows. These to defy, and all the fates that dwell In cloister'd air tainted with steaming life, Let lofty ceilings grace your ample rooms; And still at azure noontide may your dome At every window drink the liquid sky.
Need we the sunny situation here, And theatres open to the South, commend? Here, where the morning's misty breath infests More than the torrid noon? How sickly grow, How pale, the plants in those ill-fated vales, That, circled round with the gigantic heap Of mountains, never felt, nor ever hope To feel, the genial vigor of the Sun! While on the neighboring hill the rose inflames The verdant spring; in virgin beauty blows The tender lily, languishingly sweet: O'er every hedge the wanton wood bine roves, And autumn ripens in the summer's ray. Nor less the warmer living tribes demand The fost'ring Sun, whose energy divine
*The wild rose, or that which grows on the common brier.
Dwells not in mortal fire; whose gen'rous heat Glows through the mass of grosser elements, And kindles into life the ponderous spheres. Cheer'd by thy kind invigorating warmth, We court thy beams, great majesty of day! . If not the soul, the regent of this world, First-born of Heaven, and only less than God!
ENOUGH of air. A desert subject now, Rougher and wilder, rises to my sight. A barren waste, where not a garland grows To bind the Muse's brow; not ev'n a proud Stupendo is solitude frowns o'er the heath, To rouse a noble horror in the soul: But rugged paths fatigue, and error leads Through endless labyrinths the devious feet. Farewell, ethereal fields! the humbler arts Of life; the table and the homely gods Demand my song. Elysian gales, adieu!
The blood, the fountain whence the spirits The generous stream that waters every part, And motion, vigor, and warm life conveys To every particle that moves or lives; This vital fluid, through unnumber'd tubes Pour'd by the heart, and to the heart again Refunded; scourg'd for ever round and round; Enrag'd with heat and toil, at last forgets Its balmy nature; virulent and thin
It grows; and now, but that a thousand gates Are open to its flight, it would destroy The parts it cherish'd and repair'd before. Besides, the flexible and tender tubes Melt in the mildest most nectareous tide That ripening Nature rolls; as in the stream Its crumbling banks; but what the force Of plastic fluids hourly batters down, That very force, those plastic particles Rebuild so mutable the state of man. For this the watchful appetite was given, Daily with fresh materials to repair This unavoidable expense of life, This necessary waste of flesh and blood. Hence, the concoctive powers, with various art, Subdue the cruder aliments to chyle; The chyle to blood; the foamy purple tide To liquors, which through finer arteries To different parts their winding course pursue; To try new changes, and new forms put on, Or for the public, or some private use.
Nothing so foreign but th' athletic hind Can labor into blood. The hungry meal Alone he fears, or aliments too thin; By violent powers too easily subdu'd, Too soon expell'd. His daily labor thaws, To friendly chyle, the most rebellious mass That salt can harden, or the smoke of years; Nor does his gorge the luscious bacon rue, Nor that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste Of solid milk. But ye of softer clay, Infirm and delicate! and ye who waste With pale and bloated sloth the tedious day! Avoid the stubborn aliment, avoid The full repast; and let sagacious age Grow wiser, lessen'd by the dropping teeth. Half subtiliz'd to chyle, the liquid food
Readiest obeys th' assimilating powers;
And soon the tender vegetable mass Relents; and soon the young of those that tread The stedfast earth, or cleave the green abyss, Or pathless sky. And if the steer must fall, In youth and sanguine vigor let him die; Nor stay till rigid age, or heavy ails, Absolve him ill-requited from the yoke. Some with high forage, and luxuriant ease, Indulge the veteran ox; but wiser thou, From the bald mountain or the barren downs, Expect the flocks by frugal Nature fed;
A race of purer blood, with exercise Refin'd and scanty fare: for, old or young, The stall'd are never healthy; nor the cramm'd. Not all the culinary arts can tame
To wholesome food, the abominable growth Of rest and gluttony; the prudent taste Rejects like bane such lothesome lusciousness. The languid stomach curses even the pure Delicious fat, and all the race of oil: For more the oily aliments relax
Its feeble tone; and with the eager lymph (Fond to incorporate with all it meets) Coyly they mix, and shun with slippery wiles The woo'd embrace. Th' irresoluble oil, So gentle late and blandishing, in floods Of rancid bile o'erflows: what tumults hence, What horrors rise, were nauseous to relate. Choose leaner viands, ye whose jovial make Too fast the gummy nutriment imbibes: Choose sober meals; and rouse to active life Your cumbrous clay; nor on the enfeebling down, Irresolute, protract the morning hours.
But let the man whose bones are thinly clad. With cheerful ease and succulent repast Improve his habit if he can; for each Extreme departs from perfect sanity.
I could relate what table this demands, Or that complexion; what the various powers Of various foods: but fifty years would roll, And fifty more before the tale were done. Besides, there often lurks some nameless, strange, Peculiar thing; nor on the skin display'd, Felt in the pulse, nor in the habit seen; Which finds a poison in the food that most The temp'rature affects. There are, whose blood Impetuous rages through the turgid veins, Who better bear the fiery fruits of India Than the moist melon, or pale cucumber. Of chilly nature others fly the board Supplied with slaughter, and the vernal powers For cooler, kinder sustenance implore. Some even the generous nutriment detest Which, in the shell, the sleeping embryo rears. Some, more unhappy still, repent the gifts Of Pales; soft, delicious and benign: The balmy quintessence of every flower, And every grateful herb that decks the spring; The fost'ring dew of tender sprouting life; The best refection of declining age; The kind restorative of those who lie Half dead and panting, from the doubtful strife Of nature struggling in the grasp of death. Try all the bounties of this fertile globe, There is not such a salutary food As suits with every stomach. But (except, Amid the mingled mass of fish and fowl, And boil'd and bak'd, you hesitate by which You sunk oppress'd, or whether not by all)
Taught by experience, soon you may discern What pleases, what offends. Avoid the cates That lull the sicken'd appetite too long; Or heave with fev'rish flushings all the face, Burn in the palms, and parch the rough'ning tongue;
Or much diminish or too much increase Th' expense, which Nature's wise economy, Without or waste or avarice, maintains. Such cates abjur'd, let prowling hunger, loose, And bid the curious palate roam at will; They scarce can err amid the various stores That burst the teeming entrails of the world. Led by sagacious taste, the ruthless king Of beasts on blood and slaughter only lives; The tiger, form'd alike to cruel meals, Would at the manger starve; of milder seeds The generous horse to herbage and to grain Confines his wish; though fabling Greece resound The Thracian steeds with human carnage wild. Prompted by instinct's never-erring power, Each creature knows its proper aliment; But man, th' inhabitant of every clime, With all the commoners of Nature feeds. Directed, bounded, by this power within, Their cravings are well aim'd: voluptuous man Is by superior faculties misled;
Misled from pleasure even in quest of joy, Sated with Nature's boons, what thousands seek, With dishes tortur'd from their native taste, And mad variety, to spur beyond Its wiser will the jaded appetite! Is this for pleasure? Learn a juster taste! And know that temperance is true luxury. Or is it pride? Pursue some nobler aim, Dismiss your parasites who praise for hire; And earn the fair esteem of honest men,
For want of use the kindest aliment Sometimes offends; while custom tames the rage Of poison to mild amity with life.
So Heaven has form'd us to the general taste Of all its gifts: so custom has improv'd This bent of nature; that few simple foods, Of all that earth, or air, or ocean yield, But by excess offend. Beyond the sense Of light refection, at the genial board Indulge not often; nor protract the feast To dull satiety; till soft and slow A drowsy death creeps on, th' expansive soul Oppress'd, and smother'd the celestial fire. The stomach, urg'd beyond its active tone, Hardly to nutrimental chyle subdues The softest food: unfinish'd and deprav'd, The chyle, in all its future wanderings, owns Its turbid fountain; not by purer streams So to be clear'd, but foulness will remain. To sparkling wine what ferment can exalt Th' unripen'd grape? or what mechanic skill From the crude ore can spin the ductile gold? Gross riot treasures up a wealthy fund Of plagues: but more immedicable ills Attend the lean extreme. For physic knows How to disburthen the too tumid veins, Even how to ripen the half-labor'd blood: But to unlock the elemental tubes, Collaps'd and shrunk with long inanity, And with balsamic nutriment repair The dried and worn-out habit, were to bid Old age grow green, and wear a second spring; Or the tall ash, long ravish'd from the soil, Through wither'd veins imbibe the vernal dew. When hunger calls, obey; not often wait Till hunger sharpen to corrosive pain : For the keen appetite will feast beyond
Whose praise is fame. Form'd of such clay as yours, What nature well can bear: and one extreme
The sick, the needy, shiver at your gates. Even modest want may bless your hand unseen, Though hush'd in patient wretchedness at home. Is there no virgin, grac'd with ev'ry charm But that which binds the mercenary vow? No youth of genius, whose neglected bloom Unfoster'd sickens in the barren shade ? No worthy man by fortune's random blows, Or by a heart too generous and humane, Constrain'd to leave his happy natal seat, And sigh for wants more bitter than his own? There are, while human miseries abound, A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth, Without one fool or flatterer at your board, Without one hour of sickness or disgust.
But other ills th' ambiguous feast pursue, Besides provoking the lascivious taste. Such various foods, though harmless each alone, Each other violate; and oft we see
What strife is brew'd, and what pernicious bane, From combinations of obnoxious things. Th' unbounded taste I mean not to confine To hermit's diet needlessly severe.
But would you long the sweets of health enjoy, Or husband pleasure; at one impious meal Exhaust not half the bounties of the year, Of every realm. It matters not meanwhile How much to-morrow differ from to-day; So far indulge; 'tis fit, besides, that man, To change obnoxious, be to change inur'd. But stay the curious appetite, and taste With caution fruits you never tried before.
Ne'er without danger meets its own reverse. Too greedily th' exhausted veins absorb The recent chyle, and load enfeebled powers Oft to th' extinction of the vital flame. To the pale cities, by the firm-set siege And famine humbled, may this verse be borne; And hear, ye hardiest sons that Albion breeds, Long toss'd and famish'd on the wintry main; The war shook off, or hospitable shore
Attain'd, with temperance bear the shock of joy ; Nor crown with festive rites th' auspicious day : Such feasts might prove more fatal than the waves Than war or famine. While the vital fire Burns feebly, heap not the green fuel on; But prudently foment the wandering spark With what the soonest feeds its kindest touch: Be frugal ev'n of that: a little give At first; that kindled, add a little more; Till, by deliberate nourishing, the flame Reviv'd with all its wonted vigor glows.
But though the two (the full and the jejune) Extremes have each their vice; it much avails Ever with gentle tide to ebb and flow From this to that; so nature learns to bear Whatever chance or headlong appetite May bring. Besides, a meagre day subdues The cruder clods by sloth or luxury Collected, and unloads the wheels of life. Sometimes a coy aversion to the feast Comes on, while yet no blacker omen lowers; Then is the time to shun the tempting board, Were it your natal or your nuptial day
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