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CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

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quency with which they are urged we consider peculiarly necessary.

In presenting to the literati a per

Dyspepsy Forestalled and Resisted:fect plan for forestalling and resisting

or Lectures on Diet, Regimen and Em

ployment; Delivered to the Students of Amherst College, Spring Term, 1830.

By Edward Hitchcock, Prof. of Chem. and Natural History in that Institution. pp. 360.

We do not take the present work into our hands with any intention of criticising its literary merits. It contains many things which we might applaud, and some which we might censure. We might applaud the general correctness of its principles, the eloquence with which they are recommended for our adoption, the perspicuity of its style, the simplicity and force of its arguments, and the adaptation of the whole to produce a permanent reform. And we might regret, that the author's delicate health, and pressure of duties, and brevity of time did not allow him to select a more logical arrangement of his thoughts, and invest them more completely in the "toga academica." But this is not the place to scan the literary character of the volume before us. Neither do we design to give a regular synopsis of its contents; for we prize so highly its intrinsic merits that we earnestly beg our readers to give it a thorough perusal. We simply intend to give a cursory view of those principles pertaining to the health of the studious, which, from their inherent value, or the infre

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dyspepsia, our author was well apprized of the obstacles which crowded his path, and the difficulty of vanquishing them. And perhaps there is no obstacle more fearful, than the common idea that a literary life must be a short and sickly one. The path of the scholar, think many, is through a land of poisons, and reptiles, and noxious atmosphere; a land of which none are natives, and over which few can travel without diseased limbs and parched tongues and early death. We will allow that the premature decline of many modern scholars seems to warrant such a description of their mode of life. But such a decline is unnecessary, and results not from literary occupation, but the abuse of it. Literary occupation, prudently conducted, is conducive to health. There must be an equilibrium between the various powers of the human system, or the system cannot be completely sound; and without the exercise of these various powers, the requisite equilibrium cannot be preserved. Mental exercise, therefore, is equally important with muscular, and from the proper union of the two results the perfect health of the whole man. Look at the maniac; his mind, though shattered, is active often to intensity, and he possesses a firm, robust body. The idiot, on the contrary, whose mind is

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