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380 ESOTERIC ANTHROPOLOGY.
Any kind of exhaustion, by bodily labor, action, or
anxiety of mind ; sedentary occupation ; absorption in
business; circumstances of depression, all cause dys
pepsia. It is especially a disease of exhaustion.
Let a man eat a hearty meal, and then take violent
exercise, or get excited, or hear bad news, and diges
tion is suspended. Frequent repetition of this will
cause dyspepsia.
When the process of digestion begins, the vital power
gathers around the digestive organs. The blood goes
to the stomach. The force of the system is centered
there. Now, if this be drawn off, or divided, the work
is badly done, if done at all; the blood is poor and half
vitalized; poor blood makes poor gastric juice; poor
gastric juice, makes poor blood ; and so it goes on in a
progression of badness. Now, add to all these causes
one more —exhaustion from amativeness, solitary or
social, and you are near the root of evil.
Exhaustion calls for too much food, and stimulating
food. Too much food produces exhaustion.
Let us see how dyspeptics are made. A man, in
New York, gets up late in the morning, exhausted by a
night's excess, takes no bath, hurries down to breakfast,
bolts hot rolls or buckwheat cakes, saturated with butter,
sausages, and a few other abominations, washes them
down with two cups of hot coffee, lights his cigar, and
hurries down town ; goes to work fiercely, with an oc
casional cigar, till twelve or one o'clock ; rushes out, and
into some eating-house ; bolts a rapid meal of meat,
gravy, condiments, pastry, porter or brandy ; more
cigars; back to work like a steam-engine; home in the
omnibus, to a hot supper, muffins or buckwheat cakes ;