6.  The ancients are said to have possessed an art of increasing the livers of geese to a size greater than the remainder of the goose.  Martial. l. 13. epig. 58.—­This is said to have been done by fat and figs.  Horace, l. 2. sat. 8.—­Juvenal sets these large livers before an epicure as a great rarity.  Sat. 5. l. 114; and Persius, sat. 6. l. 71.  Pliny says these large goose-livers were soaked in mulled milk, that is, I suppose, milk mixed with honey and wine; and adds, “that it is uncertain whether Scipio Metellus, of consular dignity, or M. Sestius, a Roman knight, was the great discoverer of this excellent dish.”  A modern traveller, I believe Mr. Brydone, asserts that the art of enlarging the livers of geese still exists in Sicily; and it is to be lamented that he did not import it into his native country, as some method of affecting the human liver might perhaps have been collected from it; besides the honour he might have acquired in improving our giblet pies.

Our wiser caupones, I am told, know how to fatten their fowls, as well as their geese, for the London markets, by mixing gin instead of figs and fat with their food; by which they are said to become sleepy, and to fatten apace, and probably acquire enlarged livers; as the swine are asserted to do, which are fed on the sediments of barrels in the distilleries; and which so frequently obtains in those, who ingurgitate much ale, or wine, or drams.

II.  The irritative diseases of the kidneys, pancreas, spleen, and other glands, are analogous to those of the liver above described, differing only in the consequences attending their inability to action.  For instance, when the secretory vessels of the kidneys become disobedient to the stimulus of the passing current of blood, no urine is separated or produced by them; their excretory mouths become filled with concreted mucus, or calculus matter, and in eight or ten days stupor and death supervenes in consequence of the retention of the feculent part of the blood.

This disease in a slighter degree, or when only a part of the kidney is affected, is succeeded by partial inflammation of the kidney in consequence of previous torpor.  In that case greater actions of the secretory vessels occur, and the nucleus of gravel is formed by the inflamed mucous membranes of the tubuli uriniferi, as farther explained in its place.

This torpor, or paralysis of the secretory vessels of the kidneys, like that of the liver, owes its origin to their being previously habituated to too great stimulus; which in this country is generally owing to the alcohol contained in ale or wine; and hence must be registered amongst the diseases owing to inebriety; though it may be caused by whatever occasionally inflames the kidney; as too violent riding on horseback, or the cold from a damp bed, or by sleeping on the cold ground; or perhaps by drinking in general too little aqueous fluids.