livers,’ with whom he became extremely popular, not only for his learning and accomplishments, but for his genial temper and ready wit. He found this gay life not only pleasant in itself, but of use in bringing him professional business; and blessed wit a sound constitution and strong head, he bore without harm for some years a course of tavern dinners and other social festivities. But after a time his health gave way, and the aggravation of a natural tendency to corpulence, with other troubles, cause him great distress. Complete abandonment of his free habits of living (actual vice or intemperance, as then understood, he had not to reproach himself with) and rigorous moderation of diet brought some alleviation, but cost him also the loss of all his ‘holiday companions,’ who ‘dropped off like autumnal leaves,’ and his prosperous career suffered a severe check. Under these circumstances of moral and physical distress Cheyne passed through a crisis which coloured the whole of his subsequent life. He acquired more serious views of things and a deeper sense of religion. His health was finally re-established only by of course of the Bath waters; and he was thus led to pass his winters at Bath and his summers in London, diligently occupied in the practice of his profession. After some years he permanently resided at Bath, and the history of his life henceforth is chiefly the history of his writings.
His next work was the sequel to a previous one. The title ‘Philosophical Principles of Religion, pt. ii., containing the nature and kinds of Infinites, their Arithmetic and Uses, and the Philosophical Principles of Revealed Religion’ (Lond. 1715), shows its character. The intention is excellent, but the mathematical will-o’-the-wisp once more misled Cheyne (not for the last time) into mingling theology and mathematics in a manner too fantastic to bear exposition. To this was added a second edition of the work on natural religion, and the two were afterwards published to ether. In a more strictly professional work, the ‘Observations on Gout and on the Bath Waters,’ which, was extremely popular, passing through seven editions in six years, he pursued his favourite theme——the evils of luxury and the benefits a of moderate, and especially of vegetable, diet—in this instance, doubtless, with complete justification. Cheyne’s own case was again destined to point the same moral. Having gradually relinquished an abstemious for a moderate diet (though moderation in those days did not mean exactly what it does now), he found his old enemy, corpulence, gain upon him, so that he weighed thirty-two stone and was hardly able to walk. From this condition he recovered chiefly through the use of ‘a milk and vegetable diet,’ to which he confined himself for the rest of his life. His later works are hence mainly designed to preach the merits of temperance and to recommend vegetarianism. The ‘Essay of Health and Long Life’ was the most popular. ‘The English Malady’ (so called, says Cheyne, in derision by our continental neighbours) is a treatise on nervous diseases, spleen, vapours, lowness of spirits, &c., i.e. what we now call hypochondria. This, like the last, is addressed essentially ad populum, not ad clerum. It was, with the former, highly eulogised by Samuel Johnson, who had much reason to be a good judge of such a work (Croker’s Boswell, ed. 1853, vi. 145); but it received more modified approval from the medical profession. Cheyne’s next work, ‘An Essay on Regimen, together with five Discourses, Medical, Moral, and Philosophical’ (London, 1740), was much less successful, so that the author had to indemnify his publisher for a large stock of unsold copies. Cheyne thought it the best book he ever wrote, and in disgust vowed he would publish no more (Letter to Richardson, 18 Dec. 1740). But he was easily induced to break this resolution, and in the next year brought out ‘The Natural Method of Cureing the Diseases of the Body, and the Disorders of the Mind depending on the Body,’ &c. (London, 1742). It was dedicated to Lord Chesterfield, whose letter to the author, apparently referring to this work, is published in his miscellaneous works. It was much more popular than the last, running to five editions, and was translated into French.
Cheyne’s popular medical works are open to the common reproach of addressing scientific arguments to a public little able to criticise them. But they are among the best books of their class, and they had the great merit of preaching temperance to an intemperate generation. He carried his vegetarian views to great extremes, as when he maintains that God permitted the use of animal food to man only to shorten human life by permitting the multiplication of diseases and sufferings, which should conduce to moral improvement. His scientific and philosophical works, on which he chiefly prided himself, have now no value; but his literary and argumentative powers are generally admitted. All contemporary testimony gives a very favourable idea of his personal character. His reputation with the public was immense, and he was intimate wit the most eminent physicians and other persons of note in his time. His letters to Richardson, the novelist, were published in
