a body without clothing or a mountain without trees. 4. In composing essays you should think profoundly. Not to compose well is like a man who is dumb and cannot talk, or a horse that is lame and unable to walk."[1]
Never very robust — he tells his brothers that they have all inherited weak constitutions from their mother — Tsêng had to give much attention to his health. During the years he spent in Peking he was never entirely well, and in 1842 one of the men whom he consulted told him that his complaint would yield more to periods of quiet resting than to medicine.[2] Experience with many doctors led him, about 1857, to give them up altogether, with their remedies, since most of them were unskilled and did seven parts of damage to three parts of good.[3] At the age of thirty-two he gave up the practice of smoking and advised his brothers to do likewise when they should reach the same age, but he did not think that one should necessarily abandon wine in moderate quantities.[4] Early rising he considered of great importance, not only for progress in one's career but for health.[5]
Among the discussions of hygiene found in Tsêng's letters the most comprehensive rules are perhaps those in a letter dated July 16, 1866:
