——nam variæ resUt noceant homini credas, memor illius escæQuæ simplex olim sederit, at, simul assisMiscueris elixa: simul conchylia turdis;Dulcia se in bilem vertent; stomachoque tumultumLenta feret pituita.
——nam variæ resUt noceant homini credas, memor illius escæQuæ simplex olim sederit, at, simul assisMiscueris elixa: simul conchylia turdis;Dulcia se in bilem vertent; stomachoque tumultumLenta feret pituita.
——nam variæ res
Ut noceant homini credas, memor illius escæ
Quæ simplex olim sederit, at, simul assis
Miscueris elixa: simul conchylia turdis;
Dulcia se in bilem vertent; stomachoque tumultum
Lenta feret pituita.
To sense it is obvious enough, without any need to insist on this advice, how impossible it is for very different aliments to undergo, within the same time, a perfect digestion: this mixture it is which is one of the causes that ruin the healthiest constitutions, and is mortal to weak ones: it cannot be too carefully avoided.
Another attention equally necessary, and almost equally neglected, is, a thorough mastication. This is a help to digestion, of which even the most vigorous stomachs cannot be long deprived, without a notable decline or diminution; and without which the digestion in weak ones is extremely imperfect. Nothing but a long and attentive observation could satisfy one of the infinite importance to health of a careful mastication. I have seen the most stubborn diseases of the stomach, and the most inveterate languors, dissipated singly by this attention. On the other hand, I have seen persons in good health fall into infirmities, when their teeth, being damaged, no longer suffered them to employ any but an imperfect mastication; nor recovered they their health, till, after a total loss of their teeth, theirgums acquired such a hardness as to enable them to supply their function.
So many particulars, so many precautions, so many self-denying privations, will seem very fit to verify this line of M.Procope,
Vivre selon nos loix c’est vivre miserable.By physic’s laws to live ’s a wretched life.
Vivre selon nos loix c’est vivre miserable.By physic’s laws to live ’s a wretched life.
Vivre selon nos loix c’est vivre miserable.
Vivre selon nos loix c’est vivre miserable.
By physic’s laws to live ’s a wretched life.
By physic’s laws to live ’s a wretched life.
But is there any paying too dear for health? How amply are you satisfied for the sacrifices you make, by the enjoyment of it, and by the pleasures it throws into all the moments of your life? “Without health (saysHippocrates) there can be no enjoyment of any earthly good; honors, riches, and all other advantages are of no avail[109].”
Besides, these sacrifices are much less than it is commonly imagined they are. I could quote many witnesses, to whom, after just the first days, it no longer cost them any pain to renounce the variety and savoriness of rich viands, for the sake of a simplicity of regimen: which is what nature points out, and is the most pleasing to well constituted organs. A healthy palate, which has all the sensibility that it ought to have, can have no relish but for plain meats; made dishes and high sauces are insupportable toit, while, in the least savory aliments, it finds a relish, and a variety of relish, which escape the depraved, worn out, or furred organs of taste: so that those who return to the simplicity of nature in their aliments, whether it is for their health, or from convinced reason, or from a contracted distaste to high eating, may be assured, that so fast as they shall recover their health, they will find in plain aliments a delight of the palate which they did not suspect in them. A fine ear discerns the slight difference between two notes, which will have escaped a less sensible ear: just so it is with the nerves of the organs of taste; when they are in exquisite order, they perceive the slightest varieties of savors, and are sensible to them; the water-drinkers meet with waters as flattering to their taste as the most exquisite Falernian could be to drinkers of wine, and others as disagreeable to them, as to those the pricked wines of Brie.
But even were there not rational hopes of pleasure in the plain regimen, and I am sure it is not hard to accommodate one’s self to that which I have indicated, the satisfaction one must feel, the consideration that, in submitting to it, one is fulfilling a duty to one’s self, must be a greatly pressing motive, as well as a justly flattering reward, for those who can know all the value of the being well with one’s self.
The liquid part of aliments, or the drink, is an article of the regimen almost as important as the solid, or eating.
All liquids should be forbidden that can augment the weakness or relaxation, that can diminish the little that remains of the digestive powers, that can convey any acridity into the humors, or dispose the nervous system, already too irritable, to a greater mobility. All hot waters have the first defect, of weakening or relaxing. Tea, with that, has also all the others: coffee has the two last; so that one ought rigorously to abstain from them. The author of a work superior to all encomiums, and of which those who interest themselves in the progress of the medical art, wait with the greatest impatience for the continuation, has presented such an account of the danger of these two liquids, as might very well disgust or deter from the use of them those who find the greatest pleasure in them[110].
Spirituous liquors, which, at the first view might appear serviceable, for that they operate precisely the contrary of hot water, of which they really diminish the danger, if added to it in a small quantity, are, however,attended with other inconveniences that authorise their rejection, or at least restrain them to an extremely rare recourse. Their action is too violent, too transient; they irritate more than they strengthen, and if they sometimes strengthen, the weakness which succeeds is greater than before a recourse to them: besides, they give to thepapillæof the stomach a hardness that robs them of that degree of sensibility necessary to the creation of an appetite, and take from the liquids that degree of fluidity which they ought to have in aid of that sensation; and, indeed, the great drinkers of spirituous liquors are strangers to it. “Those (says the illustrious author whom I have just now quoted) who every day drink strong liquors after their meals, by way of remedying the defects of digestion, could hardly find a more likely method for accomplishing just the contrary to what they propose, and to destroy the powers of digestion.”
The best drink is water from the purest spring, mixed, equal parts, with a wine neither too heady nor too acid: the heady kinds sensibly irritate the nervous system, and produce in the humors a transient rarefaction, of which the effect is an extension of the vessels, that leaves them afterwards the laxer for it, and to augment the dissolution of the humors: the acid kinds weaken the digestions, irritate, and procure over-copiousurines, which exhaust the patients. The best are those which have the least of spirit and of salt, the most of terrestrial and oily, which constitutes what is called racy, generous wines: such are the red wines of Burgundy, of the Rhône, of Neufchâtel, and a few kinds in this country, (Lausanne,) the old white wines of Grave, the choice ones of Pontac, the wines of Spain, Portugal, the Canaries, and, where procurable, those of Tockay, superior perhaps to those of all the world besides, both for salubrity and deliciousness to the taste. As to common use there are none preferable to those of Neufchâtel.
In places where good water is not to be come at, it may be corrected by filtration, by a hot iron, or an infusion of some agreeable aromatics, such as cinnamon, aniseed, lemon-peel.
Common beer is noxious. Mum which is properly an extract from grain, both nourishing and strengthening, may be of great use: rich of spirit, it enlivens as much as wine, and is more nutritious; it may serve for meat and drink.
Among the useful drinks, may be ranked chocolate, which belongs perhaps more properly to the class of solid aliments; the cocoa contains a great deal of nutritious substance, and the mixture with it of sugar and aromatics corrects any detriment from its oiliness.“Chocolate made with milk (says M.Lewis) in such quantities as to pass easy off the stomach, is an excellent breakfast for a tabid constitution. I knew a child twelve years old who was in the last stage of a consumption, when given over by a Physician, recovered by the mother’s giving her chocolate only, in small quantities, often repeated. Indeed it is an aliment that for weak constitutions cannot be too much recommended[111].” Be it, however, remarked, that there are some to whom it might prove very pernicious.
One general attention to be observed is, that too great a quantity of any drink whatever should be avoided: it weakens the digestions by relaxing the stomach; by drowning the digestive juices, and by precipitating the aliments before they are well digested; it relaxes all the parts, it dissolves the humors; it disposes to urines and to sweats that exhaust the patients. I have seen disorders produced by an atony, considerably lessened, by no other means of assistence, than by a retrenchment of a part of the liquids for drinking.
What is to be said of sleep, may be reduced to three points; its duration, the time of taking it, and the precaution necessary for a quiet undisturbed enjoyment of it.
In grown persons seven hours of sleep, or at the most eight, are sufficient for any one: there is even a danger in sleeping longer, and in remaining longer a bed, which throws one into the same disorders as an excess of rest. If any could wish to indulge it longer, it might be those who give themselves a great deal of motion, and of violent motion, during the day time; but it is not those who practise such indulgence; on the contrary, it is those who lead the most sedentary life. Thus that term ought never to be exceeded, unless one should be fallen into such a degree of weakness as not to have the strength necessary left for the being long up; in which case, however, one should try to keep so as long as possible. “The more moderate the quantity of his sleep (says Mr.Lewis) the sweeter and more invigorating will it be.”
It stands demonstrated, that the air of the night is less healthy than that of the day, and that the weakly sick are more susceptibleof its influences in the evening than the morning; as then, during our sleep, we are confined to a small part of the atmosphere, which our bodies also would not fail of corrupting; it is to sleep that that time should be appropriated, in which the air is the least healthy, and in which the being up in it would be the most pernicious; so that it is best to go to bed early, and rise early. This is a precept so commonly known, that it may appear trivial to recall it to mind; but it is actually so much neglected, the consequence of it seems to be so little felt, though infinitely greater than it is believed to be, that it is very allowable to suppose it unknown, and to re-inculcate it by an insistence on its importance, especially to valetudinarians.
Mr.Lewisgives it for his opinion, “That if a patient lies down at ten o’ clock, which hour he should never exceed, he ought to rise in the summer-time at four or five, in the winter at six or seven, under an absolute prohibition of an indulgence in bed in the morning.” He recommends even the forming a habit of getting up after one’s first sleep, and avers, that uneasy as this custom might be at the first, it would soon become easy and agreeable[112]. A number of examples attest the salutarinessof this advice: there are many valetudinarians who feel themselves light and well on waking out of their first sleep, and who experience a laborious restlessness on yielding to the temptation of going to sleep again: they are as sure of passing a good day of it, if, at whatever the hour be of their waking out of their first sleep they immediately get up, as of passing it disagreeably, if they give way to the second.
Sleep is not tranquil but where there are no causes of irritation: which ought therefore to be carefully prevented. Three of the most important attentions are;
First, Not to be in a hot air, and to be neither too much nor too little covered.
Secondly, Not to have the feet cold at lying down; an accident common to weak persons, and which is, for many reasons, hurtful to them. The rule ofHippocratesshould be scrupulously observed,To sleep in a cool place, taking care to cover one’s self[113].
Thirdly, And what is yet more important, not to lie down upon a full stomach: nothing disturbs more the sleep, nor contributes more to render it disquieting, painful, heavy, or overwhelming, than a laborious digestion in the night. Depression of spirits, weakness, disgust, weariness, incapacityof thought or of application to any thing the next day, are the inevitable consequences.
——vides ut pallidus omnisCœna desurgat dubia? Quin corpus onustum,Hesternis vitiis animum quoque prægravat unaAtque affligit humo divinæ particulam auræ.Hor.
——vides ut pallidus omnisCœna desurgat dubia? Quin corpus onustum,Hesternis vitiis animum quoque prægravat unaAtque affligit humo divinæ particulam auræ.Hor.
——vides ut pallidus omnis
Cœna desurgat dubia? Quin corpus onustum,
Hesternis vitiis animum quoque prægravat una
Atque affligit humo divinæ particulam auræ.
Hor.
On the contrary, nothing is more efficacious toward procuring a sweet, calm, uninterrupted, refreshing sleep, than a light supper. Freshness, agility, gaiety, are, the ensuing day, its necessary consequences.
Alter, ubi dicto citius curata soporiMembra dedit, vegetus præscripta ad munia surgit.Ibid.
Alter, ubi dicto citius curata soporiMembra dedit, vegetus præscripta ad munia surgit.Ibid.
Alter, ubi dicto citius curata sopori
Membra dedit, vegetus præscripta ad munia surgit.
Ibid.
“The time of sleep (says Mr.Lewis, with great reason) is that of nutrition, and not of digestion.” Accordingly he requires of his patients the greatest severity as to their supper: he prohibits to them, and never was a juster prohibition, all flesh-meats at that meal; he allows them nothing but a little milk, and some bread sippets, and that two hours before they go to bed that the first digestion may be over before they lie down to sleep. The Atlantics, who were strangers to an animal diet, and who never ate any thing that had life, were famousfor the tranquillity of their sleep, and hardly so much as knew what dreams were.
Exercise is a point of absolute necessity. To the weak it is a pain to take it; and if they have any inclination to melancholy or dejection of spirit, it is not easy to determine them to motion; and yet nothing is more apt to augment all the evils that proceed from weakness, than inactivity; the fibres of the stomach, of the intestines, of the vessels, are lax; the humors every where stagnate, because the solids have no longer the strength to impress on them the necessary motion: thence are generated lodgments of matter, choaked up passages, obstructions, extravasations; coction, nutrition, the secretions, do not proceed; the blood remains aqueous, the strength diminishes, and all the symptoms of the disorder increase. Exercise prevents all these evils, by augmenting the force of the circulation; all the functions execute themselves as if there existed in the body a real strength for it, and this regularity of the functions does not fail soon to give it, so that the effect of motion is to supplement the vital forces, and to restore them. Another of its advantages,independent of the augmentation of circulation, is its enabling one to enjoy an air always new. A person that does not stir, soon corrupts the air which surrounds him, and becomes noxious to him: whereas a person in action is continually changing it. Motion may often supply the place of remedies, but all the remedies in the world cannot supply the place of motion.
The fatigue of the first days of attempting it, is a rock against which the faint heart of many of the sick is apt to split; but if they had the courage to conquer this first obstacle, they would soon be experimentally sensible, that to this case especially it is that that proverbial saying is truly applicable,Il n’y a que les premiers pas qui coûtent: “It is only the first steps that are hard to take.” I have been myself astonished at seeing to what a degree those who had not been disheartened at the first, acquired strength by exercise. I have seen persons fatigued with one turn in a garden, arrive, in a few weeks, at being able to take a walk two leagues, and be the better after it.
The exercise of walking on foot is not the only favorable one. For persons extremely weak, for such as have a complaint of their bowels or breast, riding on horseback is even better: but in a still greater weakness, the motion of a carriage, if not too easy an one, is preferable. When theweather does not allow of going out, some means of motions should be contrived, in the house, some not too laborious occupation, or some exercise of play; such, for example, as the battledore and shuttle-cock, which diffuses through the whole body an equable motion.
A return of appetite, of sleep, of chearfulness, are the necessary consequences of motion; but the precaution should be observed, of not taking any thing of a violent motion immediately after a meal, and not to eat while warm from exercise; which should be taken before a meal, with allowance of some moments of rest before the sitting down to it.
The evacuations are apt to be disordered along with the other functions, and their disorder increases that of the whole machine; it is then of importance to give attention thereto, in order to the earliest remedy. The evacuations which principally require observation are, the stools, the urines, the perspiration, and the saliva. The best way to keep them in due order, or to bring them to the point at which they ought to be at, is to govern one’s self by those precepts which I have laid down onthe other objects of regimen: when those are heedfully attended to in practice, the evacuations, whose greater or the less regularity is the barometer of the better or worse state of digestions, proceed regularly enough. That evacuation which it is of the most importance to favor, as being the most considerable, is perspiration, which very easily goes out of order, in weak persons. It may be aided by having the skin very regularly rubbed with a flesh-brush, or a flannel; but when it is very languishing indeed, there is not a surer way to restore it, than to put the whole body immediately into woollen covering. And yet care should be taken to avoid too warm a dress, for fear of sweating, which is always detrimental to perspiration; the forced strainers remain the weaker, and perform their functions the worse: too cool a dress is also to be shunned, as that is an enemy equally to all cutaneous evacuations. The part which every person, and especially the weak, ought to keep the warmest, is the feet. This easy precaution would never be neglected, if the importance of it to the preservation of the whole machine was sufficiently known. Frequent catching cold of the feet disposes to the most terrible chronical diseases. There are many on whom it immediately produces bad effects. But those especially who are subject to disorders of the breast, to cholics,or to obstructions, cannot too much guard against these dangers. Those priests who used to walk bare-footed on the pavement of the temples were often attacked with violent cholics.
Thesalivaoften is an over abundant secretion in weak persons; which is owing to a relaxation of the salivary organs. Now if the patients spit out continually this saliva, thence result two evils; the one, that they exhaust themselves by this evacuation; the other, that this humor, so necessary to the work of digestion, which without it operates but imperfectly, fails, and thereby renders it laborious and defective. I have already sufficiently explained myself on the dangers of a bad digestion, not to need here much insistence on those incident to an evacuation, on which the digestion so essentially depends. For this reason it is that Mr.Lewisforbids smoaking to his patients. Smoaking, among its other inconveniences, disposes to an abundant salivation, by the irritation it produces on the glands which furnish this secretion.
Might not the inhalation from one person to another, which I have precedently mentioned, be here recalled to mind as one of the means of cure?Capivacciohad judged it of use to the person under his care, that should lie between the two nurses that suckled him; and it is very probable thatthe inhalation of their atmosphere contributed perhaps as much as their milk to restore his strength.
Elidæus, cotemporary withCapivaccio, and preceptor toForrestus, who has preserved to us this observation[114], advised a young man, who was in amarasmus, to asses milk, and to have his nurse lie in the same bed with him, who was a woman extremely healthy, and in the flower of her age: this advice had the greatest success; nor was the compliance with it discontinued till the patient owned he could no longer resist the inclination grown upon him, to make an illicit use of the strength that was returned to him. A remedy, on the foot of this utility by inhalation might be preserved, and yet the danger be prevented by not mixing the sexes.
The intimate union of the soul and body has been precedently mentioned; how great the influence is of the well-being of the first, over the last, cannot have escaped comprehension; the sinister effects of melancholy have been pointed out; so that it is almost needless here to add, that too greatcare cannot be taken to avoid the unpleasant sensations of the soul, and that it is of the highest consequence to procure for it none but the most agreeable ones; indeed in all distempers, but especially in those, which, like thetabes dorsalis, of themselves dispose to sadness, a sadness which, by a vitious circle, considerably augments those distempers. But (and this makes one of the difficulties of the cure) it often happens that the patients take a kind of pleasure in this symptom of their disorder, and there is no prevailing on them to determine upon making any efforts to get the better of it. Besides, not to deceive ourselves, we must not imagine that it is enough to prescribe to a person to be chearful, for him to be so. Mirth is voluntary. Laughing is no more to be commanded than it is to be forbidden. A man can no more help his being sad, than having a fit of a fever, or the torture of a tooth-ach. All that can be required or expected of the patients is, that they will no more refuse their yielding to accept or try the remedies prescribed to them against their melancholy, than they refuse yielding to other remedies. Now the remedies are not so much, in this case, company, (we have already observed that it was displeasing to them, for particular reasons) as a variety of situations. A continual change of objects for a succession of ideas that diverts them, and this is what they need.
Nothing can be more pernicious to persons inclined to deliver themselves up to one idea, than inaction, or want of occupation. But, above all, nothing is worse than that for the case here treated of: the patients cannot too much avoid idleness, and the being too much left or abandoned to themselves. Rural exercises, or employment, comprehend the most powerful diversion.M. Lewisadvises, “that the sick should, if possible, see none but those of their own sex;
“Nam non ulla magis vires industria firmatQuam Venerem et cæci stimulos avertere amoris.Virg.
“Nam non ulla magis vires industria firmatQuam Venerem et cæci stimulos avertere amoris.Virg.
“Nam non ulla magis vires industria firmat
Quam Venerem et cæci stimulos avertere amoris.
Virg.
“that they should never be absolutely alone; that they should be kept from giving themselves up to their own reflexions; that they should be diverted or kept from reading, or any occupation of the mind; all these, (as he observes,) being so many causes that exhaust the spirits and retard the cure.” I should not, however, be for totally debarring them from all reading. It might be enough to forbid their reading for too long a time at once, if it were but on account of the weakness of their eyes; or all reading that should require too much application, but especially and severely any kind of reading that might recall to their mind ideas, or to their imagination objects, of which it were to be wished they shouldlose the remembrance: but there are subjects which, without much fixing the attention, and without recalling dangerous images, might agreeably divert, entertain, and prevent the terrible dangers of a wearisome idleness.
I shall follow the same order as in the preceding article. I shall point out the pretended remedies, which are to be avoided, before I enter on the mention of those which are the eligible ones. I have already taken notice of a first class of those which should be excluded, the irritating, the heating, the volatile medicines. There is a second one, of a very opposite nature, and equally noxious, and that is evacuatives. I have already observed, that sweats, an over-secretion of thesaliva, and too copious urines, exhausted the patient. I shall not then repeat my premonition against those evacuations: it is consequentially clear enough, that all the medicines which excite them, should be banished. It remains then to examine the propriety of bleeding, and of the evacuations of theprimæ viæ. The curative indications being to restore strength, now, in order to judge whether they are proper, it is but to know whether they can be expected to answer that indication.I shall not be long on this head. There are two cases in which bleeding restores strength; in all others, it diminishes it. The first is, when there is too great an abundance of blood; this is not the case in consumptions; or when the blood has acquired an inflammatory inspissation, which, rendering it unfit for its uses, quickly destroys the vital forces; this is the disorder of the vigorous, of those who have rigid fibres, and a strong circulation: our sick are in precisely the contrary case; bleeding then cannot but be hurtful to them. “Every drop of blood, (according to M.Gilchrist,) is precious to persons in a consumption: the assimilating power that repairs it being destroyed, they have not more than barely sufficient to keep up the circulation, and that but a languid one[115].” M.Lobb, who has very justly calculated the effects of evacuations, is positive in this sense. He observes, “that in bodies, which have no more than the necessary quantity of blood, if that is diminished by bleeding or other evacuations, the vital forces are at the same time diminished, the secretions disturbed, and various disorders produced[116].”
The manner in which M.Senacspeaks of bleeding gives it yet more precisely theexclusion in this case. “If (says he) the thick or red globules of the blood be deficient, bleeding is useless or rather pernicious: it ought then to be forbidden in extenuated bodies, where the blood is in small quantity, or not of due consistence, as when there comes from the vessels but a liquid that can scarce color linnen or water[117].” It has been observed, that such is the state of the blood in those who have hurt themselves by self-pollution; and such it is generally in the weak and in valetudinarians. Let those who attempt the cure, in this case, by bleeding, compare that method with this precept founded on the most enlightened theory, and on numerous practical observations, well digested by reflection; these constitute the basis of the work from which I draw it, and then let them judge of the success they ought to expect.
Those medicines which evacuate the first passages, conduce to the restoration of strength, when, in those parts, there is formed a lodgment of matters so considerable by their mass, as to cramp or obstruct the functions of all theviscera, or when there are in the stomach, or in the first intestines, putrid matters, of which the common effect is a prodigious weakness. In those casesevacuatives may be prescribed, if nothing contra-indicates them, if there are no other means of freeing the first passages, or if there should be any danger in not evacuating them quickly enough. These three conditions have rarely place in persons who are in a state of consumption, and in whom the weakness and atony of the first passages is a counter-indication, ever present, to purgatives or emetics. There is oftenest another method of procuring a successive evacuation, which is, the employing the non-astringent tonics; such are a great number of bitters, which, by restoring play to the organs, produce the double good effect of digesting what is not indigestible, and of evacuating the superfluities. In short, there is rarely any danger in not evacuating them quickly enough. This danger, indeed, sometimes exists in acute diseases; the acridity of the matters which the heat augments, and the prodigious re-action of the fibres, may occasion violent symptoms, which are never seen in chronical disorders or distempers of languor, in which the evacuatives, properly so called, are, from that very quality, never, by much, so necessary, and are, as I have before observed, often contra-indicated. Atony, and the want of action, are the cause of those gatherings when there are any formed; when they are evacuated by a purgative, the effect is dissipated, but the cause which will haveproduced them is considerably augmented: there remain to be repaired both the evil that actually exists, and that which the remedy will have done; if for these a remedy is not quickly provided, the effect re-produces itself faster than before; and if way is given to the employing purgatives a-new, the evil is a second time augmented; besides that the intestines are made thereby to contract indisposition to stools, which hinders their functions, till at length they arrive at such a point that there is no obtaining evacuations from them but by physic. In short, purgatives, in the case of obstructions in the first passages of weak persons, can produce no diminution of the effect but by augmenting the causes, nor give a momentary relief but as they make the disease worse. And yet this method is but too much followed; the sick generally like it, to them it has an air of quickness or dispatch; and, indeed, provided that the failure of strength be not too considerable, they find themselves relieved for a few days. The evil, it is true, returns, but they had rather impute it to the insufficiency than to the operation of that remedy, to which they have taken a liking. Besides, the sick are ever for the present relief, and few physicians have the courage to oppose this weakness. Yet is it important, as well in physic as in morality, to know when to sacrifice the present to the future: a neglectof this law peoples the world with wretches and with valetudinarians. It were much to be wished, that there should be inculcated to many physicians, as well as to many patients, that fine passage to be found in thePathologiaof M.Gaubius, upon all the evils which are the consequence of the abuse of purgatives[118].
Are not there, will it be said, some cases, in which emetics and purgatives may be admitted for the sick of whom I am treating? Doubtless, some there are, but they are very rare; and great attention is requisite not to be mistaken as to the signs which seem to indicate evacuatives, and which often depend on a cause that is to be attacked by remedies of quite another nature. I will not enter into a discussion of these distinctions; that would be quite out of place here; it is enough for me to observe, that evacuatives are rarely advisable in this disorder. M.Lewisis of opinion, “that a gentle emetic may serviceably prepare the first passages for the other remedies, but would not have that exceeded;” a multitude of cases have taught me, that even that might and often ought to be omitted; and I have precedently adduced two observations of M.Hoffman, which prove all the danger for that remedy. But even, without recourseto experience, common sense alone may suffice to persuade one, that a remedy which gives convulsions, cannot be very proper for a disorder which are the effects of repeated convulsions.
It is by combating the cause that the evil is to be destroyed; for as little as may every day be removed, of that cause, one may be pretty sure that the effect will disappear, without the danger of a return. If it is against the effect only that the procedure of the cure is levelled, the work of each day is not only of no service to the following one, but almost always detrimental.
After having indicated what is to be avoided, there remains to examine what can be done. I have precedently specified the character that the remedies ought to have; to strengthen without irritating; there are some that can answer those indications; indeed the catalogue of them is not a long one, and the two most efficacious are, doubtless,the bark and the cold bath. The first of these medicines has been looked upon, for more than a century past, independently of its febrifuge virtue, as one of the most powerful strengtheners, and as an anodyne. The most celebrated of the modern physicians look on it as a specific in the disorders of the nerves. I have already shewn, that it was an ingredient in the prescription above quoted fromBoerhaave; and M.Vandermondeemployedit with great success in the case of a young man under his care, whom debauches with women had thrown into a deplorable condition[119]. M.Lewisprefers it to all the other remedies; and M.Stehelin, in that letter of his which I have more than once mentioned, says, he holds it the most efficacious of any.
Twenty ages of exact and well considered experiences have demonstrated that the cold baths possess the same qualities. Dr.Baynardhas more particularly proved the virtue of them in the disorders produced by self-pollution, and by excesses of venery; especially in a case, where, independently of the impotency and of the simplegonorrhœa, there was so great a weakness, augmented, indeed, by bleeding and by purgations, that the patient was considered as at the gates of death[120].
M.Lewisdoes not scruple affirming yet more positively their efficacy. “Among all the medicines (says he,) whether external or internal, there is nothing can equal the virtue of the cold bath.... It cools the body more, strengthens the nerves better, and promotes perspiration moreeffectually, than any medicine taken down the throat can do, and will do as much service in thetabes dorsalis, prudently used, as every thing else put together[121].” It ought even to be remarked, that the cold bath has, as I have already said of the air, a particular advantage, which is, that its action depends less on the reaction, which is as much as to say on the vital forces of nature, than the action of the other remedies: these only act upon the quick, but the cold bath gives a spring even to the dead fibres.
The conjunction of the bark with the cold bath stands indicated by the purity of their virtues; they operated the same effects, and being combined, they cure those disorders which all the other remedies only serve to make worse. In their qualities of strengthening, of anodynes, of febrifuges, they re-invigorate, they lessen the feverish and nervous heat, they calm the irregular motions produced by the spasmodic disposition of the nervous system. They remedy the weakness of the stomach, and very quickly dissipate the pains which are the consequences of it. They restore appetite, facilitate the digestion and nutrition, they re-establish all the secretions, and especially perspiration, which renders them so efficacious in all the catarrhal and cutaneous disorders; in short, they are remedies for all the diseases causedby weakness, provided that the patient does not labor under indissoluble obstructions, inflammations, abscesses, or internal ulcers, conditions which even do not necessarily or almost necessarily exclude, any thing more than the cold baths, but which often allow of the bark.
I saw, some years ago, a foreigner, who might be of the age of about twenty-three or twenty-four, and who, from his tenderest infancy, had been subject to the torture of the cruellest head-achs, and almost continual ones considering the frequency and the length of the fits, which were almost always accompanied with a total loss of appetite. The evil had been considerably made worse by the use of bleeding, of evacuatives, of purgative waters, of warm baths, of broths, and a multitude of other remedies. I prescribed for him the cold bath and the bark. In a few days, the fits became weaker and weaker, and much less frequent; the patient, at a month’s end, thought himself almost radically cured; the cessation of the remedies and the bad weather renewed the fits, but incomparably less violent than before. He recommenced the same process of cure the spring following, and his disorder came to be so slight, that he judged he should need no more of any application; I am persuaded that the same recourse, once or twice repeated, will radically cure him.
A man of eight and twenty years old, had, for many years, been cruelly tormented with an irregular gout, which seized constantly his head, and occasioned dreadful distortions of his face; he had consulted a number of physicians, and tried remedies of various kinds, and lately a medicinal wine composed of the most penetrative aromatics, infused in Spanish wine; all, and especially the last, had increased his disorder; blisters had been applied to his legs which brought on violent symptoms; at this epoch it was that I was consulted. I advised for him, a strong decoction of bark and of camomile, which he continued for six weeks, and which restored him to more health, than he had enjoyed for many years. It would be needless here to adduce a great number of examples, especially foreign to the case, to prove the strengthening quality of these remedies, which has been so long demonstrated, and of which every thing in this disorder indicates the use; an use of which the happiest successes have confirmed the virtue.
When I employed the bark in a liquid form, I ordered the decoction of one ounce in twelve ounces of water, or, according to the indication, of red wine, boiled for two hours in a close vessel, to be taken, at three ounces a time, three times a day. I time the cold bath in the evening, when the digestion of the dinner is intirely completed;it contributes much to procure a quiet sleep. I knew a young man, accustomed to self-pollution, who used to pass the night in the most sleepless disquiet, and who was every morning bathed in his own colliquative sweats; the night that followed the sixth cold bath he slept five hours, and got up in the morning without sweats, and much refreshed.
Martials are a third remedy, so often used in all cases of weakness, as not to need any insistence here on their efficacy in quality of strengtheners; as they contain nothing of an irritating nature, they are extremely proper in this disorder. They are given in substance or in infusion; but the best preparation is the chalybeate waters prepared by nature, and especially the spaw-waters, one of the most powerful tonics that are known, and a tonic, so far from irritative, that it softens any acridity that may be in the humors. The gums, myrrh, the bitters, the mildest aromatics may also be of use. It must be the circumstances that must decide the choice from among these different remedies. The first of those that I have indicated, merit, for the most times, the preference; but there may cases occur which require others; they should, in general, be selected from the class of the nervous medicines, taking for a guide of choice, the precautions I have above specified. It is a disorderof the nerves, and ought to be treated as such; and treated so it has often been with success, without the cause of it having been known. It is a truth, and a truth demonstrated by incontestable observations, that the ignorance of this cause, and a neglect thereto consequential of the precautions which it exacts, has sometimes frustrated prescriptions to all appearances the best indicated, without the physicians being able to penetrate the cause of their failure of success.
I prescribed for the young man, whose case is described in a fragment of his letters (p. 34.) pills of which mirrh was the basis, with a decoction of the bark; and this was attended with the happiest success[122]. “I am every day (as he wrote me sixteen days after his beginning these remedies) more and more sensible of the great good they do me; my head-achs are no longer either so frequent or so violent: I have not them now any more, unless when I apply close; my stomach grows better; I have now but rarely pains in my limbs.” At the end ofa month his cure was complete, except in this, that he had not, nor perhaps ever will have, the strength it is probable he would have had but for his misconduct. The check, which the machine receives in its growing season, has consequences which are irreparable. Oh, that this truth were but strongly imprinted on the minds of youth! It has been lately urged with great energy. “Youth” (says M.Linnæus) “is the most important season for forming a robust constitution. Nothing is more to be dreaded than a premature or excessive use of the pleasures of venery: thence proceed weaknesses of the eyes, vertigos, diminution of appetite, and even an enfeeblement of the mental powers. Bodies enervated in youth never recover their original vigor: their old age is accelerated and infirm, and their life short[123].”
Sixteen hundred years before the times of this great Naturalist,Plutarch, in his valuable work on the education of children, had recommended the formation of their constitution as a point of the highest importance. “No care (says he) should be neglected that can contribute to the elegance and vigor of the body:” (the excesses of which I am treating are detrimentalto both the one and the other;) “for” (adds he) “the foundation for a healthy old age is to be laid in youth: temperance and moderation at this early time of life, are a passport to a happy latter season[124].”
To the account of the preceding case, in which the success appears due to the bark, I shall subjoin another, in which the cold bath was the principal remedy.
A young man of a bilious constitution, seduced to libidinous practices from the age of ten years, had always been, from that time, weak, languishing, and of an ill habit of body: he had had some bilious disorders, which it had been very difficult to cure; he was extremely lean, pale, feeble, melancholic. I prescribed for him the cold bath, and a powder of cream of tartar, martials, and a very little cinnamon. In less than six weeks he acquired such a strength as he had never before known.
One great advantage of the Spaw-waters and of the bark is, that the use of them agrees with milk, and suffers it to pass. The Spaw-waters are not the only ones that have this property.Hoffmanprescribed asses milk, with a third of Seltzer-water. M.de la Mettriehas preserved to us a curious observation of M.Boerhaave;speaking of the Duke of ——, “This amiable Duke (I translate literally) had thrown himself out of the nuptial paradise; I brought him into it again by the use of Spaw-waters with milk[125].”
A weakness of the stomach which causes the digestion to be too slow; acids; the want of activity in the bile; the obstructions in the intestines of the abdominal region, are the principal causes that hinder the digestion of the milk, and counter-indicate its use. The waters which remedy all these causes cannot but facilitate the digestion; and the bark, which fulfils the same indications, may also be very well combined with the milk. These remedies may be employed, either precedently, to prepare the passages, which is almost always necessary, or at the same time.
In 1753 I restored, perfectly, a foreigner, who had so exhausted himself with a woman of the town, that he was grown incapable of any act of virility; his stomach was also extremely weakened, and the want of nutrition and sleep had quite emaciated him. At six in the morning he took six ounces of the bark-decoction, to which he added a spoonfull of Canary-wine: an hour afterwards he took ten ounces of goats milk,fresh drawn, with a little sugar, and an ounce of orange-flower-water. He dined on a cold roast fowl, with a glass of excellent Burgundy, diluted with an equal part of water. At six in the evening he took a second dose of the bark; at half an hour after six he went into the cold bath, in which he staid ten minutes, and immediately on coming out of it, went to bed. At eight in the evening he took again the same quantity of milk, and got up from nine till ten. Such was the effect of these remedies, that at the end of eight days, on seeing me come into his room, he cried out to me, in a transport of joy, that he had recoveredthe external sign of virility, if I may make use of M.Buffon’sexpression. In a month, he had almost intirely retrieved his original vigor.
Some absorbent powders; some spoonfulls of mint-water, often the addition of only a little sugar; some pills of the extract of the bark with mastic, which is itself an useful remedy in this case, may also contribute to prevent the disagreement of the milk. To the mastic, or to the gum-dragon, might be substituted that gum newly introduced in some parts of England, under the name ofGumm. rubrum Gambiense, upon which there may be seen a small dissertation in that excellent collection published by the new Society of Physicians formed at London[126].It strengthens, it sweetens: which are the two great indications in the diseases of which I am treating.
However, if with all the care that may be taken, it should be found impossible to bear the milk, I should advise trying butter-milk. I prescribed it with success for a young man, in whom certain symptoms of vergency to the hypochondriac disorder deterred me from a recourse to milk itself. The bilious drink the butter-milk with pleasure, and are always the better for it; and indeed it ought always to be preferred to milk, where there is a great deal of heat, a feverishness, an eresipelatous disposition; but it is especially of very great service when the venereal excesses produce an acute fever, such as was that of whichRaphaeldied. Notwithstanding the weakness in these erotic fevers, the tonics would be hurtful; bleeding is dangerous: the famousJohnston, who died Baron of Ziebendorff, above fourscore years ago, positively forbad it in this case[127]. Too cooling a method of cure does not succeed, as the observation of M.Vandermondeproves, and as I have myself seen; but the butter-milk is of service, provided it is not too unctuous. It calms, it dilutes, it sweetens, it assuages the thirst, it refreshes, and at the same timenourishes and strengthens, which is of great importance in this case; one symptom of which is, that strength melts away in it with an inconceivable quickness. M.Gilchrist, who does not lay any great stress on milk in a hectic, commends greatly the use of butter-milk in that very disorder[128].
Since my last edition of this work, published about four years ago, (it being now 1764,) I have been consulted by several persons in a state of enervity or debility. Some have been intirely cured. Many have received considerable relief; others none at all. When the disease is got to a certain head, the most that can be hoped for is, that the remedies will stop the progress of the disorder. Of the successes of some of my patients I have remained unacquainted.
In almost all my treatment of these cases, milk has been the principal aliment; while the bark, martials, chalybeate waters, and the cold bath have been the remedies. Some patients I put intirely into a milk diet; others only took it once or twice a day.
The patient of whom I particularised the case in the fifth Section, where I promised an account of my method of management of his disorder, lived for three months upon nothing but milk, upon bread well-baked, upon one or two quite new laid eggs, a day,and fair water, just drawn from the fountain. His milk he took four times a day, twice warm from the cow without bread, twice warmed on the fire with some bread. The remedies were an electuary composed of bark, of conserve of orange-peel, and syrup of mint. His breast was covered with an aromatic strengthening plaister. His whole body was every morning rubbed down with flannel. He took as much exercise as he could bear, both on horseback and foot, and especially he kept much in the open air. His weakness, and his complaints of his breast, hindered me from advising him the cold bath at that epoch. The success, however, of the remedies was such, that his strength returned to him, and his stomach was restored. In a month’s time he was able to walk a league on foot. His vomitings ceased intirely; the pains of his breast were considerably diminished, and for these three years last past he continues in a very tolerable state of health. Little by little he returned to his usual aliments, having taken a distaste to milk.
The parts of generation are always those that recover their vigor the slowest. Often too they never regain it, even though the rest of the body appear to have recovered its natural strength. In this case, it may be literally prophesied, that the part which has sinned, will be the part that shall die.
I have always found more facility in curing those who, in the age of maturity, had exhausted themselves by excesses, in a short time, than those who, in a longer space of it, had enervated themselves by pollutions, more rarely practised, but which having been begun in their tenderest youth, had hindered their growth, and had never allowed them to come to all their natural strength. The first may be considered as having had a violent illness, which has consumed all their strength, but whose organs having acquired all their perfection, however they may have much suffered, yet, the cessation of the cause of their illness, time, a good regimen, and proper remedies, may restore them. Whereas the others, having never let their constitution come to good, how should they be restored to what they never had? How could they expect that art should operate in the age of maturity, what they have hindered nature from operating in the tender season of youth and of puberty? Common sense must tell one how chimerical such a hope must be; and, indeed, my observations every day prove to me, that young persons, who have delivered themselves up to this pollution, in their childhood, in their earliest youth, and in the epoch of the unfolding of puberty, an epoch which is a crisis of Nature, for which its whole strength is necessary to her; daily observation, I say,proves to me, that such young persons must never expect to be vigorous and robust: they may think themselves very well off, if they can compass the enjoying a moderate state of health, exempt from great disorders or great pains.
Those who trust to a tardy repentance, having delayed it to an age, in which the machine may preserve itself, when it is in good order, but is not to be repaired without great difficulty, ought not either to have great hopes. After forty it is rare to grow young again.
When I order the bark with wine, I do not restrict the patient intirely to a milk diet; but make him take the bark in the morning and the milk at night. For some patients, however, I have been obliged to invert that order; the wine taken in the morning not agreeing with their stomach, and constantly making them vomit.
When I employ mineral waters, I make them drink first some bottles pure, before I proceed to have them mixed with milk.
When the disorder is inveterate it commonly degenerates into acacochymia, a general depravation of the humors, or ill habit of the body; the cure of which must be proceeded upon before you attempt to restore strength. In this case it is that evacuants are sometimes indispensably necessary, and prove of great service. Whereas restoratives,nutritious aliments, milk, ordered in these circumstances, may throw the patient into a slow fever, and he will rather find his strength diminish in proportion to the use he makes of them.
When violent excesses shall have thrown one suddenly into such a considerable weakness as to give room of fear for the patient’s life, recourse should be had to active cordials. Spanish wines may be given him with a little bread, or some good broths with new laid eggs: he should be put to bed directly, and have some flannels applied to his breast, steeped in wine, warmed with Theriaca.
As to those cases, in which venereal excesses have occasioned an acute fever, bleeding should not be used, unless indicated by the fullness and hardness of the pulse; and it is better to take the quantity of blood at two different times bleeding, than all at once. The white decoction, barley water with a little milk, some doses of nitre, some glisters with a decoction of mullein flowers, some warm bathings for the feet; and as to aliments, some veal-broth, thickened with barley or the like grain; these are the remedies indicated by right practice, and such as I have seen succeed very happily and quickly, in those cases in which I have employed them.
The symptoms rarely require any particular method of cure, and yield to the general one. You may sometimes, however, join external corroboratives to the internal ones, where it may be proper to strengthen any particular part. I have myself often advised, with success, epithems or aromatic plaisters for the breast. Nor is it sometimes unserviceable to wrap the testicles in a soft flannel, steeped in some corroborative liquid, and to support them by means of a suspensory.
Here also may be placed what M.Gottersays: “I have sometimes cured thegutta serena, occasioned by venereal excesses, by employing internal corroboratives, and errhines, or nasal cephalic powders, which, by the slight irritation they produced, determined a greater afflux of the animal spirits to the optic nerve[129].”
It would be needless here to enter on greater particularities of the method of cure; whatever extension I might give them, they would never be sufficient to guide the sick without the assistence of a physician, to whom they would be superfluous. I have, indeed, treated the more largely of the regimen, because that, when the disorder has as yet made no great progress, that alone, joined to the cessation of the cause, might operate a cure, and that any one might confine himself to it without any danger.
There appears then nothing more for me to say, before I terminate this part, but to add the preservative cautions. I was sensible that this article was wanting to the first edition of this work, and that it was an unjustifiable defect, from the importance of the matter. A gentleman, celebrated in the Republic of Literature for his works, and yet more respectable for his talents, his knowledge, and his personal qualities, than for his name, and for the employments of which he so worthily acquits himself, in one of the first towns in Switzerland, M.Iselin, (I hope he will forgive my naming him,) made me sensible of that my omission in a very polite manner. I shall quote here an extract of his letter with the more pleasure, for its pointing out exactly what there remained for me to do.
“I could wish (says he) to see a work from your hand, in which you would explain the means the most secure and the least dangerous, by which parents, during the time of education, and young persons, when they are left to their own conduct, might the best preserve themselves from that violence of desires which urges them to those excesses, whence arise such dreadful diseases, or to disorders that disturb the happiness of society and their own. I do not doubt of there being a diet that particularly favors continency. I shouldthink that a work that should teach it us, combined with a description of the diseases produced by impurity, would be equivalent to the best treatises of morality on this subject.”
M.Iselinis doubtless in the right; nothing would be more important than the combination of the two points he desires; but then nothing would be more difficult than the detaching them from the other parts not only of moral but medicinal education. To treat of this article apart, that is to say, to treat of it well, it would be necessary to establish a great number of principles, which would swell too much this little work, and which would, besides, be very foreign to it. Some general precepts, unconnected with the necessary principles and divisions, would not only be of little use, but might even become dangerous; so that it is better to refer such a treatise to the making part of a more considerable one, upon the means of forming a good constitution, and of giving a youth a firmly established health; a matter which, though it has been handled by very able authors, is, hitherto, far, very far from being exhausted; and upon which there remain a multitude of extremely important things to be added, as well as upon the disorders incident to that season of life. So that, though it be against my inclination, I will not here touch uponthis article. All that I can say is, that idleness, inactivity, too long lying a-bed, too soft a bed, a rich, aromatic, salt, or vinous diet, dangerous or suspicious acquaintance, licentious works, being the likeliest causes of seduction into those excesses, they cannot be too carefully avoided. Diet especially is of extreme importance, and there is not attention enough had to that particular. Those who educate youth, ought to have ever present to them that pathetic observation of St.Jerom: “The forges of Vulcan, the internals of the Vesuvius and the Mount Olympus do not burn with more flames, than youth pampered with high meats, and drenched with wines.”
Menjot, one ofLewisthe XIVth’s Physicians, from about the middle to the end of the last century, mentions women, that an excess ofhippocras(spiced wine) threw into a venereal extasy. The use of wine and flesh-meats is so much the more pernicious, for that while they augment the force of the stimulations of loose desires, they weaken at the same time that of reason, which ought to resist them. “Wine and animal food dull the soul,” saysPlutarch, in his treatiseOn the eating of flesh-meats, a work which ought to be generally perused. The most ancient Physicians had already known the influence of regimen over the morals; they had the idea of a moralmedicinal-course; andGalenhas left us upon that matter a small work, which is, perhaps, the best upon that subject hitherto extant. Conviction of the reality of his promise cannot but follow its perusal.
“Let those (says he) who deny that the difference of aliments can render some temperate, others dissolute; some chaste, others incontinent; some courageous, others cowardly; some meek, others quarrelsome; some modest, others overbearing; let those, I say, who deny this truth, come to me; let them follow my counsels as to eating and drinking, and I promise them, that they will find great helps therefrom towards moral philosophy; they will especially feel the faculties of their soul gather greater strength; they will improve their natural genius, they will acquire more memory, more prudence, more diligence. I will also tell them what kind of liquors, what winds, what state of the air, what climates they ought to shun or chuse[130].”
Hippocrates,Plato,Aristotle,Plutarch, had already left us some very good things on this important matter, and among the works which remain to us of the PythagoreanPorphyry, that zealous anti-christian of the third century, there is one,upon the abstinence of the animal food, in which he reproachesFirmus Castricius, to whom he addresses it, for his having quitted the vegetable diet, though he himself had owned it was the fittest to preserve health, and to facilitate the study of philosophy; and he adds, “Since you have taken to the eating of flesh-meat, your own experience has taught you, that that confession of yours was well grounded.” There are some very good things in that work.
The most efficacious preservative, the most infallible one is, doubtless, that which is pointed out by that great man, who, of all men has the best known his fellow creatures, and all their ways; who has not only seen what they actually are, but what they have been, what they ought to be, and what they are capable of becoming; who has the most truly loved them; who has made the greatest efforts in their favor, and who has been the most cruelly persecuted by them. “Watch with care (says he) over the young man. Do not leave him alone either by day or by night. Sleep, at least, in the same room with him. From the instant that he shall have contracted that habit, the most fatal one that a young man can inslave himself to, he will carry to the grave the melancholic effects of it. He will have his body and his heart for ever enervated by it.” I refer to the work itselffor a perusal of all the excellent things he has said on this matter[131].
The description of the danger, upon the abandoning one’s self to such vitious practices, is perhaps one of the most powerful motives of correcting one’s self of them: it is a dreadful picture, and fit to make one start back with horror and affright. Let us assemble in one point of view the principal features of it. A general wasting of the whole machine; an enfeeblement of all the corporal senses and of all the faculties of the soul; loss of imagination and memory; imbecillity; contempt; shame; the ignominy such viciousness drags after it; all the functions of life disturbed, suspended, or painfully executed; long, vexatious, unaccountable, disgustful diseases; acute and constantly regenerating pains; all the infirmities or evils of old age, in the age of youth and vigor; an unaptitude for all those occupations for which man is born; the vile character to act of being an useless burthen to the earth; the mortifications to which such a character is daily exposed; a distaste for all worthy pleasures; a dull melancholy; an aversion for society and consequently for one’s self; a horror of life, the dread of temptations every moment to suicide; an anguish worse than pain; a remorseworse than anguish, a remorse which daily increasing, and which doubtless taking a new force, when the soul is no longer weakened by its ties to the body, will perhaps serve for a torment to all eternity, for an unextinguishable fire. See here the sketch of the fate reserved for those who proceed as if they had not it to dread!
Before I quit this article of the method of cure, I ought to observe to the patients, and it is an observation equally extensible to all who labor under chronical disorders, especially when they are accompanied with weakness; that they ought not to hope that, in a few days, those evils can be repaired or removed, which are the produce of the errors of years. They must lay their account with being obliged to endure the tediousness of a long cure, and to confine themselves scrupulously to all the rules laid down for their regimen. If sometimes they appear trifling or minute to them, it is because they themselves are not fit judges of the degree of their importance; it would be better for them constantly to repeat to themselves, that the irksome tediousness of the most rigid method of cure is still preferable to a state of any the slightest disease. Be it allowed me to observe, that for one disorder that remains uncured through improper treatment, there are a number, which the indocility of the patients renders incurable, notwithstandingthe most well judged assistance given on the part of the physician.
For the securing success,Hippocratesrequired that the patient, the physician, the attendants, should all equally do their duty; if this concurrence was less rare, the happy issues of disorders would be more frequent. “Let the patient (saysAridæus) have a good heart, and join forces with the physician against the disease[132].” I have seen the most stubborn ones yield to the establishment of this harmony; and recent observations have demonstrated to me, that the virulence of even cancerous disorders has submitted to methods of cure, directed perhaps with some skill, but especially executed with a docility and a regularity of which the successes constituted the best praise.