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I must repeat on this what has been already asserted with regard to other morbific agents, that its action is not the less real because it is slow, and the impression for a time is hardly perceptible. A wine drinker, on hearing his favorite liquor called a slow poison, is reported to have replied, "A very slow poison indeed; I have used it daily these fifty years, and it has not killed me yet." And this is thought to be a very triumphant answer. But the same defence may be made of every bad habit whatever. Many bear them with impunity, which proves, not the salubrity of the habit, but the flinty hardiness of a constitution with which they are blessed.

The objections which are urged against the use of fermented liquors do not seem applicable to spices. However hot and fiery these are in the mouth, they do not appear to be deleterious. They do not derange the brain, nor stupefy the nervous system; they do not even appear to heat the body, nor greatly to accelerate the pulse. There cannot, therefore, be any objection to the moderate use of such substances. The experience and opinions of Mr. Bruce on this subject are, I think, worthy of attention, though not so immediately applicable to our own climate as to the more tropical regions. This writer asks:

"But did they ever feel themselves heated by ever so great a quantity of black pepper? Spirits, they think, substituted for this, answer the same purpose. But does not the heat of your skin, the violent pain in your head, while the spirits are filtering through the vessels of your brains, show the differWhen did any ever feel a like sensation from black pepper, or any pepper eaten to excess in every meal?

ence?

"I lay it down, then, as a positive rule of health, that the warmest dishes the natives delight in are the most wholesome strangers can use in the putrid climates of Lower Arabia, Abyssinia, Senaar, and Egypt itself, and that spirits and all fermented liquors should be regarded as poisons.'

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Having condemned water, and attempted to show experimentally its noxious influence upon the system; having condemned spirituous and fermented liquors, from the authority of the most enlightened medical writers and the common experience of mankind, it must follow that there is no species of drinking which I approve. And, indeed, I have already ventured to assert that all drinking is an unnatural habit; in other words, that man is not naturally a drinking animal.

To those who cannot raise their views above the passing scene, who think that human nature must necessarily be in

every situation the same as they observe it in their own town or village; to those, in short, who look for knowledge in the prattling of the drawing-room, or the gossip of the grocer's shop, I know that this appears a strange, if not a ridiculous assertion. We say, with great confidence, that water is absolutely necessary both to man and beast. But the strength of the evidence is not equal to the positiveness of the assertion.

In fact, we know very little about the habits of animals, except of those whose natures we have changed and corrupted by domestication. All that the natural historian can do with regard to the wild species, is to describe their forms, and such of their qualities as have fallen under observation; these last must of necessity be very imperfect. Imperfect, however, as it is, we know enough to be certain that the assertion of the necessity of the use of water to animals is, to the extent to which it is carried, absolutely groundless.

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"I have known an owl of this species," (the brown owl) says M. White, live a full year without any water. Perhaps the case may be the same with all birds of prey." There was a Llama of Peru shown in London, a year or two ago, which lived wholly without liquids; it would not touch water. In some of the small islands on our coast, on which there is not a drop of water to be found, there are, I am told, rabbit-warrens. Bruce says, "That although Zimmer (an island of the Red Sea) is said to be without water, yet there are antelopes upon it, and also hyenas in numbers." To account for this, he suspects that there must be water in some subterraneous caves or clefts of the rocks. This, however, is only supposition. The argali, or wild sheep, from the country in which it is found, it is certain, does not drink. Mr. Pallas says of it, "This animal lives upon desert mountains, which are dry and without wood, and upon rocks where there are many bitter and acrid plants. He further says of it, "There are no deer so wild as the argali; it is almost impossible to come near it in hunting. They have an astonishing lightness and quickness in the chase, and they hold it a long time." How wonderfully, therefore, is this animal deteriorated by domestication, and by being forced to live in situations and to adopt habits unsuited to its nature!

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Let us therefore consider man again, for a moment, as we may suppose him fresh from the hands of his Maker, and depending upon his physical powers only for his subsistence. We must suppose every animal so circumstanced, to be furnished by nature with organs- suited to its physical necessities. Now I see that man has the head elevated above the ground, and to

bring the mouth to the earth requires a strained and a painful effort. Moreover, the mouth is flat and the nose prominent, circumstances which make the effort still more difficult. In this position the act of swallowing a fluid is so painful and constrained that it can hardly be performed. He has therefore no organ which is naturally suited to drinking. He cannot even convey a fluid into his mouth without the aid of some artificial instrument. The artifice is very simple, it is true. But still the body must be nourished anterior to all artificial knowledge. Nature seems therefore fully to have done her part toward keeping men from the use of liquids. And doubtless on a diet of fruits and recent vegetables there would be no thirst, and no necessity for the use of liquids.

If it be true therefore that other animals require water, it would not follow that man, whose organization is different, would require it likewise. But we, in fact, know very little of the habits of animals. Our common domestic animals certainly drink. But it appears, as far as my information extends, that common water has the same effect upon them as upon man; and that they are more or less healthy, according to the purity of the water which they use.*

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Many writers have observed the deleterious effect of water on our domestic animals. The following passage, from the Encyclopedia Methodique, is quoted in Sir John Sinclair's Code of Health, vol. iii.: “ Vitruvius informs us that the ancients inspected the livers of animals, in order to judge of the nature of the water of a country, and the salubrity of its nutritive productions. From this source they derived instruction respecting the choice of the most advantageous situations for building cities. The size and condition of the liver is, in fact, a pretty sure indication of the unhealthiness of particular grounds, and of the deleterious quality of the water, which, especially when it is stagnant, produces in cows, and particularly in sheep, fatal diseases that have often their seat in the liver; as, for instance, the rot, which frequently destroys whole flocks in marshy countries. The spleen is also a viscus very apt to be affected by these qualities."-Halle, Hygiene.

In a work on agriculture, by Hogg, the Ettric Shepherd, it is asserted that if it be tried to rear young lambs in the winter, upon hay and water, they, for the most part, die. But if they are supplied with fresh succulent food, they live and thrive.

PART SECOND.

CASES AND OBSERVATIONS.

In the foregoing remarks I have considered the effects of our aliment in general, without any regard to the immediate condition of the system as to health or disease. If many of the substances so applied are morbific causes, though only ultimately and remotely, it cannot but belong to prudent foresight and prospective wisdom to avoid them. But the rules for the preservation of health and avoiding diseases, though always esteemed a branch, and a most important branch of medicine, are rarely demanded of the physician, except in cases of obvious and imminent hazard. As there can be no doubt that on these highly interesting subjects many gross errors and many deep-rooted prejudices pervade the mass of mankind, hopes may be entertained that, as the understandings of men become enlightened, beneficial changes may be introduced into the general habits of society. This is, however, a remote, and not a very cheering prospect. But to do all that is within the feeble powers of individual exertion to diffuse knowledge, and the blessings which follow in its train, is no more than striving to pay that immense debt which every one owes to the community, who has received from the sufferance of his fellow-men the exemption from servile and laborious occupations, and the inestimable advantage of mental cultivation.

It belongs more to the immediate duty of the physician to consider how far the principles which have been laid down warrant a change in the treatment of diseases, particularly those which are chronical, and upon which medicine has little influence, and to determine what are the advantages which experience authorizes us to expect from the proposed change.

Whatever may be the effects upon the human body of the substances which, though received at short successive intervals, are continually applied to the organs, in the form of food and

drink, it is obvious that they cannot be estimated as we would calculate the forces, and percussions, and motions of inert matter. The body is a self-moving machine, subject to its own peculiar laws, and though to keep up the succession of motions and sensations, and the integrity of the powers which are essential to and which constitute a living system, the application of the peculiar stimuli of the various organs is necessary, still there are inherent properties of the body as a whole, of each peculiar organ, the totality of which constitute that whole, and even of every individual molecule of the living mass. Upon a machine so constituted and so complicated do the stimuli act; and to gain any insight into their effects, we must consider the properties of the substance acted upon, as well as the nature of the agents.

The living body itself is not only endowed with peculiar properties at any given moment of its existence, but it is also in a constant state of change, both in its powers and in its materials. The irritability, mobility, and sensibility of the various organs are never uniform during any two successive portions of time; and at periods considerably distant the change is more strongly marked. The whole mass of the system, the materials of which the body is composed, are likewise in a constant state of flux, so that after a certain lapse of time there is a total change of matter under an identity of form. I suspect that the laws according to which these changes take place have not been sufficiently adverted to, and that some insight may be gained into the origin, phenomena, and periods of diseases by a more strict consideration of them.

The circumstances to which I have adverted create a considerable difficulty in conducting an inquiry, by the way of experiment, on the effects of regimen, or peculiar modes of living, upon the body, either in disease or health. This difficulty is increased by the original varieties of the human constitution, so that, upon the whole, it becomes extremely hazardous to transfer the result of one trial to other cases of a different nature, or even of the same, and where the appearances are very similar. But still in this, as in every other physical inquiry, the foundation of all knowledge must be laid in experience; to that the appeal must be made in examining the truth or falsehood of principles, and the usefulness or the futility of all new proposals for the improvement of the treatment of diseases. If the varieties of different constitutions are endless, and the forms of disease unlimited, still there are analogies and resemblances sufficiently striking and definite to serve as a guide in the intricate

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