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destroy uneasy feelings, which are at the same time ultimately injurious, and concur with other causes to destroy the vital

powers.

He had, when living on common diet, been habitually thirsty, and like most persons inclined to studious and sedentary habits, was much attached to tea-drinking. But for the last two or three years, he has almost wholly relinquished the use of liquids; and by the substitution of fruit and recent vegetables, he has found that the sensation of thirst has been, in a manner, abolished. Even tea has lost its charms, and he very rarely uses it. He is therefore certain, from his own experience, that the habit of employing liquids is wholly an artificial habit, and not necessary to any of the functions of the animal

economy.

He has chosen to denominate this affection of the head atonic gout, induced by the obvious connection between it and the gouty pains. The general habit was of that kind, that it would have been said that there was not sufficient strength of constitution to throw out the gout upon the limbs. But if it should seem more proper to any one to suppose this disease a disposition to apoplexy, palsy, or any other of the great diseases originating in the brain, I should not think it worth contending about. Such disorders affecting gouty subjects cannot be distinguished from the same disorders affecting persons not subject to gout.

I may, in relation to this long history, have been tedious, and seem needlessly minute to most of my readers. But in truth, I have omitted many circumstances for the sake of brevity. There is no other case, the circumstances of which can be so strongly impressed upon my mind, and of which I can so fully warrant the correctness of statement. The conclusions, too, which I have drawn from the facts, are general conclusions, illustrative of the universal laws of diseased action. I shall, therefore, be absolved from the necessity of employing the same minuteness in what I have further to relate. If those for whose service these labors are principally designed-I mean persons suffering under habitual and chronical illness—are enabled to go along with me in my argument, to form a general correct notion of what they are to expect from regimen, and, above all, to arm their minds with firmness, patience, and perseverance, I shall not readily be induced to think that I have written one superfluous line.

Nov. 15th, 1814.-I feel it needful to add to this account no more than that the pains of the head are at present still

more trifling, and as nearly gone as possible. To say that they are wholly removed would not be the truth.

CASE II.

Disposition to Pulmonary Consumption.

August 25, 1813.-L. W. L., aged sixteen, had in the first years of his life every mark of a deep scrofulous habit. He was of a fair and pale complexion, and at six years of age the skin was rough, the eyelids habitually red, the muscles weak and soft, the joints tumid. He had suffered one severe attack of abdominal inflammation; the abdomen was always hard and tumid, though great attention was paid to regularity in his diet, and he constantly required medicine to keep the bowels regular. To these appearances was added a thinness which might be justly called emaciation, and a generally unhealthy, pallid, and sickly appearance. These appeared to me sufficient indications of a diseased state of the mesenteric glands, which is a precursor or concomitant of pulmonary consumption.

This general state of health was greatly amended by the use of the pure water, which was adopted in May, 1803; the habit was strengthened, the bowels became soft and regular, and the countenance became more healthful. From having been an inhabitant of the country, he had become, in the autumn of 1803, an inhabitant of London; and it was observable in him, that a child, who in the country was subject to frequent indispositions, was, by this attention only, in the heart of the metropolis, for about sixteen months kept free from every sort of illness.

About Christmas, 1804, he had a mild ulcerated sore throat, which appeared to have been received by contagion. After this, though he suffered very little at the time, the health began rather to fail. It left a constant hacking dry cough, which remained fixed for three or four months. At this time, instinctively, he left off animal food, and the cough disappeared in the spring, 1805. He then, spontaneously also, returned to the use of animal food, which I did not oppose, my opinion at that time being that the appetite should be taken as the guide for the species of food best suited to the present state of the body. I did not at that time consider that the fondness for animal food is wholly factitious, and could not in fact exist independent of

previous indulgence. In the course of this year he became very pallid, so that by the end of it his face was of the color of marble. He had an obstinate inflammation, of a scrofulous nature, of the left eye and eyelid in the autumn, which left the vessels distended with blood from relaxation. The appetite also became very delicate and capricious, so that his dinner was (as was remarked by a physician who saw him frequently) more play than eating. Even many sorts of vegetables he disliked. In this state, without any positive disease upon him, but with the air and aspect of a child that would never reach manhood, I resolved to confine him to a strict vegetable regimen, early in the year 1806.

The consequence of this has been, that from that hour to the present (now seven years and a half), he has been free from all serious illness; and the health has every year become more firm and established. A very few slight indispositions he has had, which it is not worth while to relate at length, except one circumstance, which I propose to make the subject of a distinct account. But in this case, though the subject was so young, the constitutional changes have been introduced very slowly; indeed, as slowly as in persons of advanced years.

In the autumn of 1806 the opthalmia returned, but much less severely, and since that time it has not appeared. But the vessels of the eyelids remained distended for three or four years, which gave the appearance of weakness in the part. For full as long a time he had a short hacking cough every successive winter. During the whole of the second year (1807), he continued to look exceedingly pallid, and far from healthy; and even at the end of four years he had, with a thin, pallid, and extenuated body, an extremely full, throbbing, and what would be called an inflammatory pulse. But since that time it has become much softened.

Formerly, when eating animal food, the tongue was at all times covered with a white slimy crust. It is now, and has been for several years, perfectly clean. The smallness and delicacy of the appetite remained for full two years, after which it improved and became much less fastidious. He is now rather pallid, but has much more color than when he used animal food.

It was an observation of his own, when he was under ten years of age, that " When I ate meat, I was at night first too cold, and then a great deal too hot, so that I could not sleep; but now I sleep comfortably all night long." I doubt whether on any point more unexceptionable evidence was ever offered.

He is at present in very good health, the breath sound and strong, the appetite hearty, with color enough, and enjoying great activity of mind and body, with a greater flow of animal spirits than falls to the lot of most people. But he carries about him strong marks of a consumptive constitution; and I do not doubt that if the attention, which has been paid to him now for a series of years, were to be remitted for three or four years, he would become really consumptive.

Nov. 17, 1814.-As this young man approaches manhood he appears to acquire more firm health, and the signs of his former delicate state are more completely effaced.

CASE III.

Distortion of the Chest, Pimples of the Face, General Debility, and Weak Eyes.

August 28, 1813.—h. L., aged nineteen, adopted the use of pure water in 1803, being then between nine and ten years of age. She had passed through the first years of her life without any dangerous illness, but was delicate and subject to congestions of the bowels; she was rather pallid, narrow in the chest, and had not the appearance of a child in good health. About the ninth year she appeared evidently to be growing awry. The health obviously improved by the use of the pure water, but not in such a degree as to furnish any precise observation, except that the tendency to crookedness was checked. At the time that this habit was persevered in, but while she used a mixed diet, the skin of the face became much deformed with the black spots that are called grubs, and the forehead in particular became almost covered and roughened with an aggregation of pimples. In 1805, she was still more pallid, heavy about the eyes, with a dark circle round them; and the spirits were so tender that every little exertion was a toil, and on the most trifling occasion the eyes would overflow with tears.

About midsummer, 1809, I joined to the pure water a vegetable regimen. She went to school at Warwick, where her regimen was continued. About October, Dr. Winthrop, then a physician at Warwick, wrote to me, that her mistress was under considerable anxiety on account of this child; that she seemed in still worse health and spirits than before, which was

attributed to the change of diet, which he feared would never agree with so delicate a subject.

I could not, however, attend to this well-intentioned advice, which, I believe, was such as would have been given by almost every other medical man. But I conceive that delicate subjects are those which afford the least resistance to morbific impressions, and from which, therefore, such impressions should be removed with the greatest care. Besides, I knew perfectly well what had been the state of the health under the common regimen; and what could be hoped from a recurrence to it, but a continuation of the same condition?

And all the prognostications of mischief from this change have been completely falsified by the event; for the truth is, that from that day to the present she has not had an hour ill health, nor scarcely the trifling indisposition of a single day. Every year the marks of weakness and delicacy wore off, and were at length completely effaced; and she has much grown up more robust. The tenderness and lowness of spirits, the heaviness of the eye and languor of the countenance have been removed and have been succeeded by uniform cheerfulness, activity, and intelligence. The chest has expanded and assumed a perfect form; and a cough, which, in the first years of this course, gave strong apprehensions of a pulmonary taint has wholly disappeared. In a word, she is now, and has been, for several years, in perfect health.

The roughness of the forehead, occasioned by the swarm of pimples, did not begin to yield till after more than two years, when they gradually disappeared. If, at present, there is an occasional pimple on the face or chin, she observes that it is much more painful than formerly, which is a sufficiently clear index that the general sensibility of the system is much greater or more acute than formerly.

I have chosen to assume a symptom that is in itself very trifling (though by no means so in the estimation of young women), as the denomination of the condition of the subject of this relation. The narrow form of the chest, or the habitual tenderness of spirits, formed a more prominent feature of the But I choose the cutaneous disease, in order to evince the connection that subsists between all the forms of disease, from the most trifling to the most severe.

case.

The color in this example is not so high as is customary with the eaters of animal food. But she is much less pallid than when she conformed to the common habits of life.

It may be worth while to observe that though in this

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