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this case gives to those afflicted with external cancerous tumors to adopt this mode of dieting. For here was every sign of a radically impaired and enfeebled constitution; the appetite greatly injured, the breath bad, the legs swelling, the strength declining; in fine, all the great and important functions imperfectly performed, though there was no breach of substance, nor any apparent great local disorganization. How absurd then (by the way) is it to say that this disease is in its origin local. But we know that many persons with true cancerous tumors enjoy, even for years, a relatively good state of health ; most undoubtedly, infinitely better than the subject of this report. I should hope, therefore, that gradually they may be made sensible of what is most proper to enable them to pass the remaining term of life with as much ease and comfort as their situation renders admissible.

It remains only to add to this account the reports of the case taken at the Consultation Committee at the dispensary.

GENERAL DISPENSARY.

Present at the Consultation Committee, 7th April, 1813, Dr. Clutterbuck, Dr. Birkbeck, Dr. Lambe, Mr. Vaux, and Mr. Norris.

Mrs. A. R., aged forty-two, has complained since June last of severe shooting pains at the lower part of the abdomen, with a great discharge of fœtid acrid matter; there likewise exists considerable tenderness of the hypogastric region, with difficulty of making water. For upward of five years, the catamenia have not occurred, but pain and hardness of the breasts have been frequently noticed. The bowels are regular, but the evacuations are attended with pain, and the discharge of clots of blood. Within the vagina no swelling can be perceived, but the uterus has descended. She has employed opium with temporary alleviation of the symptoms, and other medicines without any benefit.

August 4th, 1812.-Present, Dr. Clutterbuck, Dr. Lambe, and Mr. Vaux.

Mrs. A. R. asserts that the pains are aggravated, but the discharge is less in quantity and less foetid at present; such variations, however, she states are not unusual. The lower ex

tremities are become anasarcous. Her rest is now much interrupted. The pulse is generally about eighty in the minute, with frequent intermissions; a circumstance also noticed about two months since. Sumat Hydrosulph. Ammonia gtt. vj. ter in die sensim dosim augendo.

February 2d, 1814.-Present, Dr. Clutterbuck, Dr. Birkbeck, Dr. Lambe Mr. Vaux, and Mr. Young.

Mrs. A. R. states that the pains are much easier, though she still obtains but little rest. The discharge, which is less than formerly, is yellow and without blood. The hydrosulphuret was soon discontinued, and cort. cinchonæ taken, which is directed to be discontinued."

August 3d, 1814.-Present, Dr. Clutterbuck, Dr. Birkbeck, Dr. Lambe, and Mr. Vaux.

Mrs. A. R. now reports herself to be much improved. There is not any discharge, and but little pain. She has chiefly used opium, with a vegetable diet and distilled water.

February 1st, 1815.-Present, Dr. Clutterbuck, Dr. Birkbeck, Dr. Lambe, Mr. Vaux, and Mr. Young.

Mrs. A. R. declares that she has persevered in the use of vegetable diet and distilled water since the last report, with no inconvenience, excepting the sense of weakness, and considerable craving for food. She is in all respects improved.

REMARKS

Ou some cases of Disease which have appeared under the Regimen. Ir is not possible, in my opinion, to devise any other proof with regard to the agents which have the greatest influence on health than that which has been given in the preceding pages. I have taken, as it has been seen, examples of diseases acknowledged to be incurable, when they were presented in such a stage as to afford any rational prospect of relief, and have given the results of experience. To these are added observations, accumulated now to a considerable number, in other cases, as they have occurred in practice. These may not all of them have been of equal weight or importance. It is enough,

that they were sufficiently serious to excite the anxiety and apprehension of those who were the subjects of them. These observations, thus promiscuously taken, concur uniformly in corroborating the conclusions drawn from the diseases, avowedly incurable by medicine. They are, therefore, the more valuable, as tending to fix the practice, which has been found the most beneficial in these last.

If in these the most sanguine hopes, that might have been formed of the effects of the practice proposed, have not been fully realized; if perfect cures have not been effected, nor the body restored to a complete state of health and integrity, it will be allowed, it is hoped, that what has been effected is neither trifling nor despicable. In cancerous diseases, in particular, to have relieved the horrible and excruciating torments of the disease; to have prevented ulceration, with its attendant miseries of loathsome, fœtid, and excoriating discharges; to have preserved life, and that in such a degree of comfort as to enable the patient to enjoy society, and be equal to the common duties and occupations of the world; to have effected so much in cases where neither age, nor a completely broken constitution, present invincible obstacles to all amendment, is surely to have achieved much for suffering humanity; and amply compensates the proposer of this regimen for the anxiety and labor in which he has been involved, in consequence, for more than ten years; the obloquy of the ignorant and the misrepresentations of the malevolent; and, he must add, the heavy pecuniary loss which he has been obliged to sustain in collecting the evidence which he has been at length enabled to lay before the public.

Such, then, are the benefits which have been really gained; and the evident inferences from these facts will remain unshaken whatever may be the future progress or final issue of the cases which have been treated.

It is neither pretended, nor expected, that a morbid body can, by any art, be kept free from the attacks of disease. There seems to be in the body, as in vegetation, the seeds of future diseases, which continue latent and inactive for a length of time; they then germinate, increase, pass through their regular stages, and come to a termination. What is the secret condition of the frame, which gives occasion to these phenomena, we are entirely ignorant. It is placed wholly beyond the reach of the senses; and appears to be without the sphere of physical and experimental inquiry.

It is, however, beyond a doubt, that between that state of

the body, in which there is merely a diseased disposition, and that consequent state, in which disease becomes active, there is a very long, though not a strictly definable interval. Thus the breath may begin to fail for three or four years before a person falls into a consumption. A change, therefore, takes place, certainly in the functions, and probably in the structure of the organs of respiration, long before the accession of confirmed cough and hectic fever. We see it more evidently in the cancer, in which there is pain, perhaps, for a series of years, before there is any thickening of the parts, as happened in the first of the cases of cancer, which I have related in this work.

Now, the very state of health which persons have, upon the whole, enjoyed under the regimen which I have described, shows that much of diseased action can, by its use, be superseded. But it has equally appeared that this has only happened imperfectly. Not only have the attacks of habitual diseases been continued or renewed, but some examples even of new diseases have taken place, of which there had been no indication in the former part of life. They have not been numerous, but it would be inconsistent with my duty, as a faithful relator of facts, to pass them over in silence. I have thought it proper, therefore, in this place, to set down such of these occurrences as I have thought most worthy of notice.

CASE I. I shall first mention a local disease of the cheek, which occurred to the subject of the first of the foregoing cases. He had been subject to common pimples from the age of eighteen; but these, under the regimen, had been almost entirely subdued. But in the year 1809, about the beginning of the fourth year, some small tumors appeared on the face. They have occupied principally the left cheek, and continued for several months, red and sore, but without any discharge. They gradually rose higher upon the skin, then became dry, and peeled off in the form of a scab, leaving the parts beneath clear and sound.

When some of these tumors had gone through their course, others appeared, and had the same progress; and as they have continued fixing on different spots, even till this present time (February, 1815), it is probable that almost every portion of the lower part of the cheek has been successively the seat of this affection. But when the scab has fallen off, the skin underneath has been left sound, without pitting, or other deformity.

I believe that the essence of this disease has consisted in a

circumstance, to which I have alluded more than once in the course of this work, as often occurring in the human body, namely, that the skin of this cheek was unsound; that portions have perished, been thrown off by the action of the vessels, and have been regenerated. Latterly, though the disease has not absolutely ceased, it has very nearly so; it is at present so trifling as hardly to deserve notice, and the parts are more sound and healthy both in feeling and appearance than when it first broke out.

CASE II. In another of the persons who had used this regimen more than two years, there took place a discharge from the urethra, very copious, like a gonorrhea. There was often united with it a considerable irritability of the bladder; but, otherwise, it was not accompanied with pain or inflammation. This discharge continued for about three years, and then ceased.

CASE III.I have said many years ago that one of the members of my own family, then a boy about eight years of age, was of a deeply scrofulous habit (See my Inquiry into the Origin, etc., of Constitutional Diseases, p. 61). In the course of this investigation I have received a strong proof of the correctness of this observation, and of the difficulty of completely eradicating such a disposition.

At the end of December, 1811, when he had used this regimen between five and six years, after having been skating during the day, the hand were observed to be stiff and a little swelled. On the day following, the face on the right side swelled, and the tumefaction increased, extending from the eye to the clavicle. The seat of the disease appeared to be about the middle of the lower maxillary bone. The bone itself became thickened at this part, and roughened upon its surface. Matter came from the part, both internally into the mouth, and externally through the cheek. This happened repeatedly, for two months, when the ulcerations finally closed, and the parts. became well. But for a couple of years the bone continued thickened, and the skin adherent to the parts underneath. After that, the adhesion of the skin was gradually loosened, and the parts were restored to their natural structure. But the bone continues thickened for near an inch through its whole body.

This was, in fact, a very trifling disease. But it appears to have been the germ of one which is the most serious and distressing of any which affects the human body-a fixed and radical disease of the substance of the bone.

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