238 ON THE NATUHE AND PRINCIPLES OF 



completing the recovery is daily exemplified. In the 

 majority of cases of chronic inflammation, and parti- 

 cularly in those forms of it which occur idiopathi- 

 cally, and not from the application of any local 

 irritant, it will, however, be found necessary to adopt 

 measures having for their object the improvement of 

 the general health, and the restoration of their na- 

 tural vigour or tone to the contractile tissues of the 

 body : and, as a preliminary step, it is in these cases 

 always advisable to search for, with the view of 

 removing, any debilitating causes to which each in- 

 dividual may have been particularly subject. For 

 not only are the general causes of debility already 

 sufficiently numerous, and (from the miserable and 

 half-civilized condition of a large proportion of the 

 population, and the want of proper social legislation) 

 apparently on the increase, but each class of the 

 community is more especially exposed to certain 

 influences peculiar to itself. On the present occa- 

 sion it is, of course, impossible to do more than allude 

 to these injurious agencies, but it may be observed 

 that they all involve a partial deprivation of one or 

 . more of those essentials to health which have lon^ 



O 



been pointed out by medical writers, and the chief 

 of which are pure air, regular exercise, a sufficiency 

 of wholesome nourishment, and the means of main- 

 taining the natural temperature of the body. 



Having, then, attended to those circumstances of 

 diet and regimen, without which the administration 

 of medicines will be of little avail, we may proceed 

 to give such tonics as the state of the constitution 

 more particularly demands. And here great ad- 



