DIA. } 68 
guish the peculiar secretion thus thrown off in-a 
state of health, must be peculiarly liable to meet 
with injurious impediments to its executive office. 
Suppressed perspiration is therefore a fruitful 
cause of disease, and what we familiarly call, 
taking cold, is often the effect of this restraint on the 
cutaneous function. When it eccurs, the balance 
of circulatory and secerning regularity is deranged 
or destroyed, and the disorder or disease super- 
vening, is not entirely removed, until the unbal- 
anced actions of the body, are reinstated in their 
due efficiency. Nearly all the acute diseases, are 
attended with a disordered state of the skin, for 
the reasons already given. Hence the use of those 
remedies and means which experience has taught 
us are calculated to achieve so important a resto- 
ration of healthy action, has been coeval with the 
earliest practice of medicine. 'The common-sense 
view of the subject, has met the reasoning and 
observing faculties of mankind generally: and in 
consequence, sweating medicines have ever been 
among the most popular and general rgmedies in 
domestic practice. They bave certainly from this 
cause, been injudiciously applied, and doubtless, 
often dangerously. The records of medicine which 
shew the transitions of practice, according to the 
prevailing theories and dogmas of the day, prove, 
that this abuse of diaphoretics has not been con- 
fined to the unlearned and the vulgar. Unfortu- 
nately the members of the profession of medicine 
in the days of Van Helmot, took aconspicuous _ 
stand in this ill-judged misuse of a set of reme- _ 
dies which we justly esteem, under proper regu- 
lation, invaluable. The diseases to which they 
are applicable are various: and are both acute and 
chronic. Their efficacy is conspicuous in dysen- 
tery, and some other bowel affections; in acute 
rheumatism after the inflammatory stage has been 
