52 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



meaning is attached to this expression, it is this, that every 

 created thing was endowed with all the powers necessary to 

 enable it to carry out, in the most perfect manner, the great 

 purposes of its existence ; to bear all necessary contact with 

 other created things, without injury to its delicate organization, 

 or in any way interfering with its vitality ; and it is safe to 

 assume that in this condition every living being was in health, 

 and likely so to continue until the great object of reproduction 

 was accomplished, and the vital actions should cease by their 

 own natural laws, and life should pass into decomposition, that 

 thus the parent should furnish a portion of the nourishment 

 needed by its offspring. Every organic or living being has in 

 reserve a degree of vital power, which nature never in its ordi- 

 nary life calls into action, and by this reserved force it is enabled, 

 to a certain extent, to meet what may be called the accidents 

 of its existence, such as change of climate, mechanical injury, 

 and change of food, and while this reserved force remains undi- 

 minished, vital action continues healthy. If health then con- 

 sists in the natural action of the laws of life, it follows, of 

 necessity, that disease, the opposite of health, must commence 

 whenever the vital laws are interfered with, and cannot act 

 without interruption. 



We may say briefly, then, that disease is primarily deranged 

 vital action, while the changes of organic structure which we 

 see, are only the consecmence of functional disease, which may 

 have commenccdand continued, with gradually accelerated force, 

 through successive generations. Since, then, disease is only 

 deranged action, and every living being is made up of different 

 classes of organic action, the liability to disease, under ordinary 

 circumstances, will depend very much upon the number of 

 functions which are to be carried out by any given living being. 

 Thus the higher classes of animals, if exposed to those changes 

 in natural habit which disturb the harmony of action existing 

 in their more complex organization, will be more liable to dis- 

 ease and to greater variety in the form, than those in which 

 life is carried on in a more simple manner. If our reasoning 

 is correct, the first step towards investigating disease will of 

 course be to determine the different functions which make up 

 the diseased subject. The least complicated form of vitality 

 presented by the organic world, is to be found in plants, which 



