246 Dr Fuster on the Diseases of France 



are the prevailing annual diseases. In the south, on the con- 

 trary, the bilious aflfections, the insepai-able companions of 

 summer, constitute almost the totality of the reigning diseases. 

 M. Fuster examines for each season the nature and rela- 

 tions of the concomitant maladies, and he demonstrates, ac- 

 cording to his own observations, and all the observations pre- 

 viously collected, that the medical constitutions of the diffe-' 

 rent regions of France correspond, and are exactly suited, with- 

 out prejudice of local A^arieties, to the meteorological constitu- 

 tions of these same regions. 



For diseases and seasons, he establishes the existence of 

 complex states, of mixed constitutions, subject to the same 

 rules, and obeying the same laws. There is no need certainly 

 to say, that these two elementary constitutions do not contri- 

 bute to the mean medical constitution of the mixed in equal 

 proportions. The relations of their pi'cponderance, the supre- 

 macy of the predominant elements, acknowledge in their turn 

 certain general laws whose formulas M. Fuster has traced. 



To this exposition, which we have reduced with regret to its 

 narrowest limits, we shall subjoin certain clinical considerations, 

 which appear to us proper to give weight and credit to the 

 doctrine of the constitutions of the seasons, and of the medi- 

 cal constitutions which correspond to them. 



Besides the high influence which the characters of the sea- 

 sons exercise on the nature of the general or common mala- 

 dies, these same seasons, and the concomitant pathological 

 element, experience shews, are vigorously felt on the acciden- 

 tal diseases, the intercurrent or sporadic maladies, those which 

 here and there present themselves to the physician. It often 

 happens, for example, that a pneumonia accidentally deve- 

 loped in the height of summer, under the reign of a well- 

 marked bilious constitution, puts on by degrees the impression 

 of this bilious con.stitution. It takes its characters ; it presents 

 its symptomatology ; it claims its therapeutical indications. 



This same influence of the meteorologico-medical constitution 

 very often extends over external diseases, large sores, wounds, 

 and the consequences of the operations which they occasion. 

 Desault and Bichat, who expressly remarked it, frequently 

 turned it to the advantage of their patients. The rich collec- 



