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GENERAL NATURE OF DISEASE. 



CHAP. I. 

 Origin of Disease according to Doctrines of Causation. 



1. THOSE conditions of the body designated by the 

 terras health and disease are fixed by the consent or agreement 

 of mankind ; that is, one state of the body is said to be a healthy, 

 and another a diseased state. To settle these definitions, then, we 

 have only to describe the respective conditions which men have 

 agreed to call by these names. 



2. By the word health is implied a certain condition of all 

 the organs and functions of the organic, the animal, and perhaps 

 we may include the intellectual, systems: the latter, at least, is at 

 present foreign to our purpose. The certain condition, implying 

 that of health, has been said to consist of a natural and easy use 

 of all the functions : this definition, however, is not perfect; for to 

 say that a natural function is a healthy one, is a mere substitution 

 of terms which alike require a definition ; and to say that health 

 is an easy use of the functions, is to say more than is true, for the 

 kidneys may secrete easily, that is, without pain, in diabetes, yet 

 it would be suspected that the state of their function was not a 

 healthy one; or there may be disordered action of the heart with- 

 out pain, or a furred tongue without an uneasy exercise of its 

 function, or a wen upon the shoulder, or on the head, not uneasy 

 in itself, nor at times productive of uneasiness; yet at these times 

 nevertheless a disease. 



3. But although such objections may be raised to the defini- 

 tion of health, which assigns it to consist of an easy use of all the 



