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The phenomena of disease exhibit deviations from the state of 

 health in each of these departments. We have to determine in this 

 place, whether a predisposition, and then the symptoms of disease, 

 might originate in either of these; and if so, we have to suggest a 

 method of discriminating the instances, or whether the origin of 

 predisposition and disease belongs exclusively to the properties of 

 one class, by which those of the others are influenced consecutively, 



7. We will select as an example a disease which appears to con- 

 sist chiefly of a change of structure, or of some mechanical impedi- 

 ment; supposing that if disease does not originate in the structure, 

 in those instances in which the structure is visibly changed, we 

 are not to expect an origin of disease in the mechanical department 

 in cases in which this order of components does not sensibly 

 participate. We will take for example a scrophulous abscess, and 

 trace its history with the above view in our analytical way. 



8. Why is a collection of matter formed? it is formed by an 

 inflammation of a peculiar sort, &c.; matter is produced (says our 

 reply) by inflammation: the causes which constitute inflammation, 

 and which produce its phenomena, belong either to the vital, chymi- 

 cal, or mechanical properties, or else these concur. To proceed: 

 pus is a change of the fluids belonging to the seat in which it is pro- 

 duced; why are the fluids changed? Supposing the fluid which 

 furnishes the material for the conversion to be blood (though most 

 probably it is not blood), supposing the fluid to be blood, why is the 

 blood of a part changed ? say (arguing for the chymists) spontaneous 

 decompositions and combinations take place in blood, the result of 

 which is the formation of pus; why do these decompositions, &c. 

 occur in blood ? from some previous change, for they would not 

 spontaneously occur in blood healthily disposed. But the blood in 

 this part where pus is formed is the same, from the same vessels, 

 and no fixed or specific quantum of blood, as circulates elsewhere. 

 This part must then have properties, holding a relation with blood, 

 different from any to which it is elsewhere exposed. To these pro- 

 perties, then, and not to the mere internal causation of blood itself, 

 is to be attributed the conversion of blood into pus, or perhaps 

 more correctly the formation of pus from blood. These properties 

 we are to inquire after. 



9. These properties belong to the structure forming the seat 

 of the production of pus: are these efficient properties of a chymical 

 kind? we have no reason to think that they are; but granting it 

 which is the most that can be required, if these properties are of the 

 chymical kind, how came the seat to be possessed of an unnatural 

 or a diseased chymical constitution? Here we must recur to our 

 physiology, and ask why there are any chymical constituents at all 

 in this seat? They are held together in a forced allegiance during 

 life, and by life; left to their natural propensities, they separate and 

 dissolve into their elements. It is to life, then, or the properties 

 which constitute it, that the chymical constituents are indebted for 

 their local existence; these chymical constituents are formed from 



