278 



CHAP. III. General Nature of Disease of the Spirit. 



1. IT has been remarked, that the most intimate know- 

 ledge to which we can arrive of the nature of disease enables us to 

 say only, that health being a given state of the principle of life (or 

 of its properties), disease is a change or deviation from this state. 

 We cannot specify in what the identity of health consists, or in 

 what the deviation from this state consists, because in neither case 

 do we possess the faculties necessary for such a specification; or, in 

 other words, we are not qualified to take cognizance of the objects. 



2. Disease is transient, continued, or permanent : upon what 

 laws does its duration depend 1 



3. Disease first depends upon its causes: the causes of disease, 

 with reference to our question, are of two kinds: 1st, those which 

 being related with the spirit have the power of affecting it, and pro- 

 ducing disease as often as they are communicated, or as long as they 

 continue to reside with the spirit; 2nd, those which may modify for 

 a time or permanently the identity of the spirit, even though the 

 operation of the primary cause should have ceased. The state of 

 the spirit produced by the first class of causes is not an assimilating 

 one: the state produced by the second is either maintained by 

 assimilation or runs into a succession of modified states, each capa- 

 ble of assimilation. 



4. 1 . Life, as explained in our former sections, is no fixed sum, 

 but is produced from its elements, unites its elements, contained in 

 blood, and immediately changes its form. In this way a similitude 

 is perpetuated, although the quantum existing at a subsequent, is 

 never the same as that which existed in a preceding moment. If, 

 therefore, the identity of life be affected by a cause (as one pro- 

 ducing disease), this cause must be repeated or renewed for each suc- 

 cessive quantum of life, unless uniting with life it is renewed by 

 assimilation, or, in other words, unless it finds its similitude in 

 arterial blood. If a cause produces temporary change, which 

 endures only so long as it may be supposed to continue, or as is less 

 equivocal, if the effect ceases as soon as the identical cause is re- 

 moved, we then infer that it has not occasioned a disordered assimi- 

 lation of the spirit. 



