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5. To illustrate this class with an obvious example : suppose 

 the brain to be compressed, the properties of the brain which con- 

 tribute towards the function of respiration would by this cause be 

 modified or disordered, or even their office might be suspended. 

 A healthy state of these properties may be immediately resumed as 

 soon as the compression of the brain ceases.* The efficient cause, 

 whatever it was, which in this case disturbed or altered the vital 

 properties of a sphere, had no assimilating relation with the material: 

 if it had, the state which was produced by the operation of this 

 cause would have been continued after the causation occasioned by 

 the pressure had ceased. Thus also (though less obviously) wine, 

 brandy, &c. taken into the stomach, produce a disordered state of 

 the properties of life, perhaps in many spheres, which disordered 

 state continues as long as the quantum of these spirits, or of the 

 related properties which they contain, may be supposed to last. 

 We find that their effects endure in proportion to their quantity, 

 provided they are not, in the examples, rejected by vomiting, &c. 



6. To this class also belong many of the phenomena of related 

 disease. Thus a disease set up in one organ or part may affect 

 distant ones, which either do or do not, during health, afford evi- 

 dence of an intimate connection: thus the local injury incident to a 

 fracture of the leg will perhaps raise the action of the heart to 130 

 beats in a minute; when the violence of the local injury has sub- 

 sided, the heart will resume its former action, which might be at the 

 rate of 70 beats in a minute. Thug, also, irritation of a nerve will 

 produce convulsions, which cease as soon as the irritation is discon- 

 tinued : thus, a blow on the head will produce vomiting, the properties 

 engaged in which action do not perpetuate their state when the brain 

 has recovered from the effects of the blow, in which primary organ 

 with respect to the duration of the effects of the injury the same thing 

 is also to be remarked : thus, also, the irritation of a stone in the blad- 

 der will maintain a chronic disease of this viscus as long as the stone 

 remains, and the irritation of it will perhaps produce a wasting and 

 hectic state of the whole body, which effects cease when the cause 

 of the disorder is removed. To this class also belong the great bulk 

 of medicinal preparations: purgatives, emetics, diuretics, sudorifics, 

 &c. produce respectively, a state of the local properties conformable 

 with their character, which state lasts so long as the cause which 

 produced it resides with them. The reason why these effects do not 

 outlive the application of their causes respectively is, that neither 

 are these causes assimilated from arterial blood, nor do they lead 

 to processes of causation which produce a modified assimilating spirit. 



7. 2. We have no means of discriminating, in all examples, 

 when causes of disease unite with the spirit, and finding their simili- 

 tude in arterial blood, are maintained as the spirit itself is maintained; 



* An experiment of this sort, with such a result, has been made on the 

 human subject, in a case in which a large removed portion of the cranium has 

 uever been reproduced, The compression was made with a handkerchief. 



