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fever, what produces the spasm 1 ? cold, say they: let heat be substi- 

 tuted for cold, and let the spasm be relaxed, as they allow it might, 

 what still produces fever] the return of spasm: and what produces 

 the return of spasm? not cold again, for the patient may be in a 

 warm bed. This question they will attempt to evade by replying, a 

 disposition to spasm; allow it: and what shall we say of this dis- 

 position? simply this, that it is some change which we do not under- 

 stand; and why not say this at first? 



20. Another set will affirm, that all diseases are produced by 

 increased or diminished excitement. To these I would suggest that 

 we have no standard by which to measure the quantity of excitement. 

 But if, par hazard, their ingenuity should discover one, it may then 

 be asked what is meant by the term excitement ? say it is the power 

 of action which prevails in a living body. This power of action, say 

 they, is either too great or too little; and lo one of these varieties 

 are to be attributed all the phenomena of disease. A power of 

 action refers either to the voluntary or the involuntary muscular 

 system: to take a specimen of the first, inflamed muscles (or the 

 muscles in that state of a limb which succeeds to a violent injury, 

 as a compound fracture, followed by the most intense inflammation) 

 are not capable of performing voluntary motion, this is a diminished 

 power of action; if the limb is paralyzed by ligature, or division of 

 its nerves, the muscles are thus also rendered incapable of voluntary 

 motion: this likewise is a diminished or lost power of action, yet it 

 will hardly be said that the two states are the same; they have the 

 same effect upon the limb, or they agree in being a privation of the 

 power of motion, but the state of the moving powers has undergone 

 a change in either case, which is not distinguished by a term ex- 

 pressive only of one particular, in which they agree; in the one case, 

 motion is prevented by a modification or disease of its power, in the 

 other case it is lost, by an intercepted communication with its source. 



21. In the second department, the power of motion in the 

 heart may be such that the actions of this organ are at the rate of 

 120 in a minute: with this power of action of the sanguiferous sys- 

 tem, there may be either consumption or cancer, or a gun-shot 

 wound, or phlegmonous inflammation, or inflammation of the liver, 

 &c.; or there may exist no other symptom of disease, save this in- 

 creased action of the heart, as in some temporary states of nervous 

 disorder. If the power of action is the cause of disease (the same 

 action being produced by the same power), the same actions should 

 produce the same diseases; if they do not, there is another cause of 

 disease besides the power of action; the blood may be moved 

 through a cancerous ulcer and an ulcer that is not cancerous with 

 the same velocity ; there may be an agreement of the pulse in both 

 instances, yet the diseases are different. Oh! yes, say the sup- 

 porters of this doctrine, there is a different disposition in the diffe- 

 rent diseases; and that this difference may be something besides a 

 variety in the powers of motion may be guessed from the facts that 

 fluids may be urged through all the vessels in the body by a common 



