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one : if it is still asserted to be true, it can be so only iu particular 

 cases which remain to be discriminated. The argument now 

 stands thus: there are cases in which the processes of disease in other 

 seats palpably precede disorder of the digestive organs; but there 

 are no cases yet cited in which disorder of the digestive organs 

 obviously precedes all other disease, for in general a furred tongue 

 is only the accompaniment of other disease, and it would be diffi- 

 cult, perhaps in most cases impossible, to establish a priority 

 of occurrence. 



27. But other diseases get well, it is said, as the symptoms 

 of disorder of the digestive organs disappear. This would very 

 naturally happen if disorder of the digestive organs were main- 

 tained by a disorder elsewhere, which, subsiding, admits the re- 

 covery of the digestive organs ; as the irritation of a gun-shot 

 wound having abated, the appetite returns and the tongue becomes 

 clean. The priority of the symptoms alluded to cannot in most 

 cases be discriminated ; hence, in most cases we are not warranted 

 in assigning disorder of the digestive organs as the cause of disor- 

 der elsewhere, with which it might be connected, while the con- 

 trary, or that other disease precedes that of the digestive organs, 

 is obvious in some other instances. 



28. Granting then the assumption which, to favour the doc- 

 trine in question as much as possible, was supposed to be con- 

 ceded, we find that the evidence cited to prove the dependence of 

 disease in general upon the state of the digestive organs is alto- 

 gether inadequate; it fails of supporting the doctrine, even if the 

 assumptions it involves are freely granted. To assert that disease 

 can take place only as a consequence of disorder of the digestive 

 organs, amounts to saying that disease can originate only in one 

 seat, or that there can be only one seat of primary disease; or, 

 to return to our reduced illustration, no disease can take place 

 without disorder of the liver. 



29. If, then, disease cannot take place without disorder of 

 the liver, how happens it that the liver itself becomes diseased? 

 The very occurrence of disease of the liver proves that disease 

 might happen without being preceded by disease of the liver; and 

 if it might originate in this seat without being produced by disease, 

 as it must, when from a healthy a disordered state of the liver 

 takes place, why may not disease in other seats have an equally 

 independent origin? 



30. But granting, still further, all sorts of postnlata, can it in 

 any case be proved that disease originates in the liver? Take for 

 example a tubercle of the liver: why is a tubercle formed in the 

 liver? from a predisposition, it must be answered, which exists iu 

 the liver; and what is the history of this predisposition of proper- 

 ties of the liver to form a tubercle? the predisposition, it must be 

 replied, takes place in the series of that progressive change which 

 has been described; and did the first processes of this progressive 

 change take place in the liver, or in a related seat? we have reason 



