317 



modifying a tendency to deterioration of disease, supposing such 

 tendency should exist : and the final result of the change is then 

 governed by relations among constituent spiritual properties, all of 

 which are latent. 



24. We here perceive an agreement between the operation of 

 general remedies and the results of substituted disease. Thus, a 

 man may have inflammation of the liver ; this may cease upon the 

 occurrence of phrenitis, and this may cease upon the occurrence of 

 profuse discharge of blood from the rectum. This series is related 

 in curative order; but in another case, as in those cases cited of 

 extended disease, the secondary may have no curative relation with 

 the primary disease. 



25. There is, as just remarked, some analogy between those 

 instances of spontaneous cure by substituted disease and the opera- 

 tion of general remedies: thus, the spontaneous termination of 

 nervous disorder, pain in the head, &c. may be in an attack of 

 cholera. A similar termination may perhaps be artificially produced 

 by agents which also occasion vomiting and purging. A disorder of 

 the head may be cured spontaneously by an abscess: if we were 

 called upon to treat artificially the same disease, we should perhaps 

 employ a caustic issue, or a perpetual blister, &c. The point of 

 analogy is, that in both instances primary disease ceases, under the 

 occurrence of secondary. 



26. But there appears a certainty in the curative result of spon- 

 taneous secondary disease, which does not always obtain when we 

 attempt to imitate it by artificial means: thus insanity may be cured 

 by a spontaneous abscess of the back, but we should be disappointed 

 iu another case, if we were to expect a cure by making a caustic 

 issue in the back, in a situation corresponding with that of the 

 abscess; thus, also, a primary disease, in which purgatives have 

 failed totally, may be cured by a spontaneous diarrhoea. We shall 

 be at no loss to reconcile this diversity of result, when we recollect 

 that substituted spontaneous disease cures, either because precise or 

 identical properties of the primary disease pass to the secondary 

 seat; or because independent disease, established in the secondary 

 seat, must in all the examples of substituted disease (taking the suc- 

 cession as a proof of causation) have a curative relation with the 

 state of primary disease: on the other hand, artificial disorder maj 

 fail for want of agreement in these respects; that is, 1st, because 

 the properties of the primary disease may remain in their seat not- 

 withstanding a relation with anew disease, which only modifies their 

 phenomena in some respects; and, 2nd, because there may be no 

 relation between the seat of artificial affection and that of primary 

 disease. If there is a relation, and this is not of the curative kind, 

 then remedies which disorder, instead of irritating the substituted, 

 exemplify the extended disease. 



27. The preceding sketch exhibits a history of the general 

 nature and cure of diseases. If it is desired to trace more minutely 

 the laws of disease and the operation of remedies, it may be done, 



