24 PHYSIC 



interference with which is consequently of nothing less 

 than vital importance. 



Primarily, therefore, it would seem to be the result of 

 disturbance of a most sensitive neuro-muscular mechanism, 

 one of whose functions is to guard against the entrance 

 of toxic and harmful agencies and influences into the 

 domain of the organic life of the body, by rejecting their 

 intrusion or expediting their removal by a purposive 

 combination of neuro-muscular phenomena. These neuro- 

 muscular phenomena may be experienced in all degrees 

 of intensity, and at times reach an extremity of develop- 

 ment inconsistent with the continuance of life, when the 

 literal truth of the classical expression "sick unto death" 

 becomes an accomplished reality. 



Viewed thus, sickness is the outcome and effect of the 

 functional working of a great safe-guarding physiological 

 endowment placed at the entrance to the prima via, and 

 so it may be regarded as almost altogether salutary in 

 degrees of ordinary intensity, and as a symptom vitally 

 injurious only in those cases of a hyper-exaggerated 

 character. 



Situated as it is at and about the first great digestive 

 stage of the alimentary circulation, the safety of the 

 organic life processes beyond it are more or less perfectly 

 secured through it by its directing the avoidance of 

 dangerous articles of diet, and septic material generally, 

 by the excitation of anti-peristalsis and, it may be, peristal- 

 sis, and the consequent rejection or ejection of unsuitable 

 or injurious materials all this being accomplished, in a 

 reflex manner, through the working of a very complex 

 series of neuro-muscular operations, very faintly control- 

 lable by voluntary effort, and, hence, generally successful 

 in their working and in their ultimate object of freeing 

 the gastro-intestinal tube from hostile influences and 

 agents. 



The occurrence of the sense of sickness, in its less pro- 

 nounced degrees, may be, and is often, rationally appreci- 

 ated and used by civilised man as a criterion of the fitness 

 of what should constitute his " food and drink"; in savage 

 man and the lower animals, however, we often find that 

 their daily regimen in both food and drink is regulated 



