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GENERAL DISORDERS OF NUTRITION. 



that " he must not work too long," and should take " plenty of out- 

 of-door exercise." To be successful in our object, the quantities of food 

 and drink must be prescribed definitely, as well as the number of hours 

 allotted to each form of occupation. 



Cod-liver oil has a special and well-merited reputation as a remedy 

 ugainst scrofula, and there are plenty of instances where it has done 

 good service. On the other hand, perhaps no remedy has ever been 

 so much abused as this one. Whosoever supposes that the mere pres- 

 ence of a thick nose, a sore upper-lip, or a bunch of enlarged cervical 

 glands, affords sufficient ground for the prescription of this medicine, 

 will often fail to benefit his patient, and sometimes will do him harm. 

 Daily experience teaches, however, that such is the general belief, and 

 that he who seeks to combat it does not merely fight a windmill. Let 

 any one ask a patient whose scrofula has outlasted his childhood, and 

 who has passed again and again from one practitioner to another, how 

 often he has had cod-liver oil prescribed for him since the time of its 

 first failure during childhood ; how many months or years he has taken 

 it ; and how much the whole aggregate quantity would amount to ; 

 and he will be surprised at the answer. Nevertheless, in all proba- 

 bility, the next physician whom the patient consults will prescribe it 

 again. A most serviceable means of distinction, between the cases in 

 which cod-liver oil is indicated and those in which nothing is to be ex- 

 pected from it, is afforded by the symptoms of the torpid and erethitic 

 forms of scrofula. When the patient's slender frame, the lack of fat 

 beneath his skin, and his accelerated pulse, warrant the belief that his 

 nervous system is in a state of over-activity, cod-liver oil is generally 

 of the most signal benefit. Under its use the plumpness of the body 

 increases, while the general susceptibility of the system, and the dis- 

 eases consequent upon it subside. These are the cases to which this 

 article owes its name as an anti-scrofulous remedy. But if the patient 

 be clumsy and thick-set ; if the nose and upper-lip be enlarged, and 

 the adipose layer over the rest of the body strongly developed ; if the 

 action of the heart be retarded rather than accelerated ; if the irrita- 

 bility of the nervous system seem unusually obtuse ; in short, should 

 there be reason to suppose that the waste of the system is diminished 

 rather than increased, we cannot hope to relieve the disease by means 

 of the oil. Nevertheless, it is precisely this class of patients who in 

 vain have taken such enormous quantities of it in the course of their 

 lives. Besides the oil, and as a corroborant of its effects, so to speak, 

 articles containing a little tannin, such as parched acorns, " acorn-coffee," 

 and home-made infusions of walnut-leaves, are very often prescribed. 

 Such a practice is greatly to be commended whenever there is a chronic 

 catarrh of the intestines embarrassing the digestion and the absorption 



