272 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS WITH RESPECT TO HEALTH, AND 

 DISEASE. 



863. Disease may be regarded in three points of view, 

 viz., First, in having no necessary connection with our 

 conduct, but as being the result of circumstances entirely 

 beyond our control, or knowledge, and inflicted upon us 

 by a wise Providence, for the purpose of warning us of 

 our mortality, and of bringing us to think more soberly 

 of our moral condition, and of the great end of our ex- 

 istence. 



Secondly, as the result of what we consider accident 

 alone, or of external causes which we can appreciate, 

 but which it would have been impossible for us to 

 prevent. 



Thirdly, as the result of the direct infringement of one, 

 or more of the laws or conditions of organic life, as de- 

 creed by the Creator to be essential to the well-being, 

 health, and activity of our systems. 



864. As diseases, and accidents will occur without our 

 participation, or means of prevention, the First, and Sec- 

 ond views do not here claim our attention, and we shall 

 therefore pass to the Third, under which ill health is sup- 

 posed to arise from some infringement of those organic 

 laws by which our systems are regulated. 



865. Considering that the human frame is constructed 

 to endure, in many cases, for eighty, ninety, or even as 

 hundred years, it must seem extraordinary to a reflecting 

 mind, that in some situations, one half of all who are 

 born should die before attaining maturity, and yet, it is 

 true that of 1000 infants born in the city of London, 650 

 formerly did not live to the age of 10 years. It is hardly 

 possible for us to suppose that such a rate of mortality 

 was designed by the Creator to be the unavoidable fate 

 of our race, and this seems to be proved by the fact that 

 this proportion of deaths has been greatly diminished of 

 late years by the gradual improvement of the comforts of 

 living, and a closer observance of the laws of organic 

 life. 



866. A hundred years ago, when the infants of the 

 poor in the city of London, were received into the public 



