WORKING IN THE LIGHT. 277 



Their rapid, equal, and sufficient difFusion carries health and life ; 

 any deficiency, excess, or stagnation, is disease or deatli. The 

 machine for their constant and equal distribution, although so 

 perfect, is so complicated and extremely delicate that no human 

 hand may rashly touch it. So long as all goes well we may 

 cautiously supply food or fuel for it to work on, reverently and 

 intelligently inquiring what materials the machine was made to 

 deal with. 



When disease shows us that we have committed some fault, 

 or that the delicate circulation has been in any degree impaired, 

 the only thing we can do with any hope of success, is to attempt to 

 augment or withdraw, either heat or moisture, and to supply 

 anything likely to facilitate their equal distribution. We may 

 hope to do much good by offering life-giving heat or moisture to 

 the accessible, visible, and manageable skin, which nature has 

 constituted one of the most copious and powerful, as well as the 

 most accessible and accommodating safety-valves in the structure 

 of her most important animal machines. 



676. — Disease is sometimes the result of defective or improper 

 supply. It is more frequently the consequence of defective depor- 

 tation, or carrying away. If the waste of the body is going on 

 all right, the building up will seldom go wrong. Well drained 

 land will bear either a deficiencv or an excess of surface water, 

 better than undrained land will do, and the far more minute, 

 and more delicate drains of the animal structure, are more 

 easily obstructed, and are far more indispensable to animal 

 welfare. The bodily system is often starved, not because no 

 nourishment is supplied, but because the tubes cannot pass it on 

 for want of a clear outlet for the waste products of animal 

 combustion. 



677. — No horse can be healthy or well nourished unless the 

 lungs, the bowels, the kidneys, and the skin are all freely carrying 

 out of the system, by the aid of the great common carrier, water. 

 Each of these four great drains should take something peculiar 

 to itself, but also a great deal common to all ; so that each of 

 them can be made to take more or less than its share, and thus 

 to relieve or to overtax the rest of the drains in the system. 



