THE CAUSATION OF DISEASE. 55 



suffered from very marked flashings, headache, and backache, 

 and a symptom which I have never yet found absent among those 

 menopausic patients who seek medical relief — soreness of the scalp. 



These remarks on rhythm would be out of place here, did 

 they not bear upon disease and its causation. Diseases them- 

 selves are very frequently rhythmical, such as asthma, migraine, 

 angina, ague, remittent fevers, and a host of minor nervous 

 disorders, which have no name, but which are numerous enough 

 to the careful observer. For it requires the greatest care, 

 patience, and tact, to get the proper history from a patient ; and 

 I have not the slightest doubt there are hundreds of important, 

 though simple, diagnostic signs, which have hitherto escaped 

 our notice. 



I have already pointed out the analogy between the rhythms 

 of the heavenly bodies, the grand rhythm of life, and the 

 minor rhythms displayed by living beings. Many other forms 

 of minor rhythm might be cited, such as the rhythm of the 

 heart and respiration, and other physiological rhythms, but I 

 must content myself with merely stating the fact ; for the 

 rhythms of the body are, in fact, innumerable. Muscle and 

 nerve action, for instance, are distinctly rhythmical ; what is 

 apparently a continuous muscle-contraction is made up, as we 

 know, of a series of individual contractions (= tetanus) ; and 

 even the most seemingly continuous sensation is really rhyth- 

 mical. " An apparently unbroken mental state is in truth 

 traversed by a number of minor states, in which various other 

 sensations and perceptions are rapidly presented and disappear." 



I wish now briefly to point out a further analogy between these 

 several rhythms. Every planetary system, like every organism, 

 has an environment, which consists in the universe outside ; and 

 this E reacts upon the planetary system (just as the E of a living 

 organism acts upon it), and may cause modifications of planetary 

 structure, as we may term it, which may be transmitted to suc- 

 ceeding cycles, or, as we may call them, planetary offspring. 

 I have already said that E is the great cause of natural varia- 

 tions ; indeed, as we have already seen, it is in the last resort 

 the only cause. We may therefore speak of the changes in 

 planetary structure thus effected from without as examples of 

 ' ' natural variation " in an astronomical organism. 



