136 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



to proper treatment, or, what is more probable, 

 ceased of their own accord. We owe these fre- 

 quent recoveries, and^ where recovery does not 

 take place, this patience of the human constitution 

 under many of the distempers by which it is visit- 

 ed, to two benefactions of our nature. One is, 

 that she works within certain limits ; allows of a 

 certain latitude within which health may be pre- 

 served, and within the confines of which it only 

 suffers a graduated diminution. Different quanti- 

 ties of food, different degrees of exercise, different 

 portions of sleep, different states of the atmosphere, 

 are compatible with the possession of health. So 

 likewise it is with the secretions and excre- 

 tions, with many internal functions of the body, 

 and with the state, probably, of most of its 

 internal organs. They may vary considerably, 

 not only without destroying life, but without occa- 

 sioning any high degree of inconveniency. The 

 other property of our nature, to which we are still 

 more beholden, is its constant endeavour to re- 

 store itself, when disordered, to its regular course. 

 The fluids of the body appear to possess a power 

 of separating and expelling the noxious substance 

 which may have mixed itself with them. This 

 they do, in eruptive fevers, by a kind of despuma- 

 tion, as Sydenham calls it, analogous in some 

 measure to the intestine action by which ferment- 

 ing liquors work the yest to the sux'face. The 

 solids, on their part, when their action is obstruct-, 

 ed, not only resume that action, as soon as the ob-^ 



