20 THE BIOLOGY OF DAILY LIFE. 



But the " Castle of Alma" (to borrow the poet 

 Spencer's allegorical name for man's body*) is meant 

 to be the abode of Health; and ALMA, the fair 

 Guardian of Health, cannot rest in peace while any 

 enemies are within her walls. 



With a fearful expenditure of vital energy, and often 

 with unutterable agonies (notably in the case of iron, 

 whose expulsion causes the periodic pains of neuralgia 

 and tic dolor eux\ and always at the cost of some dis- 

 integration or tearing of the fabric of the body, these 

 drugs are slowly expelled; Nature, as we have 

 already seen, selecting her soundest and strongest 

 organs as the channels of exit. 



The facts which confirm and illustrate this are open 

 to all attentive observers who have an opportunity 

 for a sufficiently wide induction, and are not led 

 astray by superficial appearances. 



To express these facts in the words of a wide and 

 most profound observer, 



" Those with the strongest chests are afflicted 

 with lung diseases; those with the strongest 

 digestive organs get dyspepsia; those noted 

 for their mental brilliancy get diseases located 

 in the head."f 



All drugging is detrimental in two ways : 

 First, it puts foreign, and therefore disease pro- 

 ducing material, into the texture of the body ; and by 

 so doing it also, secondly, strikes at the most funda- 

 mental law of organic life, viz., the law of continuous 

 change. This law may be expressed thus : 



* Faery Queen (Book ii., canto 9). 



f "Physianthropy,or The home-cure and eradication of disease, 19 

 p. 10. 



