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frate degree, and this check over the physical excitement, facilitates the 

 observance of the laws of temperance, the original source of all virtue. 

 These observations of ancient philosophy, on the influence of regimen, 

 have, doubtless, led their authors to exaggerated inferences, but they 

 should not be considered as altogether unsupported. The carnivorous 

 species are marked by their strength, their courage, and their ferocity; 

 savages who live by hunting, and who feed on raw, bloody, and palpitating 

 flesh, are the most ferocious of men; and, in our country, in the midst 

 of those scenes of horror which we have witnessed, and from which we 

 have suffered, it was observed, that butchers were foremost in the mas- 

 sacres, and in all the acts of atrocity and barbarity. I know that this 

 fact, which w*s uniformly noticed, has been explained by saying, that 

 the habit of slaying animals, had familiarized them to shed human blood. 

 But though I do not deny the existence of this moral cause, which cer- 

 tainly operates, I think I may add to it, as a physical cause, the daily 

 and plentiful use of animal food, the breathing an air filled with emana- 

 tions of the same kind, which they inhale, and which contribute to their 

 corpulence, which is sometimes excessive. 



As the plasticity and concrescibility of the blood are diminished in as- 

 thenic diseases, or of debility, as putrid fevers and scurvy, two causes 

 may be assigned for the hemorrhages which come on in those diseases, 

 \iz. the relaxed state of the vessels and the dissolution of the blood. In 

 scurvy, the tissue of the capillaries is relaxed, its meshes enlarged, red 

 blood passes into them, transudes through their parietes, and forms scor- 

 butic spots. I have sometimes seen those ecchymoses or sanguineous 

 cutaneous transudations, extend under the skin of the whole of one lower 

 extremity. Petechiae, in putrid fever, are formed in the same manner, 

 and depend, likewise, on the relaxation of the minute vessels, and on the 

 greater fluidity of the blood, whose molecules are less coherent, and 

 more readily separated from each other. 



eessary to resort to the circulation as a medium through which it is effected. By refer- 

 ring it to that law of the animal economy termed sympathy or consent of parts, we have 

 a rationale far more consistent with those views "derived from the present improved 

 state of our knowledge. 



Conformably to this theory, when a substance either medicinal or poisonous is applied 

 to a susceptible portion of the body, externally or internally, an action is excited which 

 is extended, more or less according" to the diffusibility of the properties of the substance, 

 or the degree of the sympathetic connexion which the part may have with the body 

 generally. Thus a set of Actions is raised, every one of which is precisely similar, pro- 

 vided they are. confined to the same system, by "which is to be understood, parts of an 

 identity of structure. If, however, the chain runs into other systems, it loses its homo- 

 genous character, the actions being modified according to the peculiar organization 

 of the parts in which they may take place. 



To illustrate the more distinctly our meaning, we will state a very familiar case. By 

 inserting a particle of variolous matter under the skin, local irritation is created : in a 

 few days tins action becomes diffused, and a fever ensues, which after a short continu- 

 ance throws out an eruption, each pustule of which is alike, because the surface of the 

 body is of a uniform structure, containing exactly the same sort of virus as the primary 

 or parent pustule. It is in this way, that morbid motion distributes itself. When dis- 

 eases arise from a point, as in fact all diseases do, but more strikingly those occasioned 

 by inoculation, the matter introduced is not infinitely divided and spread over the 

 body, but the action which that matter had originally excited. These are general 

 principles, which apply to the system in every condition, and explain the modus ope- 

 randi of medicines as well as of' the causes of disease. Whatever, in short, operates 

 on the living frame, is obedient to the same laws. The spot first acted upon, is th< 

 focus from which is irradiated the more diffused impressions. Chcpmnu. 



