120 PHYSIOLOGY. 



a new action ; which is two removes. We have actions, then sedatives, 

 which is a diminution of either natural or acquired action, and which 

 is the opposite to stimulus : but we have not a something that shall 

 produce indolent disease, which would be the opposite to irritation. 



Stimulus is either mediate or immediate. The mediate often arises 

 from the immediate. The immediate is mostly local, the mediate mostly 

 constitutional. Every part of an animal that acts from impression, acts 

 from an instinctive principle. A specific action in the body is similar 

 to an abstract idea in the mind ; it is separating and combining. When 

 a morbid poison is applied to an animal that is not capable of taking on 

 the [specific or poisonous] action, from what does this [incapacity] 

 arise ? Is it from the animal not being susceptible of the irritation ? 

 Or is it from the vessels not being capable of taking on the action ? 



Perfect health in every constitution requires for its preservation a 

 regular influence or application of every natural thing. But this can 

 never be obtained ; for, from the changes going on in the natural sur- 

 face of this globe, and the natural predicament in which it stands with 

 respect to the heavenly bodies, it becomes affected ; all becoming either 

 predisposing, immediate, or contaminating causes. Thus, damp situa- 

 tions produce agues, or become a disposing cause to this disease. 

 Dry or wet weather, the seasons, the situation respecting the sun and 

 the moon, become an immediate cause by hastening on the action of 

 the disease. 



Every motion in matter produces waste ; whether it is a mechanical 

 motion, as from impulse of any kind, or a motion within itself, arising 

 from an internal power of action, as in vegetables or animals. The 

 supply in the first need not be of the same species ; although the better, 

 if so : but the supply in either the vegetable or animal must be of the 

 same [vegetable or animal] nature. 



Animal Heat. 



Animal heat is hardly to be accounted for upon any principle that 

 we know of, excepting the decompositions and combinations that often 

 take place in the body. 



The quickness of both [causes of animal heat] is very strange. James 

 Campbell, from being excessively hot, would become almost at once 

 extremely cold; much sooner than he could have done if his head had been 

 struck off, and left to cool, and in an instant would become hot again. 



The injections of nitre and ipecacuanha into the blood of animals show 

 this quick transition from the one to the other. See my Experiments 1 . 



J [Where ? (asks Mr. Clift.)] 



