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health, may in summer become harmful and injurious. This was 
shewn to be the case by the experiments of Milne Edwards. 
The animals he experimented on, succumbed in summer to a 
decrease of temperature quite supportable by them in winter. 
Whence we may come to the conclusion, that the calorific 
power of animals undergoes a progressive increase or decrease 
during the temperate or middle seasons, to fit their constitutions 
to support the temperatures of the extreme seasons. 
Well! Emigration often overturns this law of equilibrium 
between organic bodies and the surrounding world. 
In suddenly transporting an animal from one (part of the) 
country into another, without, the constitution being prepared 
for the change of temperature it is to support, it is placed under 
conditions hurtful to its organization, as is shewn by phy- 
siology. 
But it is not through influence of temperature alone that 
change of climate exercises upon the animal economy a pro- 
found modificatory action: the air, the aliments, the drinks, the 
habitations, the regimen, the care, all conspire to the same 
result, in a degree proportionate to the difference existing be- 
tween their action and that of the same physical agents in the 
localities the animal inhabits. 
And what is the nature of these modifications experienced by 
the organism under such conditions] Without doubt, a change 
in the proportion of the constituent elements of the humours, as 
well as in the nutrient actions in operation at every point of the 
organism. 
Ancient science seeks to explain the phenomenon by saying, 
that, under such influences, the crasis of the humours was 
altered, and that nature endeavoured to eject out of them the 
redundant and impure parts by a salutary critical effort, which, 
through purging the economy, re-established the natural pro- 
portions in the humoral compositions. 
Now, within this vague formule of ancient medicine we find 
the truth implicitly included, as we shall by-and-by point out; 
and modern science, in demonstrating, by analysis, that in the 
diseases of the nature of that we are now studying, the propor- 
tions and qualities of the constituent elements of the blood are 
modified through the predominance or alteration of some of 
them, attaches a meaning more precise and definite to this 
crasis of the humours , to which the ancients attributed the 
eruption of febrile and depuratory diseases. 
Thus it is, remarkable enough, that, after three thousand 
years, the ancient idea of the school of Cos promises to receive 
a striking confirmation from the researches of modern medicine. 
Let us now return to M. Charlier’s paper. Distemper, then, 
