582 
ON THERAPEUTICS. 
leds^e of the nature of the diseased condition, the causes 
combining to produce them, and an acquaintance with 
tlie properties of the agents employed. It may be as 
healthy for the heart to beat at the rate of one hundred 
in the minute as at the rate of fifty, assuming that in 
one case the animal is at rest, and in the other it has just 
undergone exertion. It may be perfectly healthy for the 
respiration to be violently excited; for the skin to show 
distended vessels, and for the mucous membranes to be 
florid in colour, if the circumstances under which the 
animal is placed are sufficient to produce these symptoms. 
Even in reference to structure, this reasoning is true. 
Muscles may be at one time much more bulky than at 
another; but if we understand that the animal has been 
submitted to exertion that has called the muscles into active 
play, we see no indication of disease in this increase of struc¬ 
ture. Should the effects, however, occur independent of ex¬ 
ternal circumstances, our conclusions are different. If an ani¬ 
mal that has not undergone exertion presents the symptoms of 
quick pulse and respiration, with florid membranes, or if 
without previous action muscles become bulky, we at once 
recognise the presence of an unhealthy condition. 
A definition sufficiently comprehensive will explain disease 
to consist in the disturbance of the balance or proportion 
between the structures and functions, and the circumstances 
under which they are acting. Thus, w r e consider all modifi¬ 
cations of structure or function to amount to disease, 
when they are either not consequent upon external agen¬ 
cies, or are disproportioned to those agencies, or continue 
after the operation of those agencies has or ought to have 
ceased. 
Disease, in whatever shape it presents itself, will be found 
to include two principal deviations from health, ei excess” 
and “ defectemphatically, there will be excited or dimi¬ 
nished action ; enlargement or lessening of structure. Com¬ 
bined with these there may be alteration of character. A 
secretion may be too acid or too alkaline, as well as excessive 
or defective in quantity; a structure may have undergone some 
positive transformation during its enlargement or decrease, 
as evidenced in numerous cases of degeneration; but these 
changes are mostly subservient to the two first, and in a 
measure depend upon them. 
Therapeutics suggest the means of curing disease, other¬ 
wise the methods of restoring the balance by remedying the 
three abnormal conditions of excited and diminished action 
and alteration of property. To rectify these three condi- 
