¥S10.] 
person, said, that ‘* he should proba- 
bly never want the suit of cloaths, as he 
distinctly felc death taking measure of 
him for his shroud.” This individual 
some years afterward died suddenly of 
palsy. 
Bath is a favourite place of refuge 
for the paralytic, whether made so 
by debauchery or natural decay. But 
the fashionable springs of that crowded 
mart of health, are not impregnated with 
the power of restoring lost energies, or 
bringing back the tde of ebbing anima- 
tion. ‘The late Dr. Heberden, eminent 
for the largeness of his experience 
and the currectness of. his observa- 
tions, observes, that ‘* these waters 
are neither in any way detrimental 
DOr OL tne. least use. an. palsy.” 
If such neutral merit were attached to 
every remedy employed in medicine, it 
would in any hands have the praise at 
least of an innocent inefficiency. The 
professor of this art or science, if it 
could then be called either, would 
require little more than automatic skill. 
One should imagine indeed that with 
many this were the actual opinion: how 
common is it to hear it said of a person 
that, to be sure, he is a stupid man, but 
he is a very good practitioner. As if to 
be able to correct the jrregular or erro- 
neous movements of so delicate and com- 
plicated a machine as the human frame, 
required no superior sagacity or acumen. 
W hen it is considered thatin many serious 
and critical disorders, so short a time is 
allowed to the physician, in which not only 
to form Is opinion, but to act upon it, 
his office would seem to require a more 
than ordinary perspicacity of talent, as 
well as alertness and facility in the 
extemporary application of it. It would 
be desirable for him to possess a faculty 
of discernment approaching to that of 
intuition in the instantaneous result of 
its operation: the urgency of the case 
may be such as not to, admit of much 
pondering and poring over it; the 
patient may die during the delay of a 
drasling deliberation. 
At this season of the year, scrophula 
is apt to shew itself more particularly on 
the external surface of the body, Con- 
sumption and scrophula are by many re- 
garded as the same disease, only atfecting 
different parts. Infact, however, there 
js scarcely any -connection or alliance 
between the two maladies. They not 
OY eS SESE EET 
* Posthumous Commentaries, p. 303, of 
_ » ghe Latin edition. 
Repori of Diseases. 
377 
only exist separately, but the one may 
appear in its most virulent or malig- 
nant form, without any simultaneous 
tendency to.the other. - Consumption, » 
indeed, seldom comparatively commits 
its internal depredatians upon a frame, 
which is defaced by tumours or cicatrices 
of the more superficial glands.* But 
scrophula is a word of wide and uncir- 
cumscribed import. . It serves as a kind 
of lumber-room in medicine, into which 
may be thrown any of those anomalous 
and unlabelled maladies, winch have no 
place assigned to them in any other de- 
partment of the nosology. From its being 
vulvarly denominated “ the evil,” one 
should imagine that it was the character- 
istic calamity, the great original sin of 
the physical constitution. But popular 
prejudice clothes it with horrors and 
with ignominy, which are by no means 
attached to it, in the eye of reason or 
common sense. Itis acomplaint which, 
compared with many others, is an object 
scarcely deserving of any painful solict- 
tude, or serious apprehension, By 
early exercise and discipline, by a judie 
cious education of the muscular fibre, 
that due and healthy tone may be given 
to it, from an absence or deficiency of 
which, arise immediately or indirectly, 
all the degrees and modifications of scro- 
phulous disorder. 
It is not a merely idle nosological dis- 
tinction between pthysis and scrophula. 
The treatment which the one requires is, 
in several circumstauces, opposite to that 
which would be best adapted for the 
other. The marine air and immersion 
in the sea, seem specifically deobstruent 
in cases of glandular obstruction, but in- 
variably agyravate and accelerate the 
fatal progress of pulmonary ailments. To 
send a consumptive patient to bathe in 
the waters, or simply to inhale the ate 
mosphere of the ocean, is infallibly to 
hasten his exit out of the world; it is to 
drive him by an unnecessary impul-e 
down the declivity of existence. Forthat 
class of sufferers, not only an inland si- 
tuation should be chusen, but one that 
is most sheltered from the cruel keenness, 
— Sateen tanneemenneee ee 
* The tubercles, which abound in the 
lungs of the pthysical, were formerly ima- 
gined to be indurated glands. Buta greater 
accuracy in anatomical research has proved 
this opinion with respect to their structure 
to be erroneous. ‘* There is no glandular 
structure in the cellular connecting membrane 
of the lungs; and on the inside of the 
branches of the trachea, where there are 
follicles, tubercles have never been seen.” 
Baillie’s Morbid Anatomy, p. 46. 
of 
