"When, very often," interposed Mr. Bagges, "that is just what he is not.”

"Or exorcist," continued Mr. Newby, "who casts out the evil spirit by the aid of certain drugs. Now diseases are processes-not individualities. There are certain processes, you know, that necessarily take place in the human body."

"Digestion, for example," remarked Mr. Bagges.

"Yes!-digestion; the conversion of food into chyme, of chyme into chyle, of chyle into blood; the respiration and the aëration of the blood; the circulation of this blood; the extraction from it of various substances by the apparatuses called secreting organs; the deposition of new flesh, and absorption of the old; and so on. These are the ordinary processes of life. Disease is an extra-ordinary process.

"Well, it is extraordinary. It is very extraordinary that we poor mortals should be subjected to disease," Mr. Bagges moralized.

"Disease, however, has an object; and, as perhaps I could show you, a beneficent one, Mr. Bagges. I said it was an extraordinary process. It is not one which occurs regularly, as a matter of course; certain circumstances are required to give rise to it. What are these circumstances

-that is to say, the causes of disease? Why, sir, they are exposure to cold, for instance; breathing bad air; habitual contact with deleterious substances; eating unwholesome food; partaking too copiously, Mr. Bagges, of food and drink, which may be harmless in themselves. I might add, sedentary occupations, mental emotions, and a variety of causes; all of which, however, may be classed under one general head of injuries."

"What injury can affect the child who is born diseased ?” inquired Mr. Bagges.

"Injury, the effects of which are transmitted by one or both of his parents," replied Newby; "and, therefore, you see that a man, in impairing his own health, may inflict a wrong upon his offspring."

"Eh?-the deuce-yes-to be sure !" said Mr. Bagges. "Disease, then," pursued Newby," is a process occasioned by injury. Now, what I am going to say may appear a truism; but no matter. Disease cannot take place in the

dead subject."

"Well," Mr. Bagges said, "I certainly should have supposed we wanted no ghost from the grave-eh ?—or the anatomical theatre-to tell us that."

"No! And yet decomposition takes place in the lifeless body. What is the difference between decomposition and disease?"

"Ahem!" was the reply of Mr. Bagges.

"Why, decomposition is a merely chemical process, and simply destructive. Whereas disease is a vital process→→→ one to which life, mark you, is essential."

"Humph !"

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Moreover, it is not one of mere destruction." "Ha!"

"Let us," continued Mr. Newby, "consider a single bodily injury, and its result. We will take a case in which we can see what takes place with our eyes. Say a burn. Apply the actual cautery to a dead body, and you only burn a hole in it; nothing ensues. But suppose I apply a hot poker to a given portion of your exterior."

"No, I thank you !" cried Mr. Bagges, instinctively rubbing himself.

"Were I," Newby proceeded, "to perpetrate this outrage, I should do something more than occasion a breach of the integrity of Mr. Bagges's surface. Redness and swelling,

accompanied with pain and heat, would-after the immediate sensation from the burn had subsided-make their appearance around the seat of injury. In short, inflammation would take place, and would continue to exist for some time. In the meanwhile, the hole would gradually fill with new flesh, and would ultimately skin over; and so the inflammation would end. Take the case of a wound, instead of a burn: let it be a cut finger. Here you have inflammation occurring, too, to a smaller extent, to be sure: but still it does occur; and its occurrence is necessary to the healing of the wound. A sort of living glue is poured out on the cut surface. It is shed from the mouths of minute bloodvessels, it joins the divided parts, and, at length, becomes a firm, fleshy substance; a live patch: what, in short, we call a scar. The inflammation results in forming this glue. Therefore we call it adhesive inflammation. It is also called healthy inflammation, to distinguish it from other inflammations which do not end so favorably. But, if this same inflammation happen in parts important to life, as those contained in the chest or abdomen, it is regarded as a disease. So it is if it take place in the eye-for instance, on the colored part of the eye, termed the iris, where the adhesive matter, if poured out, might close the hole in the iris, called the pupil, and thus blind the patient. In fact, adhesive inflammation is disease in its simplest form.”

"Disease?" said Mr. Bagges; "but, if I understand you, the tendency of the inflammation is to heal."

"Precisely so; and in the simplest form of disease we see a process, excited by injury, the effect of which is to repair that injury. But other processes, admitted on all hands to be diseases, are as obviously remedial. The voracious consumption of unripe fruit, you know, Mr. Bagges, will afflict young gentlemen with a painful ailment, which,

however, is evidently an effort of Nature to expel the cause of irritation. Many cutaneous eruptions are known to be salutary; and even a fit of the gout, as you may have heard, sir, and perhaps experienced, acts often as a kind of clearance to the system. Indeed the nature of all disease appears, so far as we can determine it, to be, essentially, reaction against injury. But this reaction may be too powerful, or too weak; it may be impeded, or perverted, or disturbed, or protracted, by a variety of causes; and then our professional interference, Mr. Bagges, becomes necessary."

"With your pills, and powders, and draughts, and mixtures, et cetera ?" interposed Mr. Bagges.

"With means and appliances such as you mention," said Mr. Newby, and some others. And for what purpose? We shall see. Let us go back to the case of the cut finger. The simple inflammation arising from that injury requires no treatment beyond what is barely protective. The finger is merely bound up and it heals; the inflammatory process is confined to the wound, and terminates of itself. But the inflammation consequent on the wound may be more than simple. The cut may fester instead of healing. The inflammation may run up the arm, and in place of forming adhesive matter, pass through various stages, which I need not describe, except as dangerous and unpleasant. What occasions the inflammatory process to assume this character -that of what is termed unhealthy inflammation? The circumstance, we discover on inquiry to be, that there is something wrong in the system: generally that some organ, the office of which is to purify it of refuse matter, is not doing its duty. Medicine is given, or means are taken to make that organ perform its function: and this object accomplished, the inflammation subsides. The action of a few blue pills and black draughts, for example, may be

sufficient to subdue it, and reduce it to the simple form and this quite independently of any local treatment beyond enveloping the limb in a pulp of bread and warm water."

"Commonly called a poultice," Mr. Bagges supplied.

"Even so. Now, in the case just supposed, the medicine, you see, Mr. Bagges, did not directly stop the inflammation. It acted by removing certain conditions-torpidity, we will say, of the liver, and other organs therewith connected-and then the inflammation ceased. And by far the greater number of diseases, sir, are to be cured by the mere removal of these and similar conditions; indeed, by no more than rectifying the digestive apparatus, and causing its dependencies to execute a sort of vital sewage and drainage. Our most numerous bodily injuries are inflicted by ourselves through excesses and errors of diet. Mischief most frequently enters the human body through the mouth. The frame is thus overloaded with superfluities, or tainted with impurities, and these are the most general causes of disease, and they aggravate and prolong diseases that originate otherwise. This fact in part explains the success of quack medicines. Most of these compounds increase the action of the cleansing organs. Out of a hundred patients taken indiscriminately, a large per centage would probably derive relief from any medicine having that action. So much testimony is safe for Dr. Gullaway's pills. A few grains of calomel and colocynth from the honest druggist's would have answered better, perhaps; but this is not known, or not considered. Dr. Gullaway puffs and advertises his successes-with additions and embellishments, of course. Experience vouches for pills in some degree, and then Credulity gulps them to any extent."

"Now disease," said Mr. Bagges," according to you, isthat is, in great measure-a what? -a salutary effort of