FALSE IDEAS OF DISEASE.--It was formerly supposed that diseases were caused by evil spirits, who entered the body, and deranged its action. Incantations, spells, etc., were resorted to in order to drive them out. By others, disease was thought to come arbitrarily, or as a special visitation of an overruling power. Hence, it was to be removed by fasting and prayer. Modern science teaches us that disease is not a thing, but a state. When our food is properly assimilated, the waste matter promptly excreted, and all the organs work in harmony, we are well; when any derangement of these functions occurs, we are sick. Sickness is discord, as health is concord. If we abuse or misuse any instrument, we impair its ability to produce a perfect harmony. A suffering body is simply the penalty of violated law.
PREVENTION OF DISEASE.--Doubtless a large proportion of the ills which now afflict and rob us of so much time and pleasure might easily be avoided. A proper knowledge and observance of hygienic laws would greatly lessen the number of such diseases as consumption, catarrh, gout, rheumatism, dyspepsia, etc. There are parts of England where one half the children die before they are five years old. Every physiologist knows that at least nine tenths of these lives could be saved by an observance of the simple laws of health. Professor Bennet, in a lecture at Edinburgh, estimated that one hundred thousand persons die annually in Great Britain from causes easily preventable.
With the advance of science, the causes of many diseases have been determined. Vaccination has been found to prevent or mitigate the ravages of smallpox. Scurvy, formerly so fatal among sailors that it was deemed "a mysterious infliction of Divine Justice against which man strives in vain," is now entirely avoided by the use of vegetables or lime juice. Cholera, whose approach still strikes dread, and for which there is no known specific, is but the penalty for filthy streets, bad drainage, and overcrowded tenements, and may be controlled, if not prevented, by suitable sanitary measures. It was, no doubt, the intention that we should wear out by the general decay of all the organs, [Footnote: So long as the phenomena of waste and repair are in harmony--so long, in other words, as the builder follows the scavenger--so long man exists in integrity and repair--just, indeed, as houses exist. Derange nutrition, and at once degeneration, or rather let us say, alteration begins. Alas! that we are so ignorant that there are many things about our house, which, seeing them, weaken, we know not how to strengthen. About the brick and the mortar, the frame and the rafters, we are not unlearned; but within are many complexities, many chinks and crannies, full in themselves of secondary chinks and crannies, and these so small, so deep, so recessed, that it happens every day that the destroyer settles himself in some place so obscure, that, while he kills, he laughs at defiance. You or I meet with an accident in our watch. We consult the watchmaker, and he repairs the injury. If we were all that watchmakers, like ourselves, should be, a man could be made to keep time until he died from old age or annihilating accident. This I firmly and fully believe.--_Odd Hours of a Physician_.] rather than by the giving out of any single part, and that all should work together harmoniously until the vital force is exhausted.