instance, attacks us from without, and does
not emanate from ourselves. To say that
such and such a disease is caused by the blood,
the bile, the nerves, or the peccant humours,
is simply to give utterance to one of those
unmeaning phrases that mostly constitute the
professional jargon of the schools, and are of
the same family as that celebrated one—
"Nature abhors a vacuum." These are bold
words, François Vincent Raspail. You would
tremble, I think, at your own boldness if you
knew how many fashionable physicians there
are here in England, whose fame, whose
harvests of guineas, whose patents of baronetcy,
are due to that one talismanic word "nerves."
How many practitioners have gained a
reputation for vast and almost boundless learning
and wisdom by merely putting their thumbs
in their waistcoat-pockets, with the head a
little on one side, enunciating, solemnly,
"Stomach!" To ascertain what the external
causes really are that affect our organs, we
must have recourse to analogy, for in most
cases they escape the scrutiny of our senses.
When a point, or sting, or simple thorn,
pierces your flesh, or gets into your skin,
your sufferings may become excruciating.
Why? Because the thorn has violently torn
the superficial expansions of the subdivisions
of the nerves, and has opened to the external
air free access to the tissues protected before
by the epidermis. You know the illness in
this case to be caused by the thorn or prickle,
and would not dream of ascribing it to the
blood, the bile, or the nerves. But, let us
suppose that, from some circumstance, the
sting or prickle escapes our sight, and finds
its way into the substance of the stomach or
of the lungs: the presence of foreign bodies
in either of these organs so essential to life
will necessarily give rise to much more serious
symptoms. Now, here the material cause
of the evil not having been revealed to the
senses, medicine will step in with a whole
train of conjectures. One physician will
ascribe the illness to the bile, another to
the blood, a third to the nerves; and the
patient will be called upon to abdicate his
own free-will, and the use of his reasoning
faculties, and to submit blindly to a course of
treatment as little comprehended by the
doctor as by the patient. A careful and
minute post-mortem examination would
reveal the presence of the little prickle, and
show the doctor that the blood, the bile, or
the nerves, had been most unjustly accused of
having done all the mischief. The similitude
of the effects has never, in medicine, served
to reveal the similitude of the causes; and,
where the cause of a disease has been hidden,
from observation, no one has ever had recourse
to analogy to find it out.

M. Raspail enumerates, among the causes
of diseases, the introduction of foreign bodies
into the organism; of poisons, or substances
which, far from being adapted for assimilation
and the development of the organic
tissues, combine; with them only to
disorganise and destroy them. Next, long-
continued excesses of cold and heat, or sudden
transition from one temperature to another;
contusions; solutions of continuity of the
muscles; hurts and wounds; the introduction
into our tissues of gramineals (grasses), dust
and sweeping of granaries, awns, prickles,
down of plants or of grains: which, when
present in the cavities of our organs, generate
or develop themselves there, or swell
under the influence of moisture. Again,
want or impurity of air; for, the most
trifling alteration of the constitution of the
atmosphere causes a disturbance of the
regular functions of our organs. Pure air is
the bread of respiration. Other causes are
privation, excess, insufficiency of food, bad
quality and adulteration of the alimentary
substances. People die of indigestion as well
as of starvation; the sufferings in the one
case are equal to those in the other; and the
indigestion of the rich, may be looked upon as
a species of set-off to the starvation of the
poor. Others, again, are the external and
internal parasitism of hydatids, maggoty,
larvæ of flies or caterpillars, ticks, insects,
coleoptera, and especially intestinal worms
that seize on the infant in the cradle, and
often adhere to man through life, quitting
him only in the grave, where they hand
him over to other worms. Indeed, M.
Raspail ascribes the "parasitism of the
infinitely small" as the cause of nine-tenths
of our diseases. He finally ranks among
aids to it, if not causes of illness, moral maladies
—violent impressions, wounded affections,
deceived hopes, disappointed ambition, weariness,
and despair. Hereditary and constitutional
diseases he seems determined to ignore,
and is even silent as to the diseases of
deformity and defective organisation. Their
causes are perhaps self-evident.

Now, having told us why we are ill, the
author proceeds to tell us how we can keep
well. Short and sententious are his hygiènic
precepts. You are to choose a dwelling
exposed to the sun, but sheltered from the
noxious emanations of swamps, ditches, and
rivers, gasworks and factories. You are not
to inhabit the kitchen-floor if you can help it.
Let your dwelling-room be high, and look
to any point of the compass but the north.
(This would not suit artists, to whom a
northern aspect is a desideratum). Don't
turn your bedroom into a workroom, library,
or kitchen. Keep one window at least in it
open all day. Do not place anything in it
that emits smells, agreeable or otherwise.
Banish even flowers; they evolve suffocating
gases. The walls should be painted; or
papered with a good sound paper, pasted
down firmly with size, scented over the fire
with black pepper, aloes, or garlic(!), which
M. Raspail terms the "camphor of the poor."
Have no paintings on the walls, no hangings
to the bed. Sleep on a hard mattress. Have