owments in different strains of blood; a
difference to which all ordinary medication is in all probability a
matter of comparatively trivial purport. Many affections which art has
to strive against might be easily shown to be vital to the well-being of
society. Hydrocephalus, tabes mesenterica, and other similar maladies,
are natural agencies which cut off the children of races that are sinking
below the decent minimum which nature has established as the condition of
viability, before they reach the age of reproduction. They are really
not so much diseases, as manifestations of congenital incapacity for
life; the race would be ruined if art could ever learn always to preserve
the individuals subject to them. We must do the best we can for them,
but we ought also to know what these "diseases" mean.

Again, invalidism is the normal state of many organizations. It can be
changed to disease, but never to absolute health by medicinal appliances.
There are many ladies, ancient and recent, who are perpetually taking
remedies for irremediable pains and aches. They ought to have headaches
and back-aches and stomach-aches; they are not well if they do not have
them. To expect them to live without frequent twinges is like expecting
a doctor's old chaise to go without creaking; if it did, we might be sure
the springs were broken. There is no doubt that the constant demand for
medicinal remedies from patients of this class leads to their over-use;
often in the case of cathartics, sometimes in that of opiates. I have
been told by an intelligent practitioner in a Western town, that the
constant prescription of opiates by certain physicians in his vicinity
has rendered the habitual use of that drug in all that region very
prevalent; more common, I should think, than alcoholic drunkenness in the
most intemperate localities of which I have known anything. A frightful
endemic demoralization betrays itself in the frequency with which the
haggard features and drooping shoulders of the opium-drunkards are met
with in the streets.

The next proposition I would ask you to consider is this: The presumption
always is that every noxious agent, including medicines proper, which
hurts a well man, hurts a sick one. [ Note B.]

Let me illustrate this proposition before you decide upon it. If it were
known that a prize-fighter were to have a drastic purgative administered
two or three days before a contest, or a large blister applied to his
back, no