constitution to sustain itself amid the
ever-varying changes to which it is exposed, has been learned by common
observation, as well by the peasant as by the man of erudition. The
fact, that man, "made of one blood, can dwell" in all the varieties of
climate, "on the face of the whole earth," and can sustain himself,
without any change of organization, at one period on the burning sands
of a Numidian desert, at another among the ice-bergs of a Greenland
winter--exhibits in the most convincing light the extent of this
wonderful power.

A curious field of speculation, on this sanative power in the physical
constitution of man, lies open to out view, had we time to pursue it, in
contemplating the habits, customs, and manners of the North American
Indian. Guided by the simple dictates of nature, he gratifies his
appetite with such food as comes most readily within his reach, and
slakes his thirst at the first mountain brook. Sometimes, for days, he
lies sleeping in his smoky wigwam without the means of appeasing hunger;
then rises and follows his game with the fierceness of a tiger, until
the object of his pursuit is overtaken; after which, with the voracity
of a dog, he loads his stomach with food sufficient to satisfy the
cravings of nature, for as many days as he had previously fasted, and
again betakes himself to sleep and inactivity. With all this
irregularity, he is a total stranger to lingering complaints, and to
that numerous as well as fashionable class of diseases denominated
"Nervous." That formidable ailment, _Dyspepsia_, which, like a fiend,
has, for the last few years pervaded the whole land, is unknown to the
Indian; having its origin in the abuses introduced by civilization and
refinement. But to return:

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that a man who daily uses tobacco,
enjoys equal health with one who uses none, and is no more liable to
disease; let him once be attacked by disease, and then it will be far
more difficult to remove it, than to do so in one free from such habit.

This will appear from the following considerations:

Remedial agents ordinarily act on the system, by exciting the living
power through the medium of the nerves; hence when these have long been
deadened by the habitual use of any narcotic, common sense, aside from
the lights of science and philosophy, would teach us the difficulty of
making an impression on a system whose nerves had thus been previously
paralyzed.

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