--certainly at
eight or ten years of age. Some of the healthiest men and women I have
ever known were those who had either been trained or had trained
themselves in this way. And yet I would not be so anxious to bring
nature back to this rule when there have been large digressions, as to
be found administering cathartics on every trifling occasion.

An old man, who eats little and exercises still less, but has a good
pulse, a good appetite, and a free perspiration, with a cheerful mind,
need not take "physic" merely because his bowels do not move more than
once a week; nor need those who are feverish, and who eat and exercise
but little. The disturbance which will ensue, if medicine be taken, may
be productive of more mischief, on the whole, than the absorption into
the system of small portions of the retained excretions, or the small
amount of irritation they produce--and probably will be so.

It will be a solace to some to know that the alvine excretions of the
system are not so much the remnants of our food, when that food is such
as it should be, as a _secretion_ from the internal or lining membrane
of the bowels. Consequently, if this secretion is interrupted by
disease, there will be a proportionally diminished necessity for alvine
evacuations.

Prof. ----, of Ohio, had been sick of fever, for a long time, and, on
the departure of the disease, his bowels were left in such a condition
that cathartics, or at least laxatives, began to be thought of; but his
physician interdicted their use: His costiveness continued to the
twenty-first day, without any known evil as the consequence. On this day
nature rallied. Then followed a period of quiescence of fourteen days,
and then another of seven days, after which he fell into his former
diurnal habits. There was much croaking among the neighbors, on account
of the treatment of his physician; but the results put all to silence.

The case of Judge ----, in the interior of the same State (Ohio), was so
much like that of Prof. ----, in all its essential particulars, that I
need but to state the fact, without entering at all upon the details.

J. W. G., a lawyer of Massachusetts, was sick with a lingering
complaint, attended with more or less of fever, for several months.
During this time there was one interval, of more than thirty days,
during which his bowels did not move. And yet there was no evidence of
any permanent suffering as the consequence.

The principal use I w