us
impaired, the peculiar morbid action of which tubercular matter is the
product. The general division of causes into predisposing and exciting,
must ever be more or less arbitrary. Individuals subject to predisposing
causes may live the natural term of life and finally die of other
disease. Indeed, when predisposing causes are known to exist, they
should constitute a warning for the avoidance of other causes. Again,
among the so-called exciting causes, some may operate in such a manner,
with some individuals, as to predispose them to consumption, and the
result will be the same as if the disposition had been congenital. The
causes which in one individual are _exciting_, under other circumstances
and in other individuals, would be _predisposing_, because they act so
as to depress the vitality and impair the nutritive processes.

THE PREDISPOSING CAUSES, then, are hereditary predisposition, scrofula,
debility of the parents, climatic influences, sedentary habits,
depressing emotions, in fact, _anything_ which impairs the vital forces
and interferes with the perfect elaboration of nutritive material.

THE EXCITING CAUSES are those which are capable of arousing the
predisposing ones into activity, and which, in some instances, may
themselves induce predisposition; as dyspepsia, nasal catarrh, colds,
suppressed menstruation, bronchitis, retrocession of cutaneous
affections, measles, scarlatina, malaria, whooping-cough, small-pox,
continued fevers, pleurisy, pneumonia, long-continued influence of cold,
sudden prolonged exposure to cold, sudden suspension of long-continued
discharges, masturbation, excessive venery, wastes from excessive mental
activity, insufficient diet, both as regards quantity and quality,
exposure to impure air, atmospheric vicissitudes, dark dwellings,
dampness, prolonged lactation, depressing mental emotions, insufficient
clothing, improper treatment of other diseases, exhaustive discharges,
tight lacing, fast life in fashionable society, and impurity and
impoverishment of blood from any cause. This list might be greatly
extended, but the other causes are generally in some manner allied to
those already named.

SYMPTOMS. The symptoms of consumption vary with the progress of the
disease. Writers generally recognize three stages, which so gradually
change from one to the other that a dividing line cannot be drawn. As
the disease progresses, new conditions develop, which are manifested by
new symptoms