induced by irregular habits, a lack of nourishing food, or by the
acquirement of some venereal taint.

The matter that is discharged from these glands is not healthy, but is
thin, serous, and acrid; a whey-like fluid containing little fragments
of tuberculous matter, which resembles curd. The affected glands
ulcerate, look blue and indolent, and manifest no disposition to heal.
We have thus traced this disorder back to weak, perverted and faulty
nutrition, to disordered and vitiated blood, the products of which
slowly inflame the glands, which strain out unhealthy, irritating,
poisonous matter. The medicines to remedy this perverted condition of
the blood and fluids must be alteratives which will act upon the
digestive organs and tone the nutritive functions, thus enriching and
purifying the blood. As this affection is frequently a complication in
chronic diseases, it is eminently proper for us to refer to a few
considerations involved in its general treatment.

An alterative medicine belongs to a class which is considered capable of
producing a salutary change in a disease without exciting any sensible
evacuation. In scrofula, remedies should be employed which will improve
digestion and also prevent certain morbid operations in the blood.

It is well known to medical men that nearly all medicines belonging to
the class of alteratives, are capable of solution in the gastric and
intestinal secretions, and pass without material change, by the process
of absorption, through the coats of the stomach and intestines, as do
all liquids, and so gain an entrance into the general circulation; that
these same alteratives act locally to tone and strengthen the mucous
surfaces, and thus promote and rectify the process of digestion before
being absorbed; that alterative medicines, when in the blood, must
permeate the mass of the circulation, and thus reach the remote parts of
the body and influence every function; that these medicines, while in
the blood, may combine with it, reconstruct it, and arrest its morbid
tendencies to decomposition.

We should use those alteratives which give tone to the digestive and
nutritive functions, in order to curtail the constant propagation of
scrofula in the system; which alter and purify the blood through the
natural functions, thus reconstructing it; and which check the septic,
_disorganizing_ changes which are evinced by the irritating and
poisonous matter discharged from the ulcers.

These