rhaps been handed down even unto the third or fourth generation, to an
innocent posterity from infected progenitors; too sudden rest after
great and fatiguing exercise, and living in poorly-ventilated
apartments. These are among the most fruitful causes of those feeble,
deranged, or impure conditions of the system to which catarrh so
frequently owes its origin. Although the immediate or exciting cause is
generally repeated attacks of "cold in the head," which, being neglected
or improperly treated; "go on from bad to worse," yet the predisposing
or real cause of the disease is in the majority of cases, an enfeebled,
impure, or otherwise faulty condition of the system, which invites the
disease, and needs only the irritation produced in the nasal passages by
an attack of cold, to kindle the flame and establish the loathsome
malady. Some people are convinced with difficulty that there exists in
their system a weakness, impurity, or derangement of any kind, which
permitted the disease to fasten itself upon them. They may not feel any
great weakness, may not have any pimples, blotches, eruptions,
swellings, or ulcers, upon their whole person; in fact, nothing about
them that would, except to the skilled eye of the practical and
experienced physician, indicate that their system is weakened or
deranged with bad humors; and yet such a fault may, and GENERALLY DOES,
exist. As an ulcer upon the leg, or a "fever-sore," or an eruption upon
the skin, may be the only outward sign of a fault in the system, so
frequently chronic catarrh is the only sign by which a bad condition of
the system manifests itself in a manner that is perceptible to the
sufferer himself, or to the non-professional observer. The
finely-skilled physician, whose constant practice makes his perceptive
faculties perfect in this direction, would detect the constitutional
fault, as an experienced banker detects a finely-executed and dangerous
bank-note which the unpracticed eye would pronounce genuine.

[Illustration: Fig. 9.
Examination of the Nasal Passages by means of the Rhinoscope
and Head Mirror.]

TREATMENT. If you would remove an evil _strike at its root_. As the
predisposing or real cause of catarrh is, in the majority of cases, some
weakness, impurity, or otherwise faulty condition of the system, in
attempting to cure the disease our chief aim must be directed to the
removal of that cause. The more we see of this odious disease, the more
so we the impor