omentary cure, have only moved the weeds,
whose roots lie in the soil. It is only by changing the soil itself that
we can eradicate these evils. The senses are five porches for the
physician to enter into the mind, to keep it in repair. By altering the
state of the body, we are changing that of the mind, whenever the
defects of the mind depend on those of the organization. The mind, or
soul, however distinct its being from the body, is disturbed or excited,
independent of its volition, by the mechanical impulses of the body. A
man becomes stupified when the circulation of the blood is impeded in
the _viscera_; he acts more from instinct than reflection; the nervous
fibres are too relaxed or too tense, and he finds a difficulty in moving
them; if you heighten his sensations, you awaken new ideas in this
stupid being; and as we cure the stupid by increasing his sensibility,
we may believe that a more vivacious fancy may be promised to those who
possess one, when the mind and the body play together in one harmonious
accord. Prescribe the bath, frictions, and fomentations, and though it
seems a round-about way, you get at the brains by his feet. A literary
man, from long sedentary habits, could not overcome his fits of
melancholy, till his physician doubled his daily quantity of wine; and
the learned Henry Stephens, after a severe ague, had such a disgust of
books, the most beloved objects of his whole life, that the very thought
of them excited terror for a considerable time. It is evident that the
state of the body often indicates that of the mind. Insanity itself
often results from some disorder in the human machine. "What is this
MIND, of which men appear so vain?" exclaims Flechier. "If considered
according to its nature it is a fire which sickness and an accident most
sensibly puts out; it is a delicate temperament, which soon grows
disordered; a happy conformation of organs, which wear out; a
combination and a certain motion of the spirits, which exhaust
themselves; it is the most lively and the most subtile part of the soul,
which seems to grow old with the BODY."

It is not wonderful that some have attributed such virtues to their
system of _diet_, if it has been found productive of certain effects on
the human body. Cornaro perhaps imagined more than he experienced; but
Apollonius Tyaneus, when he had the credit of holding an intercourse
with the devil, by his presumed gift of prophecy, defended himself from
the a