es are advanced as to how they aid in the
construction of new cells or atoms, or how they aid in the disposal of
the old ones.

Construction, destruction! There is no death of atoms: really nothing is
generated, nothing destroyed: the change is but the rearranging of
ultimate elements; and how is a drug to influence any more than would be
in case of the affinities of chemistry?

Hazy conceptions, crude means! The ultimate cell multiplies by division
to become bone, nails, hair, ligaments, muscles, fat, the brain, the
whole body. Where along the line in the reconstructive work called by a
disease or injury is a medicine to apply with power to aid? In what way
the need to be expressed, in what operative way the helpful assistance
made clear, that faith without works that are seen can be made strong?

The chemist never rushes into print with news that another element has
been discovered until demonstrative evidence has placed the matter
beyond all question. If anything new is discovered in the firmaments,
adequate means to an end will be able to reveal it to all interested
eyes.

The impressions of science are quite different from the impressions of
the materia medica; and the miracles of cure that are displayed by the
column in even the highest class public prints are never in reach of
scientific explanation.

A new element is announced; we know instantly that it has been actually
discovered. A new cure is announced; we instantly may know that the
evidences will never be displayed along the lines of science.

I now unfold a theory of my own of the origin and development of
disease, and the development of cure, in which the physical changes
involved in some of the processes are in reach of the microscope.

It is my impression that, with rare exceptions, people are born with
actual structural weaknesses, local or general, that may be called
ancestral legacies. These are known as constitutional tendencies to
disease.

In parts structurally weak at birth the bloodvessels, because of thin
and weak walls, are larger than in normal parts, and because of
dilatation the blood circulates slower. There is an undue pressure upon
all between-vessel structures, a pressure that must lessen the nutrient
supply more or less, according to its degree. The death of parts in
boils and abscesses is due, I believe, to strangulation of the
nerve-supply. The bloodvessels are elastic, and capable of contraction
and dilatation, a matter r