o more to Dr. Bianchon; he should be able to
grasp the whole treatment as well as the details. There may be, perhaps,
some complication of the disease--the bronchial tubes, possibly, may be
also inflamed; but I believe that treatment for the intestinal organs is
very much more important and necessary, and more urgently required than
for the lungs. Persistent study of abstract matters, and certain violent
passions, have induced serious disorders in that vital mechanism.
However, we are in time to set these conditions right. Nothing is too
seriously affected. You will easily get your friend round again," he
remarked to Bianchon.

"Our learned colleague is taking the effect for the cause," Cameristus
replied. "Yes, the changes that he has observed so keenly certainly
exist in the patient; but it is not the stomach that, by degrees, has
set up nervous action in the system, and so affected the brain, like a
hole in a window pane spreading cracks round about it. It took a blow
of some kind to make a hole in the window; who gave the blow? Do we
know that? Have we investigated the patient's case sufficiently? Are we
acquainted with all the events of his life?

"The vital principle, gentlemen," he continued, "the Archeus of Van
Helmont, is affected in his case--the very essence and centre of life is
attacked. The divine spark, the transitory intelligence which holds the
organism together, which is the source of the will, the inspiration of
life, has ceased to regulate the daily phenomena of the mechanism and
the functions of every organ; thence arise all the complications which
my learned colleague has so thoroughly appreciated. The epigastric
region does not affect the brain but the brain affects the epigastric
region. No," he went on, vigorously slapping his chest, "no, I am not
a stomach in the form of a man. No, everything does not lie there. I do
not feel that I have the courage to say that if the epigastric region is
in good order, everything else is in a like condition----

"We cannot trace," he went on more mildly, "to one physical cause the
serious disturbances that supervene in this or that subject which has
been dangerously attacked, nor submit them to a uniform treatment.
No one man is like another. We have each peculiar organs, differently
affected, diversely nourished, adapted to perform different functions,
and to induce a condition necessary to the accomplishment of an order
of things which is unknown to us. Th