with headache or dizziness, occasional pains of the
limbs, or numbness or tremors in the hands and feet, and sometimes with
difficult breathing, disturbed sleep, and a dry cough, and huskiness of
the voice in the morning. The physician suggests the propriety of his
laying aside animal food for a time; but the patient objects, alleging
that he never feels so well as when he has swallowed a good dinner.
He is then advised to avoid spirit, wine, cider, beer, &c.; the reply
is, "it is impossible, that the little I take can do me hurt; so far
from that, it always does me good; I always feel the better for it.
I do not need any one to tell me about that." He is asked if he uses
tobacco. "Yes, I smoke a little, chew a little, and snuff a little."
You had better leave it off altogether, Sir. "Leave it off? I assure
you, Doctor, you know but little about it. If I were to leave off
smoking, I should throw up half my dinner." That might do you no harm,
Sir. "I see you do not understand my case, Doctor; I have taken all
these good things, for many years, and have enjoyed good health. They
never injured me. How could they have done so without my perceiving it?
Do you suppose I have lived so long in the world without knowing what
does me good, and what does not?" It would appear so, Sir, and you are
in a fair way to die, without acquiring this important knowledge.

The poor man goes away, in a struggle between the convictions of truth
and the overwhelming force of confirmed habit. Under the sustaining
power of a good constitution, and in the activity of business, he never
dreamed of injury from the moderate indulgence, as he regarded it, in
the use of stimulants, as spirit, wine, tobacco, &c., till the work was
done. His is the case of hundreds of thousands.

The vital principle, in the human body, can so far resist the
influences of a variety of poisons, slowly introduced into it, that
their effects shall be unobserved, till, under the operation of an
exciting or disturbing cause, their accumulated force breaks out, in the
form of some fearful or incurable disease. The poison, which comes from
vegetable decompositions, on extensive marshes and the borders of lakes,
after being received into the body, remains apparently harmless, in some
instances, a whole year, before it kindles up a wasting intermittent, or
a destructive bilious remittent fever.

Facts of this nature show, that pernicious influences may be exerted
upon the secret