but what we might expect from its
action.

I have been thus minute on the subject of inflammation, because the
theory of it, which I have attempted to defend, differs considerably
from the commonly received opinions. I shall now proceed to consider
the nature of asthenic diseases.

From what has been already said, it must be evident that the causes
of diseases which we have assigned, are very different from those
delivered by physicians who preceded Dr. Brown. Some physicians
imagined that diseases were caused by a change in the qualities of
the fluids, which became sometimes acid, and sometimes alkaline; or
on a change of figure of the particles of the blood: some imagined
diseases to be owing to a rational principle, which they called the
vis medicatrix naturae, which governed the actions of the body, and
excited fever or commotion in the system to remove any hurtful cause,
or expel any morbid matter, which might have insinuated itself into
the body. Others supposed many diseases to arise from a constriction
of the extreme vessels by cold; or from a spasm of them, which was a
contrivance of the vis medicatrix, to rouse the action of the heart
and arteries to remove the debility induced.

We have seen, however, that health and diseases are the same state,
and depending upon the same cause; viz. excitement, but differing in
degree; and that the powers producing both are the same, sometimes
acting with a proper degree of force: at other times either with too
much, or too little.

We shall now examine how the diminished actions of the different
exciting powers produce asthenic disease; and we shall take them in
the same order as when we were speaking of sthenic diseases. It must
be recollected however that an asthenic state, or a state of
debility, may be produced in two ways. First, by directly diminishing
the action of the exciting powers. Secondly, by exhausting the
excitability, by a strong or long continued stimulant action. The
former state is called direct debility, and the latter indirect
debility. This is not merely a distinction without a difference, the
body is in very different states, under these two different forms of
disease. In the former case, the excitability is abundant, and highly
susceptible of the action of stimulants. In the latter, it is
exhausted, and the body has very little susceptibility.

Cold, or a diminution of heat, carried beyond a certain degree, is
unfriendly to all animals. Dr. B