e of excitability, and a variety of stimuli, by which we can
exhaust it to the proper degree, and thus bring about the healthy
state; whereas, in indirect debility, the vital principle or
excitability is deficient; and we have not the means of reproducing
it, at pleasure, absolutely under our command. Besides, the
subtraction of stimulants, which is one of the most certain means we
have of accumulating excitability, if carried to a great extent, in
diseases of indirect debility, would produce death, before the system
had power to reproduce the lost or exhausted excitability. Hence the
cure, in these two kinds of debility, must be very different: in
cases of direct debility, as in epilepsy, we must begin with gentle
stimulants, and increase them with the greatest caution, till the
healthy state is established: we must, however, guard most carefully
against over doing it; for, if we should once overstep the bounds of
excitement, and convert the direct into indirect debility, we shall
have a disease to combat, in which we have both a want of excitement
and of exciting power.

In cases of violent indirect debility, as, for instance, in gout,
when it affects the stomach: it would be wrong to withdraw the
stimulus, for the excitability is in such an exhausted state as to
produce no action, or very imperfect and diseased, from the effect of
the common exciting powers; we must, therefore, here apply a stimulus
greater than natural, to bring on a vigorous and healthy action, and
this stimulus we should gradually diminish, in order to allow the
excitability to accumulate, by which the healthy state will be
gradually restored.

This method was very judiciously recommended, by a very eminent
physician, in the case of a Highland chieftain, who had brought on
dreadful symptoms of indigestion by the use of whisky, of which he
drank a large silver cup full five or six times in the day. The
doctor did not merely say, diminish the quantity of spirits
gradually, for that simple advice would not have been followed; but
he advised him to drink the cup the same number of times full, but
each morning to melt into it as much wax as would receive the
impression of the family seal. This direction, which had something
magical in it in the mind of the chieftain, was punctually obeyed. In
a few months the cup was filled with wax, and would hold no more
spirits; but it had thus been gradually diminished, and the patient
was cured.

This reminds