on will have no use
unless accompanied with resolution to enforce it.

Though the physician can do something toward the cure, much more depends
upon the patient; and here his constancy of mind will be employed most
happily. No one is better qualified to judge on a fair hearing what
course is the most fit; and having made that choice, he must with
patience wait its good effects. Diseases that come on slowly must have
time for curing; an attention to the first appearances of the disorder
will be always happiest; because when least established it is easiest
overthrown: but when that happy period has been neglected, he must wait
the effects of such a course as will dilute and melt the obstructing
matter gradually; for till that be done it is not only vain, but
sometimes dangerous, to attempt its expulsion from the body.

The blood easily separates itself into the grosser and the thinner
parts: we see this in bleeding; and from the toughness of the red cake
may guess how very difficult it will be to dissolve a substance of like
firmness in the vessels of the body. That it can thus become thickened
within the body, a Pleurisy shews us too evidently: in that case it is
brought on suddenly, and with inflammation; in this other, slowly and
without; and here, even before it forms the obstruction, can bring on
many mischiefs. Various causes can produce the same effect, but that in
all cases operates most durably, which operates most slowly. The watery
part of the blood is its mild part; in the remaining gross matter of it,
are acrid salts and burning oils, and these, when destitute of that
happy dilution nature gives them in a healthy body, are capable of doing
great mischief to the tender vessels in which they are kept stagnant.

SECT. III.

The SYMPTOMS of the DISORDER.

The first and lightest of the signs that shew this illness are a lowness
of spirits, and inaptitude to motion; a disrelish of amusements, a love
of solitude and a habit of thinking, even on trifling subjects, with too
much steadiness. A very little help may combat these: but if that
indolence which is indeed a part of the disorder, will neglect them;
worse must be expected soon to follow.

Wild thoughts; a sense of fullness, weight, and oppression in the body,
a want of appetite, or, what is worse, an appetite without digestion;
for these are the conditions of different states of the disease, a
fullness and a difficulty of breathing after meals, a