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condition? No facts show us that they could. To be sure the life of these cold blooded creatures does not approximate to the elevated existence of the loftiest of the warm blooded animals; still we are forced to acknowledge a certain general analogy among all beings indued with life. At any rate, other things being equal, it does seem rational to suppose that the more the functions are urged above their natural standard of action, the sooner will their power become wasted, and consequently the earlier will be their extinction. It has even become a vulgar saying in relation to individuals who live freely and under the influence of strong excitements, that they live fast. And the saying is founded on sound inductive philosophy, for the signs of age are marked much earlier upon them, than on individuals subjected to less sensual excitement. View the voluptuary, even in the morning of his years; at the period when others are just beginning their career of usefulness, and it will be found that strong and unnatural excitements have borne him rapidly on in his course of existence. The pale and withered brow— the dim sunken eye-the feeble and nerveless arm— the infirm step, and the wreck of all his nobler powers, show us too plainly how prodigally life has been consumed. We behold youth manifesting all the marks of an infirm and decrepit old age.

Do not the inhabitants of tropical climes-in whom heat excites an early maturity, communicates its quickening influence to all the feelings, and accelerates all the functions of life-do not they, I ask, sooner ex

hibit marks of age and decay than the more phlegmatic inhabitants of colder latitudes? It is at least most strikingly true of tropical females, who begin to decline, and lose the attractions of youth at an age when more northern dames are glowing in all the beauty and loveliness, and consequent power of their sex. Hence it is, that the inhabitants of tropical regions do not bear so well the effects of artificial stimuli, as the dwellers in high latitudes, whose vital actions are less rapid, and who have less natural stimuli to excite them. These statements may no doubt be met by many exceptions, but not enough to destroy their general truth.

Life has been aptly likened to the heavenly fire with which Prometheus animated his statues of earth. While this celestial flame continues to burn, all the manifestations of life are maintained, but with its extinction all the vital actions which it excited must cease. Now though this flame must at last go out, still its extinction may be hastened or protracted according as we artificially and irregularly excite it, or allow it to burn on steadily and equally.

Every judicious physician will rank the abstinence from all violent excitements-temperance, steady habits, calm and well regulated affections, among the most important conditions to the preservation of health, and consequently to the prolongation of life. It may said that men of very different habits of life, of opposite characters have lived to extreme ages. A few instances may be adduced of men of the most intemperate

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habits who have lived on even in health to a ripe old age; and such cases are sometimes very foolishly, not to say wickedly, cited to show that ardent spirits are not so destructive of health and life as is commonly represented. But the very importance attached to such instances, most satisfactorily proves them to be only exceptions, and very rare ones too, to a general rule. They are lucky escapes from the baneful effects of destructive habits, referrible perhaps to original energy of constitution, active and healthful pursuits, or other favouring causes not understood.

It is a truth which ought to be familiar to every one, but particularly to our own profession, that true and enduring tone or strength cannot be communicated to the animal body by unnaturally urging its vital movements. Actions to be lasting, ought to be steady and equable, and to maintain a relation correspondent to the capability of the organs destined to their performance. Destroy this necessary balance between action and power, and a pathological state must ensue. Over excitement wastes our energies, without supplying the expenditure.

Suppose it desirable to obtain the greatest possible amount of labor from an animal in any considerable length of time. Would any one of ordinary sense and judgment begin by impelling him to undue exertions— to efforts disproportioned to his ability? Would the practiced driver commence by worrying and stimulating him with the whip or the goad? To be sure he might thus be excited to quicker motions, and for a

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little period to an increased exhibition of strength. But fatigue would soon begin to palsy his efforts, and he would much earlier become unfitted for service than under more gentle management. Now an individual, a laborer for example, who begins at the commencement of his task to excite artificially his functions, to whip and goad them on, if you will, to undue and overstrained exertions, acts on the same ill advised principle, as would the injudicious driver who expected to get labor from his horse in proportion to the frequency and power with which he applied the whip. Like this poor abused animal his functions would soon get wearied out by such inconsiderate management. The actions of inanimate creation, if strongly excited, are but of brief duration. The tempest and the earthquake soon spend their power, the winds go down, and the earth rests from its feverish agitation-but the stillness and desolation which follow, painfully exemplify the exhaustion and evil attendant on such unnatural excitations.

Every physiologist and pathologist, I trust, must be well aware that a course of unnatural stimulation cannot long continue operative on the living economy without inducing some morbid alteration in some of the vital tissues, and a consequent derangement in the function of the organ or organs, whose structure becomes thus affected. There can exist no perfect health unless the important tissues of life are in a natural condition. In the complex mechanism of the human body the anatomist detects certain elementary structures which are

denominated tissues, or membranes; several of these, each with its own peculiar nature, are combined together to constitute an organ. Several organs next unite their functions to accomplish a particular object in the economy, and get the name of an apparatus. Thus then the human body may be regarded as one great apparatus, all of whose parts work together for the maintenance of health and life. Within it are minor apparatus, subservient to more particular effects. These are resolvable into organs, and lastly the organs into tissues, and it is through the medium of these ultimate structures that the functions of life must be excited. Now as all impressions are communicated first to some of the tissues, if they are unnatural, and especially if frequently repeated, a change of structure will follow; then the function of the organ into whose composition the tissue enters will necessarily become deranged, and if it belongs to what we denominate an apparatus, the effect must be manifested in the grand result of the apparatus. Farther if it possesses high importance in the economy, the whole living machinery, from the necessary connexion and consent of its component parts, must partake in the derangement. Now in the habitually intemperate, morbid impressions are continually conveyed, either directly or indirectly, to the different ultimate structures, to the mucous, the nervous, the glandular, &c.; hence they soon become diseased, and more or less general derangement of function must ensue. Health dwells not with intemperance. How many do we not see daily, yield

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