petent to suppose either the one or the other reducing the remaining forces of the system to one-half of their proper amount. In both cases, the work of restoration must be on the same simple plan of redressing the inequality, of allowing more than the average flow of blood to the impoverished organs, for a length of time corresponding to the period when their nourishment has been too small. It is in this consideration that we seem to have the reasonable, I may say the arithmetical, basis of the constitutional treatment of chronic disease. We repay the debt to Nature by allowing the weakened organ to be better nourished and less taxed, according to the degradation it has undergone by the opposite line of treatment. In a large class of diseases we have obviously a species of insolvency, to be dealt with according to the sound method of readjusting the relations of expenditure and income. And, if such be the true theory, it seems to follow that medication is only an inferior adjunct. Drugs, even in their happiest application, can but guide and favor the restorative process; just as the stirring of a fire may make it burn, provided there be the needful fuel.
There is thus a definite, although not numerically-statable relation, between the total of the physico-mental forces and the total of the purely physical processes. The grand aggregate of the oxidation of the system includes both; and, the more the force taken up by one,
