primitive privilege was to take no thought about the bowels, or gastric juices, letting these act in obedience to Truth, instead of error. A ghastly array of diseases was not constantly kept before the mind by works on physiology, hygiene and materia medica; hence the greater longevity and more harmony of man. Before these got the floor, dyspepsia, consumption, spinal diseases, etc., were not heard of in all the land. The duties of man were thought of, and the naturally undisturbed mechanism of man not interrupted by sorrow, cares, or materia medica, went on harmoniously. Damp atmospheres, and freezing snows, empurpled the cheeks of our fore-fathers; but never reached the refinement of inflaming bronchial tubes; they were as ignorant as Adam, before informed by his wife, of bronchial tubes, or troches for bronchitis.
But, alas! the nineteenth century would load with disease the very airs of paradise, and hunt mankind down with airs in dress and airs of heaven. Metaphysics hold mind the only friend or foe to man, and Truth destroying error, the great panacea. It is important to learn the exact belief that has produced disease, if you would destroy it, unless your spirituality is equal to this by holding a balance over matter; when you destroy disease in mind it disappears on the body. A surgeon must hit the ulcer with his lance to cure it, unless he is able to destroy it without the sharp point; and you must reach the mind by argument, unless the Spirit reaches it without speech. A strongly material, bigoted, or opinionated man yields more slowly to scientific treatment than the more liberal and logical mind, but the spiritual is more easily affected than either.
