images of disease from taking form in thought, and we should efface the outlines of disease already formulated in the minds of mortals.
When there are fewer prescriptions, and less thought is Novel diseases given to sanitary subjects, there will be better constitutions and less disease. In old times who ever heard of dyspepsia, cerebro-spinal meningitis, hay-fever, and rose-cold?
What an abuse of natural beauty to say that a rose, the smile of God, can produce suffering! The joy of its presence, its beauty and fragrance, should uplift the thought, and dissuade any sense of fear or fever. It is profane to fancy that the perfume of clover and the breath of new-mown hay can cause glandular inflammation, sneezing, and nasal pangs.
If a random thought, calling itself dyspepsia, had tried to tyrannize over our forefathers, it would have No ancestral dyspepsia been routed by their independence and industry. Then people had less time for selfishness, coddling, and sickly after-dinner talk. The exact amount of food the stomach could digest was not discussed according to Cutter nor referred to sanitary laws. A man's belief in those days was not so severe upon the gastric juices. Beaumont's “Medical Experiments” did not govern the digestion.
Damp atmosphere and freezing snow empurpled the plump cheeks of our ancestors, but they never indulged Pulmonary misbeliefs in the refinement of inflamed bronchial tubes. They were as innocent as Adam, before he ate the fruit of false knowledge, of the existence of tubercles and troches, lungs and lozenges.
“Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise,” says
