DEFINITION OF DISEASES, &c.

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any medicines yet known. In diseases which proceed from a re-laxed state of the solids, the cold bath, and other parts of the gym-nastic regimen, will be found equally beneficial. See Exercise,p. 66.

Few things are of greater importance in the cure of diseases thancleanliness. When a patient is suffered to lie in dirty clothes,whatever perspires from his body is again resorbed, or taken upinto it, which serves to nourish the disease and increase the dan-ger. Many diseases may be cured by cleanliness alone ; most ofthem may be mitigated by it, and in all of them it is highly neces-sary both for the patient and those who attend him. See Clean-liness, p. 78.

Many other observations, were it necessary, might be adducedto prove the importance of a proper regimen in diseases. Regi-men will often cure diseases without medicine, but medicine willseldom succeed where a proper regimen is neglected. For thisreason, in the treatment of diseases, we have always given the firstplace to regimen. Those who are ignorant of medicine may con-fine themselves to it only. For others who have more knowledge,we have recommended some of the most simple but approvedforms of medicine in every disease. These, however, are never tobe administered but by people of better understanding ; nor evenby them without the greatest precaution.

The clearness and simplicity with which I took care to expressmyself on these points, would, I thought, have prevented the pos-sibility of any misrepresentation. Yet I find that a certain lowclass of self-ai pointed practitioners, who call themselves of thefaculty, take no small pains to insinuate, that my observations onthe prevention and cure of diseases serve only to encourage thefatal practice of domestic quackery. This is equally inconsistentwith candour and truth. The obvious tendency of all my remarksis to enlighten the minds of the people on a subject of such imme-diate concern as their health, and thus to guard them against thebad effects of ignorance and rashness on their own part, and ofimpudence and deceit on the part of others.

I should rather have expected to be blamed for teaching peopleto place very little reliance on the efficacy of any medicine ; whichwas, indeed, one of the objects I had in view, for the express pur-pose of directing general attention to the far more assured meansof preserving health, namely, air, cleanliness, diet, exercise,and the management of the passions. Upon these subjects Ienlarged with peculiar earnestness, well knowing how mucheasier it is to prevent disorders before-hand than to cure themafterwards.

Even in cases of actual infirmity and disease, I have intimateda wish, that those who are ignorant of physic would confine them-selves to regimen only, and leave the medical treatment of theircomplaints to persons of better information. The remedies whichI have prescribed may be entrusted to such hands with perfectsafety; and if the directions I give do not operate as a check uponrashness, I know of no words strong enough to produce thateffect. ,