For the Belfast Monthly Magazine.

MEDICAL REMARKS.

IT is a medical truth, more known than practised, that chronic diseases require chronic remédies. Indeed, as Bacon long ago observed, medicine is a science more professed than laboured, more laboured than advanced, the labour being in circle, rather than progression, and the novelty being more in manner = than in kind. To cure a chronic disease by a grain or two; or a drop or two; to remove totally a confirmed gout by two drachms of l'eau me dicinale; or to cure a confirmed consumption by some bottles of vegetable balsam; these are the miracies of modern superstition, the wretched credulities which set a civilized age almost below the level of a barbarous one. But there is a class of diseases, of which that last mentioned is an example, which are neither curable by remedies nor regimen applied solely to the individual, neither by the temporary and temporizing prescription of the physician, nor by the appropriate use of the elements, in which regimen consists. There is indeed an innocent physician of the name of Lambe, who proposes to oure, ef

fectually, consumption, cancer, and I believe other constituional complaints, by the exclusive use of one of the elements, viz. chistilled water, which at least bids as fair as all the draggery of shops.

But the truth, in reality, is, whatever practitioners may profess, and however patients may confide, that the cure of the large class of ma ladies called constitutional, is seldom, if ever, effecied, when once they have taken place. A chronic disease requires a chronic remedy. But the constitution which pre-dis poses to consumption is curable not in the individual, but in the course of generations. It is only to be attained by the slow and gradual change, for the better, of the constitution which has been deteriorated, and that depends, in no trifling de gree, on a change in the frame, or at least in the habits of society itself. The constitution of individuals is much affected by the organization of civil society. Thus a large manufacturing town is often the seminium of that debility of the animal fibre, which brings on the pthisical conformation as well as temperament, and then becomes transmissible to the offspring.

In the vegetable economy, we find that frequent and judicious chan ges of seed, are of the greatest importance in improving the quality of the grain. And even the good habits acquired by seeds taken from better kinds of soil, and somewhat better climates, may be continued long after their removal to inferior situations. Analogy is not always sound argument, but there appears much ground for an application, in the present instance, to animal life.

Some ingenious authors have supposed, that different races of men might be bred for different uses. Some whole races appear born for the sword, and others for the pen, or for inferior handicraft. Were we to take as much pains with the human race, as we frequently do with that of our horses, we might proba bly succeed as well. We might have military colonies of mountaineers, and a particular breed of men for each profession of importance. Man may be bred up to any degree of excellence; and may be, also, bred downward to every degree of either bodily or mental debasement. There is an aristocracy in the human race, which is apt to contemplate with distaste, and to reject with disdain, all analogy between itself and inferior animals, of whom man, himself, has declared, that ever since the creation, he got the complete sway and disposal, but let him lord it as he will over the rest of the creation, he is but an animal at best, and at worst, a very contemptible

one.

There is an acquired pre-disposi tion to disease, which gradually becomes transmissible and hereditary. In compensation, I think it extremely probable, that the cultivation of virtuous manners, through a course of generations, will, at last, become congenite, affecting the early organization of the brain; but that, in

the same way, a debasement and degradation of the mental powers, may, at length, become like a here ditary disease, transmissible to pos terity. He, therefore, who habituates his nature to vice and servility may impress a proclivity to it on his yet unborn child; and the nation, I repeat it, the nation, which for a century or two has debased itself by indolence, or brutalized itself by servitude, will have little chance of regeneration by its internal energy. Thus the perfectibility of our Dature is such, that it may, in the individual, and more readily in the mass, be bred up to any thing, and, in the descending scale, it may be bred down, until the animal organization become vitiated; and then a nation may as certainly tend to corruption, as an individual succeeds to the inheritance of consumption.

Some may laugh at the idea of an aptitude to virtue being inheritable. The King of Siam laughed heartily when the Dutch ambassador told him, that the water in his country was often as hard as a stone, and that the people walked upon it. I, however, take it as an undoubted fact, that tempers and dispositions are hereditary, as much as the features of the face; and if the external forms of the head and face be of ten transmitted from parents to children, why not the form and minute organization of the brain, on which the first lines, the "primæ lineæ❞ of characters are traced? There may be a pre-disposition in the mental organ to the reception, connexion, aud cultivation of certain impressions and ideas rather than others, a predisposition, which forms the primary links in the chain of habit, and which may be deemed the germ of the future character.

As far then as virtue is complexional, and is dependent on temper and dispositions, it is certainly

ansmissible as much as a choleric, melancholy temperament; and as ras virtue consists in a more enrged, and cultivated reason, it ust depend upon a sound and ealthy organization of the brain. or vices may be justly deemed parat insanities, and most probably iginate from physical defects, which ay either lie dormant, or be deeloped in a greater or less degree, cording to the circumstances in hich we are placed, or in other ords, according to the education e receive. Virtue is the health of te mental organ, (Sanitas est vir Is. Tuse 4. 13.), and what is cal da bad heart, always betrays an sound intellect. And I conclude, at a healthy conformation of the rain, may as certainly be inherible as a sound conformation of the ver or the lungs.

Some indeed think of the mind as a certain volatile being, which, some undefined moment, flies into e body, and after taking its habition there for some years, flies off ain, as a bird from its cage; but hers, perhaps as justly, think it e result of a particular organiza. Don, suited to receive, retain, mofy, and associate impressions reived through the of organs sense, hich modifications or phases of the Dental organ, are denominated perption, attention, memory, fancy, flection, &c.

eases

It is observed, that broad shoulderI men have broad shouldered chilen. Now as labour always strength s the muscles employed, and intheir bulk, it would seem at a few generations of labour or of dolence, may in this respect ange the form and temperament the body. It is, in this manner, continual residence for several enerations in certain places, under ertain unfavourable circumstances, d in unhealthy employments, that

proclivities to particular diseases are brought on by gradual malconformation of particular organs, such as of the liver, the lungs, &c. and of the parts containing them, or by that general debility and laxity of fibre, which pre-disposes to constitutional disease, and becomes at length a he reditary one.

It is remarked by an author, whose merits are far from having been adequately appreciated by the present age, that it is owing to the im perfection of language, the offspring is termed a new animal, but is, in truth, a branch or elongation of the present, sinee a part of the embryon animal is or was a part of the parent, and therefore, in strict language, it cannot be said to be entirely new at the time of its production-and, therefore, it may retain some of the habits of the parent system.

On the whole, there is some reason to think that the general state of the animal economy may be considerably influenced by that of the political economy, and that an illconstructed organization of the human frame, with the chronic and hereditary complaints consequent upon such deterioration, is ascribable,much oftner perhaps than suspected, to the evil organization of human society. Thus the financier, who raises his temporary revenue from the intoxication of the people, not only corrupts the morals of the present generation, but lays the foundation of that physical debility, which is entailed in various forms of disease upon remote posterity, and which is only curable by adopting through the same number of generations, a mode of life more agreeable to nature. A modern financier has no respect to posterity; he burthens it with debt, and he burthens it with disease.

Cicero defines health excellently well, when he calls it, Corporis temperantia cum ea congruunt inter se, e quibus con

stamus.

In ancient times, there were fewer manufactures, but a less morbid population, fewer artisans, but a healthier community, a more universal enjoyment of the natural elements, a more perpetual use of air and exercise, which is in itself the best preservative, and nature's prophylactic, against the chronic debility that pre-disposes to the primary production of transmitted disease. Agriculture was the chief manufacture of ancient times, and certainly it is the most favourable not only to the possession of health, but the transmission of it to posterity. The Fabii, Lentuli, Cicerones, recognized their agricultural ancestors in their very names, (unlike our modern nobility, who seem desirous of concealing their names under a new title!), and kept in memory the very grains which they cultivated, with most success. "We may talk," says the virtuous and amiable Cowley, "we may talk what we please of Lions rampant, and spread eagles in fields d'or, or d'argent, but if heraldry were guided by reason and nature, a plough, in a field-urable, would be the most noble and ancient arms."

If therefore we are to propose a CURE that will prove perfect and radical, for such maladies as the consumptive habit, we will find it only in the thorough change of constitution, wrought by a total change of Occupation or mode of life, into one where there will be found a more constant and complete use of what has been nonsensically termed the non-naturals, and this continued not merely through one, but several ge, nerations. Thus, for example, if father, son, and grandson, should become seamen, or pursue through life the cultivation of the ground, I have little doubt that the narrow chest would expand, and the debile fibre would be condensed, and the due balance of the circulating sys

em would be preserved through the critical periods of life.

In a medical point of view, I have therefore supposed that EMIGRATION was often of great eventual benefit to the health as well as happiness of the human species, and that what at first sight, and what in reality is distressing, in the first instance, to the individuals concerned, may in the result, through the good. ness of Providence, which brings real good from apparent evil, prove an advantageous circumstance, to correct, to re-invigorate, and renew; the energy and vitality of the human frame, and to give it the best chance of getting free from that proclivity to particular maladies, for which transient doses of medicine and even the most careful regimen is too often of little avail.

"Often when I plough my low ground," said the American farmer, I place my boy on a chair which screws to the beam of the plough.) Its motion, and that of the horses please him. He is perfectly happy and begins to chat. As I lean over the handle, various are the thoughts which croud into my mind." This is a subject for a picture which might have worthily exercised the pencil of Gainsborough, and which the goddess Hygeia herself might have delighted to contemplate. what a contrast might have been af forded to the same artist from many of our cotton and other manufac tories crouded with morbid life, and premature labour, the remote cause of chronic and constitutional disease.

Alas!

In the same point of view, even war itself may turn out a partial blessing. In ancient times every c tizen was a soldier, and though the superfluity of labour was much less, the physical power, and health of the community was comparatively. greater than in modern states, where immoderate industry supports in

moderate luxury, and the one portion famishes while the other fattens, both verging to disease. PUBLIC SPIRIT was, then, the animating soul, that ventilated, invigorated, and inspired every order in the community. The modern enlistment of soldiery certainly rescues the prime of life from morbific manufactures; and it may be deemed a thirst of nature which actuates youth to free itself from the slow decline and degeneration of the workshop, for a more healthy and happier mode of life, though it may be thus curtailed in duration. Military discipline is, in many respects, a moral discipline, and, in its privations and perils becomes the school of men. Tous, the most effectual cure, and best means of checking the fatal progress of many chronic maladies, and particularly of the consumptive habit, is to be sought for, and only to be found, in a complete, and continued mutation in the modes of Fife, and in those occasional disper sions of the human race, which, in their event, bring about a radical reform, and salutary revolution of the animal economy.

SALUS PUBLICA.

In the account exhibited to the public last year of the income and expenditure of this institution, the expenditure exceeding the income ra ther more than one hundred pounds. In that now presented, the committee have to regret the same circumstance to the amount of £32 11s. 4žd. and that there is a sum of £76 143. due to their treasurer, which from the first of the present year, the period to which the account is made up, and that which the subscriptions become payable has been conside rably increased, so that at the last mentioned period there was £149 4s. due to him.

The subscriptions for 1810 have decreased; this circumstance indeed was to be expected from the extraordinary distress felt by the trading world, from this cause a considerable proportion of subscriptions can now no longer continue, the committee therefore entreat that those whom divine providence has preserved from feeling the shock materially, and those in a peculiar and forcible degree who are not subject to the pres sure consequent upon the want of trade, to consider the necessity of coming forward with additional and new subscriptions to support this institution, which the committee can assure them, affords the poor much salutary assistance, and they have much pleasure in stating that the physicians have discharged their dufy in a manner calculated to impress the poor objects, they have had under their care, with a just sense of the great relief experienced from the institution.

The number of patients have increased for several years past; 1810, shows a number on the books of the institution of 1006 more than 1809, the want of employment felt by the poor in this period, and the reduction of the price of spirituous liquors from the effects of the dis૨ ૧ ૧