giving blood is made;

a sufficient amount of pure air must come in contact with it before blood is constituted. This contact takes place in the lungs; not such a contact as the actual commingling of wine and water, for the air and what is soon to become blood are not mixed together; they are kept separate in different vessels. The air is in the lungs; that is, in the little bladders or cells, and this fluid, which is to be converted into blood, is in the little veins or tubes, which are spread around over the sides of the air-cells, as a vine is spread over a wall; but these little vessels have sides so very thin, that the life-giving material of the air passes through into the blood, just as the warmth of the sun passes through glass; but while this life-giving quality of the air passes into the blood, making it perfect, the impure and deathly ingredients of the blood pass out of it, into the air, which has just been deprived of its life. Thus it is, that while the air we draw in at a single breath is cool and pure and full of life, that which is expired is so hurtful, so poisonous, at least so destitute of life, that were it re-breathed, instantly, uncombined with other air, by a perfectly healthy person, he would instantaneously die. So that pure air in breathing is most essentially indispensable; first, to impart perfection, life, to the blood; and also to withdraw from it its death. No wonder, then, that a plentiful supply of pure air is so essential to the maintenance of health, so doubly essential to the removal of disease and restoration to a natural condition. No wonder, then, that when a man's lungs are decaying, and thus depriving him of the requisite amount of air, he so certainly fades away, unless the decay is first arrested, and the lung power or capacity restored.

The great principles, then, involved in the cure of - Consumptive disease, or, professionally speaking, the great indications, are—

To cause the consumption and healthful digestion of the largest amount possible of substantial, nutritious, plain food.

To cause the patient to consume more pure air.

To bring about the first condition, requires the exercise of extensive medical knowledge, combined with a wide experience and close and constant observation. To regulate healthfully the digestive apparatus—that is, to keep the whole glandular system of the human body in healthfully-working order-requires remedies and treatment as varied in their combinations almost as the varied features of the human face. Scarcely any two persons in a hundred are to be treated in the same way, unless you can find them of the same size, age, sex, constitution, temperament, country, climate, occupation, habits of life, and manner of inducing the disease. Here are ten characteristics, which are capable, as every arithmetician knows, of a thousand different combinations; so that any person proposing any one thing as a remedy, a cure for Consumption, applicable to all cases and stages, must be ignorant or infamous beyond expression.

The two things above named will be always curative in proportion to their timely accomplishment. The ways of bringing these about must be varied according to constitution, temperament, and condition. The mode of doing the thing is not the essential, but the thing done. Beyond all question, the thing can be done; Consumption can be cured, and is cured in various ways. The scientific practitioner varies his means according to the existing state of the case. The name of the disease is

nothing to him he attacks the symptoms as they are at the time of prescribing; and if he be an experienced practitioner, he will know what ought to be done, and how it should be attempted, just as a classical scholar knows the meaning of a classical phrase or word the first time he ever sees it, as perfectly as if he had seen it a thousand times before. And without setting myself up as an instructor to my medical brethren, I may here intimate my conviction, that the cure of Consumption would be a matter of every day occurrence, if they would simply study the nature of the disease, read not a word of how it had been treated by others, but observe closely every case, and treat its symptoms by general principles, as old as the hills, and follow up the treatment perseveringly, prescribe for the symptoms, and let the name and disease go. But, then, they must first understand perfectly the whole pathology of the disease -its whole nature. That, however, requires years of laborious study and patient observation.

The above things being true, as perhaps none will deny, it is worse than idle to be catching up every year some new medicine for the cure of Consumption. The readiness with which every new remedy is grasped at, shows beyond all question that the predecessors have been failures. Scores of cures have been eagerly experimented upon;-naptha, cod-liver oil, phosphate of lime, each will have its day, and each its speedy night, simply because no one thing can by any possibility be generally applicable, when solely relied upon. The physician must keep his eye steadily upon the thing to be done, varying the means infinitely, according to the case in hand. Therefore, the treatment of every individual case of Consumption should be placed in the

hands of a scientific and experienced physician, and in time, and not wait, as is usually the case, until every balsam and syrup ever heard of has been tasted, tried, and experimented upon, giving the practitioner nothing to work upon but a rotten, ruined hulk, leaving scarcely anything to do but to write out a certificate of burial, and receive as compensation all the discredit of the death.

The necessity of keeping the whole digestive apparatus in high and healthful operation in the successful treatment of Consumptive disease, is illustrated by a description of the mode of nutrition, as connected with

CELL DEVELOPMENT.

The human body is in constant transition. The particles of which its structure is constituted are not the same in position and relation for any two minutes in succession. Thousands of atoms which compose it the present instant, are separated from it the next, to make a part of it no more; and other thousands, which are a portion of the reader's living self while scanning this line, will have been rendered useless and dead on reading the next. There are two different armies of workers, whose occupations cease not from the cradle to the grave. One army, composed of its countless millions, is building up the body; the other removes its waste; one party brings in the wood and the coal. for the fireplace and the grate, the other carries away the ashes and the cinders:-the builders and the cleansers. When the builders work faster than the cleansers, a man becomes fat, and over-fat is a disease. When the cleansers are too active, the man becomes lean, and wastes away to a

skeleton, as in Consumption. Health consists in the proper equilibrium of these workers.

Every movement of the body, every thought of the mind, is at the expense of a portion of the material frame; that is to say, certain atoms of the living body are killed by every action of the mind, by every motion of the body, and being dead, are useless. But they must be removed from the body, or these "heaps of slain" would fill up the workshop of life, and the whole machinery would stand still; the fire-place would be filled with ashes, the furnace clogged with cinders, and the grate be useless. Vast masses of these dead atoms are pushed, worked out, or thrown from the body at the surface. At any night, on undressing, the cleanliest person may rub from the body countless numbers of these dead atoms, a teaspoon-ful of them may be gathered from the feet at a single washing, if long neglected. Hence the value of thorough daily frictions to the skin, as promotive of health, because, on an average, we all eat about one-third more than is needed; thus throwing on the cleansers a third more labor every twentyfour hours than they were designed to perform. By the frictions we come to their aid artificially. They are wise who perform these frictions daily and well; but wiser they by far who do not eat the extra one-third, and consequently do not need to be scrubbed and bathed and washed every day of their existence, to save them from the effects of over-feeding. Better eat less and save trouble. The surplus third would feed half the poor of the land.

But a larger portion of these dead atoms are scattered in the more interior parts of the body, and the cleansers remove them by first rendering them fluid, as solid ice