An imperfect
intelligence, imperfectly taught,--and this is the condition of our
finite humanity,--will certainly fail to keep all these laws perfectly.
Disease is one of the penalties of one of the forms of such failure. It
is prefigured in the perturbations of the planets, in the disintegration
of the elemental masses; it has left its traces in the fossil organisms
of extinct creations. [Professor Agassiz has kindly handed me the
following note: "There are abnormal structures in animals of all ages
anterior to the creation of mankind. Malformed specimens of Crinoids are
known from the Triassic and Jurassic deposits. Malformed and diseased
bones of tertiary mammalia have been collected in the caverns of
Gailenreuth with traces of healing."]
But it is especially the prerogative, I had almost said privilege, of
educated and domesticated beings, from man down to the potato, serving to
teach them, and such as train them, the laws of life, and to get rid of
those who will not mind or cannot be kept subject to these laws.
Disease, being always an effect, is always in exact proportion to the sum
of its causes, as much in the case of Spigelius, who dies of a scratch,
as in that of the man who recovers after an iron bar has been shot
through his brain. The one prevalent failing of the medical art is to
neglect the causes and quarrel with the effect.
There are certain general facts which include a good deal of what is
called and treated as disease.
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