But it is now time to examine the view generally entertained respecting what is more usually known as disorder and disease, and to this I purpose giving up a separate chapter or two.

CHAPTER X.

LIFE IN THE BLOOD.

"What a thousand years since would not to a rational man, contemporary with the first voucher, have appeared at all probable, is now urged as certain and beyond all question, only because several have since, from him, said it one after another.”—LOCKE.

In this chapter I set out with the supposition that every person living has a theory for any disease under which he may happen to suffer, at least I never recollect to have met with any one who could not explain the pathology of his malady to his entire satisfaction. Either "its in the blood," or "on the nerves," or "its got into the constitution."

But it is particularly on the state of the blood that every person comes out so strong. He (every person) may suppose "its on the nerves "when he has got

fits or low spirits, but no sooner does he espy a crop of boils or an outbreak of spots, than anything like hesitation vanishes and he at once rushes pleno rivo to the conclusion that "its in the blood," which of course must be purified. On being asked how he knows that "its in the blood," he can only say that it must be there or in "the humours." Tell him that what he calls humours are simply excretions or secretions, which being expelled from the circulating system previous to being discharged in great part from the frame, can have no influence good or bad, and he retorts," then where is it if it's not in the blood?"

which is rather a puzzling question, and adds, "of course if medicines cure the disorder they can only do so by purifying the blood," so that the cycle of argument is completed to the great edification of all concerned. To reason against such arguments or with such people at all, is simply to waste time and patience :

"You break his web of sophistry in vain,

The creature's at his dirty work again."

The doctrine that every disease is caused by a bloodpoison of some kind or other, after having been several times at a heavy discount and as often revived in a different form on account of its great convenience, now bids fair to exterminate all others, from the believer in Sir Benjamin Brodie who referred the injurious action of tobacco to its volatile oil getting into the blood of the unhappy smoker, to the ambitious student who tries his "prentice hand" at diphtheria or scarlatina, a blood poison scems to make the world of medicine kin.

Finding that it has become the fashion to account for all disorders on this principle, I was credulous enough to believe that people who were so perfectly satisfied about the matter, were quite prepared to give a full account of every point pertaining to a bloodpoison. I made my inquiries in the full assurance that I should be utterly put to shame for being so ignorant as to ask such a question; that I should be forthwith overwhelmed with proofs, references and authorities. "Is a blood-poison," I asked, "one which though localized deteriorates all the blood without once entering the circulation; does it incor

porate itself with the blood, or does it simply travel in the same vessels as the blood, like two streams which meet and roll together but do not mingle?" but I could never get an answer. I could not learn whether a blood-poison is solid, fluid, or gazeous. I was not overwhelmed with proofs, reader, or anything of the kind; on the contrary to my great amazement I could not find one single author living or dead who could say with a safe conscience that he had ever once taken the trouble to satisfy himself as to the form and nature of any of the poisons in the blood he talked about; indeed most persons when asked at all only smiled compassionately, as if the very fact of putting the question smacked a little too strongly of ignorance or lunacy.

I beg to say my conviction is that the whole thing is a sheer delusion, and that there is no such thing as a blood-poison, that the belief is just one of those things which

"The superstitious idle-headed eld
Received and did deliver to our age,"

and that the term is in fact a mere symbol, a bond of common intelligence between the patient and surgeon, for a person is of course quite disposed to side with you at once if you explain a disease by telling him that it has got into his blood; and when one author tells us that it possesses "physiological attributes," "but no anatomical attributes," I can only suppose this strange description means when put into the crucible and reduced to plain english that the supposed virus has no existence except in the mind of the writer, or when Sir Benjamin Brodie speaks of it

as though it were accumulated in the system like electricity in a Leyden jar or generated like gas, and says, speaking of an impending fit of gout, that "after a while the poison as it were explodes," * and the person in whom this takes place, instead of being blown up has a fit of gout, I sceptically think and say that an explosion must burst something. The fact that surgeons have so long employed these symbols, proves that the mind when unable to bear the strain demanded by strict search and accurate definition of such abstruse subjects, will seek at any sacrifice for repose and security in familiar images. I feel compelled to believe that there is not and never was a drop of tobacco oil floating in the veins of any mortal since the red man first smoked his weed by the banks of the muddy Orinoko. But it is a most convenient term, for what more could any reasonable person desire in the way of information than be told that his disorder is in the blood? what figure of speech, in common use at least, would enable him more effectually to terrify his friends and relatives than to tell them that his blood is poisoned?

It is

To begin upon, the very term is a misnomer. one of those wretched imitations of german of which we have had more than enough, and which being totally unsuited to it can only injure our language. If it is absolutely unnecessary to choose between corrupting our grand english from living streams and extinguishing it by means of the dead languages, let us in the name of common sense and convenience keep to those words which we have used in such matters for

*Psychological Inquiries, p. 71.