of nutrition from food for the support of the body; and its importance in preserving the tone and vigor of the digestive functions. Tobacco perverts this divine arrangement. It brings these glands into unnatural exertion. It not only stimulates them by acting on their nervous susceptibilities, but acts on them by mechanical pressure. The act of chewing, whatever may be the substance, calls these glands into action by the motion of the jaws, and when the muscles of the mouth are at work these glands are constantly secreting their fluid. This keeps the masticating apparatus constantly at work. So these glands constantly labor. They never find time to rest, and their fluid is constantly flowing. This makes a very great draft upon the system. This secretion of course is formed from the blood, and costs the system an amount of this vital fluid which it cannot afford to spare. The essence of tobacco in chewing or smoking mixes with that portion of the saliva which is not expectorated, but passes through the digestive organs into the circulation, so that it not only impairs the saliva for subserving the purposes of healthy digestion, but enters with all its properties into the rivers and streams of life.

Tobacco has already been charged with striking its first and heavi-' est deadly blow upon the brain and nerves, and it is from these directly that the germ of the future being proceeds. Whatever tends to enervate these and adulterate their vital fluid sends proportionate debility and derangement into the foundations of vitality of the being that proceeds from them. The user of alcohol and tobacco, in keeping his brain and nerves constantly saturated with narcotic, must inevitably transmit a measure of their deadly influences into the physical, and also indirectly into the moral, systems of those who are begotten by them.

Tobacco-using tends to destroy by exciting the generative organs beyond their proper balance, and must transmit that influence also upon posterity. The creating and fostering of any unnatural stimulant tends to this result. The use of alcohol and of tobacco increases the activity and excitement of these organs, operating with peculiar force upon the base of the brain, which controls this part of our nature. Undue excitement here tends to debase character, because, while this portion is under excitement the just balance between the animal, intellectual and moral qualities is destroyed. While the animal nature is under excitement the sensibility and activity of the intellectual and moral faculties are diminished. Those accustomed to this excitement are the less cultivated in intellect and morals; because, while the electrical currents are called urduly in this direction they are drawn away from other portions of the brain. It is a fact, well attested by observation, that the inveterate consumers of the article in the latter part of life have often found the natural powers of the genital organs completely prostrated, so that the natural offices pertaining to them have been found entirely wanting. So long has the nervous system been excited, and especially that portion of it which is connected with this faculty, that the nerves of this portion of the physical being have become so paralyzed as no longer to be able to comply with the original dictates of nature.

Long-continued morbid amativeness has exhausted its power of development. The medical faculty has been greatly in fault on this subject. They have not brought their knowledge of the laws of life and of the real properties of tobacco to a bearing. They have recommended this dreadful poison as a medicine, without counting the cost, and they have not cried aloud against the extensive habit of tobacco-using as a luxury. They have not been ready to perceive and declare the deadly doings of this article in their patients, where this has been an important, if not the only, cause of complaint.

PRESERVATION OF HEALTH.

BY J. MCLEISH, M. D., of New York city.

Men have ever been prone to depart from the promptings of nature in relation to their physical and moral training. Indeed, from the varied innovations forced upon those natural laws, designed for the regulation of our physical existence, our lives may be justly called artificial.

We appear to live in the vain expectation of superseding the innate functions of nature by art and science, and thus free ourselves from the responsibilities, physical and moral, which were imposed as a penalty of transgression, by reason of which we suffer from the many ills which cluster about and render irksome our present term of life. Instead of reaching the alloted period of four score years and ten, we terminate a troublesome existence before half the extent of our allowance has expired-borne down by the weight of our own inventions and consigned to a premature grave, martyrs to an hereditary monomania for unnatural habits and customs, which were gradually acquired and have been constantly gaining strength from the period when they first encroached upon patriarchal simplicity, and may be considered the source of the many complicated diseases with which we are constantly afflicted - withholding the freedom and purity of those impulses designed for the control of our unnatural appetites, substituting stimulation, which produces for a short time excited action and pleasurable emotions, but when withdrawn reaction takes place, and the system is depressed in ratio with the over excitement, and should the stimulation be continued or constant, the powers of the body are gradually exhausted, requiring in the ratio of depression an increase in the amount of stimulation, and thus the powers are unnaturally called forth and destroyed.

But habits have become so firmly incorporated with our physical being by hereditary transmission, and these constantly forming under the influence of an unhealthy imagination, that it would require the passage of several generations to restore, in an apparent degree, the principle of the original stock of health entailed upon our race with its attendant happiness.

Since the days of Hippocrates, the reputed father of medicine, much time has been devoted to the investigation of the functions of the body, for the purpose of obtaining a knowledge of the changes produced by disease as it exists under various forms, and the causes that give it origin, with a view of arresting its progress by forming a correct basis for medication.

But physicians, in devoting their time mainly to the study of disease and its treatment, have in a measure overlooked the more important duty that devolves upon them in their choice of a profession, by neglecting to improve the opportunity afforded them when treating the cause of disease, of learning and treating the method of prevention. Had they from the first inculcated with the same zealous care the knowledge that they were able to draw from the cases presented for treatment, of the method to be adopted in order to avoid the danger of disease, they would have been as much relied upon for the advice necessary for the preservation of health as they are now upon the prescriptions made in sickness. And we may readily suppose from our knowledge of the mechanism of the human system, and the combined functions of the numerous organs that comprise it, that we should enjoy a degree of health far above the present standard had we received the benefit of the knowledge which might have been obtained from the experience of the numerous generations which have flourished since the days of Hippocrates. But we have been little benefited by the wisdom of our ancestors in the art of preserving health, as the causes of disease are constantly multiplying by inattention. We are born with its impress and the vitality of life is constantly sapped by doses, from the cradle to the grave.

Living fast is an expression in common use, and it is grimly true. A man can live through a life which would, with care, have served him half as long again, and die worn out at sixty, when he might have lived to ninety, but his physiological capital is spent long ere his time has been anticipated, in fact and he ceases to exist; his account is closed. Again and again do we read and hear of men brought down in their prime by diseases at first regarded as trivial, and the life gone ere it was well realized that it was endangered. Men of good physique and constitutions apparently unimpaired, sink in the day of trial, because their resistive power is reduced and diminished by premature exhaustion. There is no longer the power to resist and withstand disease, which normally exists, because the reserve power which would have enabled them to make a successful stand has been already spent and utilized, and the "body bank of force has been too much drawn upon already to have a practically sufficient reserve left in it. In plain English, the person is physiologically bankrupt." The accelerated pace at which we live is telling upon us all. We all, in one way or another, are living too fast, and we cannot live both fast and long.

The question naturally arises here, but how is the condition of matters to be remedied? In order to ascertain what is most conducive to the improvement of man's health, it is absolutely necessary that we should investigate his normal condition and discover the agencies that are most instrumental in impairing it. The full development of the organization, the complete performance of all the organic functions, and the enjoyment of an agreeable condition, may be considered as approximating to that desirable state of existence perfect health. The same has also been defined "as the natural and easy exercise of all the functions, constituting a state of actual plea

sure, in which the usual, the permanent and natural condition of each organ and of the entire system, is pleasurable." Dr. Johnson states that this might be true if we were in a state of nature, but in our present condition there is often a negative rather than a positive quality an immunity from suffering rather than the "pleasurable condition described by the auther above quoted.

All experienced medical writers incline to this conclusion with regard to the health of man in his present situation. Hence his offspring must be considered as in a comparative state of health, for "the sins of the father are visited upon the children." The infant brings with it predispositions to disease peculiar to the parents, which are developed in its progress through life, modified or aggravated, as circumstances may determine.

The manner in which associations as formed and individuals linked to individuals by inheritance illustrates well the influence which can be exercised by one person over others. It behooves a man above all things to see that his children and their descendants are not to suffer from sin or folly upon his part. Nor is it sufficient that such care be exercised after the determination to marry and "settle down in life" as he terms it, has become his purpose. The life led before this is not without its influence, and long ere the idea of marriage has crossed the mental horizon, disease may have been incurred which will poison the springs of domestic comfort, and blast the health of the unoffending, and, as yet, unborn offspring. The doom pronounced by outraged nature is not to be averted, and the early excesses of the father may be branded on the physique of his child, years and years after the folly has been repented of and almost, it may be, forgotten. Not only is this true of actual, tangible, physical disease, but it is true of the mental peculiarities. "I will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of those that hate me," is as real now as it was when first announced, and the grim and terrible truth conveyed in these words is as marked now as ever. The results of the father's life, moral or other, are indeed felt by his descendants, and the offsets weigh upon them in inherited tendencies and inclinations. It is indeed a grave matter that what is acquired by the parent may be inherited in the child, and so a vice or a habit may be perpetuated. The passion for intoxicating liquors is sometimes hereditary, and so several generations may pay the price for an acquired vice. Habits of growing drunkenness in parents have the effect of inclining the children to grow up instinctive drunkards, and the first children born ere the habits are confirmed are free from the vice which holds the younger children just in a disgraceful thralldom. How frequently does an idiot member of a family live; a constant reminder of the debauch in which his existence commenced and in other cases how do the physical deformities of his children tell of vices long past, lost indeed in the lapse of time, in the thoughtless days of his father's youth. Nor, indeed, need there be mere physical illness or disease in the results of inheritance in order to affect the bodily health. The life led by the parents will exercise an effect upon