A curious field of speculation, on this sanative power in the physical constitution of man, lies open to out view, had we time to pursue it, in contemplating the habits, customs, and manners of the North American Indian. Guided by the simple dictates of nature, he gratifies his appetite with such food as comes most readily within his reach, and slakes his thirst at the first mountain brook. Sometimes, for days, he lies sleeping in his smoky wigwam without the means of appeasing hunger; then rises and follows his game with the fierceness of a tiger, until the object of his pursuit is overtaken; after which, with the voracity of a dog, he loads his stomach with food sufficient to satisfy the cravings of nature, for as many days as he had previously fasted, and again betakes himself to sleep and inactivity. With all this irregularity, he is a total stranger to lingering complaints, and to that numerous as well as fashionable class of diseases denominated "Nervous." That formidable ailment, _Dyspepsia_, which, like a fiend, has, for the last few years pervaded the whole land, is unknown to the Indian; having its origin in the abuses introduced by civilization and refinement. But to return: Suppose, for the sake of argument, that a man who daily uses tobacco, enjoys equal health with one who uses none, and is no more liable to disease; let him once be attacked by disease, and then it will be far more difficult to remove it, than to do so in one free from such habit. This will appear from the following considerations: Remedial agents ordinarily act on the system, by exciting the living power through the medium of the nerves; hence when these have long been deadened by the habitual use of any narcotic, common sense, aside from the lights of science and philosophy, would teach us the difficulty of making an impression on a system whose nerves had thus been previously paralyzed. Perhaps the man, who daily drinks ardent spirit, may, from the greater insensibility of his system, in some cases escape sickness as long as the most temperate, (though this is by no means a common fact); yet, let disease once commence, and then we learn, by painful experience, the disadvantage of having broken down the nervous system by needless and vicious excess. Tobacco is acknowledged to be one of the most deadly of the vegetable narcotics: yet experience proves that the nerves, by habit, become so accustomed to its stimulus, that it in a great measure loses its power. How then can we hope with ordinary remedies to make an impression, when even this powerful agent has itself lost its proper and natural effect?