I have always found more facility in curing those who, in the age of maturity, had exhausted themselves by excesses, in a short time, than those who, in a longer space of it, had enervated themselves by pollutions, more rarely practised, but which having been begun in their tenderest youth, had hindered their growth, and had never allowed them to come to all their natural strength. The first may be considered as having had a violent illness, which has consumed all their strength, but whose organs having acquired all their perfection, however they may have much suffered, yet, the cessation of the cause of their illness, time, a good regimen, and proper remedies, may restore them. Whereas the others, having never let their constitution come to good, how should they be restored to what they never had? How could they expect that art should operate in the age of maturity, what they have hindered nature from operating in the tender season of youth and of puberty? Common sense must tell one how chimerical such a hope must be; and, indeed, my observations every day prove to me, that young persons, who have delivered themselves up to this pollution, in their childhood, in their earliest youth, and in the epoch of the unfolding of puberty, an epoch which is a crisis of Nature, for which its whole strength is necessary to her; daily observation, I say, proves to me, that such young persons must never expect to be vigorous and robust: they may think themselves very well off, if they can compass the enjoying a moderate state of health, exempt from great disorders or great pains. Those who trust to a tardy repentance, having delayed it to an age, in which the machine may preserve itself, when it is in good order, but is not to be repaired without great difficulty, ought not either to have great hopes. After forty it is rare to grow young again. When I order the bark with wine, I do not restrict the patient intirely to a milk diet; but make him take the bark in the morning and the milk at night. For some patients, however, I have been obliged to invert that order; the wine taken in the morning not agreeing with their stomach, and constantly making them vomit. When I employ mineral waters, I make them drink first some bottles pure, before I proceed to have them mixed with milk. When the disorder is inveterate it commonly degenerates into a _cacochymia_, a general depravation of the humors, or ill habit of the body; the cure of which must be proceeded upon before you attempt to restore strength. In this case it is that evacuants are sometimes indispensably necessary, and prove of great service. Whereas restoratives, nutritious aliments, milk, ordered in these circumstances, may throw the patient into a slow fever, and he will rather find his strength diminish in proportion to the use he makes of them.