Patients in this state never complain of any absolute pain. Their digestive powers are ruined: the appetite, however, continues--even increases, and sometimes becomes voracious. After taking food, they seem to have more strength; but this advantage is soon paid for, by the inconveniences resulting from digestion--especially if that variable appetite be too much indulged. As the stomach and most of the other viscera do not perform their functions properly, the more that is eaten the more the belly is tumefied, by the relaxation of the digestive organs. This swelling is attended with a painful feeling of anxiety, which exists in these unfortunates at other periods of the day, and impels them to avoid society. They are more disposed to sorrow than to joy--that is, the news of an unfortunate event brings with it more sorrow than that of a happy event causes pleasure. In them, as in onanists, there is a want of intelligence; they are stupid; natural sleep does not refresh them; the memory and sight are particularly debilitated. And this is the state of things, until the patient becomes affected with phthisis. At first, neither moral causes, nor affections of the soul, nor disappointment, can be suspected. There is apparently no viscus affected; nor can we ascribe the disease to any deleterious substance concealed in the body, and consuming the flesh. The patient has no pain, excepting that obtuse, compressive pain, which is referred to the hypochondria, and which depends on the swelling of the weak intestines. If you add to the characters the absence of fever, and of the ordinary causes of exhaustion, you may be persuaded that diurnal pollution exists--that it is the hidden cause of all the symptoms. This is a general description of the disease, drawn up from a considerable number of cases which we have observed. Wichmann, also, remarks the resemblance between individuals affected with diurnal pollution and those affected with phthisis pulmonalis. Experience has taught me, (says he,) that in many patients who have been considered as affected with true phthisis, the disease must be referred to this cause alone. The symptoms of diurnal pollution are not very dissimilar to those of the first period of phthisis pulmonalis, at this purely spasmodic period, which I should be tempted to term insidious, if I considered merely the difficulty and uncertainty of the diagnosis at this period. The cough which then attends some patients, also, leads physicians to dread phthisis: or, rather, consumption, arising from diurnal pollution, assumes so much the characters and form of this disease, that one is disposed to treat it by the ordinary method, to the great disparagement of the patient, whose state requires opposite remedies. Farther: it is clear, that the disease of which we speak must infallibly terminate in phthisis, if it be not soon arrested.