Indeed, what is more rational than to suppose that the Seeds of Disease are coeval with the fall of man. His first disobedience {vi} brought death:--that his subsequent errors should hasten its approaches is not to be marvelled at. The undetected murderer, though he may escape the punishment human justice would inflict upon him for his delinquency, suffers a penalty in the tortures of conscience, infinitely more horrifying than the most ignominious death. The law of nature is triumphant. No less certain, though after a different manner, are the consequences of minor forms of disobedience. It is so ordained, that certain diseases shall arise, under peculiar conditions, which may have been brought about by a train of causes, easily imagined, and difficult to be explained, but all having their origin in the vices and errors of man in his moral and social relations. If man neglects the cultivation of the ground; with rank vegetation, the germs of fever will invisibly grow and multiply; if he harbours that which is rotten and corrupt, he is himself consumed by those agents destined to remove the rottenness and corruption; it is a part of the law of nature that there should be active and energetic agents for this purpose. The seeds of disease, like the seeds of plants, may be shewn to have {vii} their indigenous localities; like them they may be spread and multiplied; like them they may lie dormant, and after awhile spring as it were into active existence; like them, when the soil and other conditions favour, they are ever ready to make their appearance. And this is the law, the germs of all disease exist, and have existed. Despise the dictates of nature, be careless of yourself and those around you, neglect to use the means which a noble intelligence has placed at your command, and above all, transgress the laws of God, then will disease pursue and attend you, as the conscience of the murderer pursues and attends him until he is finally cut off. His wants and necessities, his sufferings and privations, are the basis of the intellectual progress of man. The wonders of Omnipotence are revealed through the whirlwind, the storm, the pestilence, and the famine. The constructive and perceptive faculties of man have been developed by the necessity of protecting himself from injury by winds and rains; his intellectual faculties have been cultivated, by the sufferings of disease having led him to the study of {viii} organization and life, to discover the cause,--and to chemistry, and other sciences for the cure of his ailments. Famine and distress have aroused his emotions, and softened down his asperities, so that what appears at first to be the infliction of a Curse without Pity, is in reality a Judgment with Mercy.