III. There are cases where the efforts of nature are over proportioned to the strength of the disease, as in the cholera morbus and dysentery. IV. There are cases where nature is idle, as in the atonic stages of the gout, the cancer, the epilepsy, the mania, the venereal disease, the apoplexy, and the tetanus[13]. [13] Hoffman de hypothesium medicarum damno, sect. xv. V. There are cases in which nature does mischief. She wastes herself with an unnecessary fever, in a dropsy and consumption. She throws a plethora upon the brain and lungs in the apoplexy and peripneumonia notha. She ends a pleurisy and peripneumony in a vomica, or empyema. She creates an unnatural appetite for food in the hypochondriac disease. And, lastly, she drives the melancholy patient to solitude, where, by brooding over the subject of his insanity, he increases his disease. We are accustomed to hear of the salutary kindness of nature in alarming us with pain, to prompt us to seek for a remedy. But, VI. There are cases in which she refuses to send this harbinger of the evils which threaten her, as in the aneurism, schirrhous, and stone in the bladder. VII. There are cases where the pain is not proportioned to the danger, as in the tetanus, consumption, and dropsy of the head. And, VIII. There are cases where the pain is over-proportioned to the danger, as in the paronychia and tooth-ach. This is a short account of the operations of nature, in the diseases of civilized nations. A lunatic might as well plead against the sequestration of his estate, because he once enjoyed the full exercise of his reason, or because he still had lucid intervals, as nature be exempted from the charges we have brought against her. But this subject will receive strength from considering the REMEDIES of civilized nations. All the products of the vegetable, fossil, and animal kingdoms, tortured by heat and mixture into an almost infinite variety of forms; bleeding, cupping, artificial drains by setons, issues, and blisters; exercise, active and passive; voyages and journies; baths, warm and cold; waters, saline, aërial, and mineral; food by weight and measure; the royal touch; enchantment; miracles; in a word, the combined discoveries of natural history and philosophy, united into a system of materia medica, all show, that although physicians are in speculation the servants, yet in practice they are the masters of nature. The whole of their remedies seem contrived on purpose to arouse, assist, restrain, and controul her operations. There are some truths like certain liquors, which require strong heads to bear them. I feel myself protected from the prejudices of vulgar minds, when I reflect that I am delivering these sentiments in a society of philosophers. Let us now take a COMPARATIVE VIEW of the diseases and remedies of the Indians with those of civilized nations. We shall begin with their diseases.