But the effect of the tides upon the human constitution in certain states is not a mere vulgar opinion. Major Moor says that near the tropics, especially in situations where the tide of the sea has a great rise and fall, scarcely any person, and certainly no one affected with feverish or nervous symptoms, is exempted from extraordinary sensations at the periods of spring tides. That these are caused by the changes of the moon he will not say, for he had never fully convinced himself, however plausible the theory, that the coincident phenomena of spring tides, and full and change of the moon, were cause and effect; but at the conjunction and opposition, or what amounts to the same, at the spring tides, these sensations are periodically felt. There is an account of one singular case in which the influence was entirely lunar. When Mr. Galt was travelling in the Morea, he fell in with a peasant, evidently in an advanced stage of dropsy, who told him, that his father had died of a similar complaint, but differing from his in this remarkable respect—the father's continued to grow regularly worse, without any intervals of alleviation; but at the change of the moon the son felt comparatively much easier. As the moon advanced to the full, the swelling enlarged; and as she waned, it again lessened. Still, however, though this alteration continued, the disease was gaining ground. “The moon,” Mr. Galt observes, “has, or is believed to have, much more to say in the affairs of those parts, than with us. The climate is more regular; and if the air have tides, like the ocean, of course their effects are more perceptible.”