Anything that constitutes a _tax_ upon the system beyond its ability to extract an ultimate good therefrom——for we know that, within certain limits, taxing the powers, the mental, physical and emotional, tends to exalt them——or to put it squarely: anything that overtaxes the system in any direction, tends to induce that state or condition commonly recognized as consumption. No greater error can be made than that of considering this disease as primarily affecting the lungs. The lungs are readily affected by disorder of the digestive organs. While it may not at first be plain to the ordinary reader how catarrh, sore throat, bronchitis and even congestion of the lungs[7] could originate in this manner; it is nevertheless true that they not only can and do thus originate, but this is in fact the most available and constantly operative source of respiratory affections. They may be affected directly by continuity of tissue, or indirectly through the sympathetic system. All understand something about the practical working of the telegraphic system, by which a touch of the wire at Boston, for example, may not only be felt at any point in our own country, but even in England or Europe. How often, in joy or affliction, the wire constitutes a sympathetic connection between friends, families, nations. The nervous system forms a sympathetic connection between the different parts throughout the organism, only it is more complete, ten thousand times over, than the telegraphic or telephonic system. If in these cases the wires were to take on disease,——become inflamed and so affected as to cause the same states, emotions, or disasters, at the point where an unhappy message is received as at the point of departure,——it would constitute for the nation and the world what the sympathetic nervous system does for the animal organism. Should we not, then, deplore its existence, and grieve that we are so “fearfully and wonderfully made”? Nevertheless, it is directly a great boon, and but for this intimate connection between the different portions of the body——for want of this most efficient set of safety valves, so to say——the organs primarily affected would more often become fatally diseased and life speedily terminated. Indeed, in spite of this most wonderful provision of nature, the violations of law are so constant and severe, or so overwhelming upon occasion, that life is often destroyed with but a moment of warning, as in apoplexy, “heart disease,” and sunstroke, so called. Strictly speaking, however, even in these cases there have been premonitions without number, dating afar back (see Bright’s Disease), which would have prevented the disaster if only they had been known and heeded. [Footnote 7: This disorder, which is supposed often to _cause_ consumption, is rather a disease of indigestion, and is especially apt to attack patients _already in consumption_, because of their chronically disordered nutritive and respiratory organs.]