I hold that the gouty, the rheumatic, the strumous, the “colds,” and all other diatheses, are practically unimportant distinctions. The technical difference is, of course, well understood and admitted. In any event, it is certain that the course of living best suited to prevent one, is also best adapted to prevent or remove all. For all practical purposes, however, they may be classed together; and whoever desires, either for themselves or their children, exemption from, or the alleviation of, suffering, have only to adopt a pure mode of living in order to escape, or emerge from, the _disease diathesis_. * * * * * NOTE.——The limits of this work forbid an extended consideration of the influence of this or that occupation in promoting this disease; nor is it, in my estimation, essential. The trades must go on, regardless of their influence upon health. There must, for example, be painters, plumbers, compositors, tin-workers, etc., even though the absorption of lead does tend to produce the gouty condition and, so, a predisposition to renal disease. A sufficient degree of care in other directions would enable this class to outlive the more favored ones who neglect the laws of life. See note 2 in Appendix, p. 276. CHAPTER VI. INSOMNIA——INSANITY. Sleeplessness is often referred to as a cause of insanity, but it would be much nearer the truth to say that insanity causes sleeplessness. Dr. Rush says: “A dream is a transient paroxysm of delirium, and delirium a perpetual dream.” Not every dreamer becomes insane, in the common understanding of the term, nor every person who is distressed by wakefulness; nor do all those persons who dream dreams of a strange, droll, startling, heart-rending, exhausting character, become inmates of lunatic asylums, although all such are fit subjects for a rigid hygiene; and not a few out of this large number of bad dreamers——who are likewise afflicted with insomnia——but could with advantage place themselves under the charge of an expert in diseases of the brain, or even in an asylum, if either the former, or the physicians in charge of the latter, were in all regards thoroughly equipped for their work——a rare circumstance indeed. Normal sleep is dreamless; in default of this total oblivion, sleep is only partial——it is not perfect nervous repose. No person who suffers severely from indigestion but is also troubled with much dreaming, and, more or less, with wakefulness; and no person who has these last-named symptoms but can safely set them down; at least in great measure, to digestive disorder; and as, almost invariably, removable by improved habits.