It is not enough, then, to sit by the fire, blame Nature, and lament over our unfortunate constitution, which obliges us to make such constant use of medicine. In the great majority of instances, Nature is more willing to do her part than we are to do ours, and all that she requires of us is to fulfil those conditions without which she is powerless, and we are sufferers and unhappy. If we exercise our minds and bodies in healthful occupation, and seek to inhale the pure atmosphere which God has spread around us, so as to impart that gentle impulse to the stomach and bowels which I have already described as necessary to their action, we shall have no need of laxatives to assist them. But if we choose to neglect His laws and to live in bodily inaction within doors, and thus deprive the bowels of all natural aid, let us at least take the blame to ourselves, and not unjustly throw it upon the Ruler whose injunctions we thus practically despise. And if, while leading this inactive life, we continue to gratify taste by eating much more than waste requires, and thus stand in need of purgatives to enable us to throw off the load, let us at least be just, and, instead of lamenting over a defective constitution, let us deplore the ignorance which has hitherto blinded us to the perception of the truth, and led us to blame a Being whose arrangements are so evidently intended for our happiness. During the active years of childhood and youth, when a strong instinct impels to much locomotion in the open air, how rarely do we find the stimulus of purgatives necessary to the proper action of the bowels, except after errors in diet, or some unusual accident! And what is it that induces imperfect activity in later years, if not the change in the habits, occupations, and mode of life? If the lively and bounding girl, whose loose and unconstrained attire admits of the freest motion and fullest respiration, passes in a few months from the exuberant and playful indulgence of her feelings, intellect, and muscular system, to the quiet and composed inaction and confined dress of a sedate young lady, who never walks out, except at a measured pace to school or to church, is it really wonderful that, with an undiminished diet, her stomach and bowels should begin to act with less vigour, and that, in time, her constitution should be so far impaired as to render necessary the constant use of laxatives? The stomach and bowels, in fact, are regarded very much as if they were independent powers residing within us, and placed there purposely for our molestation. So many heavy charges are continually brought against them that they can scarcely ever be found in the right. They are blamed for every act of mischief which cannot be clearly proved against another organ; and yet, influential as they are in effecting our comfort, they are treated by us with very little care or ceremony. Their powers and wishes are consulted in nothing, but their backs are loaded, at the caprice of