Hypochondriasis forms, as it were, the extreme link of the long chain of affections generally called "nervous complaints." These, under various modifications, compose a large proportion of the diseases presented to the observation of the medical practitioner. Sydenham, at the close of the seventeenth century, computed fevers to constitute two thirds of the diseases of mankind. But in the nineteenth, we may safely venture to assert, that nervous disorders have taken the place of fevers, and may justly be reckoned two thirds of the whole with which civilized society is afflicted. Dr. Cheyne, who wrote a hundred years ago, in his work entitled "The English Malady," makes nervous disorders almost one third of the complaints of people of condition in England; from which we may with propriety infer that they were then little known among the inferior orders. nervous ailments are not now confined to the higher ranks, but are spreading rapidly with the extension of knowledge and luxury among the poorer classes. Various causes, physical, moral, and political, have contributed to this increase. The highly artificial state of society, the intense application to business, the anxieties of competition, the use of stimulant and narcotic substances,

But

increased luxury in diet and dress, impure air and sedentary habits, have all had their influence in bringing about the augmentation of nervous suffering.

To those known as nervous must be added several others called bilious, or stomach complaints, vapours, (the name is out of date, but not the thing), low spirits, or the being, as it is called, "in a low way." These are all exceedingly well defined by Dr. Trotter in language which will pourtray them so as to be readily recognised by the reader of any experience in the world. "Nervous feelings, nervous affections, or weak nerves," he says, "though scarcely to be resolved into technical language, or reduced to a generic definition, are in the present day, terms much employed by medical people, as well as patients, because the expression is known to comprehend what cannot be so well explained. An inaptitude to muscular action, or some pain in exerting it; an irksomeness, or dislike to attend to business and the common affairs of life; a selfish desire of engrossing the sympathy and attention of others to the narrative of their own sufferings, with fickleness and unsteadiness of temper, even to irascibility, and accompanied

more or less with dyspeptic symptoms are the leading characteristics of nervous disorders, to be referred in general to nervous debility, increased sensibility, or torpor of the alimentary canal." (Medicina Nautica, Vol. iii.) In all these, except such as are the result of direct debility, (and which will hereafter be treated of in connection with the Chalybeate water) the Sulphur water is a most powerful and direct remedy; cleansing the body of its crude and noxious secretions; correcting its disordered functions, and invigorating the nervous system and the powers of the mind in a manner hardly to be credited by those who have not observed its effects.

THE DISEASES OF THE SKIN next deserve our attention in considering the curative powers of the Sulphur water. They have long been the opprobium medici, as well from their varied and complicated character, which renders classification and definition very difficult, as from the imperfect and uncertain effect of medicines upon them. Of late much has been done in this, as in other departments of medical science; but the treatment of these diseases is still empirical and often inefficient. Hence the pages of our newspapers teem with advertisements of quack medicines professing

to cure them; the active ones generally composed of dangerous and deleterious minerals, the rest of no effect, good or bad; and all having the recommendation of amusing the minds and lightening the purses of the credulous public.

It does not appear to me that the physiology and pathology of the skin have yet received that attention which its extent and importance as an organ demand. Its close connection with many vital organs is easily demonstrated. The sudden difficulty of breathing occasioned by plunging into cold water shows how intimately the lungs sympathize with it. Often after eating shell-fish or some other kind of food which disagrees with him, a man will be covered in a short time with nettle-rash from head to foot; thus indicating the sympathy of the stomach with the skin. Again, it is obviously closely connected with the brain and nerves. The first symptoms of fever are shivering, chilliness of the surface, followed by burning heat, and this succeeded by profuse perspiration. And in extensive burns and scalds, where the injury is spread over a large portion of the skin, the nervous system gives way, and the patient sinks at once. Dr. Cullen considered what he called "spasm of the extreme vessels" to be the cause of fever and inflammation.

The Mucous Membranes which line, as it were, the eye, ear, nose, mouth, throat, stomach, and bowels, and the urinary apparatus, are nothing more than a continuation of the skin, modified as to its structure, to suit the difference of place; or it would be equally correct to state that the skin is a continuation of the mucous membranes, more firmly and closely wrought, and protected by the cuticle. Here we see an explanation of the circumstance that disorder of the stomach so commonly produces, not only affections of the eyes, ears, mouth, and nose; but also of the skin itself; insomuch that it is very rare for us to find any considerable skin-disease, without some disorder of the digestive organs. The skin is also one of the great emunctories of the body; a scavenger of the system.

A quantity of fluid continually transudes through the skin, sometimes wholly disappearing by evaporation, and sometimes collecting as a liquid upon the surface of the body. In the former case it is termed the insensible perspiration, and in the latter the sensible perspiration. The experiments of Seguin and Lavoisier show that the quantity of the insensible perspiration amounts to about 660 grains every hour; and this without taking into