er debilitating affections; and it is often excited into obvious
existence by blows, sprains, bruises, or other accidents.

This disease may attack any part of the human body; but in general
commences in the _glandular_ structures, such as the glands in the
arm-pits, in the neck, &c.; it often also attacks the joints, as the
knee, the elbow, the hip, the wrist, the ankle, and likewise the
fingers and toes. Too often it does not confine its ravages to the
external parts, but it attacks the vital parts; when it affects the
lungs it is called consumption, and I wish this to be particularly
understood, that _consumption is neither more nor less than scrofula
of the lungs_. When it attacks the glands of the mesentery, the belly
becomes large and hard, while the legs and arms waste; the patient is
voracious, yet his food fails in affording sufficient nourishment, and
he gradually loses his strength and dies. Then the liver, the heart,
the spleen, and even the brain itself, may become the seats of this
dreadful disease. Lastly, we may mention that the bones are very
commonly affected, and even destroyed, from the attacks and long
continuance of the disease. Hence it will be seen, that both internal
and external parts of the human body are equally liable to the ravages
of scrofula; and it is proper to remark, that it often commences
externally, and after an uncertain time, it leaves the surface and
attacks the internal parts, in which case it almost invariably
terminates fatally. Many times have I seen the disease commence in the
joints, or in the glandular parts, and go on for a considerable length
of time; it has then left these parts, and the unhappy patient has
been carried off by consumption, or scrofula of the lungs. In the same
manner have I often remarked, that after limbs have been amputated for
scrofula, the operation has evidently hastened the death of the
patient, by the disease immediately attacking the more important
parts. It is for this reason that I have a decided objection to all
operations for scrofula, because the experience which I have had in
scrofula for the last 26 years, has proved to me that such operations
are worse than useless; I consider them as positively dangerous,
inasmuch as they hasten an event which in all probability might have
been prevented.--Scrofula is not a _local_ disease which may be
remedied by the knife or any other local remedy; but it is a
_constitutional_ disease, which must be t