Excerpt from The American Practitioner, 1874: A Monthly Journal of Medicine and Surgery The question at once arises in what the tolerance of dis ease consists; but, by way of preparing to consider this ques tion, let us first inquire how diseases destroy life. Naturally we are led to apply this inquiry to acute and to chronic dis eases separately. Certain acute diseases are fatal because they are seated in vital organs, and compromise the functions of these organs sufficiently to destroy life. Examples of this are some rare cases of acute pneumonia and pleurisy, cases of pericarditis and of meningitis when inflammatory changes or products affect the portion of the nervous center which is essential to respiration. The events which are incidental to certain cases of disease may occasion death. Examples are either submucous infiltration or exudation in laryngitis, and heart-clot in pneumonia and other affections. Exclusive of these two explanations of death from acute diseases, they kill because, to quote common expressions, the powers of life give way, the vital forces are exhausted, nature can no longer hold out, etc. There was significance in the re port of the cause of death in a certificate from a practitioner in this city to the board of health, some years ago, namely. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.