Excerpt from On Diseases of the Skin As the cause of disease is naturally obscure, our appreciation of the nature of a cause must be greatly influenced by the theory of medicine, which has been impressed upon us in our early educa tion, or by the prevalent theory of the day. One theory that has been handed down to us from a very early age, is that of the ba mors which assumes that the majority of diseases originate in a morbid condition of the humors of the body, and especially of the blood. This is the foundation of the Humoral Pathology, and the disciples of this doctrine are the Humoralists. Humoralism was early adopted as an explanation of cutaneous disease; and the practice which has been founded upon that theory has been most successful in the treatment of these diseases. Theory assumes a morbid alteration of the blood; practice exerts all its powers to remove the offending constituents of the blood, to improve the condition of the blood; in fact, to purify the blood. 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.