Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/88

 fall, she will so arrange matters as to make the fad as soft as possible; and should we be exposed to great hardships and privations, she will enable us to surmount them with impunity, when under ordinary circumstances they would be followed by the most untoward consequences, or perhaps with death.

11. STANDARD OF HEALTH.—It would no doubt be a very desirable thing to lay down a standard of perfect health with which to compare the cases of one's patients as he would compare their lineaments and proportions with those of the Venus de Medici and the Apollo Belvidere, and be able to demonstrate their different anomalies. But every man has a sliding scale of his own, by which his health must be measured, and which would be inapplicable to every other. One man may have a pulse ten beats above the average and another ten beats below the average, and yet both may be in perfect health. An indulgence that is conducive to the health of one man would be the cause of certain disease in many another. One man may smoke his thirty cheroots a-day, drink his dozen of beer, and yet for years live, laugh at the doctor and get fat upon it, while another would sink under a fourth of these allowances. One man may require some drain upon his constitution to preserve him in health that would be