A great deal has been written in modern books on pathology about the difficulty of defining the word "disease." The dictionary calls it "lack or absence of ease, pain, uneasiness, distress, trial, trouble," &c., but against either of these definitions objections may he raised. James Paget says: "Ease and disease, well and ill, and all their synonyms are relative terms, of which none can be fixed unconditionally. If there could be fixed a standard of health, all deviations from it might be called diseases; but a chief characteristic of living bodies is not fixity, but variation by self-adjustment to a wide range of varying circumstances, and among such self-adjustments it is not practicable to make a line separating those which may reasonably be called healthy from those which may as reasonably be called disease." To this occult science answers that such a standard of health exists for us as soon as we recognise the unity and supremacy of the law; that the results of obedience to the law are harmony and health, and the results of disobedience are called discords or disease."
