A very insightful and well-written read, Bingley! Thanks for the link. I'd be interested to get Dr. Bill's reaction to this. And I also encountered an unfamiliar word in the passage: batlling. It doesn't seem to be a typo for battling because the rest of the work is flawless, perhaps a variation in the spelling?...or could it be an obsolete medical term of some kind? Here's the usage:

So it was that in this disease there was no cause which came within the province of human reasoning; for in all cases the issue tended to be something unaccountable. For example, while some were helped by batlling, others were harmed in no less degree.