Cachexia (Gr. , bad, and condition), a term used in medicine to signify an unnatural and unwholesome condition of the body, not immediately and directly dependent on local disease, but rather on the long-continued action upon the system either of slow pathological changes going on in some vital organ, or of morbid climatic influences. A condition of cachexia is marked by a sallow or dusky complexion, loss of flesh, a diminution of muscular strength and of the general nervous activity, and a liability to succumb easily under various incidental disorders, which vary in different cases. Thus we have the cancerous, tuberculous, and syphilitic cachexia, the cachexia of Bright's disease, malarial cachexia, etc. In many cases, the cause of the morbid condition being itself irremovable, the cachexia, when once established, is necessarily fatal, as in cancer and Bright's disease. In other instances, as in malarial cachexia, the indications for cure are: first, to remove the patient from the locality in which the affection originated to a purer and more bracing atmosphere; and secondly, to recruit the bodily powers by judicious exercise, nutritious food, and the administration of tonic and sustaining remedies.