The organic laws, or, The laws which govern the human organism / by J. Bradford Sax.

  • Sax, J. Bradford.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The organic laws, or, The laws which govern the human organism / by J. Bradford Sax. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    75/268
    if it only occurred the day before the disease manifested itself; but are utterly skeptical as to flesh and grease eating having any- thing to do with causing diseases which do not appear immediately. The truth is this ; flesh-meat, and other improper kinds of food and drink, being unadapted to the nature of the alimentary organs and the whole human constitution, and therefore unfit to supply the alimentary wants-of the system, disturb and disorder the action of the organs, debilitate and disease the body, and introduce an ab- normal action or condition into the vital economy, which is ex- tremely liable to take on the most violent diseased action. The body thus becomes, filled as it is with corruption, and built up of materials just ready to putrefy,—it becomes as it were a magazine of disease, ready to explode upon the application of the slightest spark, in the shape of external injurious influences. In this con- dition, if the person be subjected to the slightest unus^l exposure, or extra labor, or any other injurious influence, which would not have produced the least effect upon a healthy body, the magazine will explode, and the person have a violent attack of disease. Now what is the real and efficient cause of his sickness ? It is mani- festly the habits which thus corrupted the body, and made it so liable to take on violent diseased action. Correct these habits, and you strike the root of the evil, cut off its source of supply even at its fountain head, and cause the stream of life to run clear and healthful. If you purify the fountain of life, the stream cannot be utterly corrupted by little rivulets which may chance to run into it on the way. Let the daily habits, and particularly the dietetic habits, be in accordance with the laws of health, and you may laugh at those petty and insignificant causes to which diseases and prema- ture deaths are commonly ascribed. It would be amusing, if it were not painfully melancholy, to see wise men, with grave and sage countenances, hunting with micro- scopic vision, if peradventure they may chance to dig up some trifling arid utterly insignificant influence operating upon a person, which they at once invest with great importance, and assume to be the efficient cause of all his ailments ; while they have not once thought of making even the inquiry, much less answering it, at least in any rational way, whether his dietetic and other daily habits arc right or wrong. Those who live correctly do not take