Ourselves, our food, and our physic / by Benjamin Ridge.

  • Ridge, Benjamin.
Date:
1861
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ourselves, our food, and our physic / by Benjamin Ridge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    definite knowledge of the cliemico-vital causes of health or on what it depends, they presume to cure disease by en- deavouring to put the body into that state of which they know nothing; to alleviate disease, yet see it daily increas- ing in intensity without knovdng why, and not imin-obahly, by the very means used to arrest it. This is a state of things that requires very different reasoning on to what has lutherto been brought to bear upon it. The same thing may bo said of the continental practices. Everything relating to the material lesion or specific disease is studied with hopes of verification in the dead body. No account exists of the law or cause of disease, or the cliemico- vital condition of the elements of the body: all is physiology and pathology. The administration of medicine is a simple matter of personal opinion guided by no law. The conti- nental physicians are contented with ptisans and to leave the matter to Natm'c—so, tether an Elephant with pack- thread; while the English school, more bold and daring, open a Geneva watch with a crowbar. All I can say is— Let us hope for better things some day. CHAPTER XV. CONCLUSION. The practical physician a useful and necessary member of the commanity.— ‘ Healtli and disease,’ objects of that work.—Gradation of disease, by natural laws.—The jiresent piiictice of medicine an art and mystery, not a science.—Disorders arising from great mental labour.—Stimulants ]ierniciou8 to those who are of se<lentary habits and write much ; but necessary in some mental exertions largely combined with physical.—Fashionable follies in medicine and hygiene.—The stethoscope, auscultation, &c. No one, I think, can misunderstand the end or the object of this small work; nor, I trust, its plain language, or the tenets set forth herein. It was written to illustrate broad principles, and to assail the mystery that hedges about the practice of medicine ; not in any way to place crude information in every hand, to supersede the practical physician in his manifold duties.