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

  • Ridge, Benjamin.
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

    201/220 (page 189)
    (lono at least two Imndred and eighty nights out of the tlireo Imndred and sixty-five. My work on ‘ Health and Disease,’ containing above six hundred and fafty pages, was written within these liom-s in sixteen months. Those who write can alone know its labours : the pen follows thought so quickly, that much is done only to be expunged on correction and re- correction ; therefore double the ijuantity of matter is wiittcn to what is published. This small volume has occupied mo six months of the same niglitly labour. Now this is simply stated for the sake of illustrating the w'ear and tear of the body and mind, and consequent disorders attending great mental labour and loss of rest. In waking up from my nap, how' often the acid fimies of an ill-digested dinner have come into the throat and mouth, and the evening began wdtli a cob- webbed state of brain ! The matter occupying tlie night’s toil has often been a severe strain on the inductive and rea- soning powers, and when it has been put on paper, as in this volume, a whole night’s work has been half expunged on reading and re-reading for the sake of the gi’oatest condensa- tion. Now look at the cflfect of all this. I have called upon all the vital gases to aid the brain-secretions, if I may so call them :—constipation follow'S. At anotlier time, the subject being an anxious one, my liver has not secreted an ounce of bile in a week: at other times, iiritation of the bowels has set up. Now what would have been my condition if I had not had some principle to guide mo in correcting these evils ? Suppose 1 had had to fly to empiricism for assistance, to state all my ailments so frequently produced from this pernicious course of life—for we must call things by their right names—I should have had aperients given me for one thing; stimulants and alteratives for another; blue-pill for my poor liver; and lots of other things. But I have been guided simply by Glossological laws ; and seeing thereby the general conditions of the bodily secretions, and by correcting them upon the prineijiles I have hiid dowTi, I have as yet come out unscathed in health; whilst a night in lx;d now and then sets mo all to rights. Hero then comes the warning to those wlio do the like foolish things for tlio sheer love of them, or iiropelled thereto by various motives ; some for ambition ; some for fame; some for honour; some, Uko myself, for tho mere daily rations, a