Discourse on the importance of the study of physiology as a branch of popular education / [John Fletcher].

  • Fletcher, John, 1792-1836
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Discourse on the importance of the study of physiology as a branch of popular education / [John Fletcher]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to their delusions is in general precisely proportioned to their absurdity. What Sir William Temple said of the stomach, that, if not occupied in its proper business, it was (like a school-boy) always in mischief, may be said with much greater truth of the brain. The hu¬ man mind—“ that mind, that mind of man, that god¬ like spring of action,” must be continually employed in some way or other. The most abject savage^the gib¬ bering idiot, the untutored clown, the muling infant and the decrepit dotard—all must have their minds, such as they are, in some degree engaged; and what they want in rational knowledge they invariably make up in fancy and credulity. In as far, then, as we repudiate all real knowledge of ourselves, we infallibly lead to hallucina¬ tions incomparably worse than the worst into which such knowledge can conduct us. It is needless, in sup¬ port of this position, to go into all the absurd fancies which the people of former ages, or the savages of mo¬ dern times, have entertained, and still entertain with respect to the causes of diseases ; or the idle measures to which they have resorted, and still resort in the treat¬ ment of them. From this degraded state the practice of medicine has only very gradually recovered itself in European countries ; and among the barbarous and semi- barbarous people whom science has not yet enlightened, the opinions still prevalent respecting the causes of dis¬ eases are as wild, and the practices still had recourse to in cases of sickness as idle and absurd, not to say as re^ volting and cruel, as ever. And upon whom is it among ourselves that the despicable empirics of the present day live and fatten, while their terrified and poisoned victims quail under their grimaces, and totter to untimely graves under their drugs ? “ It is,” says the able reviewer whom I have before quoted, “ to the deplorable ignorance even of persons of education, with respect to the structure and functions of the human body, and every thing which relates to health and disease, that we must ascribe the inability of such persons to distinguish between the ra¬ tional practitioner and the quack.” Now a very little knowledge of Physiology would enable any one to de-