Lectures on diet and regimen : being a systematic inquiry into the most rational means of preserving health and prolonging life. Together with physiological and chemical explanations, calculated chiefly for the use of families; in order to banish the prevailing abuses and prejudices in medicine / by A. F. M. Willich.

Date:
1799
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on diet and regimen : being a systematic inquiry into the most rational means of preserving health and prolonging life. Together with physiological and chemical explanations, calculated chiefly for the use of families; in order to banish the prevailing abuses and prejudices in medicine / by A. F. M. Willich. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    formation {epigenefis). Agreeably to the former, it was conjcdliured, that all organic bodies, which have of Adam, were at one time, ipfo fa8o, pent up in the two ovaria of our common mother Eve- There we lay, as it were afleep ; and, though aflonifliingly little creatures, yet completely organized bodies, and perfeft miniatures of the forms we have fince affumed ; for, fays Haller, “ ytll our vtf- “ cera, and the bones themfelnses were then already formed, although “ in a kind of fluidflate. That which we call impregnation, is nothing elfe than the adlion of awakening the germ from its lethargic ftate, by means of the male femen, which ftir mulates the little creature’s heart to the firft pulhition; and fo on. “ The fame kind of idea has lately induced a very cele- brated naturalift of Geneva, and a warm advocate of this tlieory, to plan out for us a hiftory of organized bodies pre- vious to the ftate of impregnation, from which we learn, I. that we are all much older than we fiippofe ourfelves to be ; 2. that all mankind are exactly of the fame age, the great-grandfather not a fecond older than the youngeft of his great-grandchildren ; 3. that this refpedtable age, -which we are all of, may be about fix thonfand years. The fame natural hiftorian alfo agrees entirely in opinion with Bazin ; that fince this charming long feries of years, when w-e were all packed together, along with Cain and Abel, and the other two hundred thoufand millions of men, which, ac- cording to the beft calculations, have fince th-at period gone— quo pins JEneas, quo TuHus dives, et Ancus ; in a word, fince the firft creation, during which time wc have been in a kind of lethargic fleep, though not entirely -without motion ; that during the whole fifty-feven centuries, I fay, previous to our being awakened by the above-mentioned ftimulus, we were, according to Bazin’s opinion, always growing by im- perceptible degrees-; for inftance, we were moft probably rgther a little bigger at the time we lay befide Cain’s nieces, than