Elements of physics or natural philosophy : written for general use in plain or non-technical language / by Neil Arnott.

  • Arnott, Neil, 1788-1874.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elements of physics or natural philosophy : written for general use in plain or non-technical language / by Neil Arnott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    caught in his expanded sails, and are made to waft their lord and his treasures across the deep, for Ids pleasure or his profit. In Architecture, also, Physics is supreme, and has directed the construction of the temples, pyramids, domes, and palaces which adorn the earth. In respect to machinery generally, Physics is the guiding- light. There are, for instance, the mighty steam-engine; machines for spinning and weaving, and for moulding other bodies into various shapes, yea, even iron itself, as if it were plastic clay; windmills, and watermills, and wheel carriages; the plough, and implements of husbandry; artillery and the furniture of war ; the balloon, in which man looks around from above the clouds, and the diving-bell, in which he can pene- trate the secrets of the deep ; the implements of the intellectual arts, of printing, drawing, painting, sculpture, &c.; musical instruments; optical and mathematical instruments, and a thousand others. 33. Physics all-important to Medical Practitioners. And Physics is also an important foundation of the healing art. The medical man, indeed, is the engineer pre-eminently ; for it is in the animal body that the highest perfection and the greatest variety of mechanism are found. Where, to illustrate Mechanics, is to be seen a system of levers and hinges, and moving parts, like the limbs of an animal body; where such an hydraulic apparatus, as in the heart and blood-vessels; such a pneumatic apparatus, as in the breathing chest; such acoustic instruments, as in the ear and larynx; such an optical instru- ment, as in the eye ; in a word, such variety and perfection, as in the whole of the visible anatomy ? All these structures, then, the medical man should understand, as a watchmaker knows the parts of a time-piece which he is intrusted to repair. The watchmaker, unless he can discover where a pin is loose, or a wheel injured, or a particle of dust adhering, or oil wanting, &c., would ill succeed in restoring efficiency ; and so also of the ignorant medical man in respect of the human body. Yet it is true that not long ago there were medical men allowed to prac- tise, who neither understood mechanics, nor hydraulics, nor pneumatics, nor optics, nor acoustics, beyond the merest routine ; and that plans of medical education were tolerated which hardly noticed the department of Physics ! That such Avas the case, furnishes an illustration of what is stated in the beginning of