Two lectures on the conditions of health and wealth educationally considered / by W.B. Hodgson.

  • Hodgson, W. B. (William Ballantyne), 1815-1880.
Date:
1860
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Two lectures on the conditions of health and wealth educationally considered / by W.B. Hodgson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    death of a thousand such.* It is earnestly to be wished that the lives of men like Kirke White, and of others nearer our own time that I could name, were re-written, and made to yield a new, wholesome, and much needed lesson. There is a perverse spirit, of which most studious youths have had experience—a spirit which disdains what is called subservience to a material body, which exults in defiance of its demands, and seeks to soar into the empyrean unincum- bered by the flesh. This spirit, the besetting sin of the aspir- ing, is not the less dangerous because it fills us with a certain sympathy and admiration. To take an illustration which falls far below the truth : What should we say of a horseman who, in his eager speed, in the consciousness of his own strength and freedom, should refuse to be restrained by the necessities of the animal he rides, should grudge it both rest and food, and ever goad it on to further and further effort ? But the union of the mind and body is far more intimate and close than that between the horse and his rider, or even that be- tween the man and the horse in the mythic centaur. We hear much still of mind triumphing over the ruins of its fleshly tenement, but what should we think of the logic of a man who, having lost his arms, cites his power of walking as a proof that they are not necessary ? And so, on purely physio- logical principles, when the activity of the brain has survived, as for a time it often will, most extensive injury of other bodily organs,-f- when, perhaps, it is the very nature of the disease itself to produce excessive activity of brain, how shall we judge men who point to this result, as an evidence that mind is wholly independent on the body ? Mischievous delusion ! for error is ever mischievous, however excellent the motives of those who prop it up. Passing on to other things, I would ask, in spite of all we hear of ventilation and the necessity of fresh air, how often * “ God lays down certain physical laws. Upon His carrying out such laws depends our responsibility (that much abused word) ; for how could we have any responsibility for actions the results of which we could not foresee, which would be the case if the carrying out of His laws were not certain? Yet we seem to be continually expecting that He will work a miracle, i.e , break Ills own laws expressly to relieve us of respon- sibility.”— Florkhcb NiGirriNGAtK, Notes on Nursing, p. 15. f See Appendix, No. I.