Anti-Lancet, or, The destructive practice of bleeding, &c., exposed and denounced : showing the principles of life and death, and the origin of all diseases with a description of the most efficacious medicines ever made known to the world for their relief and cure / by Charles Rooke.

  • Rooke, Charles.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Anti-Lancet, or, The destructive practice of bleeding, &c., exposed and denounced : showing the principles of life and death, and the origin of all diseases with a description of the most efficacious medicines ever made known to the world for their relief and cure / by Charles Rooke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    is a something wanting, and which may be comprised in the questions- What puts this organised machinery into action 1 By what means are these wonderful operations produced and perpetuated for so many years ? To say the body is put into motion, regulated, and continued, by the vital principle, or life, is only telling the reader what he already knows. The question still remains unanswered—What is life, or that animating prin- ciple by which the body is sustained and preserved from decay, from birth to the grave 1 With all our researches in philosophy and advances in knowledge, there are very many subjects which we cannot comprehend; there are mysteries dark and impenetrable, which the human mind will never be able to solve We see a wonderfully-made body, performing many marvellous functions, and controlled by an animating principle termed life, the real nature of which we cannot understand. We can, however, explain the principles on which life acts, in producing motion, and enabling organised matter to per- form its functions. The life of all organised beings begins in motion, and ends in rest. Indeed, throughout all nature, motion is the source of every combination, and its extinction is the cause of death. We know, by many direct and unfailing experiments, that life or vitality consists of nervous power; and through this power all the different .organs of the body ai’e enabled to perform their functions. It is nervous power which causes the stomach to secrete its juice, by which the food is dissolved into chyme; the same power causes the liver and pancreas to secrete their juices, by which the chyle is produced; and it is the same power which causes the lacteal vessels to absorb that fluid, and convey it into the blood, by which the body is nourished. The same power is also the direct cause of all the other secretions of the body, and is the cause of motion. Nervous power originates in the brain and spinal marrow ; the latter, however, is merely a continuance of the former, and the channels by which it is conveyed to every part of the body are the nerves. As the nervous system is of so much importance, both as regards the origin and cure of diseases, I deem it necessary to render a brief explanation thereof. The nerves issue in pairs—one of each pair being allotted to each side of the body. From the brain and spinal marrow there arise forty-three pairs, twelve from the brain, and thirty-one from the spinal marrow. The nerves have the appearance of whitish cords, and every large nerve consists of a bundle of smaller ones, each nerve dividing like the branches of a tree, and spreading its ramifications over the whole body, until they become so small as to escape our senses; of their presence, however, we are fully satisfied, as we cannot wound any part of the body without exciting pain—a proof that the nerves are injured by it. The nervous fabric is a mysterious portion of animated beings; and its nature and influence—in conveying motion, sensation, and perception— • have been problems amongst physiologists in every age, the solution of which is attended with many difficulties. Many physiologists, both in ancient and modem times, have regarded the nerves as solid capillaments, or like the tense and elastic strings of a musical instrument, operating by tremors and oscillations; which hypothesis prevailed among the Greeks, although it was not the opinion of Hippocrates. Such was the opinion of Dr. Hartley, an eminent physician of the eighteenth century.*—Hippocrates * See Observations on Man; his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations. By D. Hap.tx.ey, M.D London, 1791. This work does honour to human nature. One feels proud to belong to the same order of intelligences with the mind which could compose it. That which, in the conclusion, relates to the final happiness of all mankind, is truly worthy of the philosopher, the philanthropist, and the divine.