The influence of civic life, sedentary habits and intellectual refinement on human health and human happiness / by James Johnson.

  • Johnson, James, 1777-1845.
Date:
1818
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The influence of civic life, sedentary habits and intellectual refinement on human health and human happiness / by James Johnson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    As he took the pains to observe, so has he claimed the privilege to think for himself; and if he has made no allusion to any man’s writings on the subject of this Essay, it is simply because he is not indebted to any man s ideas or experience in its construction. The mass of observations, on which his positions are founded, were collected in ac- tive scenes of life, during personal visitations’ in many of the largest cities and societies of the world; and a considerable proportion of the morbid influences here delineated have been severely felt, in person, by the Author. They are not, therefore, the creatures of ima- gination, or the theories of the closet. They are promulgated under the sole patronage of Nature and truth. The Author’s immortal namesake (Dr. Johnson) has indeed remarked, that—truth feeble when it stands alone.” The writer of this Essay has not hitherto found ' it so. Truth is immutable, and consequently cannot be feeble. Like a solid tower or pyra- mid, it mav be immersed and concealed, for a time, in the mist of ignorance or prejudice;