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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    rently temperate regimen; and in reality this repletion, and the irregular states of plethora which thence result, characterize nine-tenths of the diseases of civilized life, though they assume the garb of debility, and too often lead to the most erroneous and unsuccessful me- thods of treatment. Every one, after a full meal, especially of animal food, with all the etceteras of a civic table, must have felt how incapacitated he was for either mental or cor- poreal exertion. It is a law, indeed, in the economy of the living machine, that where any one of the three systems above mentioned is over-exerted or over-excited, one or both of the other two systems must fall into a state of irregular or deficient action. The heavy meal of animal and other food exemplifies this law. When the digestive organs and circu- lating vessels are strongly engaged, the mus- cular and the intellectual systems are indis- posed towards the full exercise of their func- tions, the greater portion of vital energy being then apparently concentrated in the or- ganic system, the principal theatre of opera- tions for the time. On the other hand, let the animal system or voluntary muscles be thrown into violent or unusual action—the digestive process is diminished or even suspended, and the mind is incapable of dwelling intently on any train of thought. Who could solve a ma- I