Physic and its phases, or, The rule of right and the reign of wrong : a didactic poem in six books / by Alciphron, "the Modern Athenian."

  • Alciphron.
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Physic and its phases, or, The rule of right and the reign of wrong : a didactic poem in six books / by Alciphron, "the Modern Athenian.". Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    rilEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. In the beginning of the present century the celebrated IIeberden, with a candour rarely seen in these times, thus expressed himself in his Commentaries on Disease:— ‘‘The Art of Healing has scarcely, hitherto, had any guide but the slow one of experience, and has yet made no illustrious advances by the help of reasoning; nor will it, probably, make any till Providence think fit to bless mankind by sending into the world some superior genius capable of contemplating the animated world with the sagacity shown byHEWTON in the inanimate^ and of discovering that great principle of Life upon which its existence depends, and by which all its functions are governed and directed.” Has the discovery thus prophetically foreshadowed by Hebekden been yet made ? If by this be meant—the discovery of the material source or mainspring of all Vital Power—whether as regards Motion or Best influencing every organ and controlling every function and embracing alike the phenomena of Health and Disease—the answer is, happily for mankind, it lias.