Change of air, or, The pursuit of health : an autumnal excursion through France, Switzerland, & Italy, in the year 1829 : with observations and reflections on the moral, physical, and medicinal influence of travelling-exercise, change of scene, foreign skies, and voluntary expatriation / by James Johnson.

  • Johnson, James, 1777-1845.
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Change of air, or, The pursuit of health : an autumnal excursion through France, Switzerland, & Italy, in the year 1829 : with observations and reflections on the moral, physical, and medicinal influence of travelling-exercise, change of scene, foreign skies, and voluntary expatriation / by James Johnson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    the field. The terrible competition and struggle for pre-emi- nence, introduced into all systems of male and female education, are not relaxed when scholastic discipline is at an end. Alas, no ! A new and destructive element is then added—cark ! The studies of youth are untinctured by anxiety, except that of emulation; and they are sustained by that almost inexhaustible elasticity of mind which is inherent in the juvenile constitution. B]]|i when the next act of the drama comes to be performed— when the curtain is drawn up, and we step forward on the stage of life, the competition is not merely for honorary rewards, but, among a large majority of society, for actual subsistence ! This struggle, inductive of premature old age, is, of course, increased and rendered more baleful by the crowded state of all the learned professions—which redundancy of hands, or rather of heads, is itself produced, in a great degree, by the taste or mania for excessive education. Man naturally, and almost universally, aims at bettering his condition—that is, at rising a step above his present station. This impulse is, if possible, still more ac- tive with respect to his offspring. The consequence is a general and unquenchable thirst for knowledge and intellectual acquire- ments of all kinds, as the means of accomplishing the great ob- ject in view. This, in fact, is the march, or rather the race of INTELLECT, in which the progression is with the head instead of the feet. And it is not in the higher pursuits of literature and science—of divinity, law, medicine, and politics only that this system obtains', in every art, from the most refined to the most mechanical, one leading feature, one pervading object, is to work the brain in preference to the hand. That man was designed by his Creator to exercise both his intellectual and muscular powers, is as clear, from the organization of his body, as it is evident, from the structure of his teeth, that he was des- tined to live on animal and vegetable food. Nor does it appear that Nature is very squeamish about the relative proportions of intellectual and corporeal labour. We see people—almost whole nations, enjoy health and comparative happiness with scarcely any exercise of the thinking faculties—and we observe whole