An essay, or tract, on the vitality of the warm blood and air / by James Morison ; edited and republished by Elisha North.

  • Morison, James, 1770-1840.
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay, or tract, on the vitality of the warm blood and air / by James Morison ; edited and republished by Elisha North. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    17/36
    ent materials, and their forgetting, that it is but one whole [made from the same material, a little modified, to wit, the blood, and having within it but one feeling agent, i. e. the blood, or its spirit.] Does not every one see plainly the cause of their mistake, and that all their science, as they call it, is only a nonsensical jargon of absurdities, since it is not according to the truth. Have these phi- losophers ever felt a corn on the little toe, or the gout on the great toe, or a violent inflammation any where else, and been insensible of the pain ? Have they ever witnessed a mortification of the too soon destroying life 1 Does not the gouty man in his great agony think his great toe endowed with as much sensibility as his brain? It is the blood, that is, the suffering piinciple, or agency in all these [cases under review.] Do not surgeons and doctors know, that by opening a vein, the blood all' runs out, and you expire ? What, then becomes of this vitality or vital spark, which they tell you your brain and other parts are virtually endowed with, or is inherent in them ? Or if you tie up your little finger with a thread, and prevent the blood from circulating in it, you have no feel- ing in it;—or if you raise the flesh or skin and detach it from the circulating blood, you have no more feeling in it, and you may cut it oft'with scissors, as something not belonging to you.—We hear from the pulpit, and we read every day in the newspapers, of the vital spark having fled from the body, as if there were something to come out of it, like a spark from a flint stone, and that such spark was the cause of life, and its exit that of death. Such assertions and opinions coming from so high an authority, tend only to the propagation of vulgar errors, and keep mankind always in the dark, as to the real state of their own bodies and minds. -How can men (and they of learning and judg- 2