An essay on the absorbents : comprising some observations upon the relative pathologies and functions of the absorbent & secreting systems / by Daniel Pring.

  • Pring, Daniel, 1789-1859.
Date:
1813
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the absorbents : comprising some observations upon the relative pathologies and functions of the absorbent & secreting systems / by Daniel Pring. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    tory of anatomy and physiology. The one, in a medical point of view, is useful only from the intimate alliance it claims with the other. But by the surgeon anatomy must be respected for its own sake. Although so close a connection obtains between them, as to render them worthy the appellation of sister sciences: although it would appear that an intimacy with the one must necessarily lead to an acquaintance w ith tlie other, we are compelled nevertheless to acknowledge the converse of this supposition. Anatomy and physiology, though departments of the same subject, are widely distinct; and demand, for the success of their respective investigations, a mode of inquiry altogether different. The progress of the one is every where characterized by a demonstrative evidence—the evidence of the senses. The first step of information which is attained on the other is the result of the exercise of reason; it is a conclusion from data, which, as far as they go, must be correct, in as much as they generally admit a previous demonstration: but the conclusion itself is marked by a diversity, as mutilform as the regards which the caprice of individuals or their different habits of thinking may incline them to bestow upon the matter. Seeing that even in the present day the developement of structures is, in many instances, inadequate to throw the faintest light upon the functions to which they sub- serve, we cannot be surprised that physiology should in the earlier ages have limped so lamely after the dis- coveries of the knife. We cannot feel surprised that a knowledge (such as it was) of the structure of the heart, anrl of the general arrangement of the blood-vessels,