Volume 1

The institutions of physiology / By J. Fred. Blumenbach ... Translated from the Latin of the third and last ed. ... and supplied with copious notes, by John Elliotson.

  • Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 1752-1840.
Date:
1820
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The institutions of physiology / By J. Fred. Blumenbach ... Translated from the Latin of the third and last ed. ... and supplied with copious notes, by John Elliotson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and, as the subject has not been made by myself a matter of ori- ginal research and is far too extensive to be handled here as it but is never, that we can perceive, the object of contrivance. Teeth are con- trived to eat, not to ache; their aching now and then is incidental to the con- trivance, perhaps inseparable from it, or even, if you will, let it be called a defect in the contrivance; but it is not the object of it. This is a distinction which well deserves to be attended to. In describing implements of husbandry, you would hardly say of the sickle, that it is made to cut the reaper’s fingers, though, from the construction of the instrument, and the manner of using it, this mischief often happens. But if you had occasion to describe instruments of torture or execution, this engine you would say, is to extend the sinews; this to dislocate the joints; this to break the bones; this to scorch the goles of the feet. Here pain and misery are the very objects of the contrivance. Now nothing of this sort is to be found in the works of nature. We never discover a train of contrivance to bring about an evil purpose. No anatomist ever dis- covered a system of organisation (i. e. no species of system of organisation, for the laws of the formation of an individual are the general laws of the species to which it belongs) calculated to produce pain and disease ; or in explaining the parts of the human body, ever said, .this is to irritate; this to inflame ; this duct is to convey the gravel to the kidneys ; this gland to secrete the humour which forms gout. If by chance he come at a part of which he knows not the use, the most he can say is, that it is useless: no one ever suspects that it is put there to incommode, to annoy, or to torment. Since then God hath called forth his consummate wisdom to contrive and provide for our happiness, and the world appears to have been constituted with this design at first, so long as this constitution is upholden by Him, we must in reason suppose the same de- sign to continue.” Moral Philosophy. vol.i. p. 76. “The evil and the good,” says Bishop Watson, “ necessarily spring from those laws of matter and motion, to which we and all other animals inhabiting this earth are now subjected ; nor, whilst these laws subsist, is it possible that the evil could have been avoided and yet the good produced; they must of ne- cessity both exist together; and if the good outweighs the evil (as it unques- tionably does, if we take into consideration the whole of any species) we may be certain that a benevolent Being is the author of both. ‘‘Unanimated matter is incapable of either pleasure or pain ; it cannot be the subject of either good or evil. But all the parts of this terraqueous globe, and the air which surrounds it, are filled with various species of animals, all of them, collectively taken, deriving pleasure from their existence. Now pleasurable sensations are a positive good derived from God having animated a certain por- tion of matter ; the quantity of this good we know not how to estimate, but we