Medical and physical memoirs / by Charles Caldwell.

  • Caldwell, Charles, 1772-1853.
Date:
1827
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical and physical memoirs / by Charles Caldwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    18 ■iLlimify, force, and grandeur of the epic productions of both Milton uiul Homer. ISTor is it to be regarded as the least valuable of the advantages f suffering, that, by weakening our attachment to this world, its amusements and delights, it prepares us the better for our final departure from it, and reconciles ua to the dcalk of our friends, as ihe termination of their sorrows and pains. View the subject, then, in whatever light vou may. thnt cup in which a portion of the bitterness of misery is mingled, is beslsuit- t l (otbe palate and the condition of man. The sweets of happi- iic.=.-'without alloy, would satiate and sicken. Nor would undiluted liitlerness be a suitable potion. Conforma- bly to that checkered .scene of diversities and opposites, which every where surrounds us, the dniught must lie m?.rec?, and Ihutwo ingredients so apportioned as to balance each other. 6uch, then, appcys to be the decree of Heaven in relation to man. Varied in his constitution, variet} is essential to all his en- joyments. Singieness nnd simplicity are incompatible with his nature. Subjected to their ceaseless inlluence, he woubl sicken of life, and voluntarily renounce it, as the most grievous of burthens. Letter to be tossed between the very extremes of opposites, than to lie supine and corrupting amid the calm of identity. But notwithstanding the interest, which, as topics of conteinpla- fiQu, may be attached to the several conflicts and balance.s, of which 1 have spoken, there remain to he treated of two others, with which, as physicians, we are more immediately concerned. They arc the balances between life and death, on a general scale, and, as relates more particularly to man, between the ladentia and juvan- lia, or things salutary and things injurious to him. As respects the tirstof these, it is requisite, before commencing our immediate illustration of it, that we determine, with accuracy, what we are to understand by the term death. The event or condition designated by that word, is referable only to matter, spirit being an imperishable sulistancc, of which death cannot be predicated. Nor is it predicablc of matter, in ihc abstract, but only of compound and organized forms of it; matter, in its simple condition, being as indestructible as spirit. Death, then, as, a general term, means nothing more than a radi- cal change in the modes of existence of compound bodies, the nexus or bond that held together their elementary parts having deserted them. In reference to man, it is the separation of his vital princi- ple and spirit from his body, and the subsequent resolution of the latter into its original elements, to be re employed in further com- pounds. But in this process of separation and resolution, it is to he distinctly understood, that there is no actual destruction of matter, any more than of spirit. In death, then, there is no a/im7i?7uh'o>i of substance, but merely a separation of its parts, and a passage of it from one form and node of existence to another. Were sjiirita campound substance.