Essays in medical science. I. On the nature of inflammation. II. On the encephalic circulation, and its relation to the physiology of the brain / by James Cappie.

  • Cappie, James, -1898 or 1899.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays in medical science. I. On the nature of inflammation. II. On the encephalic circulation, and its relation to the physiology of the brain / by James Cappie. 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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    tion. The more extended and precise our knowledge is in these respects, the better qualified will we be to judge of the nature of deviations from the healthy standard; but, if our knowledge be limited and obscure, and on many points, iinfortunately, it is both, then, to a corresponding extent, our theories of morbid action must continue imperfect. To describe nutrition, it is not sufficient to unravel the tissue,—we must describe its elements in action. So nume- rous are these, and so little do we know of many of them, so fleeting are their conditions of activity, and so intermixed are their effects, that it becomes most difficult to limit pre- cisely the influence of any one element in the production of any particular result. The physiologist here finds himself in a difficulty somewhat similar to that so complained of by the historian. It is not in acted as in written history. Actual events are nowise so simply related to each other as parent and offspring are : every single event is the offspring not of one, but of all other events, prior or contemporaneous, and will in its turn combine with all others to give birth to new—it is an ever-living, ever-working chaos of Being, wherein shape after shape bodies itself forth from innumer- able elements. And this chaos, boundless as the duration and habitation of man, unfathomable as the soul and destiny of man, is what the historian will depict and scientifically gauge, we may say, by threading it with lines of a few ells in length ! For, as all action is by its nature to be figured as extended in breadth and in depth as well as in length, that is to say, is based in Passion and ]\Iystery, if we