On the unity of disease : being the annual oration delivered before the Medical Society of London, in commemoration of its ninety-third anniversary, March 8, 1866 / by Weeden Cooke.

  • Cooke, Weeden.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the unity of disease : being the annual oration delivered before the Medical Society of London, in commemoration of its ninety-third anniversary, March 8, 1866 / by Weeden Cooke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of all animate and many inanimate bodies. Without water the human frame itself would be devoid of form and return to its original dust. The vege¬ table world would be a small heap of grey ashes, whilst the vast crystalline masses which make up the greater part of the crust of this earth would be but a collection of incoherent particles, wafted aloft by every fleeting breeze, rendering this planet perfectly uninhabitable. Rivers have well been called the arteries of the world, for it is water and its circulation that keeps all creation alive and fitted for the duties imposed upon it. Time will not permit me to dwell upon the uses to which medicine has applied this all-pervading element. Water drinking, with or without extraneous mine¬ ral substances, has its advocates and its devotees. Water ablutions, wet-sheets, sea-bathing, the hot bath, the shower-bath, the douche, all testify to those restorative powers of water, w'hich medical men are accustomed to call to their aid in various disorders of the system. Above all, the morning tub,^’ which is now happily so universal, is an in¬ stitution due to the writings and personal advocacy of members of our profession. And these vast elements, Earth, Air, and Water, so intertwined and dependent on each other, are more closely bound together by that wondrous nervous system. Electricity. In nothing has the intellect of man showm itself so transcendent as in the remarkable contrivances for bending this enor¬ mous power to the service of mankind. The very wildest poetic vision of the bard of Avon is
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