The institutes of medicine / by Martyn Paine.

  • Martyn Paine
Date:
1859
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The institutes of medicine / by Martyn Paine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    of more precision, and more accomplishment to science, and without the pernicious hypotheses of the latter. And can the same affirma- tion be made of our knowledge of the properties of the vital princi- ples, and of their natural modifications in different parts, and those which are induced by morbific and remedial agents 1 On the contrary, we see this knowledge every where converted to the most important uses of organic beings, not only in a direct practical sense, but in un- folding the great laws by which they are governed. This knowledge, indeed, is the great foundation of physiology and of the healing art. Do you object to the relation which sympathetic sensibility bears to the nervous power (§ 201), and the relation of the nervous power to irritability (§ 226), in the phenomena of motion 1 Have you any better data for your conceptions of the relation of the magnetic pole to the needle; and to explain that relation, do you not admit a pecu- liar imponderable, invisible agent, which acts upon the properties of the needle ! Do you understand any better, or have you any bettei facts respecting, the relation of physical agents to the mind, in the phe- nomena of sensation 1 You obtain your ideas of matter through the operation of physical agents upon the intellectual part; and how will you explain the access of those physical means to the spiritual sub- stance unless you also admit the physiological property, sensibility? What intelligible connection is there between the properties of mind and the motions of the brain 1 What intelligible connection between the stimulus of the blood and the motions of the heart, or those mo- lions which attend the generation of bile and all other organic products, unless you admit a principle of life ] The forces of life are concerned about sensation in a peculiar manner, and there would be a violent interruption of the law of analogy were there not something interme- diate between mind and matter, a bond of union, as it were, through which impressions upon the senses should reaeh the spiritual existence. We may fancy it to be electricity, or the chemical forces; but, this no more aids our comprehension, through the known phenomena sup- plied by these causes, as to the communications from matter to the immaterial, thinking existence, than if we regard the nerves, per te, as the only medium. We therefore turn our reason to the special phenomena, and find a property in universal operation throughout the body, as the medium through which certain kinds of impressions from physical agents are transmitted to the mind. But, we find, also, an- other analogous series of phenomena which force us to the conclusion that these depend, also, upon a certain modification of the same prop- erty as that through which impressions are made upon the mind by external objects. We see, also, that these transmitted impressions give rise to another endless series of peculiar results, which have their point of departure in the nervous centres; and we see, too, that each one corresponds with, and confirms the others, in the several series respectively. We learn, besides, that those of the last series are anal- ogous to the direct effects of vital agents, healthy, morbific, and re- medial, upon the organs which are the immediate seat of their opera- tion. Hence, we conclude, inevitably, that there exists what is de- nominated the nervous power, with all the attributes which I have as- cribed to it, and that it is brought into operation through the same channel of sympathy as the mind when sensible objects' exert their effects. The mind, and the nervous power are, therefore, so far on a
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