Elements of physiology / By A. Richerand ; translated from the French by G.J.M. De Lys ; notes and copious appendix by James Copland.

  • Anthelme Richerand
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elements of physiology / By A. Richerand ; translated from the French by G.J.M. De Lys ; notes and copious appendix by James Copland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    AUTHOR’S ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIFTH EDITION. In preparing for the press this Fifth Edition of his Work, the Author has carefully revised and corrected it, in all its parts, so as to render it more worthy of the success it has already obtained. The additions which have been made will be found not to consist of idle discourses or frivolous hypo- theses. The ground-work and the order are the same, the Author has merely added to the mass of facts, —supported, by additional proofs, the opinions which he had advanced,—and developed those parts of his’subject, which, from being ex- plained in too concise a manner, might be involved in some degree of obscurity. Among the variety of opinions which criticism, oftener unjust than enlightened, has pronounced, in judging this Work, there is one which requires to be refuted, because it proceeds from an erroneous idea of what an elementary work should be. The Author, it has been said, ought to have contented himself with giving a view of the present state of the science, without any additions of his own; and he should have abstained from inserting new opinions, which, until they had received the sanction of the learned world, ought not to have been in- troduced into an elementary work. This objection may be answered by considering that modern physiology being, in some measure, a new and regenerated science, there will be found, in treating of it to its full extent, many deficiencies to be filled up, and many doctrines evidently erroneous for which truths are to be substituted, which it is of importance to discover. Lavoisier, in his Elements of Chemistry, set forth, in a methodical order, truths which he himself had discovered : he introduced original ideas, not such as owe an appearance of originality to minute explanation of what is already known, or » to a general want of erudition, too prevalent in the present day.