Health and disease, as influenced by the daily, seasonal, and other cyclical changes in the human system.

  • Edward Smith
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health and disease, as influenced by the daily, seasonal, and other cyclical changes in the human system. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    t and disease, and it was such a state of things that the physicians of those days had to combat; but now there is more uniform health, because there is a more correct balance in the account of want and supply. If in any case the skin be deficient in action, the heart's action excited, and the system full of blood, as a tolerably constant state of things, it may readily be admitted that much depletion in one way or other will be both borne and required; but we maintain that that would be no evidence of true muscular power, or of great vital power, such as is requisite to resist the action of external influences. Under the existing regimen the muscular development may be certainly carried by cultivation to a degree never surpassed, and the body be thus better able to endure fatigue than could be the case under circumstances of excess. 866. It is, however, true, that a spare diet lessens muscular power, and that on this ground chiefly the inhabitants of the Continent are less powerful (644) and less enduring than Englishmen; but, in the former, there is deficiency of animal food to maintain the due assimilation of other food, and to supply abundant material for muscular repair. There is no reasonable fear that the change which has occurred in the habits of the people of this country will have this effect. It is, however, highly probable that, under the former habits there would be less tendency to take cold, or to submit to the influence of moderate changes of temperature, and also greater power to sustain unusual calls upon the system, as
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