Lectures on nursing / by William Robert Smith.

  • William Edward Smith
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on nursing / by William Robert Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    always fit for use. We can bear with thirst for a little time, and the earth here and there furnishes her springs and other stores of water. But far otherwise is it in the obtaining of food. It is the lot of all animals to secure nourishment by labour; and even of men the larger proportion in civilised and savage countries submit to a hard destiny. To obtain their daily bread is the great object of life. hat is the physiological explanation of this neces- sity for a supply of air, of water, of food ? Why is it that the system will bear so little delay ? The answer which physiology gives to these ques- tions is one of ominous import. The condition of life is death. No part of a living mechanism can act without wearing away; and, lor the continuance of its functions, there is therefore an absolute necessity for repair. It has been greatly to the detriment of physiology, and the practice of medicine, that this conception has not been thoroughly realized until late times. The aspect of identity which an animal pre- sents is an illusion, hiding from us the true state of the case. It has been the fruitful source of errors which have retarded the progress of these sciences. What could their career possibly be when men had persuaded themselves that a living being possesses a capacity for resisting any change, and that organic structures never yield to external physical influences until after death. But life, far from being a condition of immobility,
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