The why and the wherefore, or The philosophy of life, health, and disease : new and original views explanatory of their nature, causes, and connexion ... with rules for the preservation of health and renovation of the system / by Charles Searle.

Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The why and the wherefore, or The philosophy of life, health, and disease : new and original views explanatory of their nature, causes, and connexion ... with rules for the preservation of health and renovation of the system / by Charles Searle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    cliarncter by the nature or structure and function of the part in which it is centralized, and combinations founded upon the derangements which successively ensue. Now, should this be true, (and the sequel, in the expla- nation afforded of the phenomena of all the principal diseases of the body, I am of opinion, most irrefragably proves it to be,) the treatment of every disease is of necessity brought within the confines of a few general principles, definite in kind, although doubtless modified in degree, by the con- stitution of the individual, his age, and the particular circumstances of the case; and in thus simplifying the subject, we take a step in advance of the present complicated system of medicine—a step assuredly of the utmost im- portance. If the treatment of all disease may be thus embraced in a few leading principles, our remedies are necessarily re- duced proportionably in number also. And as the princi- electricity is evolved by the chemical actions going on in the animal system— which the evidence adduced and Matteucci's experiments pretty gatisfactorily prove—and that electricity is equal to fulfil all the purposes of the nervous power—which numerous experiments establish also to be the case—and that living muscular fibre is the most sensitive of all electroscopes—and that there is an electric discharge in all muscles at the moment of their contraction, as Matteucci has shown,—I would ask whether it be at all probable that Nature, with her universal economy of means, would provide any second agency to fulfil the requirements of what this one alone is quite equal to accomplish ? which second power, moreover, exists only in imagination—there being not a shadow of evidence to prove its existence. And as the vital force of Liebig, (using his own words) unites in its manifestations all the peculiarities of chemical forces, and of the not less [mind this] wonderful cause which we regard as the ultimate origin of electrical phenomena, I may, with the facts adduced, venture to call it by its proper name, and at once affirm it to be what it really is—Electricity. In explanation of the phenomena of Electricity in the animal system, and of its source and production being derived as above explained, I read a paper to the Westminster Medical Society, in IS.'iO; which paper was published in the p.-igcs of the Lancet of the 4th of June of that year.