Principles of organic life : showing that the gases are of equal importances with the solids and fluids in the laws which regulate the progress of matter from the lowest inorganic to the highest organic conditions / [Benjamin Ridge].
- Ridge, Benjamin
- Date:
- 1875
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Principles of organic life : showing that the gases are of equal importances with the solids and fluids in the laws which regulate the progress of matter from the lowest inorganic to the highest organic conditions / [Benjamin Ridge]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![8G germ or element which produces small-pox, may be equally fixed and diffused in the inorganic as in the organic elements ; and 1 ask the question ; Why should it not be as much in these, as it is in the arterial blood itself? In short, I consider it far more likely from the simple fact of the inorganic elements being at least 90 per cent, more in quantity than the organic. Secondly, when small-pox is seen in its most virulent form, when not a pin’s head can be put between any pustule all over the body, that the suj)ply to all these pustules comes to them in the same ratio of 90 per cent, from the inorganic elements. Thirdly, that it is totally impossible they could be supplied from the organic elements or the blood alone. And fourthly, that if they were, as is believed to be the case, the very fact of any individual recovering from such a drain on this vital organic current, is ample proof that it cannot be so. There is quite tax enough on the organic elements to bear their 10 per cent, of the strain, to make and repair the structiu-al matter de- stroyed at the bases of each ])ustule. Again, the very fact of the pustule respecting no part of the body, inside or out, proves the universality of the poison, as much as the fact, that the disease itself is Nature’s effort to get rid of it, from both elements respectively. AVhen, therefore, this diffused poison is thus thrown out; Nature has performed already her modus medendi. That which we consider disease. Nature calls a remedy ; for the disengagement of the poisons which to her were disease, are thus thrown out of the system, to her in- expressible relief. No medicine is required here. All that the system wants, is j)lenty of the raw material or fresh ingesta, such as meat and beer, to support the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2807256x_0148.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
