Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Observations on the diseases of seamen / by Gilbert Blane. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
19/698
![energies of natural agents as they reciprocally afFed each other, and it is the bufinefs of obfervation and experience to afcertain and feled: the fads conftituting this knowledge*. In thofe enquiries which have inanimate matter for their fubjedi:, a fmgle fadt may be a fufficient ground for an obfervation, but in thofe which relate to the living body, there are feveral circumftances which give occafion to ambiguii-y, and render the difcovery of pradlical truths more difficult. The firft I fhall mention is, that there are refoarces in nature wherebv difeafes are fub- dued without any interpolition of art, as is evident with regard to wounds, and even acute difeafes, not only in animals but in the human fpecies, and that therefore the operations of nature and of art come to be fo blended, that it is difficult to diftinguiffi them fo as to afcer- tain what is due to each. It is well obferved by fome medical v/riter, that the animal frame differs from all other machines in this, that when out of order it can rectify itfelf. This holds with regard to prevention as well as cure -; for infedtion, not excepting that of * See this farther elucidated at page 39 of a Le(5]:ure on Mufcular Motion, read before the Royal Society of London the 13th and 20th of Nov. 1788, by Gilbert Blane, M. D. the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2104255x_0019.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
