Changes produced in the nervous system by civilization, considered according to the evidence of physiology and the philosophy of history / by Robert Verity.

  • Verity, Robert.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Changes produced in the nervous system by civilization, considered according to the evidence of physiology and the philosophy of history / by Robert Verity. 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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    between these various activities of the human economy, and their organic physiological conditions; that in proportion as the former become enhanced, so do the latter become developed, and reciprocally; that according as one species of activity more than another predominates in the life of the human individual, so also does the corresponding organic element, subserving this, become in its turn am- plified and more appreciable; that individuals, in fact, undergo modification in the constituent tissues of their bodies, according to the particular kind of activity which governs and habitually prevails. In some it will be the animal and organic, from high proportional endowment of the muscular system, visceral organs, and ganglionic nerves; in others, it will be that of a higher kind, and more characteristically human, from the volume and quality of the great nervous centres, the former being fit types of the semi-civilization of more re- mote times; the latter, types of our own. And from the superior nerv^ous activities eminently characterising our present times, it necessarily follows, that we may expect to find, in all individu- als who are fair representatives of the higher type, a predominance of the corresponding organic con-