Life, health, and disease / by Edward Johnson.

  • Johnson, Edward, 1785-1862.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Life, health, and disease / by Edward Johnson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    in possession. I believe, also, that such a work would tend more than any other to induce men to practise those rules of conduct which are best calculated to preserve and promote health ; because men are ever more ready to do this or that, when they can themselves clearly see and under- stand its necessity—and the manner how, and reason why, that necessity exists—than when they have no other authority than the dictum of another, however high their respect for his knowledge and judgment may be. Neither, as I think, should medical men take offence at the publica- tion of such a work ; as it would have a direct tendency to ennoble their profession—to render it purely scientific—and to divest it of that mystifi- cation by which it was formerly so much disgraced, and of which a portion still remains. If patients themselves had a clear general acquaintance with their own internal machinery—with the nature of the several offices intended to be fulfilled by the several parts of that machinery, and with the nature of disease in general; and if, with their mind's eye, they were enabled to look into themselves, and behold the complicated and delicate clock-work—every wheel in motion, every spring in operation—all acting in concert, and all tending to one purpose, yet requiring only the slightest imprudent interference to throw the whole into disorder and irreparable confusion—if, I say, they could see all this, they could not but feel and acknowledge that so beautiful, complicated, and wonderful a machine could only be regulated by the hand of a mechanician intimately acquainted with its minutest structure, and with the particular uses and manner of handling the several instruments necessary to rectify whatever derange- ment may have accidentally befallen it. It would also materially con- duce to destroy the predilection of the public mind for quacks and quack- ery : for who that knows anything at all of the animal economy, and of the nature of disease, can for one instant be gulled into a belief that any one remedy can be, at all times, good or proper, even for the same dis- ease, and for the same patient ? A bumper of brandy will cure the head- ache, providing that it be caused by a disordered stomach ; but a glass of brandy, administered for a headache arising from inflammation of the brain, would, in all human probability, destroy the patient. And how is the patient to know from which of these causes his headache arises ? Such a work I have, to the best of my ability, executed—and I have done so in a series of familiar Letters, because I thought that it would afford me the best opportunity of employing a plain and conversational style, which is the more necessary when writing for readers who have no acquaintance whatever with the subject treated. For the same reason, I have avoided all professional pedantries and learned technicalities, when- ever it could be done consistently with perspicuity ; and I have described just so much, and no more, of the structure of the body as I thought suf- ficient to give the general reader a clear idea of those parts only which are concerned in the preservation of health. Thus, in speaking of the heart, I have divided it into two cavities—a right and a left; although, in fact, each of those cavities is again divided into two others. But, as a