A treatise on indigestion and its consequenses, called nervous and bilious complaints : with observations on the organic diseases in which they sometimes terminate / by A.P.W. Philip.

  • Philip, Alexander Philip Wilson, 1770-1847.
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on indigestion and its consequenses, called nervous and bilious complaints : with observations on the organic diseases in which they sometimes terminate / by A.P.W. Philip. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    complicated the operation of those causes must be ; and in- deed, from reflecting on the nature of the animal body, the variety of parts of which it consists, the variety of functions necessary to produce each result, and the variety of causes which may influence each organ in this complicated structure, we are prepared for such a conclusion. When the motions of a clock are suspended, we find a wheel clogged, and readily perceive how this cause of derangement has destroyed the action of the machine ; because its action de- pends wholly on one principle, and consequently all causes impeding its motion must affect this principle. But did the nature of the clock include many principles of action, and were the cause of disorder such as mio-ht influence several or all of O them, we should seldom find its effect confined to the derange- ment of one part; yet, even then the effects of the offending cause w^ould be simple compared to those of a cause of disease ; for, to bring the machine into a state analogous to that of the animal body, and render the effect of its offending causes equally complicated, its different principles of action must not only have, some of them a direct, and all an indirect, depend- ence on each other ; but, beside this dependence for their actual existence, each must in a greater or less degree be capa- ble of influencing every other, in such a way, that the secondary affection shall re-act on the part first impressed by the offending cause. In a machine so constituted, until we can trace the manner in which the different principles of action depend upon and affect each other, what possibility is there of ascertaining the change which any cause of derangement has occasioned in it, and there can surely be no expectation of finding it in the dis- order of any one part. How vain then was the humoral pa- thology, and how vain that of the simple, or even exclusively of the living solid ; although the last, which we owe chiefly to the labours of Hoffman and Cullen, must be regarded as an impor- tant step towards a true view of the nature of disease. All the parts of a living body are concerned in its diseases, and it is only as we advance in a knowdedge of Physiology, that is, of the nature of the animal functions and their relations to each other, that the deviations from a state of health can be understood.