The effects of arts, trades, and professions, and of civic states and habits of living, on health and longevity : with suggestions for the removal of many of the agents which produce disease, and shorten the duration of life / by C. Turner Thackrah.

  • Thackrah, Charles Turner, 1795-1833.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The effects of arts, trades, and professions, and of civic states and habits of living, on health and longevity : with suggestions for the removal of many of the agents which produce disease, and shorten the duration of life / by C. Turner Thackrah. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. From the rapid sale of the first impression, and the interest which the subject has excited, I have been induced greatly to enlarge my observations and inquiries. The present edition contains, besides much additional matter to the sections, about 120 employments, which were not examined before. Many others were found so closely allied to the subjects of former statement, as to require no separate notice. Still much, very much remains to be done: and I would earnestly solicit the profession to aid, extend, and correct, these important investigations. If any object, that the cure, not the causes or prevention of disease, is the business of the medical practitioner, I would reply that the scientific treatment of a malady requires a knowledge of its nature, and the nature is but imperfectly understood without a knowledge of the cause. Here the modem systems of physic are singularly deficient. From Burserius to Good, we find volumes on the symptoms, character, and treatment of diseases, but rarely a line on the causes as produced by employments and habits, and this line as frequently erroneous as correct. Strange this omission or ignorance in centuries of advancing knowledge! A study of medicine, moreover, which disregards the prevention of diseases, limits its utility and its honours. It would strip the profession of its noblest attribute, that of benevolence ; and exhibit our practice as influenced more by personal and pecuniary motives, than by an anxiety to relieve human suffering, and promote human happiness. C. T. T. Leeds, June 25, 1832.