A text book of physiology / by M. Foster.

Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A text book of physiology / by M. Foster. 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.

    11/586 (page 7)
    PREFACE. In the following pages I have made no attempt to give a comprehensive account of all the statements, conflicting or accordant, which have been made, or of the opinions which have been held, concerning the phenomena exhi- bited by animal bodies. I have rather striven to explain, in as clear and straightforward a manner as I could, the main facts and fundamental principles of physiological science. The student before whom things both new and old are tumbled out of the physiological treasury, with- out adequate critical appreciation of their respective values, is simply bewildered instead of being taught; and, finding that the labours of the Physiological Laboratory at Hinauf seem to be chiefly directed to contradicting the results of the Laboratory at Hinab, very naturally con- cludes that he had better pay attention to neither. In physiology, as in other sciences, there is a zone of strife where truth and error mingle in conflict, and where the results of yesterday have power because they are new. But in physiology, no less than in the other sciences, this agonosphere is merely the envelope of a solid nucleus of acquired truth, which year by year grows larger at