ATTRACTIONS OF PhYSIOLOGY—THE NECESSITY OF EXAMINING
BOTH HEALTH AND DISEASE A VERY IMPORTANT POINT JUST
NOW, AS TESTING THE VALIDITY OF CERTAIN VIEWS OF LIEBIG
AND OTHERS.
"No study can surely be so interesting as Physiology. Whilst other sciences carry us abroad in search of objects, in this we are engaged at home, and on concerns highly important to us, in inquiring into the means by which 'we live, and move, and have our being.' To those, however, engaged in the practice of Medicine, the study of Physiology is indispensable; for it is evident that the nature of the disordered actions of parts or organs can never be understood or judiciously counteracted, unless the nature of their healthy actions be previously known.
"The study of Physiology, however, not only requires that we should investigate the nature of the various vital processes carried on in our own bodies, but also that we should compare them with similar processes in all the varieties of living beings; not only that we should consider them in a state of natural and healthy action, but also under all the varying circumstances of disorder and disease. Few indeed have studied Physiology thus extensively, and none in an equal degree with Mr. Hunter. Whoever attentively peruses his writings, must, I think, perceive that he draws his crowds of facts from such different and remote sources, as to make it extremely difficult to assemble and arrange them[46]."
OF DISORDER AND DISEASE.
"Disorder, which is the effect of faulty actions of nerves, induces disease, which is the consequence of faulty actions of the vessels. There are some who find it difficult to understand how similar swellings or ulcers may form in various parts of the body in consequence of general nervous disorder, and are all curable by appeasing and removing such general disorder. The fact is indisputable. Such persons are not so much surprised that general nervous disorder should produce local effects in the nervous and muscular systems; yet they cannot so well understand how it should locally affect the vascular system. To me there appears nothing wonderful in such events; for the local affection is primarily nervous, and the vascular actions are consequent. Yet it must indeed be granted that there may be other circumstances leading to the peculiarities of local diseases, with which, at present, we are unacquainted. Disorder excites to disease, and when important organs become in a degree diseased, they will still perform their functions moderately well, if disorder be relieved, which ought to be the Alpha and Omega of medical attention[47]."
As we have seen, in the early part of our narrative, he was one of the first to insist on the importance of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, and, as we shall have to relate, most active in securing what has proved so greatly influential to its progress in this country (the appointment of Professor Owen). Yet he modestly ignores any positive pretensions which might be imputed to him from his endeavour to illustrate a Museum dealing so largely with Comparative Anatomy.