The Sun.
London, England, 1840-11-21 00:00:00

EVENING EDITION

LITERATURE.

HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY.
By Jon A, ELLlorso.v, M.D. Cantab, F. R S.
Longman, London, 1840.

.•
In the generality of instances we hold with the
old Greek adage that " a great hook is a great
evil ;" but there arc exceptions to this rule, and
the volume before us is one of them ; for though
i;; a most bulky and corpulent octavo—a very
Daniel Lambert among books, containing upwards
of eleven hundred closely printed pages, yet it is
so full of valuable information on the important
subject of Human Physiology ; exhibits such
extraordinary research on matters of the ab-
strusest kind ; is so ably reasoned ; and, above
all, is so terse and perspicuous in its style,
that, despite its cumbrous dimensions, even old
Sam Johnson—who detested, what he called, a
" big book"—would have acknowledged its claims
on his attention, and hailed it as a great addi-
tion to the stock of useful literature. One of
its principal recommendations with the general
reader is the utter absence of any ostentatious
display of learning ; the volume is less bur-
dened with medical and scientific technicalities
than any work of the sort we are acquainted with ;
indeed, Dr.Elliotson, the author, is studiously simple
and lucid in his language, as though anxious to
make himself intelligible to the most ordinary ca-
pacities. Another laudable feature we find in his
volume, is the s)stematic and harmonious arrange-
ment of his very eliversified matter; he proceeds step
by step with his subject, reasoning consecutively
with the precision and method of a thoroughly-dis-
ciplined mathematician. It will not do to select a few
chapters at random from his work ; so read, it will
be apt to perplex one's attention ; in order to get
a clear insight into its content-s, and the skill with
which they arc disposed, the reader must begin with
the beginning, and work way diligently to the
end. In the first chapter of his volume, the Doc-
tor indulges in some general observations on the
Corporeal Characteristic of Alan," which may
be considered as the frame-work, or scaffolding of
his subject ; and then proceeds to canvass the na-
ture and functions of 4. Mind," observing,
" In contending that the mind is a power of the living
brain, siad the e‘.:ere...iee cf it the functions of thee organ,
I eintend for merely a plr-sical bet ; and no Caristidn
"„ho ha, just conceptions of tile Author of Nature -Al
Lec,itato to look boldly at Nature as she is, lest ha
should discover facts opposite to the pronunciations of
his revelation ; for the word and the works of the Al-
mighty cannot contradict each edict-. Bacon aceerd-
ingly, in a very memorable part of his writings, directs
the physical inquirer to be uninfluenced by religious
Opinions, as the more independently truth is pursued
the sooner will it be gained, and the sooner will the real
meaning of a divine statement of natural things, and
the conformity of this to physical fact, be established.
Ilia assertion, however, that the mind is a power of the
living brain, is not an assertion that is material ; for a
power or property of matter cannot be matter. Neither
is it an assertion that this power cannot be a something
immortal, subtle, immaterial, diffused through and con-
nected with the brain. A physical inquirer has to do
with only what he observes. Ile finds this power, but
attempts not to explain it. He simply says the living
brain has this power, medullary matter though it be.
Seeing that the brain thinks, and feels, and wills, as
clearly as that the liver has the power of producing bile,
and does produce it, and a salt the power of assuming
certain form, and does crystallise, he leaves others at
liberty to fancy an hypothesis of its power being a sub-
!le, immaterial, immortalsubstance, exactly as they fancy
life to he a subtle fluid, or, perhaps, though very extra-
ordinarily, the same subtle fluid (if subtlety is immate-
riality and immortality), elucidating the subject no
Wore than in the case of life, and equally increasing the
buinher of its difficulties; as though we were not cre-
ated beings, or not altogether ignorant what matter is,
or of what it is capable and incapable ; as though mat-
ter exhibited nothing but extension, impenetrability, at-
traction, and inertness ; and as though an Almighty
could not, it it seemed good to him, have en-
dowed it, as he most evidently has, with the superad-
dition of life, and even of feeling and will.
"1 Nor does this assertion imply that the resurrection
from the dead is impossible, or even improbable. Tho
brain, and
inquirer, finding the mind a power of the
and abstaining from hypothesis, must conclude
ttlat, in the present order of things, when the brain
ceases to live the power necessarily ceases—that, in the
language of Scripture, "Dust we are, and unto dust
we all return—that our being is utterly extinguished.
and we go back to the insensibility of the earth whence
we were taken." Our consciousness of personality can
afford no reason for imagining ourselves immortal and
distinct from earth, more than brutes ; for this the fly
possesses equally with the philosopher about whose head
It buzzes. The moral government of the world, the
N nlinie reach of our acuteness the great improve-
" --- this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality ;
---- this secret dread and inward horror
Of falling into nought,"
have been thought to completely harmonise with a life
hereafter, but certainly fall so short of proof as to have
left the wisest of antiquity, Solomon, Socrates, Cicero,
&c --in uncertainty,4s when they saw how death reduces
to our pristine elements. The hope of immortality
31'ired by such reflections, assisted by the desire of
elPlair,ing every thing in some way or other, first, I
4 13rebend, made men attempt to find, in the imagined
ethereal essence of the soul, a reason for our not totally
Perishing as our senses would lead us to suppose. But,
heeause we refuse to listen to a mere hypothesis re-
lPeetiog spirit, we are not neccessarily to deny the re-
trreetion. For if a divine revelation pronounce that
re shall be another order qf things in which the mind
she
4" exist again, we ought firmly to believe it, because
1„111ther our experience nor our reason can inform us
at will be hereafter, and we must be senseless to
art objections on a point beyond the penetration of
Ur faculties."
•In the chapter entitled " Hunger," Dr. Elliot-
°ll, in reply to the general opinion that attributes
Ris sensation " to a sympathy of the stomach
• 411 a general feeling of want in the system," re-
arks, that if hunger arose from fatigue of the
tht"aell, it should be greatest immediately after
e laborious .act of digestion, and gradually de-
ass ; but on the contrary, it increases. Were
itation the cause, hunger should be greatest when
tare stomach is filled with food. On the whole,
therefore, lie considers that hunger " may be re-
arded as a sensation connected with the contracted
state of the stomach." On this branch of his
„tlike.t:ts lie relates the following curious anecdotes :
fo_ "lippoerates says that most of those who abstain from
,_''ofor seven days die within that period ; and if they
171,rt n
_t, and are even prevailed upon to eat and drink,
I they perish. Sir William Hamilton, however, saw
!trl, sixteen years of age, apparently not in bad health,
was extricated from the ruins of a house at Op-
ti!ood ;
us I n which she had remained eleven days without
t.an infant in her arms, but a few months old,
abllied died on the fourth
lilt
nay day, as the young are never so
e to endure ahstinesntcoenshi
abstinence, moderate supplyi of
Water lengthens
gentlem, ni" Dr. w lan was
called to a young
abstained from everythingb'unt who had voluntarily
fla-
voured with orange juice, for sixty days little water, Just
; death ensued
a fortnight. afterwards. Redicruelly
found that of a
umber of starved fowls deprived of water, none lived
beyond the ninth day, whereas one indulged with water
!Ives upwards of twenty. If the water is not swallowed,
but imbibed by the surface or lungs, it may also prolong
1
Ife• Foderee mentions some workmen who were extri-
114ted alive at the end of fourteen days from a cold
onp cavern in which they had been buried under a
tr,uto• In abstinence equally great imbecility of mind
o,l'. e
,S place as of body ; extreme emaciation and cedema
' the legs present a frightful spectacle."
,4,1,1111. excellent chapter on " Digestion" follows,
ii, creed the author describes the nature and peen-
416es of the
~1 gastric juice ; sonic of his remarks
tt►ls head are curious ; but we should be doing
ell'
Qontr Justice were we to curtail then] ; and our
git aued limits preclude the possibility of our
Mthem at length. In the chapter on the
ot'
f),,rt too of the Blood," we find sonic interesting
41141:c.usla.rs respecting the circulation of this fluid,
;tt, discoverer, Harvey :
Without `~'Quid not be right to terminate this section.
°I the h a note upon the discovery of the circulation
to h blood—a truth of which the ancients are thought
qv_
etn,„ remained ignorant, from finding the arteries
co PI after death. The discovery was made by our
mews yti,l ot. Dr. Harvey, Physician to St. Bartholo-
Ite "sPltol and promulgated by him at the
eaur,e4 forty-one, in an anatomical and surgical
so of lectures at the College of Physicians
4„,,,.,1619. Ile is entitled to the glory of
sayrigiiinrtle it, says Hume, by
.reasoning alone, without
Ras texture, of accident. He informed Boyle that he
to it by reflecting on the arrangement of the
.f the heart and veins, as exhibited by his
in 'I Pabricius. Nothing, he knew, was
planned
but , std they clearly allowed a fluid to pass
li 0 " way. By this argument, and the fact of
.4eeutnga,t,,ure upon an artery causing the blood to
veirCgtte in it on the side nearest the heart, and upon
toYond the ligature ; and that on animals bled
blasted LI wounds in arteries or veins, he chit fly esta-
.4l"str 104 doctrine. After his time it was de-
tri4l, 4ted with the microscope in cold-blooded ani-
tila 'a His immediate reward was general ridi-
tes • 11(1 abuse, and a great diminution of his prac-
Iter and no plivsician in Europe, who at the time
tot,,,te:dellitezl forty. years of age, ever, to the end of life,
'11,4 is doctrine of the circulation of the blood.
e truth could be denied no longer he was
-441111(

iiir
5'6
og
tar

of
Pa'

au'
ion
rillY
jig-

the
Ito
leY