Thoughts on health and some of its conditions / [James Hinton].

  • Hinton, James, 1822-1875
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thoughts on health and some of its conditions / [James Hinton]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    It were hard to have answered, ere the work was done; but we know which was chosen, and can recog- nize in some degree the wisdom which the choice reveals. The force of chemical affinity was raised to this dignity, to be the minister of man ; it is made the agent in the realization of his purposes, the ful- filler of his will. For the power of the body arises simply from the chemical changes which take place within it ; its life consists in the presence of the con- ditions which those chemical changes demand ; and its health is in the perfectness with which those con- ditions are maintained, and those changes carried on and regulated. At once, then, we have the key to the laws of health. They are all summed up in this :—to provide for the due maintenance, and the unhindered perform- ance, of the chemical changes on which the activity of the body depends. To do that is to insure, so far as it is in our power, the perfection of our instrument; to fail in it is to incur inevitable loss. Life has no exemptions, is treated with no favour. We can no more live with the conditions of chemical change within our bodies wanting or deranged, than we can fire a cannon with damp gunpowder, or with none. I have said we can discern reasons why chemical