Man the unknown / by Alexis Carrel.

  • Carrel, Alexis, 1873-1944.
Date:
1948
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Man the unknown / by Alexis Carrel. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    responsible for organic diseases are considered dangerous, and not those which bring on corruption, criminality, and insanity. The public would refuse to be attended by physi- cians knowing nothing but a small part of the body. Special- ists would have to learn general medicine, or work as units of a group under the direction of a general practitioner. Pathologists would be induced to study the lesions of the humours as well as those of the organs, to take into account the influence of the mental upon the tissues, and vice versa. Economists would realize that human beings think, feel, and suffer, that they should be given other things than work, food, and leisure, that they have spiritual as well as physio- logical needs. And also that the causes of economic and financial crises may be moral and intellectual. We should no longer be obliged to accept the barbarous conditions of life in great cities, the tyranny of factory and office, the sacrifice of moral dignity to economic interest, of mind to money, as benefactions conferred upon us by modern civilization. We should reject mechanical inventions that hinder human development. Economics would no longer appear as the ultimate reason of everything. It is obvious that the libera- tion of man from the materialistic creed would transform most of the aspects of our existence. Therefore, modern society will oppose with all its might this progress in our conceptions. However, we must take care that the failure of material- ism does not bring about a spiritual reaction. Since tech- nology and worship of matter have not been a success, the temptation may be great to choose the opposite cult, the cult of mind. The primacy of psychology would be no less dan- gerous than that of physiology, physics, and chemistry. Freud has done more harm than the most extreme mechani- cists. It would be as disastrous to reduce man to his mental aspect as to his physiological and physico-chemical mechan- isms. The study of the physical properties of blood serum, of its ionic equilibria, of protoplasmic permeability, of the