i6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



as much right to be termed general, as any which I possess myself, 

 the difference being one of degree." So long as Mr. Muller puts his 

 exclusive claim solely on the ground that animals have no language, 

 he must not expect to gain ovei* many adherents. "Animals cannot 

 talk, because they have no general ideas ; they evidently have no gen- 

 eral ideas, because they do not talk" surely, as pretty a circle as 

 ever was drawn with compasses; a mere duplication and bending 

 around into a curved and reentering form of the dogma that thought 

 is impossible without words ; that the intellect cannot apprehend re- 

 semblances and differences, cannot comj^are and infer, without the 

 bodily organs to make signs for it. If this is an exaltation of the 

 value of language, it is an equal degradation of the power of the 

 mind. Contemporary Review. 



-^- 



THE CO^^SERVATIYE DESIGN OF ORGANIC DISEASE. 



By Peof. a . F. A. KING, M. D. 



IF we should say that diseases prolong life, that without them man 

 would be more liable than he is to sudden death, the announce- 

 ment would be received by most medical thinkers, and by all those 

 who have never studied pathology at all, as a transcendental idea, 

 quite insusceptible of logical proof. But it is otherwise : that certain 

 processes of disease are really conservative, and contribute to the 

 longevity of the individual, is an absolute fact, as we shall now en- 

 deavor to demonstrate. 



Let it be noted that almost from time immemorial physicians have 

 recognized in the body a certain power of resisting injuries, and of re- 

 turning spontaneously to health, when disordered ; and this they have 

 called tlie power of Nature the vis medlcatrix naturce. The growth 

 of this idea culminated, during the sixteenth century, in the establish- 

 ment of the so-called " Stahlian system of medicine." And, while the 

 doctrines of Stahl were sustained and elaborated by many of the lead- 

 ing physicians of his day,' we now know they were erroneous, for he 

 maintained that there resided in the or2;anism a '' rational souV which, 

 he affirmed, not only formed the body, but excited and directed all of 

 its motions ; it was alleged to perceive intelligently the tendency of 

 all external impressions acting upon the body, and to excite such mo- 

 tions as would favor the beneficial and obviate the injurious influence 

 of such impressions. Hence, generally speaking, diseases were con- 

 sidered to be salutary efforts of the "presiding soul," and were to be 



' By Perrault in France, Gaubius in Holland, Porterfield and Simpson in Scotland, 

 Juncker in Germany, and by Nichols and Mead in England. 



