WHAT A PIECE Ob* WORK IS MAN ! 515 



memory the above fact, and not charge a man with plagiarism, 

 because we have seen his ideas in print before perhaps as old as a 

 thousand years or only as yesterday. It is pleasant, nevertheless, 

 to meet with novelty : one gets tired of looking at the same things, 

 in different dresses, and it is quite refreshing to find a book *' spick 

 and span " new ; and this the more especially when the book treats 

 of a subject which has hitherto, in great measure, baffled enquirers, 

 and has remained clothed in the dark mantle of doubt and mystery. 

 Such is the nature of disease : physiologists and pathologists have 

 pored their eyes and their brains out to no purpose ; it was all guess- 

 work with them, and hence their opinions have been and are " wide 

 as the poles asunder." Not only so, but all their explanations were 

 confused and complex, a mighty pother about high-sounding names 

 and learned phrases; so that even when their premises seemed simple 

 and clear, it has been quite impossible to draw any rational con- 

 clusions from them. Hence arises the circumstance, that the healing 

 art has remained a mystery to the multitude. People, even in the 

 present enlightened period, are as much in the dark about their own 

 bodies as they are of the " man in the moon." One bad effect of 

 this is the prevalence of quackery ; indeed, we have heard it said 

 that the practice of physic is nothing but quackery : this, by the bye, 

 we disbelieve, and there is abundance of open and avowed quackery 

 without implicatiug the " regular Doctors." And why does 

 quackery abound ? simply because ignorance is synonymous with 

 credulity and superstition. Men and women labouring under pain 

 are glad to find succour, come from what quarter it may ; and thus 

 imagination and ignorance form a capital soil for the luxuriant 

 growth of the henbane of empiricism. A work therefore on this 

 subject, so simple and understandable that all men may comprehend 

 it, is at once an acquisition and a curiosity. Such is the little work 

 before us. Mr. Green has laid open the cause of diseases in such a 

 straightforward manner, that he who runs may read ; and, in future, 

 men in place of going to their doctor will content themselves with 

 saying "my insects are troublesome" or "my mushrooms are 

 springing," and swallow a dose of mercury, and lo ! the cure is 

 complete. 



" I am not going," says the Author, " to undertake to point out all the 

 causes of injury, or all the sources of disease, but I wish to direct the 

 attention of physiologists particularly to one cause, which I think may be 

 the source of many, or perhaps I might say of most, of the diseases to 

 which we are subject. The explanation, which it affords of the nature of 

 disease, is at least intelligible. Whether it will be deemed satisfactory I 

 leave to others to decide. It is something in favour of an explanation, that it 

 is intelligible. A theory that is intelligible, has at least a chance of being correct." 



We accord our full consent to the above remarks in Italics; they 

 are sound and simple, and worthy the attention of all theorists. He 

 proceeds: 



" The cause to which I allude, is not any deficiency in the principle of 

 vitality, but, on the contrary, the constant and unerring activity of this 

 principle ; it is the profusion in which life abounds, wherever the 

 requisite conditions are present. Of these conditions one of the most 



