29G TXSTRUCTION IX PHYSIOLOGY xi 



carry it out with logical rigour. But many of us 

 are old enough to recollect that the administration 

 of chloroform in assaugement of the pangs of 

 childbirth was, at its introduction, strenuously re- 

 sisted upon similar grounds. 



I am not sure that the feeling, of which the 

 doctrine to which I have referred is the full ex- 

 pression, docs not lie at the bottom of the minds 

 of a great many people who yet would vigorously 

 object to give a verbal assent to the doctrine itself. 

 However this may be, the main point is that suifi- 

 cient knowledge has now been acquired of vital 

 phenomena, to justify the assertion, that the no- 

 tion, that there is anything exceptional about 

 these phenomena, receives not a particle of sup- 

 port from any known fact. On the contrary, 

 there is a vast and an increasing mass of evidence 

 that birth and death, health and disease, are as 

 much parts of the ordinary stream of events as tbe 

 rising and setting of the sun, or the changes of 

 tlie moon: and that the living body is a mechan- 

 ism, the proper working of which we term health; 

 its disturbance, disease; its stoppage, death. The 

 activity of this mechanism is dopoiiflcnt upon 

 many and complicated conditions, some of which 

 are hopelessly beyond our control, while others 

 are readily accessible, and are capable of being 

 indefinitelv modified bv our own actions. The 

 business of the hygienist and of the physician is 

 to know the range of these modifiable conditions, 



