346 HEALTH. 



wholeness, the pain of the proof* is contemporaneous with the jour- 

 neying of a star from the east, which stands at last as a heraldic 

 sky-point over a new born health. 



In the few remarks which we have to offer in this Chapter upon the 

 subject of health, we shall follow that division which is generally 

 admitted, and consider the individual from two points of view ; first- 

 ly, as containing within himself the grounds of a certain stock of 

 health or disease, which falls under the ordinary department of me- 

 dicine : and secondly, as being surrounded by circumstances favor- 

 able, or otherwise, to health; which constitutes the field of what is 

 termed public health, or as we might name it, social health. It is 

 however no part of our, design to contribute directly to either of the 

 branches of practice which are busied with these two walks ; but 

 rather to complete and conclude the physiological and psychological 

 subjects that have already occupied us in the foregoing Chapters. 

 A popular education on these themes, is very near our aim; and 

 general notions only can therefore enter into our pages : yet we feel 

 that if the eye can be opened to the compass of the subject, we shall 

 not fail in the long run to have brought to practice those first helps 

 which depend upon the insights and expectations of the learner. 

 There are abundance of good books, and zealous men, engaged upon 

 details and sciences : be it our endeavor to elicit some little of the 

 order and light in which they are working, and to present it to me- 

 mory under an organic form. In the first place, therefore, to pro- 

 ceed from the great to the small, we shall consider the subjects and 

 method of social health ; and in the next place, we shall speak, not 

 of individual diseases, but of the various systems of medical treat- 

 ment which are applied to disease, and follow its fashions and moulds. 

 I do not know that our design can be likened to anything more apt- 

 ly than to a map, in which the fewness of places, the smallness of 

 size, and the poorness of outline, are themselves valuable for giving 

 a first view to that public which does not travel. There will be 

 tracts of terra incoc/nita also, for which the excuse shall be, that 

 they are left blank, and not completed for deception. 



And first a few words on the difference between the private, and 

 the public or social health. 



The science of private health is of individual concern, and lies in 



