PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 



IN the following pages I have endeavored to give an account of 

 the structure and activities of the Human Body, which, while in- 

 telligible, to the general reader, shall be accurate, and sufficiently 

 minute in details to meet the requirements of students who are not 

 making Human Anatomy and Physiology subjects of special ad- 

 vanced study. Wherever it seemed to me really profitable, hy- 

 gienic topics have also been discussed, though at first glance they 

 may seem less fully treated of than in many School or College 

 Text-books of Physiology. Whoever will take the trouble, how- 

 ever, to examine critically what passes for Hygiene in the majority 

 of such cases will, I think, find that, when correct, much of it is 

 platitude or truism: since there is so much that is of importance 

 and interest to be said it seems hardly worth while to occupy space 

 with insisting on the commonplace or obvious. 



It is hard to write a book, not designed for specialists, without 

 running the risk of being accused of dogmatism, and some readers 

 will, no doubt, be inclined to think that, in several instances, I have 

 treated as established facts matters which are still open to discus- 

 sion. General readers and students are, however, only bewildered 

 by the production of an array of observations and arguments on 

 each side of every question, and, in the majority of cases, the chief 

 responsibility under which the author of a text-book lies is to select 

 what seem to him the best supported views, and then to state them 

 simply and concisely : how wise the choice of a side has been in each 

 case can only be determined by the discoveries of the future. 



Others will, I am inclined to think, raise the contrary objection 

 that too many disputed matters have been discussed : this was de- 

 liberately done as the result of an experience in teaching Physi- 

 ology which now extends over more than ten years. It would have 

 been comparatively easy to slip over things still uncertain and 

 subjects as yet uninvestigated, and to represent our knowledge of 

 the workings of the animal body as neatly rounded off at all its 

 contours and complete in all its details totus, teres, et rotundus. 



