666 THE DISEASES AND DISORDERS OF THE OX. 



of human beings, it is indeed one of the most intense interest 

 and greatest import. Very safely may we say that there are 

 many persons ostensibly enjoying good, or at least fair, health, 

 who would do very wisely to turn their attention to these too 

 often neglected and ill-used portions of their bodily frames. We 

 should always bear in mind that the kidneys are organs by whose 

 activity some of those useless and noxious, or rather poisonous, 

 products resulting from the wear and tear of the numerous vital 

 processes involved in bodily and mental work are separated from 

 the blood, and rendered capable of being readily eliminated from 

 the system through the channels afforded by the ureters, the 

 urinary bladder, and the urethra. In short, the kidneys are 

 endowed with a most important function in the animal 

 economy. 



The conditions of this nineteenth-century civilisation, leading, 

 as they do, more and more markedly, to the concentration of 

 immense aggregations of people in the towns and cities of 

 the world, to a large extent — inevitably, as it seems — also 

 bring about an abstention Irom the active side of life on the 

 part of those persons whose sphere is the counting-house or the 

 printer's work-room, the banker's, the merchant's, or the lawyer's 

 office, the pulpit, the school-room, the doctor's consulting-room, 

 the statesman's sanctum, and, perhaps still more than any of 

 these, the writer's or the editor's arm-chair. It is manifest that, 

 as a nation advances, the social division of labour becomes more 

 and more minute, and it is sufficiently clear that it must be much 

 more extreme in the future even than it is now. The tendency 

 of the tide of progress is towards the channels of specialism. 

 Great danger is to be feared on this account, and one of the 

 gravest risks of all is that many of those who live by brain work 

 and sedentary work of any kind will become more and more 

 rigidly compelled to ignore the great law of nature that man 

 should live literally hy the sweat of his brow, and not by that of 

 his brain. 



Certainly, those who live by tilling the soil or by other forms 

 of physical toil, provided that they are fairly strong, pursue a 

 more healthy mode of life. In them the kidneys, the liver, and 

 the other organs of the body have more stimulus to perform their 

 due and proper functions suitably. So far, then, from being 

 worse off than many of their so-called betters, the hornv-lianded 



