XI INSTRUCTION IN PHYSIOLOGY 295 



Listening to ordinary talk about health, disease, 

 and death, one is often led to entertain a doubt 

 whether the speakers believe that the course of 

 natural causation runs as smoothly in the human 

 body as elsewhere. Indications are too often obvious 

 of a strong, though perhaps an una vowed and half 

 unconscious, under-current of opinion that the 

 phenomena of life are not only widely different, 

 in their superficial characters and in their practical 

 importance, from other natural events, but that 

 they do not follow in that definite order which 

 characterises the succession of all other occur- 

 rences, and the statement of which we call a law of 

 nature. 



Hence, I think, arises the want of heartiness of 

 belief in the value of knowledge respecting the 

 laws of health and disease, and of the foresight 

 and care to which knowledge is the essential pre- 

 liminary, which is so often noticeable ; and a cor- 

 responding laxity and carelessness in practice, the 

 results of which are too frequently lamentable. 



It is said that among the many religious sects 

 of Russia, there is one which holds that all disease 

 is brought about by the direct and special inter- 

 ference of the Deity, and which, therefore, looks 

 with repugnance upon both preventive and curative 

 measures as alike blasphemous interferences with 

 the will of God. Among ourselves, the " Peculiar 

 People " are, I believe, the only persons who hold 

 the like doctrine in its integrity, and carry it out 



