ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION IN PHYSIOLOGY. 95 



haps an unavowed and half unconscious, undercurrent 

 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 occurrences, and 

 the statement of which we call a law of nature. 



Hence, I think, arises the want of heartiness of be- 

 lief in the value of knowledge respecting the laws of 

 health and disease, and of the foresight and care to 

 which knowledge is the essential preliminary, which is 

 so often noticeable; and a corresponding laxity and 

 carelessness in practice, the results of which are too fre- 

 quently 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 interference 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 with logical rigour. But many of us are old enough 

 to recollect that the administration of chloroform in as- 

 suagement of the pangs of childbirth was, at its intro- 

 duction, strenuously resisted upon similar grounds. 



I am not sure that the feeling, of which the doctrine 

 to which I have referred is the full expression, does not 

 lie at the bottom of the minds of a great many people 



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