PKEFACE TO THE FIEST EDITION. 



IN the following pages I have endeavored to give an 

 account of the structure and activities of the Human Body, 

 which, while intelligible to the general reader, shall be accu- 

 rate, and sufficiently minute in details to meet the require- 

 ments of students who are not making Human Anatomy and 

 Physiology subjects of special advanced study. Wherever it 

 seemed to me really profitable, hygienic 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, however, 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 ic of impor- 

 tance 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 discussion. 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 responsi- 

 bility 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 t>e 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 dis- 



