PREFACE. 



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 

 accurate, and sufficiently minute in details to meet the 

 requirements 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 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 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 be determined by the 

 discoveries of the future. 



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



