I860.] Pamphlet. 559 



PAMPHLET. 



Beneficence in Disease.* 



Discarding the view, long held by all classes of thinkers, that dis- 

 eases are to be "looked upon in the light of scourges," the author of 

 this pamphlet assumes that they form part of the scheme of Nature for 

 maintaining or restoring the healthy condition of the human race, 

 and he sets out with the inquiry : " What purpose does disease answer 

 in the great scheme of Nature ? " 



He shows that disease is always preceded by some local or general 

 injury, and that it is the visible effort of Nature to save the subject of 

 the injury from more serious consequences, in fact, as we understand it, 

 from some permanent derangement of a portion of the body or from 

 death. Seeking his illustrations in aural surgery, that branch of the 

 healing art with which he is the best acquainted, Mr. Toynbee tells 

 us that the disease known as Otorrhoea often arises from some 

 violence done to the ear, such as a blow or a prick ; or from gout, 

 scrofula, or a general disorder which attacks the ear when that organ 

 is rendered unusually susceptible of attack by some trivial injury, 

 such as a " box on the ear." His meaning will be more fully ex- 

 plained hereafter. 



And need there be any doubt as to the correctness of his views, 

 when they are tested by the more extended experience of the human 

 physiologist, or by that of the moralist ? In another place f it has 

 been shown that those diseases which have always been considered 

 par excellence the scourges sent to punish man — plague, fever, &c. — 

 are the results of injuries inflicted upon society through the neglect 

 of the simplest and best known sanitary laws ; and just as gout, or 

 scrofula, is shown by the author to find its expression in Otorrhoea, and 

 when the general injury (gout) is removed, the special disease (Otor- 

 rhoea) disappears or is easily cured, so in the larger case where filth, 

 overcrowding, and drunkenness, the general injuries inflicted on 

 society, find their issues in plague and fever, these disappear or are 

 easily combated when houses are ventilated, and the inhabitants be- 

 come sober, moral, and cleanly, and live in conformity with sanitary 

 laws. 



But the author need not even have limited the application of his 

 principle to the physical condition of man ; for, this being intimately 

 allied to his moral state, the application of the law he enunciates 

 necessarily extends to that also. 



If we were to follow the career of a youth who gives himself up to 

 dissipation, we should find that not only is each successive form of 

 disease the means by which Nature seeks to rid the body of some 

 " general injury," some poison that circulates through the system, but 



* ' Beneficence in Disease : being an Introductory Address, delivered at the 

 opening of St. Mary's Hospital Medical School, October 1, 1864.' By Joseph 

 Toynbee, F.R.S., &c. Churchill. 



t ' On the Predisposing Causes of Pestilence.' Second article in the present 

 Number. 



