Читать книгу Owen's Moral Physiology; or, A Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population Question онлайн

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It may seem vanity in me to imagine, that this treatise is free from similar objections; yet I have taken great pains to render it so.

R. D. O.

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The reader, after having been taxed with the perusal of two prefaces before reaching the subject matter, may consider it a hardship to be further called upon to read a somewhat lengthy introduction, when the title of a book should be its best preface; but the Editor would ask your indulgence while he briefly states the object and design of the following pages.

It has often been held of questionable propriety, whether the public should be furnished with medical readings, it being presumed that such literature tended to thwart the very purposes it professed to encourage: that, instead of affording an exposition of the ills of our nature, whereby we might avoid or remove them, its effect necessarily, from the probable absence of all preliminary medical knowledge on the part of the reader, was but to create confusion and alarm, and, even where understood, only to magnify the fear; and this latter notion is grounded on the popular error, that even professional men, from the same cause, are least efficient when in attendance upon themselves. The doubt, however, may now be considered as removed if we but observe how of late years the desire to possess general information on all matters relative to the functions of life, has manifested itself, by the public attendance at the various learned institutions, and how also it has been encouraged by men eminent for their talents and worth, devoting themselves to the unfolding and simplification of the professional lore they had been years in acquiring. Lectures have been given, and large crowds of silent and anxious auditors have attended them—edition after edition of popular works on similar subjects, by the same men, have been called for, and eagerly caught up—the mysteries of physiology have been laid open from the lowest to the highest scale of creation: the history of man has been displayed, and his several elements have been demonstrated—the phenomena of respiration, digestion, and the circulation of the blood, have all had their share of attention, and many of the most prevalent diseases of humanity have been discussed and examined, their causes exposed, and the means of their avoidance detailed. So far from the public suffering from this diffusion of medical knowledge, immense advantages have accrued to all classes of mankind.