Excerpt from Human Physiology, Statical and Dynamical: Or the Conditions and Course of the Life of Man
The publication of the text of the Lectures on Physiology which the author has given for many years in the University was originally contemplated at the repeated solicitation of his pupils, who have felt the necessity of haring an outline of the science in its present state sufficiently brief for their use.
There are some advantages attending such a publication of matter which has been employed in Lectures. Among these, condensation or compactness may be particularly mentioned. It is not possible to instruct, for any length of time, classes of many hundred persons without detecting the more obvious imperfections of the course. An intelligence quickly springs up between the professor and his audience, which unmistakably indicates to him where he is too diffuse and where obscure.
But there arc also disadvantages, more especially where Lectures are not read, but delivered orally from a text. Such a text, if published, will show many obscurities in its descriptions which were perhaps removed in the discourse.
To write a complete treatise on Physiology demands an extent of knowledge possessed by very few men. What science is there which is not involved in explaining our structure and functions? Anatomy, Chemistry, Zoology, Botany, Geology, the various branches of Natural Philosophy, which themselves require as their foundation Mathematics. Well, therefore, may the author of this book, in view of his own imperfections as tried by such a standard, express his opinions with hesitation, and, at the conclusion of his labor, feel regret that he has ever undertaken a work, the execution of which, with even a moderate success, is so hard, and in which the detection of multitudes of imperfections is so easy.
The science of Physiology is the result of the labors of thousands of the ablest men continued for centuries. Though of course, in its advance, physicians have taken the prominent part, it is also under manifest obligations to men who did not belong to the medical profession. To recall the names of its many cultivators would have converted the following pages into a scientific history. The author desires to draw his readers' attention particularly to this point, since he has found himself constrained, by the plan and size of his book, to avoid such a course.
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