Excerpt from The Centennial Practice of Medicine
Man's body resembles a stately mansion, constructed of beautiful but very perishable materials, all of which are needing repairs to keep up the shape and utility of the building. But not all in equal degrees; some portions may stand unaided for years, while others may need hourly looking after. When the occupant leaves the building, repairs cease, and then we sec all the materials one by one falling into ruin.
What, then, raises to the rank of living creatures, and clothes with loveliness the masses of organic matter which are growing, moving, breathing, thinking, all around us? It is the power of the individual life to create its own individual form. It is the form which constitutes the self. The organic materials lire the property of the form only so long as it retains them, and no longer - they are a floating capital. Over the innate essential elements it has no control. Life cannot make the brute materials which it uses live longer than that which it leaves unused; but it has the power of making them anew and building them up into a certain shape for the time they are made to last. In short, life rests on the metamorphosis or renewal of the body; as this renewal is more thorough, the individual is more perfect; if it stops altogether, the body is no longer living. If it partially stops, there is disorder, or what we call disease. Health is the perfect harmony of the human mechanism - a superabundance of life - an excess of vital action cannot exist. We cannot have a too active metamorphosis of the tissues, for the fresher their organic constituents, the more serviceable they are; incessant change is the organic law.
The most active metamorphosis of the body possible, the highest possible development of life, is health. The complete cessation of metamorphosis, is death. The partial cessation or arrest, is disease. In death the flesh goes on decomposing as during life, but there being no renewal, the form is lost In disease waste goes on, perhaps more rapid, but renewal fags, incomplete or degenerate tissues are formed.
Equilibrium or the vital forces depends upon perfect harmony, or two forces carried on simultaneously; destruction and construction both are necessary; there must be no deficiency of either, for a preponderance of one over the other in any part, or a deficiency, constitutes a deficiency of life (a disease), an absence of health. This deficiency of lite is the sole aim of treatment of disease, a recognition of how vital functions can be increased or diminished; how a balance can be maintained is the sole object of the physician.
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