The commonwealth of cells — A Closer Reading

THE COMMONWEALTH OF CELLS

Some Popular Essays on Human Physiology

BY H. G. F. SPURRELL, B.A. OXON.

LONDON BAILLIÈRE, TINDALL AND COX 8, HENRIETTA STREET, STRAND 1901

[_All rights reserved_]

MY ESTEEMED FRIEND AND TUTOR,

GUSTAV MANN, M.D., ETC.

Ever since the very beginning of my student days, when my contemporaries took to plying me with embarrassing demands for information upon all matters medical, I have been constantly impressed by the interest which the unscientific public take in the workings of their bodies and the material basis of their minds. It is this general display of interest among my friends that has emboldened me to add yet another book to the many already dealing with the subject. In using the word ‘unscientific’ I imply, of course, no reproach. I mean simply to denote those people who have specialized in some branch of knowledge other than those collectively known as Natural Science.

I usually find, when discussing physiology with such people, that they take more interest in general principles than in details, which they frequently find repellent, and that they frame their questions in an appallingly comprehensive manner.

My object throughout this little work has therefore been to present the fundamental principles of physiology in a brief, consecutive and readable form, for those who do not care to study the text-books. There is no lack of excellent books already, books illustrated by careful drawings quite gruesome in their accuracy, but they are almost all intended for “students,” and the casual reader, finding the organs divided up for exhaustive treatment, fails to form a conception of the body as an organic whole, and misses the very principles he is in search of, in the heap of details under which they are buried.

It may cause some surprise that, though in my efforts to be up-to-date I have in places outstripped the text-books, I quote no authorities. But a moment’s consideration will show that it would defeat the very object of a sketch like this to burden the text with an account of how my views were formed, while, on the other hand, the pioneers of science will forgive me. Their papers will be quoted in more durable works, and their names honoured long after this little book has been forgotten.

OXFORD, _March, 1901_.

THE CHEMISTRY OF THE BODY 8

THE MECHANICS AND PHYSICS OF THE BODY 31

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 58

The unscientific public is extremely prone, and not altogether without reason, to take medicine as a starting-point, and arrange all biological science around it. As it is, moreover, apt to gauge the interest and utility of every branch of this science from a practical point of view, and bestows most attention upon that which it imagines is of the greatest service to the doctor, I think a series of popular essays on physiology could not commence with more advantage, at any rate to physiology, than by briefly discussing, not with what it deals, for that is pretty generally known, but what is its relation to medicine. Further, as the doctor is more easily discussed than medicine, the physiologist will be more manageable for our immediate purpose than physiology in the abstract, so we will devote the first few pages to the question of how his labours benefit the patient.

Everyone knows the doctor, and everyone knows that physiology deals with the ‘functions of different organs of the body’; but the public rarely meet the physiologist, except in the fanciful caricatures of his enemies, which though frequently personal are rarely accurate. These rancorous libels, if anyone heeded them, would tend to raise doubts as to whether the physiologist was a good companion for the doctor, and if it were not as well for them to see as little of each other as possible.