On continuous molecular changes, more particularly in their relation to epidemic diseases : being the oration delivered at the 80th anniversary of the Medical Society of London / by John Snow.

  • Snow, John, 1813-1858.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On continuous molecular changes, more particularly in their relation to epidemic diseases : being the oration delivered at the 80th anniversary of the Medical Society of London / by John Snow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    f If the brain of an animal is in a particular state o.' S molecular action, from any object that excites fear or ; joy, it may cause a similar state of the bi'ain in others of its species, by uttering a cry, or merely assuming a particular demeanour. The faculty of speech gives to man a power of communicating his complex feelings and ideas, far exceeding that of the lower animals; and the invention of literature has greatly increased this power in civilized nations. By speech, not only can fresh sensations and ideas be communicated, but also that continuation of them called remembrance, by which they revive after, it may be, a long interval of suspended action. By the aid of literature, indeed, knowledge committed to writing may lie dormant for centuries, like the ears of wheat in the hand of the Egyptian mummy, and then again take up the pro- cess of growth, to increase and spread in another part of the world. In addition to the series of continuous molecular changes having for their result the preservation of the individual and the species, there are others, occurring in living beings, which have an opposite tendency ; they divert part of the substance of the individual from the actions which are natural to the species to another kind of action, in consequence of which this substance is employed in the multiplication and increase of the materies morbi of communicable diseases—an extensive group of maladies, each case of which is caused by