Some pathological bearings of Darwinism / by D. Astley Gresswell.

  • Gresswell, D. Astley.
Date:
[1886]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some pathological bearings of Darwinism / by D. Astley Gresswell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    DARWINISM. BY D. ASTLEY GRESSWELL, B.A., B.M. Oxon., M.R.C.S., I>ATE HOirSE PHYSICIAN ST. BAETHOLOMEW'S HOSPITAL. The sciences relating to plants and animals are slowly but surely confederating to form a biology in its true, its widest sense, a science of life's processes in. general, regular and irregular. Are then the physiological and pathological processes of organisms in degree aMn ? A priori, yes ! If the principles of Darwin and Herbert Spencer be beyond the sphere of conjecture, we may loot to the structure and function of organisms, high and low, for help in comparison and thereby in elucidation of life's processes in general. We must associate the off-shoulder lameness of the horse with the right scapular pain of man in some cases of hepatic irritation; the tiptoe walk of the horse with the paralysis of the extensors of the arm of man in plumbism ; or, again, the fact that pneumonia attacks the right lung more frequently than the left in domestic animals with the like fact in the case of man. Biology will progress as all science progresses—by comparison. The processes of life in plants and animals, processes both regular and irregular, must be brought into comparison with those of man if we would establish a science of biology in its widest sense. An attempt will be made ia the following pages to bring together some vital processes in illustration of the aid which Darwinism may afford us in explaining phenomena called abnormal. They