An essay on suspended animation / by Samuel Jackson, honorary member of the Philadelphia Medical, and member of the Philadelphia Linnean societies.

  • Jackson, Samuel, 1787-1872.
Date:
1808
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on suspended animation / by Samuel Jackson, honorary member of the Philadelphia Medical, and member of the Philadelphia Linnean societies. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    nius and of ignorance, lay alike mouldering in scarce distinguishable ruins. But this period has passed away, this day of barbarism, when despotick power assumed the right to manacle the godlike faculties of man, and with its iron hand to crush the expanding wing of aspi- ring intellect, has now declined; and its productions, the offspring of cramped and confined minds, which da- red not to deviate from the dictates of authority, to lis- ten to the voice of truth, or to view the form of nature, inviting with simplex ?nundit'us but only as repre- sented in the canvass of daubing copists, appear too hi- deous to have had birth, while their existence can scarce command the belief, that they are the children of intel- ligence. But now, that reason roves far as the wide extended realms of nature, uncontrolled by power, un- fettered by adherence to systems, because they are vene- rable from the continued belief of wasted ages, though unsanctioned by truth, our science has emerged from this unintelligible disorder, to lucid method, and arrange- ment. The temple of medicine, from this confused mass, erects its noble front, the proudest boast, the ho- nour of our race. It no longer threatens to overwhelm those who approach it, with cumbrous and tottering magnificence, but invites to its entrance with simple majesty. While disease, within this dome, has now lost the hydra form with which it has been represented, and its proximate cause beheld with piercing ken, is no longer confounded with its effects, but appears as mor- bid excitement.