Observations on morbid poisons, chronic and acute : the first compehending syphilis, yaws, sivvens, elephantiasis, and the anomala confounded with them ; the second the acute contagions, particularly the variolous & vaccine / by Joseph Adams.

  • Adams, Joseph, 1756-1818.
Date:
1807
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on morbid poisons, chronic and acute : the first compehending syphilis, yaws, sivvens, elephantiasis, and the anomala confounded with them ; the second the acute contagions, particularly the variolous & vaccine / by Joseph Adams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    circles, the different sections and points of contact in which we have before us ? Yet this we are apt to consider among the higher branches of erudition, because it cannot be accomplished without a power in the mind to retain and combine, and the constant appli- cation of that power. How many ages did men rest satisfied with v'hat they fancied a solution of mercury rising in the Torricellian tube! The language of the schools was, “ Nature abhors a vacuum. The fuga vacui is the cause of the suspension of the mercury.” The fact itself, which ought to have been accounted for, was brought as a proof of the doctrine. Yet this fuga vacui, though a mere hypothesis, was likely to be more popular than the true solution of the phenomenon, inasmuch as it saved the mind the trouble of thinking, and attending to those laws on which atmospheric pressure depend. To give a further illustration of the subject.—If in the less im- proved state of chemistry, a professor should have exhibited to hi*, pupils the spontaneous ignition that takes place on the mixture of the nitrous acid with spirit of turpentine, and should seem to explain it as arising from no other cause than the force of their mutual attraction, which by the rapidity with which it takes place, excites so much motion as to produce heat enough to set them on fire; no one will now say that the cause was in any respect explained. Yet how congenial to young minds, might such an apparent solution prove; and how much more popular than the long process by which a true philosopher would explain the sudden decompositions that take place, and the extrication of fire that was before in a state of combination. I am aware it may be urged, that in what is called the true explanation, we are still far from arriving at primary causes ; that in the first instance we have to learn the cause of gravitation, and in the last what the matter of fire is, and why it does not exhibit similar phenomena under every combination. But in both wre can