If a man desires a house erected, he consults a carpenter, or if a first
class residence, he employs an architect. If our watch gets out of repair,
we take it to a skilful jeweller. If our boots become worn, want tapping,
they are sent to the cobbler. But how many people there are, who, when the
complicated mechanism of the system gets out of order,--which they cannot
look into as they can their watch or old boots,--first try to patch
themselves up, instead of employing a professional "cobbler of poor health
and broken constitutions."
Before me are Wistar's, Wilson's, and Gray's Works on Anatomy. I have
read them, or Krause's, more than twenty years. They contain all that has
been discovered relative to the human system. But I do not know it all. I
never can. I doubt if the man lives who knows it all. Then here is
"Physiology," which treats of the offices or various functions of the
system. I do not comprehend it all. "Great ignoramus!" Nobody is perfected
in it. Next is Pathology, which treats of diseases, their causes, nature,
and symptoms. Then there are Materia Medica, Chemistry, and much more to
be learned before one can become competent to prescribe for diseases
safely.
[Illustration: CORRECT POSITION.]
[Illustration: INCORRECT POSITION.]
Can a carpenter, or any mechanic, a lawyer, minister, or other than he who
devotes his whole powers to the theory and practice of medicine, be
intrusted with the precious healths and lives of individuals, about which
he knows little or nothing? Or can I, in a few chapters, instruct such in
the art of curing complicated diseases? O, no, no. But I can do something
better for such. I can tell you how to avoid diseases. I am quite positive
of it. I should wrong you, and endanger your lives by the deception thus
put forth. There are some books written on the subject which are useful to
the masses in the same manner in which I trust this will prove, by
instructing in the ways of health, and warnings against that which is
injurious; but there are far too many issued which are but a damage to the
public by their false claims of posting everybody in the knowledge of
curing all diseases, particularly that complicated one termed consumption.