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The influence of tropical climates on European constitutions
The influence of tropical climates on European constitutions Author:James Johnson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: some strength of argument to persuade young men to reliu- quisli their use, or to check the wide-spreading evil. Sect. 2.—In attempting to delineate the influ... more »ence of hot climates on the European constitution, although we may endeavour— " To chain the events in regular array;" yet, it must be confessed, that nature spurns all such artificial arrangements ; since simultaneous impressions on several organs, must produce co-temporary and combined effects, which our limited faculties are scarcely capable of embracing m thought, much less, of describmg in the fetters of language. Taking facts, however, and personal observation for landmarks, I shall pursue the investigation, as nearly as possible, in the order of nature and of events. There exists between different, and often distant parts of the body, a certain connexion or relation, which, in medical language, is culled " consent of parts :"—that is, when one is ati'ected by particular impressions, the other sympathises, as it were, and takes on a kind of analogous action. This sympathy, or consent of parts, has never been satisfactorily accounted for, by the ablest of our physiologists, nor—(mirabile dictu !) by the most ingenious of our theorists. As all, however, are agreed in respect to the fact, we may allow the cause to remain locked up in Nature's strong box, m company with many other arcana, which she does not seem disposed to reveal. Of these sympathies, none is more universally remarked, or familiarly known, than that which subsists between the external surface of the body, and the internal surface of the alimentary canal. This, indeed, seems less incomprehensible than many others, since the latter appears to be a continuation of the former, with the exception of the cuticle. In the first section, I gave...« less