Disease and Its CausesCouncilman, W. T. (William Thomas)
Science
Disease and Its Causes
Councilman, W. T. (William Thomas)
Diseases -- Causes and theories of causation
It is not necessary to assume in
such individual differences that there be any variation in the amount
and character of the component elements, but the individuality may be
due to differences in the atomic or molecular arrangements. There are
two forms of tartaric-acid crystals of precisely the same chemical
formula, one of which reflects polarized light to the left, and the
other to the right. All the left-sided crystals and all the
right-sided are, however, precisely the same. The number of possible
variations in the chemical structure of a substance so complex as is
protoplasm is inconceivable.
In no way is the individuality of living matter more strongly
expressed than in the resistance to disease. The variation in the
degree of resistance to an unfavorable environment is seen in every
tale of shipwreck and exposure. In the most extensive epidemics
certain individuals are spared; but here care must be exercised in
interpreting the immunity, for there must be differences in the degree
of exposure to the cause of the epidemic. It would not do to interpret
the immunity to bullets in battle as due to any individual
peculiarity, save possibly a tendency in certain individuals to remove
the body from the vicinity of the bullets; in battle and in epidemics
the factors of chance and of prudence enter. No other living organism
is so resistant to changes in environment as is man, and to this
resistance he owes his supremacy. By means of his intelligence he can
change the environment. He is able to resist the action of cold by
means of houses, fire and clothing; without such power of intelligent
creation of the immediate environment the climatic area in which man
could live would be very narrow. Just as disease can be acquired by an
unfavorable environment, man can so adjust his environment to an
injury that harmony will result in spite of the injury. The
environment which is necessary to compensate for an injury may become
very narrow. For an individual with a badly working heart more and
more restriction of the free life is necessary, until finally the only
environment in which life is even tolerably harmonious is between
blankets and within the walls of a room.
The various conditions which may act on an organism producing the
changes which are necessary for disease are manifold. Lack of
resistance to injury, incapacity for adaptation, whether it be due to
a congenital defect or to an acquired condition, is not in itself a
disease, but the disease is produced by the action on such an
individual of external conditions which may be nothing more than those
to which the individuals of the species are constantly subject and
which produce no harm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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