I am sensible of the total inadequacy of any remedy for this evil, short of a modification of our domestic institutions. Mere information, however complete the communication of it, can do little beyond affording a clearer conception of the end in view, and of the means fitted to secure it. Even this little, however, would be something gained; and the hope of contributing, in some degree, to the furtherance of this object, has supplied one of the main motives for undertaking the present work. Meantime, women are the earliest teachers; they must be nurses; they can be neither, without the risk of doing incalculable mischief, unless they have some understanding of the subjects about to be treated of. On these grounds I rest their _obligation_ to study them; and I look upon that notion of delicacy, which would exclude them from knowledge calculated, in an extraordinary degree, to open, exalt, and purify their minds, and to fit them for the performance of their duties, as alike degrading to those to whom it affects to show respect, and debasing to the mind that entertains it. Though each part of this work will be made as complete in itself as the author is capable of rendering it, and to that extent independent of any other part, yet there will be found to be a strict connexion between the several portions of the whole; and greatly as the topics included in the latter differ from those which form the earlier subjects, the advantage of having studied the former before the latter are entered on, will be felt precisely as the word _study_ can be justly applied to the operation of the mind on such matters. In the expository portion of the work I have not been anxious to abstain from the employment of technical terms, when a decidedly useful purpose was to be obtained by the introduction of them; but I have been very careful to use no such term without assigning the exact meaning of it. A technical term unexplained is a dark spot on the field of knowledge; explained, it is a clear and steady light. In order really to understand the states of health and disease, an acquaintance with the nature of organization, and of the vital processes of which it is the seat and the instrument, is indispensable: it is for this reason that the exposition of structure and function, attempted in this first part of the work, is somewhat full; but there cannot be a question that, if it accomplish its object, it will not only enable the account of health and disease in the subsequent part of it to be much more brief, but that it will, at the same time, render that account more intelligible, exact, and practical. S. S. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HEALTH. CHAPTER I.