Femina, A Work for Every Woman — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Femina, A Work for Every Woman
John Stuart Mill · en
Professor L. Landois, in his work on “Human Physiology,” says that
“when a _hydra_ is divided into two parts, each part forms a new
individual—nay, if the body of the animal be divided into several
parts in a particular way, each part gives rise to a new individual.
The _planarians_ also show a great capacity for producing lost parts.
Spiders and crabs can reproduce lost feelers, limbs, and claws; snails,
part of the head, feelers, and eyes, provided the central nervous
system is not injured. Many fishes reproduce fins, even the tail
fin. Salamanders and lizards can produce an entire tail, including
bones, muscles, and even the posterior part of the spinal cord, while
the triton reproduces an amputated limb, the lower jaw, and an eye.
This reproduction requires that a small stump be left, while total
extirpation of the parts prevents reproduction. In amphibians and
reptiles the regeneration of organs and tissues, as a whole, takes
place after the type of embryonic development, which is by cell
division, and the same is true as regards the histological processes
which occur in the regenerated tail and other parts of the body of the
earth worm.” Comparative pathological anatomy clearly demonstrates the
inherent curative power of nature, and this is also apparent in the
vegetable kingdom, and together they deliver a lecture on the “art of
healing” from the stage of creation, in silent and modest language, but
eloquently instructive to the thoughtful observer.
The question now naturally arises How far this curative energy of
nature operates in warm-blooded animals, and especially in man? The
answer must be that, while it falls short of reproducing parts of
organs or even tissues in the same degree of perfection as in the lower
orders, the innate tendency towards regeneration and recovery from
injury and disease is, on certain lines, practically the same. There is
not the slightest doubt that ninety per cent. of all cures, whether the
invalid took this, that, or the other medicine, or whether the method
of treatment was homeopathic, allopathic, or mind cure, are entirely
due to this inherent curative energy; and the other ten per cent.
may have required some active remedy, but this, too, alone, without
nature’s healing force, would have been ineffectual.