Reducing agent

“ When we consider how in such conditions as those mentioned, patients are made to swallow pills and mixtures for months or years, or, more appropriately, and if they can afford it, are sent abroad, we can realize the importance of an agent by means of which the desired end can be obtained more conveniently, certainly, economically and in a shorter time than by any other means. ”

“ We cannot imitate this method of supplying a substance in minute quantities, simply because we have no means of controlling the essential mechanism of regulation, owing to our ignorance of its nature. ”

“ And by this means we doubly cut off the growth of the succeeding fitt, by restoring the patient to early vigor of the solids, and by totally destroying the matter of the present fitt, making the crisis compleat and perfect as well as speedy. ”

“ It’s as though the chemical ingredients in a retort had been carelessly flung together, regardless of power or proportion, and the solution in consequence is a mere seething chaos—fine material wasted. But what a fool I am—she can’t be more than twenty. ”

“ The effect to make money a drug in the market, of this sweeping reduction in its purchasing utility, was greatly increased by its practically complete disuse by the large and ever-enlarging proportion of the people in the public service. ”

“ An unexplained residuum of change, perhaps a large one, must be left to the assumed uniform action of those unknown agencies, which occasionally induce strongly-marked and abrupt deviations of structure in our domestic productions. ”

“ Nutritive action does not respond to the demand to renew effete material. The equilibrium being destroyed, decay and the products of decomposition become the most important factors in the study of the diseases which now threaten to disintegrate this hitherto self-sustaining system. ”

“ It can also be, wrecked by changing the form of its product in fact any change, whether it is a change of the product or a change of the men, which interferes with the continuity of operation of a man along habit lines is an economic loss to that organization. ”

“ The maintenance of a solid form by any group of units implies among them an arrangement so stable that it is not overthrown by the incident forces. Whereas the assumption of a liquid form implies that the incident forces suffice to destroy the arrangement of the units. ”

“ This loss, this change, which commences with life and terminates only with death, is compensated for by the constant renewal of the whole frame by the deposition and assimilation, or organisation, of matter from the blood, which thus becomes gradually thinner and impoverished, unless, in its turn, it receives a corresponding supply of its vital elements. ”

“ Is it not manifest, that while the demands upon the vital force have been increased, the supply of material has been decreased? If this have been the case, she arrives at the period when the third and last demand is to be made on her growing power, with not force enough to assume the additional work, and in consequence she shows signs of disease. ”

“ Why, to add a new cause to increase the evil, a cause more fundamental and more powerful than any which previously existed. It behoves us to think a little what we are about. The burthen may be increased till our commerce can bear it no longer. ”

“ Then it follows, that given any state of disease which is a correspondent and plane of influx for certain evil spirits, the introduction of a drug which carries with it opposite symptoms furnishes a plane of influx for spirits of an opposite nature; and in their conflict and opposition, equilibrium is restored. ”

“ This bold and successful economic reconstruction upon national lines is not inevitable merely because every sound reason points us in that direction. A man may be very ill, a certain drug may be clearly indicated as the only possible remedy, but it does not follow that the drug is available, that the doctor will have the sense to prescribe it, or the patient the means to procure it or the intelligence to swallow it. ”

“ We desire to be informed what is to be said by science on the moderate use of these agents. Let abuse of them go to the wall; let use stand forth alone, and let us hear what place this strong drink holds in relation to man and animals—what place it holds in nature—what good it is for man—what bad, when it is used in moderation. ”

“ You encourage it with fresh fuel, rake it and shake it but without avail—the accumulations of debris are too great. You remove a portion, but its place is taken by more substance from above. At length you resort to the measure you should have employed at first—you "dump the grate" and start a fresh fire. The moral is obvious: dump the grate of the human system—in other words, empty the colon. ”

“ If chemistry can make the putrid fish of Billingsgate and the putrid flesh of Newgate and Leadenhall Markets wholesome, by neutralising the poisonous qualities, it seems desirable that it should be a lawful process. ”

“ The crowding of the callings until self-support is impossible, the sinking of endurance in the overcrowded vocation, lead to a flowing off of the superfluous elements, and finally the whole organism has overcome the crisis of assimilation by forcing each particle where it is economically most valuable. ”

“ If desperation will sometimes spur men to exceptional exertion the effect is fleeting, and, for a permanence, a more stable condition is better suited to foster that blend of restraint and energy which makes up the tissue of a life of normal health. ”

“ If the destructive agency has not continued in action, such less-endowed individuals will multiply; and the species, after sundry oscillations, will return to its previous mean state. But if this agency be a persistent one, such less endowed individuals will be continually killed off, and eventually none but highly-endowed individuals will be produced—a new moving equilibrium, adapted to the new environing conditions, will result. ”

“ Now this method of attack upon the citadel of life is so treacherous, and so easily carried out, that all precautions you may take against it are insufficient. You may throw difficulties in the way of procuring poison—you cannot wholly prevent the sale. ”

“ But there are other natural or normal effects which are the outcome of powers, forces, energies, not all-pervading, but restricted to special groups of agencies, dependent for their actual production on the presence of a great and complex variety of extrinsic conditions, and liable therefore to be impeded by the interfering action of numerous other natural agencies. Such, for instance, would be the natural powers and processes whereby living organisms propagate their kind. ”

“ Inhibition of certain phases or elements of some of the tendencies is necessary for the most valuable development of the individual, but the entire loss of any save one or two would be disastrous to some form of adult usefulness or enjoyment. The method by which valuable elements or phases of an original tendency are fixed and strengthened is the general method of habit formation and will be taken up under that head in Chapter IV. When the modification involves definite inhibition, there are three possible methods,--punishment, disuse, and substitution. ”

“ But it is moulded by blind and wasteful processes, namely, by an extravagant production of raw material and the ruthless rejection of all that is superfluous, through the blundering steps of trial and error. The condition at each successive moment of this huge system, as it issues from the already quiet past and is about to invade the still undisturbed future, is one of violent internal commotion. ”

“ Yes, certainly, if you buy from chance agents who are trying to do a small business in the country. At each market there ought to be a chemical expert who understands these artificial manures, which it is so difficult to get unadulterated. ”

“ This power of adaptation, while it unquestionably lures on to the continued indulgence of all kinds of bad habits, is, on the other hand, the only hope and assurance the sufferer from such causes can have of ultimate recovery from his danger. If it requires years to establish bad habits in the animal economy, why should we expect that they can be wholly eradicated except by a reversal, in these respects, of the entire current of the life, or without allowing a commensurate time for that perfect restoration of the disordered functions which is expected? ”

“ But let these statical conditions be once changed, whether by the advent of man or from whatever cause, and this equilibrium is immediately disturbed. The chained forces are set free; a general swarming begins; some individuals are destroyed, others are liberated; each pushes its advantage to the utmost, and all move forward in the direction of least resistance, till at length they again mutually neutralize each other, and again come, under new conditions and modified forms, into the former state of quiescence. ”

“ We have here an industrial organism, not a mere mechanical combination, and any disturbance in one part of it will derange or vitiate, more or less, the whole. The phenomena which here appear belong to what has been called fructifying causation. One economic error produces fruits which combine with those of another economic error, and the product of the two is not their sum, nor even their simple product, but the evil may be raised to a very high power by the combination. ”

“ Such, then, in brief, are the three main modes of elimination: elimination by physical and climatic conditions; elimination by enemies; elimination by competition. Observe that it is a differentiating process. Unlike the indiscriminate destruction before alluded to, the incidence of which is on all alike, good, bad, and indifferent, it separates the well-adapted from the ill-adapted, dooming the latter to death, and allowing the former to survive and procreate their kind. The destruction is not indiscriminate, but differential. ”

“ To resume: all natural agents which are limited in quantity are not only limited in their ultimate productive power, but, long before that power is stretched to the utmost, they yield to any additional demands on progressively harder terms. This law may, however, be suspended, or temporarily controlled, by whatever adds to the general power of mankind over nature, and especially by any extension of their knowledge, and their consequent command, of the properties and powers of natural agents. ”

“ In the working of a big scheme like this—for, I assure you, this is no cottage-garden affair—there is, as you may imagine, an enormous deal of business. Somebody has to be responsible for, or, at any rate, to sanction, all that is done. Whether we put up fresh stamps, or whether we decide to use the cyanide process for tailings, or sink a deep level, or abandon a vein, or use the sulphide reduction, to take only a few obvious instances, somebody has to be able to answer all questions, difficult ones sometimes, possibly even awkward ones. ”

“ If he'll try to keep us short-handed, if he'll spend money to do it, if he'll do a trick like giving sulphur for lung-worm and then send infected stock out into the herds, I don't know just where he will stop—unless we stop him. ”

“ During the change of treatment inevitable hardships will occur; every effort should be made to minimize these hardships; but we should not because of them hesitate to make the change. There should be a continuous reduction in the number of agencies. ”

“ But among natural agents we need not take into account those which, existing in unlimited quantity, being incapable of appropriation, and never altering in their qualities, are always ready to lend an equal degree of assistance to production, whatever may be its extent; as air, and the light of the sun. Being now about to consider the impediments to production, not the facilities for it, we need advert to no other natural agents than those which are liable to be deficient either in quantity or in productive power. ”

“ But where the poison is introduced into the system so insidiously that the subject is unconscious of its absorption until its effects are produced, then it is not a question of antidotes, but the problem is, How shall we counteract its consequences, and how shall we keep our patients alive until the life-destroying agents have ceased to put in jeopardy the vital powers? ”

“ It is contrary to all previous experience to suppose that the addition of so much trained intelligence will not operate beneficially in securing the disposal of a commodity which is at present a drug in the market. ”

“ Elimination through enemies is more important, but has not much bearing on the question at present before us—the evolution of the conceptual. Elimination by competition, again, though a factor of yet greater importance in human evolution, has, nevertheless, so far as individuals are concerned, but little bearing on our present question. Few are eliminated through the absence of the conceptual faculty. ”

“ This discovery, due to Wöhler and his followers, showed that organic products could be prepared artificially.285 In brief, the decline of the vital force followed from the knowledge that at least one portion of the processes of life was governed by known forces. ”

“ With each new intensification of dependence between the parts of the organism must go that psychological development which has marked every stage of the progress in the past, from the day that we killed our prisoner in order to eat him, and refused to share him with our fellow, to the day that the telegraph and the bank have rendered military force economically futile. ”

“ Similar crises have developed in, and are constantly assailing, other industries. Upon their occurrence they appear to be equally impossible of successful adjustment, but, finally, as a result of attacking a difficulty from quite a new angle and in a new way, it has been not only subjugated satisfactorily, but a distinct improvement upon the old method brought into operation at one and the same time. ”

“ Elimination
One of the greatest brain savers is elimination. Every man should try to operate along lines of the least resistance, eliminate the deterrent influences and all things that fret him.
Do not look for trouble. Do not concern yourself too much over disagreeable things over which you have no control.
Do not build up an intricate system in your business. Have simplicity your ideal. Eliminate all useless moves. If you have disturbing influences in your institution, such as an employe who is continually causing friction, eliminate that employe. ”