Excerpt from Primary Lessons in Human Physiology These lessons have been prepared as a guide to the study of the human body; and while, no doubt, the teacher who undertakes to teach the subject of this little book is fully competent to do so, yet the writer may be pardoned for giving expression to his views in regard to the true place of such a book. The writer would insist that the book be used only as a guide to such study and not the sole object to be studied. The human body itself should be the object studied. To supplement this, abundant materials from the bodies of lower animals should be used as a means to give true conceptions of the parts of the human body and its actions. If the teacher had sufficient time to give complete individual direction, a book would be of questionable use in this connection. If this or any other elementary text-book in physiology is used simply as a book to be learned and recited, the time spent on it is worse than wasted. The terms used in the description of the parts of the body and their actions can not have their proper meanings unless the real objects are seen. To attempt to cram children's minds with terms which to them stand either for nothing, or for vague conceptions wholly different from those for which the terms have been chosen, is doing the children a great injury. This procedure is not only harmful but unnecessary. Many of the parts of the body can be put under study and their operations carefully observed and analyzed. The lower animals can furnish the rest of the illustrations. A bone is a bone, the animal kingdom through. The same may be said for muscles, tendons, ligaments, nerves, and all other parts that make up the body. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.