A key to Fowle's diagrams

Preface

The primary object of this book is to explain the Series of Eight Diagrams, prepared by the author, for the use of parents, and teachers of common schools ; but a description of the human frame naturallyled to an explanation of the uses of the several parts of the body ; and the book, besides being a Key, is so complete a treatise on Human Physiology, that no other text book will be needed in Schools where this Key and the Diagrams are used.

These Diagrams will be found much more bold and distinct than any hitherto prepared ; they are engraved from original drawings by the author, and may be relied on for their accuracy.

The animal part of man, is composed of very complicated machinery, and of many thousand delicate parts, to understand which, would require a long life of unremitted study. This minute acquaintance with our frame, though all-important to professional surgeons and physicians, can not be acquired by others ; but a much smaller degree of anatomical and physiological knowledge must be very useful, and very necessary to every individual, and may be attained with no more labor than is constantly bestowed on the physiology of plants or the structure of minerals, which are much less intimately connected with our welfare and happiness.

A general idea of the elements which compose their animal frame, would enable men to improve constitutions naturally feeble or inclined to disease, and to prevent many of the ills which they, and those dependant upon them, suffer. It is to be regretted that men do not employ physicians to keep them well, rather than to make them well by allaying pains and curing diseases, which, in most cases, proceed from ignorance, and which might have been prevented at none of the expense, and with one tenth of the trouble, it requires to cure them.

4 PREFACE.

Such general information in regard to the human frame, its organization and operations, it is the object of this book and the Eight Diagrams to impart. By the aid of the Diagrams and Key, the teacher may soon become acquainted with the mechanism and physiology of his body, and then, by familiar conversations upon the Diagrams, he may readily teach children all they need, or can comprehend; illustrating his instructions by obvious facts, and by a familiar application of principles to every day life and experience. It will be found far more profitable to go over the Diagrams several times, asking questions, and allowing them to be freely asked by the pupils, than to give a lesson which may be recited by the child, in the words of the book, without any distinct ideas, and without any permanent advantage.

It is hoped that the long experience of the author as a teacher, has given an educational bearing to this work, which is not to be found in any other on the same subject. He may have overrated his ability to make the very book that is wanted, but he feels certain that he did not mistake when he supposed that the proper book had not been made when this was undertaken.