\AJ6 THIS WORK TO THE MEDICAL PROFESSION OF THE UNITED STATES BY THKIIl OBEDIENT, HUMBLE SERVANT, THE AUTHOR. PREFACE TO THE FIEST EDITION. The Author of this work has endeavoured to keejD before him the difficult objects of adapting it to the student in medicine and to the more advanced. For the advantage of the former, therefore, he has aimed at such method as he might command, and such illustration as might not seem irksome to the latter. With a view to the former, also, he has endeavoured to indicate the intimate manner in which all the topics embraced in the work are related to each other, and their mutual dependences, by constant references from one part to others ; and, what is unusual, the Author has made these connecting refer- ences in a prospective as well as retrospective manner. With a view, also, to the same objects, the Author had designed a more copious Index ; but as the stereotype was completed as long ago as the mid- dle of November, and as the state of his health, and other avocations, have not permitted him to complete the Index, in its regular order, beyond the 125th page, he has concluded to print it as it now stands, and to extend it in a future edition. Many subjects, however, throughout the work, are now incidentally carried out in the Index ; but many of the most important receive only a general reference, ex- cepting as they are related to others which are more amply noticed. New York, Jan. 1, 1847. ^ PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION. Three Editions of these Institutes, the first of which w^as pub- lished in 1847, having been exhausted, the Author now submits a fourth to his medical brethren, in which he has endeavoured to incor- porate, in an Appendix, the most important of the recent discoveries in Physiology, Pathological Anatomy, Therapeutics, Organic Chem- istry, and Microscopy that are relative to the principles about which this work is interested, and he has connected the Appendix intimate- ly with the main body of the work by copious references to the sec- tions embraced in the former, while the same system is carried out reciprocally in the latter. It is also gratifying to the Author to pay his humble tribute of admiration particularly to the immense labors of the microscopist, who, through the great improvements of the in- strument, is now enabled to analyze Avith surprising accuracy the ul- timate and varying conditions of the solids and fluids. The Author has also fulfilled his design, as expressed in the Preface to the first edition, of extending the original Index, a second one being now added, in which he has endeavoured to present an epitome of the whole work. It is proper, however, to suggest that the Reader will find an advantage in consulting simultaneously the original Index, as it is more particularly analytical. An Essay upon the Soul and In- stinct forms a part of the Appendix. New York, Novemhei-^ 1857. PKEFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. The Supplement which is added to the present edition embraces observations that go to corroborate some of the Author's principal views in medical philosophy ; but he is not aware of any discoveries in Physiology, or of any new facts in Pathology, or of any improve- ments in Therapeutics since the late edition to affect adversely any of his doctrines. Indeed, as a work of principles, and as a consistent whole, should any doctrine of importance be shown to be fallacious, the entire fabric must be abandoned. But if, on the contrary, its principles be foimded in Nature, they can not be affected by any fu- ture accumulation of facts — no more than the law of gravitation was rendered more absolute by the successful calculation of the periodic time of Halley's comet. That achievement was simply a corrobora- tion of a great discovery. It is of no importance, therefore, to the essential objects of this work to mtroduce new discoveries till some one or more may present themselves, that, Hke chlorine, iodine, &c., in their relation to Lavoisier's theories of oxygen, shall invalidate the system of medical philosophy herein embraced ; by which the Author means such facts as can be undeniably shown to contradict that phi- losophy. This, it is true, will appear strange to those (and of such there are many) who look upon principles as "liable to exceptions" — as having no stability — exposed to daily fluctuations — as consisting •even of isolated facts ; such philosophers, particularly, as see no dis- crepancy between the conflicting laws of organic and inorganic be- ings, and who, therefore, are ever ready to engraft them mdiscrim- inately upon organic philosophy, or as one or the other may have its chance in the irresistible pronimciations of organic life, or in the spu- rious analogies of simple matter. To muiltiply facts in this work which merely contribute to the validity of its principles, or to incor- porate others that may be speciously arrayed against those principles, would constitute a defect for the most ordinary criticism. Never- theless, some things, both of the former and latter nature, have been admitted into the Appendix, although precisely parallel facts occur in the body of the work. But they were said to be new, and the Author yielded to this general belief, though he concedes that the facts are more fully displayed in the latter than in the former cases, and that he therefore contemplated an advantage from their corrob- orating effect. But their exclusion would not have otherwise affected the work, though it might have been regarded by some as a defect. The same may be also afiirmed of the Supplement, where, for exam- ple, some late observations relative to absorption by the intestinal villi are stated, although they simply confirm what had been long ago ascertained ; but they are more precise and complete, and place the doctrine in these Institutes beyond question.. New York, August, 1859. PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION. A CAREFUL, attention lias been bestowed upon this sixth edition, as will be sufficiently manifest in the numerous references which have been added to the sections wherever the subjects under consideration are allied to other parts of the work and may derive illustration through this re- lationship. These new references (which occupy mostly the former va- cant spaces at the end of sentences) are prospective as well as retro- spective, and amount to more than seventeen hundred ; and the Indexes have been improved in a similar manner. The Author has also en- deavored to simplify the exposition of some of the most difficult prob- lems, and to thus render them of more easy comprehension by the young medical student. For this purpose he could have equally desired great- er amplification, and especially to protect himself against misapprehen- sion or misrepresentation (from the latter of which, however, he is not so unwise as to hope for escape) ; but the vastness of the field, the immensity of the labyrinth which he has explored, has rendered it necessary to em- ploy as much brevity xis such variety and intricacies would admit, and he has considered it most expedient to carry into the Appendix and Supplement the same compactness that characterizes the body of the work. Of the Supplement it is said that "it is very brief, but speaks a volume." But whatever advantages in respect to detail and perspicuity may at- tend a work upon the principles of medicine as founded in Nature, it -can have but little chance with other systems unless the student be ambitious of knowledge, and disposed to grapple at the very beginning of his career with the difficulties of truth as distinguished from the fascinating sim- plicity of error. The latter once impressed upon his imagination, or once productive of mental indolence, fetters his aspirations and decides his destiny. Hence the incalculable importance of a right beginning. Whatever the apparent obstacles, they may be soon surmounted. The task will have been the best possible mental discipline for the young in- quirer. He will have learned the important art of thinking for himself; and when once inducted into the true philosophy of medicine he can not help thinking, and into the very depths of that philosophy. He will have also shielded himself against the seductions of artificial systems. He will quickly distinguish what is true in Nature from factitious analogies. He is not, however, to be discouraged from informing himself of spurious doctrines ; and with this object in view the Author of these Institutes has incorporated in the work a copious exposition of the offsprings of X PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION. error. But, as he has also endeavored to indicate their fallacies, the student has the double advantage of learning the inventions of art and at the same time the infirmities which are so apt to commend them to our natural indolence. The Author's method, therefore, if he be right in his premises, is not open to the objection alleged by Burke (but on the contrary defeats it), that — " When education takes in error as a part of its system there is no doubt that it will operate with abundant ener- gy and to an extent indefinite." ' Much has been recently said by a few writers upon the recuperative law of Nature, and presented in such a manner as to convey an impres- sion that now, for the first time, the old doctrine of the vis medicatrix na- turce has been distinctly announced. The Orator, for example, of the Lon- don Hunterian Society for the present year remarks that — " From time immemorial the professors of the healing art, with one or two exceptions, seem to have known nothing of the course and termination of diseases, save in connection with, and as modified by, special therapeutical agents. Nearly all their reasoning upon the action of medicines has, in conse- quence, been based upon comparisons of one method of treatment with another. They seem never to have thought of taking as the basis of their reasoning the curative resources of Nature herself, as ascertained by study of the natural course of disease." It is evident that they who have lately written in the foregoing man- ner have had their attention divei'ted from Hippocrates, Celsus, Galen, &c., and if they will turn to the mottoes at page 661 of this work they will find that those early masters '•' took as the basis of their reasoning" what is supposed to be of such very recent origin. And the Author of these Institutes, unwilling to be excluded, may be permitted lo assure these reformers that throughout the work he has " taken as the basis of his reasoning the curative resources of Nature herself, as ascertained by study of the natural course of disease." It is the absolute foundation of all his Therapeutics, and the foi'egoing mottoes were employed to in- dicate the fact. But these reformers have, also, nearly as large a reli- ance upon Nature as the homoeopath, Avith much less regard for the noble science, and appear to be of Magendie's opinion that "the nurse can prescribe equally well"' (§ 744) ; and perhaps this may be what is intended by claiming for the honor of the present age the discovery of the 175 medicatrix natwce. In that aspect of the subject the Author of these Institutes does not sympathize (excepting as it respects a few " self- limited" diseases, and multitudinous cases in which there is no pi'ofound derangement, results of mechanical injuries, «fcc.), although he endeavors to expose the errors of excessive medication, and agrees with the abo7'- tive disciples of Nature that wherever this practice obtains (as it does with the mass of the profession) the whole work of cure is supposed to devolve upon art; and this, he maintains, is the inevitable effect of the chemical and Immoral doctrines. PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITIOIS". XI Nature, in the foregoing sense, is nothing but a system of laws, a proper conformity with which is as much at the foundation of therapeutics as of hygiene. The physician, tlierefore, should be alone employed in applying to his use the laws by which organic beings are governed. A A'ital principle, or vital force (as may be preferred), in connection with organic structure, forms the basis of those laws. Such i§ a glance at some of the objects of this work, and to which the Author invites especially the impartial attention of the young student of medicine, and with the assurance that he will meet with no timid or un- fair concealment of doctrines that ai-e opposed to those of the Institutes. There remains to be noticed what may seem to be an isolated subject, but which is essentially relative to physiology — the essay upon the Soul and Instinctive Principle (incorporated in the Appendix), in which the Author endeavors to demonstrate the substantive existence and self-act- ing nature of the Soul and Instinct upon strictly physiological principles. If this have been accomplished by the Author, who believes the demon- stration to be conclusive, then is there an end to materialism ; and even he who doubts not the probabilities of the metaphysical inductions, or relies with greater confidence upon Revelation, must realize a new sat- isfaction in that tangible proof which no ingenuity can invalidate, no misrepresentation pervert, and no sophistry evade. As to the Author's reference to his essay upon " Theoretical Geology" (p. 908, 927), it will be seen that the work embraces many facts that are allied to organic philosophy ; but it is now his object to state that the discussion proceeds upon recognized grounds in natural philosophy, chem- istry, geology, &c., and without departing from the rules j)rescribed by " positive science ;" and as the Author's aim is simply the development of truth, he entertains the hope that the essay may be scrutinized accord- ing to its supposed philosophical premises. The issue must ultimately turn upon this mode of investigation, not upon the usual ground of geo- logical hypotheses, which, indeed, are the veiy things in question. It must be decided in tTie open field of those various sciences which consti- tute the physiology of Nature ; since the near aflSnities among the facts in geology constantly bring them under the collective interpretation of the different departments of knowledge, and no one who has not direct- ed his attention to the whole circle of the sciences is qualified to grapple with the subject. New York, September, 1860. PEEFACE TO THE EIGHTH EDITION. A SEVENTH edition of this work was published in 1861, which, as stated in a Preface, " is distinguished from the preceding editions by the addition of several brief foot-notes and some other improve- ments." In 1862 appeared another edition, but under the designa- tion of the seventh edition, though distinguished from that by the addition of twenty pages of Notes appended at the end of the Sec- ond Index^ and by frequent references to them in the text, and also by the addition of several brief foot-notes, and by many references to sections throughout the work. Doubtless it had been better to have entitled that edition the eighth. The present edition is distinguished from the last particularly by an extension of the Notes at the end of the Second Index, and by numerous references to them in the text. Several of the former Prefaces are reproduced as memoranda of the progressive condition of the work. In the Preface to the seventh edition, which is now omitted, there occurs the following explanatory statement: "The fiuthor embraces this opportunity to say (what may not be obvious to all) that the fractions which appear in many of the numerical des- ignations of the sections, as § 303^ «, are intended for sections that were made after the original completion of the manuscript, by which the labor of a revision of the entire work was saved. The addition of letters to a series of figures of the same denomination indicates distinct sections, but that they are either closely allied, or are intend- ed as substitutes for fractional parts." New York, 1865. PEEFACE TO THE NINTH EDITION An Eighth Edition Revised of this Avork was published in 1867 and 1868, in which improvements were introduced. The present or Ninth Edition has also been carefully revised, and, although the text has been in no essential respect altered, some notes have been added. The Author, in concluding this brief Preface, thinks it but just to himself to say that during the fifty-four years of his professional life he has at no time intermitted his professional labors, either sci- entific or practical, and that, therefore, he does not offer this new edition of his work in ignorance of the latest contributions to med- icine, or when it might be supposed that his interest in the great subject Avas not as ardent as ever. New York, 1870. TABLE OF CONTENTS. PRELIMINARY REMARKS PHYSIOLOGY Composition Structure Vital Principle and its Properties . . . . Vital Principle .... Irritability Scjisibility Mobility Vital Affinity Vivification Nervous Power .... General Remarks upon the Philosophy of Life . The Mind and Instinct, and their Properties Functions, Co.mmon Motion Absorption Assimilation Distributio7i Appropriation Excretion Calorification Gcjieration Functions, Peculiar . . . Sensation Sympathy Its general relations to the nervous system . Experiments illustrative of Varieties or kinds of. . Laws of, applied patho- logically and therapeu- tically . .... In its relation to special tissues and organs Relative to the Mental Prin- ciple and Instinct . Vital Habit Age Infancy Childhood Youth Manhood Old Age Temperament, Constitu- tion, Idiosyncrasy . The Sanguine . The Melancholic The Choleric . The Phlegmatic The Nervous . 1-15 15^12 23-49 50-73 73-125 73-89 89-100 100-103 103, 104 105 105 106-111 111-122 122-125 125-280 126-128 128-134 134 207-217 217-227 227-234 234-279 279, 280 280-362 280-283 283-362 284-295 295-321 321-335 335-353 353-362 382 363-372 373-383 373-375 375, 376 376-380 380,381 382, 383 383-391 386, 387 387-389 389 389, 390 390 Physiology — continued. Races of Mankind .... 391-393 Sex 393,394 Climate 394-396 Habits AND Usages . . . 396,397 Relations of Organic Be- ings to External Ob- jects 398-400 Death 401-404 Summary Conclusion in Physiology, or its Uni- ty OF Design .... 405-412 PATHOLOGY 413-540 Remote Causes .... 414-427 Pathological or Proximate Cause 427-434 Symptoms 134-455 The Pulse , 443^48 The Tongue 448^50 Secretions and Excretions . 450-455 Morbid Anatomy .... 456-463 Inflammation 464-489 Description of 464-480 Remote Causes of . . . 480, 48 1 Pathological Cause of . . 482-489 Active and Passive . . . 486-489 Fever 489-499 Description of 489-497 Remote Causes of . . . 497-498 Pathological Cause of . . 498-499 Venous Congestion . . . 500-513 Humoralism 514-540 THERAPEUTICS .... 541-777 General Consideration of 541-563 Cathartics 563-570 Astringents 570-578 Tonics and Diffusible Stim- ulants 583-590 Antispasmodics 590-593 Cinchona, and its Alka- loids 593-607 Arsenic 607-612 Iodine 612-620 Ergot 620-628 Emmenagogues 628, 629 Diuretics 630-633 Expectorants 633-642 Counter-irritants . . . 642-660 Remedial Action, its Gen- eral Philosophy . . . 661-689 The Seton ...... 679-681 Local Sedatives, Warm Poultices, <^c 681-683 Genito-urinary Agents . . 683-689 Uterine Agents .... 683-C8i) Tlierapeulics — continued. Bloodletting 690-777 Leeching 692-698 General BloodleUins- ■ . ■ 698-702 TABLE OF CONTENTS. P.ige Therapeutics — continued. Bloodletting — continued. Simple Intermittent Fe- ver 736-739 Cuvving 702-703 | In the Cpld Stage of Fever 739-741 The Nervous Power in its In Apoplectic Affections . . 741-747 Relation to the Effects of I Expericjice and Opinions of distinguished Physiciayis as to Bloodletting in In- flammatory, Congestive, and Febrile Diseases . . 747-766 In the Diseases of Infancy and Old Age .... 768-770 Spontaneous Hemorrhage . 770-772 Misapplied and Excessive . 772-776 General Conclusions as to . IIQ-ITI Loss of Blood .... 703-711 General and Practical Obser- vations upon .... 711-777 General Extent of Bloodlet- ting 711-724 In Congestive Fevers . . 724-732 7?* the recognized Forms of Iiiflammation .... 732-736 In Simple Continued and CONTENTS OF APPENDIX. Progress of Physiological and Pathological Chemistry .... 779-802 Production of AnIiMal Sugar 783-794 Progress of Physiology 801-816 Structure of Organs 801-803 Of the Spinal Cord 802-803 The Nervous Power and Organic Properties 803-806 Animal Heat in its connexion with the Nervous System 807-812 The Primordial Cell 812-814 The Boundary-line between Animals and Plants 815 Hybrid Animals 816 Absorption and Circulation in Plants 817-824 Experiments to ascertain whether the quantity of Blood circulat- ing IN the Brain may be reduced artificially 824-828 Sedatives — a farther exposition of their uses and of the philosophy relative to their effects 828-835 Alteratives — their uses and mode of action considered practically, &c. . 835-851 Jalap, p. 851-853 — Saline Cathartics, p. 853-854 — Rhubarb, Scammony, Aloes, Colocynth, Senna, Colchicum, p. 855-862. Of the action of Chloroform and analogous agents in producing Insensibility when inhaled 862-864 Oi'' the Influence of the Mind upon the Action of Remedial Agents 865-868 Have Diseases undergone Changes of Type within the last forty Years, or have new ones appeared 1 868-872 Physiology of the Soul and Instinct, or Demonstration of their substantive existence and self-acting nature 873-911 Rights of Authors 912-920 SUPPLEMENT. Correlation of Forces. — The Glycogenic Function of the Liver. — The Cause of the Blood's Fluidity. — Modus Operandi of Remedies. — Absorption by the Skin. — Transfusion of Remedies. — Intestinal Absorption and Lacteal Circula- tion. — The Forces which circulate the Blood 921 Indexes 935 Notes 1111 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. PRELIMINARY REMARKS. " Until it is proved that the forces which, in a living body, interrupt the play of the natu- ral chemical affinities, maintain a proper temperature, and preside over the various actions of organic and animal life, are analogous to those admitted by natural philosophy, we shall act consistently with the principles of that science, by giving distinct names to THESE TWO KINDS OF FORCES,* and employing ourselves in calculating the different LAWS they OBEr." — Andral's Pathological Anatomy. See, also, Medical and Physio- logical Commentaries, vol. i., p. 626-632. " Our notion of life involves something more than mere reproduction, namely, the idea of an ACTIVE POWER, exercised by virtue of a definite foiTn, and production and genera- tion in a definite form. The production of organs, the co-operation of a system of organs, and their power not only to produce their component parts from the food presented to them, but to generate themselves in their original fonn and with their properties, are characters belonging exclusively to organic life, and constitute a form of reproduction in- dependent OF CHEMICAL POWERS. This VITAL PRINCIPLE Is Only known to us through the peculiar form of its instroments ; that is, through the organs in which it resides. Its LAW'S must be investigated just as we investigate those of the other powers which EFFECT MOTION AND CHANGES IN MATTER." — Liebig's Organic Chemistry applied to Physiology, p. 355. "Simple views, whether of health or disease, however ingenious, can seldom be just. They have their origin in the spirit of system, not in the careful study and faithful ena- meration of the complicated circumstances which concur in the production of all vital phe- nomena." — Thompson, on Infiamination. 1, a. SoLiDisM and vitalism will form the basis of these Institutes. If consistent in all their parts, without a violation of facts, it is, frima facie, a proof of their foundation in Nature. To show this consist- ency, and to develop the great principles and laws of organic beings, and erect a substantial fabric of Institutes which shall guide the hand of art, we must ascend, progressively, along the fundamental facts in physiology, pathology, and therapeutics ; till, at last, we proceed to convert the great system to practical uses, in the preservation of health, and a just, intelligible, and philosophical application of the materia medica to morbid states of the body. To render this work, therefore, most practical, and to simplify as far as possible the highest department of knowledge, I shall adopt an analytical method. I have also endeavored to arrange the various topics in their most natural order, or as each successive one may ap- pear to emanate from, or to depend upon, the preceding. The stu- dent, therefore, to understand the last, must comprehend all the pre- ceding, and so of each in succession. We have thus a connected link throughout; a difficult achievement, and the more difficult as it is the first effort that has been made to present the natural relations of my . whole subject in their just order, to point out the affinities, and to ex- hibit throughout the important laws and essential foundations of vital- ism and solidism, and to maintain throughout a consistency of facts and of laws that shall stamp the whole as the PJiilosopJiy of Medicine. In making this claim for the Institutes, I am prepared, as in the case of the Commentaries, to invite the most rigid scrutiny.* If there be any where a collision in principles or iacts, or any contradictions of myself, let them be pointed out. My aim is truth, and I desire * Medical and Physiological Commentaries, New York, 1840. A 3 INSTITL'TE.S OF MEDICINE. nothing for myself Avliich I do not yield to others. If there be minor imperfections I would gladly know them. Many of the original doc- trines which appear in this work are presented in various connections in the ISIedical and Physiological Commentaries. The spirit of the Commentaries will pen'ade the Institutes, as being, in my judgment, the only stable foundation.* 1, b. In the farther prosecution of this work it will still be my object to speak of such errors as have usurped the rights or blighted the interests of rational medicine. It is not now the time for a simple expression of facts, of experience, and of philosophical doctrines. The errors which surround, them must be also exposed and refuted, or the foe of truth, or the ambitious aspirant, or the lover of indolence, will gain something from an indulgence which they know how to seek and appi'opriate. Nor is any one more aware of the tendencies of free discussion or unsparing of physiologists than he who has been most successful in the propagation of error, or who would sooner stifle inquiry into factitious systems. Thus, it is said by Liebig, that " It is too frequently forgotten by physiologists that their duty really is, not to refute the experiments of others, nor to show that they arc erroneous, but to discover tnith, and that alone." — Lieeig's Organic Chemistry applied to Physiology, Sfc. Now this obvious sophistry betrays its motive, since it is utterly at variance with the habits of him who would enjoin the fiction upon others. Truth should be, indeed, the ultimate object of pursuit ; but the first and most important step toward its attainment is the removal of obstacles that may lie in its way (§ 820). It is allowed, indeed, by one of Liebig's most zealous advocates, the editor of the London Lancet, that " the removal of error claims a place next to the establish- ment of truth" (Dec, 1S44); and it has grown into a proverb, that " it is more difficult to subdue a prejudice than to build a pyramid." Although, therefore, the contemplated method must be sometimes arorumentative and controversial, it has the advantage of leading more immediately to a knowledge of the truth upon disputed questions, than any other which is not demonstrative. There can be no doubt, indeed, that the "establishment of truth" in medical philosophy can be effected only by a simultaneous refutation of the errors which sur- round it. The mind will not surrender a favorite doctrine, however false, to the force of truth alone. Even its practical disasters, as we every where witness, are an inadequate demonstration. But, when error and truth are presented in forcible contrast, it is the pride of reason to embrace the latter. AVhat is also important, the reader will have been presented, as in the Commentaries, with the great rival doctrines in medicine, and in their proper relations to each other (§ 3501). 2, a. The Institutes of Medicine are natural inductions of principles and laws from the healthy and morbid phenomena of living beings. They relate to Physioloory, Patholog}', and Therapeutics, and to noth- ing else. All other systems, therefore, must be spurious. The sub- stitutes have no depth, no principle, no laws, and are recommended alone by their naked simplicity. "Gentlemen," says Bacon, "nature is a labyrinth, in which tlie very haste with which you move will make you lose your way." 2, h. The immediate objects of physiology are a critical analysis of * Tbe autlior has seen no reason to modifj- this statement, made more than twenty A-ears ago — 1870. PBELLMINAKY REMARKS. 3 the vital conditions and results of organic beings, as manifested in different organs, and in tbeir relations to each other. It contemplates organic nature, therefore, in its natural state ; and the laws which it obeys are its highest end. Patholog^y is to the physician the oreat final object of physiology. It investigates the causes which disturb the physiological conditions, and inquires into the phenomena, and the nature of the vital and structural changes. These, in connection, form the ground-work of Therapeutics, which considers the indica- tions to be fulfilled, and the means and the manner by which they are to be accomplished, and nature thus aided in the process of cure. The Materia Medica comes last, and is the subordinate object of all the rest. It investigates the composition and physical character of the material objects by which the therapeutical intentions are fulfilled, and interrogates especially their relations, as vital and alterative agents, to pathological conditions. Disease, being a modification of the phys- iological or natural condition, produces new relations between the properties of life and the natural, morbific, and remedial agents; and these are ascertained by observation of their effects upon morbid states alone. It is thus that remedies become beneficial when thev would be morbific in health; and what is salubrious in health is ren- dered morbific by diseased conditions. The principle is in beautiful harmony %vith the instability of the vital properties ; and the final cause of this instability is the preservation of organic being (^ 133, c, 153-156, 63S). 2, c. Nevertheless, each of the four great departments of medicine possesses so many peculiar characters that they may be severally con- sidered as constituting, to a large extent, distinct parts of one great symmetrical whole (^ 83, c). Pathological conditions could never have been inferred, a priori^ from any extent of physiological inquiries, nor could the effects of therapeutical agents, or the natural termina- tion of disease in health or in death, from any knowledge of anatomy, physiology, or pathology. The whole is originally the Avork of ob- servation ; and we come to learn the relations of the four great branches of medicine by comparing the phenomena which are pre- sented under the various conditions of health and disease, and as these phenomena may be affected by artificial influences. Anatomy, however, affords no such standard of comparison. And yet it is obvious, as will more distinctly appear hereafter (§ 83-163), that anatomy is the basis of medicine. It is, however, of the svstem of organic life that I mainly speak. All, at least, that is superficial in animal life, the voluntary- muscles, &c., abstracted from their rela- tions to the organic condition, belongs to the domain of surgerv, and is, therefore, of little importance to the physician. 2, d. XotAvithstanding, therefore, the foregoing qualifications, it Avill be seen, in our inquiries into the great fundamental points, that the science of medicine is, throughout, a perfectly connected chain ; beginning with the laws which govern the modes in which the ele- ments of matter are combined in org^anic beingfs, — advancingr to the union of organic compounds mto cells and tissues, — to the laws which respect the various processes which are conducted by these tissues, and by the organs into which they are combined, — to those laws as affected by the contingencies of disease, — and, lastly, to the laws which regulate the changes through which the morbid statPK return tc 4 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. the natural conditions of life. All are connected together by intimate dependencies, and are determined by the natural or by the varying states of the vital properties in their operation through material parts. The ground-work of the whole is, evidently, perfectly simple ; since the laws by which the whole is regulated are established upon the constitution of the organic properties (§ 169,^ 638). 2, e. To the eye of the philosopher, therefore. Nature, in her or- ganic department, as in every other, appears in an aspect of astonish- ing simplicity, when he contrasts her forces and laws with the diver sity of their phenomena; nor does he confound the principles and laws which distinguish the different departments of nature. To every other eye the phenomena of life appear confused, and seem referable to no common powers or laws. But he who has obtained the key to the true philosophy of life, by a wide observation of nature, lays open at once the apparent secrets of all its results, whether in health or disease. Whatever he sees has its individuality, and stands in re- lief from all the rest. He knows at a glance from whelice this or that springs, how it is related to others, and he traces the whole directly up to a few simple principles. To all but such an eye, however, the phenomena of life, and more especially of life diseased, appear as does a field to all but the botanist. The common observer sees nothing but a confused assemblage of grasses, and probably will tell you there is but one species where the botanist will as instantly discover fifty. Each species has to the latter a distinct individuality, and he cannot regard them in that state of confusion which is seen by the ignorant. He has studied each plant, knows its specific characters, its relations to others, its habits, &c. By these modes of observation he has also acquired the knowledge that nature has pursued a common plan of organization, and linked the whole, by close analogies, throughout the vegetable kingdom. Were the botanist, therefore, to range simulta- neously among the 100,000 species of plants, he would see nothing but individuality, and the greatest simplicity in the principles upon which the whole are constituted. And just so it is with a philosophi- cal observation of the healthy and morbid phenomena of the animal kingdom. 3, The organic and inorganic kingdoms have, respectively, their peculiar properties and laws. Such as appertain to life, in its nat- ural, as well as morbid aspects, are denoted by an incomparably greater variety of phenomena than those of the external world ; and as their only intelligible foundation is the phenomena evinced, we attain our knowledge of either according to the extent and variety of the phenomena. We know nothing more of matter itself. Without a comprehensive knowledge of the properties and func- tions of living beings, and especially of the laws by which they are governed in their healthy and morbid states, the practice of medicine is mere empyricism. The ignorant, alone, undei-value causes and piinciples, and depend upon unconnected facts. 4, a. In medicine, therefore, we must concern ourselves with some- thing besides effects. We must understand the laws under which they take place, and, as far as possible, trace up the effects to the pri- mary causes. This is always done in other sciences and in the arts. Why, then, should it be neglected in that science whose practical ap- plication relates to the highest welfare of man? PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 5 The human mind will have its theories upon all subjects ; and cho whole history of medicine is a perpetual exemplification that in no inquiries do theory and hypothesis abound so universally as in the healing art (§ 819, 960). This arises, m part, from the intricacies of the subject, but mostly so from the constitution of the mind itself. The Almighty designed it for theoretical conclusions, and set us the example in those stupendous theories upon which the universe, and all it contains, are founded. And what else are, or should be, our inquiries and our theories, than finding out and adopting those of which He is the author ] What other theory in the natural world can there be than such as are instituted by the Almighty Being? And shall we hesitate to embrace, and to act upon such theories'? And yet it is one of the pretended improvements of the day to insist upon nothing but facts, and to denounce all principles in medicine ; as if the Almighty had not ordained principles and laws as well as facts, which are mere emanations from the former. 4, h. The ignorant pretender will tell us that all this is unimport- ant ; though no one is so much directed by hypothesis, or theory, as this very pretender himself (§ 884). Does not every empiric in the land prescribe his drastic cathartics for the purpose of cleansing the blood of its supposed impurities % Are they not exactly on a par, in their doctrines, and in their practice, with the most speculative of our enlightened humoralists % Nay, have the ignorant portion of that sect, our Brandreths, our Morrisons, et id oinne genus, any reference v^rhatever to facts or experience % Is it not all hypothesis, and, there- fore, all a reckless waste of human life \ Mount up the scale, and you shall find at every step of your ascent, from him who prowls about the outskirts of the profession, to him who directs the all-potent drug with the most consummate skill, that each and all rely mainly upon their conceptions of the philosophy of disease. But you shall also find, that in proportion as Nature has been taken for their guide, and as medical principles are founded upon the absolute phenomena of life, in their healthy and morbid aspects, there will always be the greatest reference to facts and experience. Hence, again, the importance of looking Avell to our theories, and of seeing that they are established on well-grounded facts, or on the analogy to which they conduct us. Could we, as we cannot, direct the treatment of disease without principles, we never should ; and it should therefore be the business of the practitioner to enlighten his mind upon the philosophy of medicine, or his unavoidable disposition to theorize may prove a scourge to mankind. Of this, indeed, the records of medicine abound with examples (§ 801, h, 819, &c., 960, 1005, 1068).— Notes F p. 1114, Ee p. 1133, Ff p. 1135, Gg p. 1138. It will therefore be my agreeable task to expose, in these Insti- tutes, the fallacies of the prevailing physical doctrines of life and dis- ease, as well as to inculcate principles which exalt our science above the mere world of matter, render it consistent in all its details, and present it to the profession as a department of knowledge fundament- ally distinct from all other pursuits. — See Rights &c. p. 912. Differences of opinion on questions of great moment to mankind are apt to be strongly conveyed, and apparent error to be censured in no measured terms. This, perhaps, is often admissible, considering the obstinacy of error, and so long as it is the doctrine, and not its au- 6 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. tiior, which is assailed. We may revere the names of Voltaire, of Hume, and of Gibbon, yield them a proud rank in the scale of intel- lect, and gratefully acknowledge the rich legacies they have left be- hind. But, who of us would hesitate to speak of their infidelity ac- cording to its nature and tendencies 1 This is even demanded by what we believe of the jarecepts of religion. And so of the principlen of medicine, which hold as high a relation to the temporal interests of man as do the precepts of religion to his spiritual welfare. The high- est order of intellect is often devoted to the dissemination of error, and perhaps more frequently in religion and medicine than in any other of the great interests of mankind. This must be fully and firm- ly met, not only by evidences of the truth, but by an exposure of its perversions and cori'uptions. 4^, a. The physiological world has been lately divided into three schools. One of these sects virtually regards organic nature as a part only of inorganic, endowed with the same properties and governed by the same laws. It maintains, in short, that there is no essential dif- ference between a man and a stone. At the head of this school stands Liebig, the distinguished and able chemist. It is a great and power- ful school, but is falling, daily, beneath the weight of its vast ei'rors and corruptions. It is denominated the chemical school of medicine. 4|, h. Contrasted with this is the school of vitalism, which regards organic and inorganic nature as distinct in their most essential attri- butes. It supposes that each department is governed by properties and laws peculiar to itself. It regards the organic being as funda- mentally distinct from the inorganic in its elementary constitution, in the aggregation of its molecules, in the structure of its parts, in its condition as a whole, and in every phenomenon which it evinces. It sees design in every part of the living being — eloquent even in the dry bones of a skeleton ; a design peculiar to every part, while all concur together to the common ends of the more universal designs of procuring the means of sustenance, of maintaining life, of perpetua- ting the species, &c. On the other hand, this school discerns no cor- responding design in the constitution, or in the condition of inor- ganic matter. It sees nothing here but mere vis inertice, which, however, is supposed by the chemical school to be capable of evolv- ing from simjjle matter every variety of organization, with all its spe- cific designs, even instinct and reason, while, at the same time, we hear from the depth of materialism that " organic nature is the mys- tery of mysteries" — the Creator being the only "mystery" about it. Again, the vitalists, in consideration of the facts now stated, main- tain, in the language of Liebig, the gi-eat head of the school of mere physics, " the existence of a principle distinct from all other powers of nature, namely, a vital principle ;^^ which organizes and governs all living beings, and which is the fundamental cause of all their phe- nomena in health and disease. I say, in the language of Liebig, "a principle distinct from all other powers of nature ;" for this mere chemist, in his conflicts with living nature, concedes the existence of such a principle as at the foundation of all vital phenomena, yet, in the same general manner, and on all specific questions where he had introduced its direct and exclusive agency, he as unequivocally de- clares that there is no such principle, and that every result of life and disease, even thought itself, are entirely owing to chemical agenciesi PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 7 His whole system, as set forth in his " Organic Chemistry applied to Physiology," and in his "Animal Chemistry" as applied to Pathol- ogy and Therapeutics, is a tissue of similar contradictions, and of the boldest assumptions. Yet, with deep mortification I say it, he has been hailed with an enthusiasm before unknown in the annals of med- icine, as the only true expounder of physiology and of medical phi- losoph3^ The world, however, is fast awaking from its spell-bound delusion, and the doctrines of this " reformer" will soon be mingled with the same and more original chimeras which did their part in "the dark ages of science" (§ 350, 1029, 1030, 1034). 41, c. Finally, the third school, or that of chemico-vitalism, en- deavors to form, as it were, a bond of union between the schools of pure vitalism, and of pure chemistry ; though such an alliance be as unnatural as human brains in a block of granite. The chemico-phys- iologist makes a compromise with philosoj^hy, and takes for his rule " in medio tutissivius ihis.'" It is as regardless as the school of pure chemistry of the universal consent with which physiology has been hitherto restricted to the condition, functions, results, and laws of liv- ing beings, and chemistry to the condition and laws of dead matter. This school, therefore, mingles the doctrines of vitalism and chemis- try ; allotting to the former one half of the phenomena of life, and the other half to the latter. This is the school to which the young student has the greatest chance of becoming the victim; for it is apparently recommended by the conciliatory principle which I have stated in the form of its motto, and by many of the most distinguished members of our profession. 4^, d. I have said that it is a remarkable characteristic of the medi- cal school of pure chemistry, that its doctrines are in perfect conflict with each other, as shown in a work (Liebig's "Animal Chemistry") which is assumed as the basis of the chemical philosophy of life — as the great foundation on which the school itself has been erected. And how could it be otherwise, seeing that this school, and this writer, are constantly employed about two subjects which have no affinities ; that is to say, the philosophy of life and the philosophy of chemistry? I shall think it of sufficient importance to substantiate the foregoing fact by many proofs in the course of this work ; and, as an example of the whole, I shall adduce the contradictory views which are put forth upon the most important principles which lie at the foundation of organic life, and at the basis of medical science. On the very subject of a vital principle itself the genius of the school is as flatly contra- dictory as on the most unimportant doctrine ; for at one moment he avows the existence of such a principle " distinct from all other pow- ers of nature," and calls it "the vital principle," which, he says, gov- erns all the processes of living beings (§ 59, 60), and at the next moment he asserts that, " in the animal body we recognize, as the ultimate CAUSE OF ALL FORCE, Only ONE CAUSE, the clicmical action which the elements of the food and the oxygen of the air mutually exercise on each other. The only known ultimate cause of vital force, either in animals or in plants, is a chemical process T He renders, as will be seen by ensuing quotations (§ 350), what he assumes as an original fundamental cause of life the indispensable source of another cause, which he avows to be equally original and fimdamental ; and what is yet more indicative of the chaotic state of INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. the chemical speculations relative to living beings, this author (as I have shown in the Medical and Physiological Commentaries of many others) assumes, at one time, the chemical force to be the sole cause of all vital processes and results, while, at another time, he regards the vital principle as the only power concerned in the same phenomena. It will be gratifying to curiosity, for example, to observe how Liebig entangles his reader, as it respects the physiology of digestion, by making that process to depend on a purely chemical action, and to evolve that vital principle which he as unequivocally declares to be the only power concerned in chymification (§ 350, nos. 3, 17, 51, 58). 5. Chemical and mechanical philosophy, as we have already seen, are strangers to the philosophy of medicine. There is a natural con- flict between the subjects of each. They have no relationship, no sym- pathies, but caiTy on a pei-petual hostility. The organic being is for- ever converting to its own uses the inorganic, and changing its very nature into its own. The inorganic is fruitless in resistance and in assault, till the former is passive. It then lays waste the fabric by which it had been wrought into a great system of designs, and de- gi'ades the whole to its own level. Chemistry, therefore, begins where physiology ends ; and physiology begins with organic influences upon the elements of matter, or where chemistry leaves off". No depart- ment of medicine has any thing to hope from chemistry beyond its power of analysis (§ 1029, 1030). And yet do the labors of chemists aspire at a substitution of the ever-fluctuating principles of chemical science for all that has been hitherto founded upon the phenomena of life and disease. Their oft repeated effort to carry a science which is mainly analytical and me- chanical into that which is eminently intellectual and overflowing with the most sublime institutions, and distinguished by the most pro- found principles and laws of nature, and therefore seductive to an am- bition which is restif under the practical manipulations of the labor- atory, would raise no inquiry as to motive, or end, did not the proper guardians of the science not only abandon their old and rich dom.ain at the very approach of the enemy, but, with most unnatural distrust of self, invite the destroyer (§ 349, d, 433, p. 719, § 960, a). The late publication of Liebig's "Animal Chemistry" has abund- antly proved the truth of what I sufficiently established in the '• Med- ical and Physiological Commentaries," that the recent application of chemistry to physiology and medicine is not a partial, but a complete substitution of that science. In justification of all this, we are now told that the means of investigation, of analysis, and of creation, have received an extension of which our predecessors had no knowledge. Such, however, has always been the pretext of chemistry for its inva- sions upon the science of life. Take, for example, the words of Fourcroy, who wrote more than sixty years ago,*and who, like Lie- big and his school, attempted to substitute chemistry for physiology, and to rear up a fabi-ic of medicine upon that imaginary foundation ; and this, too, in the case of either of the masters, without having ever read a medical book, or having ever prescribed for a disease. The language of Fourcroy is exactly such as we now hear from the lips of Liebig and his followers ; who cheerfully allow that nothing flow- ed from the labors of Fourcroy to illuminate the dark ways of or- ganic life (§ 1029, 1080). * Now more than eighty years — 1870. PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 9 So identical are the language, and ambition, and hope or confi- dence, and the visionary speculations, of the older and recent chem- ists, that a space may be well assigned to this exposure of chemical pretensions. We read, then, in Fourcroy, what we read in the works of Liebig and his cotemporary chemists. Thus : " The errors of the chemical physicians of the last century, and the indifference many practitioners of the present time seem to have for chemistry, have produced a disadvantageous opinion in the minds of many persons, which time alone can remove. If the enthusiasm of those physicians, who cultivated chemistry, misled, them, it does not follow that any conclusion can be drawn from thence that may he ap- plied to the present time. The exactness which the moderns have introduced into every part of experimental philosophy ought to re- move the apprehensions of such as, for want of acquaintance with the subject, are apt to imagine that chemistry is still the dark, mysterious science it was a century ago." " It is chemistry alone that can throw any light on the composition of the fluids, and the changes they under- go by the processes that are carried on during life. We cannot avoid having recourse to this science, in our endeavors to discover the true mechanism of the animal functions ; the properties of the fluids separ- ated by the different viscera ; or the alterations such fluids undergo." ♦' It will be necessary to enlarge and multiply these researches on subjects of different age, size, and temperament, in various climates and seasons, and to pursue them among the different classes of ani- mals," &c. " We think it equally necessary to examine the solids, by chemical methods, as well in the sound as in the diseased state, and hy a comparison of their properties, endeavor to discover to which of the fluids they owe their formation ; and this being known, we may proceed to conjecture, in morbific dispositions, the solid or fluid that has suffered a change. " If it be thus established that the theory of medicine is capable of receiving the most essential advantages from chemistry, it is equally certain that the practice is no less in need of the same assistance ; since both must of necessity accompany each other, and are promoted by the same means." " Nothing can be more evident than that the choice of aliments, and of air, cannot be made with any certainty, but in consequence of chemical researches into the nature of foods, and the properties of the atmospheric fluid" (§ 18). — Fourcroy's Medical Chemistry, 1782.— Also, Appendix § 1028-1030, 1034, Lehmann. I have said, in the Commentaries, that " a prosperous harvest" was promised from Fourcroy's reformation. But, again I reiterate, where is the evidence ? since which time, also, chemistiy has made greater advances than any other science, has had its unmolested sway, and Fourcroy's example has been followed with a corresponding diligence. Can you point to a solitary instance in which organic chemistry, ex- cept in a negative sense, has advanced the science of life or disease ? Do not the veiy chemists of this day incidentally allow the perfectly abortive nature of their science in relation to physiology and medi- cine ] Consult the quotations in section 350, b, 1, &c., and 350^— 3503-. Or take the affirmations of the distinguished Mulder (§ 350f), which go, with the rest, to establish the truth of my former assertion, that " chemistry has been a perfect incubus upon medicine; and the time is not distant when it will have proved, by its own shotving, its want of 10 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. relation to our subject, if it have not done so already.'" — Commtat., voL i., p, 586, note. — See Appendix § 1028-1030. 5i, a. I agree with the chemical physiologist that "facts are slub- bovn things," and, with the analogy which reposes upon them, are at tV.e foundation of all philosophy ; but it does not equally follow that facts are always philosophically or even honestly applied, nor that he who devotes himself to the laboratory is the best qualified to apply his own facts to organic natui'e. " Wc can have no very high idea of experiments made by gentlemen," says Hunter, " who, for want of anatomical knowledge, have not been able to pursue their reasoninf even beyond the simple experiment itself" Least of all can the chemist be permitted to charge upon the vitalist a neglect of chemical facts ; since it is as well by these as by the phenomena of life that the vitalist overthrows the artificial system (§ S50-350|). Nor let it be forgotten that it is purely by an appeal to certain false analogies, and by a disregard of the phenomena of living beings, that the physical and chemical hypotheses of life and disease have obtained their ascendency (§ 733, d). All our theories and principles in medicine, it cannot be too often reiterated, should rest upon well-ascertained facts. The great diffi- culties with which truth has had to contend since the restoration of the proper method of observing nature consists in the mistaken nature of facts, or of false conclusions from admitted facts. What is often assumed to be fact is just otherwise, and, where the premises are sound, they have frequently led to spurious theories (§ 350^-3503, 433, &c., 493, 823, &c.). 5i, h. The phenomena of nature are the facts about which all phi- losophy is concerned, and therefore form the substantial ground of all intellectual acquirements. As they relate to organic beings, to their laws, their properties, their functions, whether morbid or healthy, they are to be found in the organic being himself, not in the work- shops of the chemist or of the mechanical philosopher. But, even where the mind admits this proposition, if prone to speculation, it too often regards each fact by itself, and rears up hypotheses wrong in themselves, and in conflict with each other. Facts should therefoi^e be compared before they are reduced to theory ; or, where they may conflict with acknowledged principles they should remain in an iso- lated state till their true nature may be better understood, or till the principles which they appear to contradict may be shown to be erro- neous. Should some fact, for example, appear to indicate the depend- ence of life upon chemical or any other physical forces, the evidence to the contrary is so various and conclusive, that that fact must be considered as deficient in some of its elements, which, if known, would readily bring it under a well-established principle in physiology. These absent elements are some other facts which escape our obser- vation ; and thus what is truly fact, in an abstract sense, is made the ground-work of important error. 5^, c. It is the peculiar misfortune of science to generalize too hastily ; and it often happens that the explosion, or the introduction, of one error, is the parent of many others. It is also astonishingly- true that a few phenomena are abstracted from the whole, of which they may bo only sequences of the others, and are made the ground of conflicting doctrines, and substitutes for the theories that are insli- PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 11 tuted upon the more fundamental facts ; and thus a blind disregard of consistency is permitted to prevail till a most incongruous series of assumptions, as in Liebig's Animal Chemistry, is presented to us as the science which Nature teaches. Again, there is a proneness of the human mind to admit of no real- ities but such as make a strong demonstration upon the senses; and hence it is that the physical and chemical philosophers of life prefer the facts of the laboratory to such as are supplied by organic beings. The former are therefore assumed as the foundation for principles and laws in physiology and medicine ; and when it is considered how large a proportion of mankind have not the ability to distinguish the true from the false, especially when the latter is set forth in a confi- dent and dogmatic manner, it ceases to be remarkable that what is comparatively simple, and comes plausibly recommended by the tangi- ble and visible attributes of matter, should command their confidence beyond those realities which can be appreciated only by an exercise of the understanding in connection with the revelations of sense, and which form the ground-work of principles of difficult penetration. There are few, indeed, who ai'e capable of reasoning beyond their senses and the facts themselves, and this is equally true of the chem- ist, both as to the facts of the laboratory and the phenomena of living beings, whenever he attempts an exposition of the properties and laws of a department of nature which lies not within his sphere of investi- gation. " Truth, whether in or out of fashion, is the measure of knowledge and the business of the understanding. Whatever is be- side that, however authorized by consent or recommended by variety, is nothing but ignorance or something worse'* (§ 1034). 5i, d. It cannot but be conceded, that, as knowledge advances, and the subjects of inquiry become more or less exhausted, ambition is likely to depart from an observation of nature to seek gratification and renown in artificial expedients. This is"" becoming a prevailing propensity in medicine; and many have left, and are leaving, the bul- wark of knowledge to rear up hypotheses upon distortions of nature, which, for their better success, they dignify by the name of " experi- mental philosophy" (§ 1085).— Note Pp p. 1142. 51, e. In medicine, at least, there is but one kind of experimental observation, which consists in the simple study of the phenomena of nature. Or, if art be applied to give them a fuller development, the means must be such as shall elicit results conformable to the institu- tions of nature. But aside from chemistry, it has been the fatality of the physiological department of medicine to have been encumbered with rude experiments, giving the wildest distortions to the features of nature. When we consider the wonderful susceptibility of the properties of life, how readily their actions and results are influenced by natural agents, how a drop of hydrocyanic acid, or of the alcoholic extract of nux vomica, applied to the tongue of an animal, will ex- tinguish life in an instant ; or that the same may be done by thrust- ing a needle into the medulla oblongata ; or how concentrated mias- ma may almost as instantly induce an attack of fever ; or how a little excess in eating may bring on an attack of apoplexy as immediately fatal as a blow on the region of the stomach — fatal, perhaps, in either case, as the aitillery of the clouds ; or how simple irritations of a nerve may be followed by death from tetanus ; or how all the veg- 12 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. etable and animal poisons, as well as all things else which do not pos- sess natural relations to the properties of life, will variously change those properties and all their results, — when, I say, we consider all these things, we may well imagine the difficulty of imitating nature by the most cautious experiments, or of developing her laws by mutila- ting the structure of organic beings, or of illustrating those modifica- tions which spring up in disease, by resorting to processes which are foreign to natural influences. Even the greatest experimentalist in modern times, he who has performed more vivisections than any other man, has placed it upon record, that it is one of the most diffi- cult things in physiology to perform an experiment that shall not be liable to objection. Yet no man ever ventured more hastily upon conclusions from such experiments, and none has thrown gi'eater ob stacles, in consequence, in the way of physiology and pathology. ^\,f' The limits which restrain the interposition of art are very narrow: and whenoraranic nature is brouijht under the influence of arti- ficial causes with a proper reference to these limits, the resulting phe- nomena may form a safe ground of reasoning as to the laws by which organic beings are governed. Much has been accomplished, in this way, as to the physiological connections of the nervous system with organic actions, the part which it takes in the morbid processes, the sympathetic communications which it establishes throughout the or- ganization, and the interpretation which it supplies of the operation of remedial agents. Nevertheless, the most important part of our knowledge upon these great and intricate questions is abundantly supplied by the natural phenomena of life, as manifested under the varying conditions of health and disease. And that this is so, is suffi- ciently evident fi-om the fact, that but Yittie practical information of the foregoing nature has been added, by recent experiments, to what had been known centuries ^ago. The late experiments, however, upon the nervous system have confirmed what had been deduced from the more natural process of observation, and have developed some useful facts which it might have been impossible to have known by any other method. Such, for example, is the difference of function be- tween the component parts of the spinal nerves ; one part being de- signed for the transmission of sensation and sympathetic influences, the other for the operation of the will and the development of motion. And yet, if analogy were allowed its proper weight in physiological inquiries, as it must be in reality the great basis of medical science, — if there had been less pertinacity as to the necessity of abstract facts for every conclusion, we might have come, by a process of analogy founded upon ultimate facts, to a knowledge of the constitution of the compound nerves. This could have been inferred from their complex functions as evinced by their phenomena, and by associating them with the simple elements of cerebral nerves, where it is plainly seen that some of the nerves have, individually, a specific function, and whose phenomena are destitute of complexity. 5i, a. But the reign of " experimental philosophy" which so lately appeared in the mutilations of animals to discover their natural func- tions ; in the injection of corrosive and putrid substances into the cir- culatory apparatus of animals to illustrate the pathology of human disease; in the transfusion of remedial agents into the same order of beings, and even into plants, to asceitiin the virtues of remedies, their PKELIMINARY REMARKS. 13 modus operandi as curative agents, and the right treatment of human maladies, has given place to an " experimental philosophy" in which organic life has no participation. This is the " philosophy" against Avhich the observer of nature is now called upon to contend; fraught with far greater evils than the spiyrious systems which it has so sud- denly surprised and superseded. It is impossible to calculate the mischief which must result to mankind from its unrestrained popular- ity. Something may be gathered from its former effects when chem- istiy was young ; and something from the progress of error under the fresh spur of Liebig's Animal Chemistry (§ 350-350|, 821). We all know how common the enthusiastic belief that this " Reformer" had overthrown all former systems in every department of medicine ; and we may take the following editorial passage from the London Lancet as expressing a very common opinion of the profession as to the ap- plication of chemistry at the bedside of disease : "As organic chemistry marches on the basis of an improved system of medical practice," says the veteran editor, " it will prove impera- tive that a rigorous examination of the products of the animal frame, the several humors and excretions of the body, should be employed in the investigation of disease. The period approaches when it will be incumbent on us, not perhaps invariably, but still very often, in pre- scribing, — say, for typhus, or purpura, or any of the numerous vari- eties of cutaneous affections, that by a chemical analysis we should first ascertain the constituents and proportions of the proximate elements of the urine, the saliva, the expired breath, the perspired matter, per- haps the blood, the faeces of the patient, before applying our remedies; and this process may have to be gone through not once only, but sev- eral times in the progress of the malady." " The time is, we repeat it, approaching when the foundation op practice on the laws of Organic Chemistry will form the distinction between the enlight- ened physician and the mere pretender" (§ 851, 863, e; 883, h).— London Lancet, April 2^, 1843. (Also, § 1029, 1030.) 5i, h. In the foregoing quotation we have essentially what is now extensively denominated " the progress of medical science," and the nature of the doctrines to which these Institutes are opposed. These Institutes will be found mainly, so far as physics are alleged to be concerned, by the side of all the most illustrious physiologists from Hippocrates to us, whose general views are thus summarily express- ed by Bichat : " The organic chemistry of the laboratory," says Bichat, " is the dead anatomy of the fluids, not a physiological chemistry. The physiology of the fluids should be composed of the innumerable variations which they experience according to the different (vital) states of their respective organs." " The instability of the vital pow- ers is the quicksand on which have sunk the calculations of all the physicians of the last hundred years. The habitual variations of the living fluids, dependent on the instability of the powers of life, one would think, should be no less an obstacle to the chemical physicians of the present age." " Again, had physiology been cultivated by men before physics, I am persuaded that many applications of the former would have been made to the latter. Rivers would have been seen to flow from ihe tonic action of their banks, crystals to unite from the excitement 14 INSTITUTES OP MEDICINE. which they exercise upon their reciprocal sensibilities, and planets to move because they mutually irritate each other at vast distances. All this would appear unreasonable to us, who think of gravitation only in consideration of these phenomena. And why should we not, in fact, be as ridiculous when we come with this same gravitation, with our chemical affinities and chemical compositions, and with a language established upon their fundamental data, to treat of a sci- ence with which they have nothing whatever to do ]" — Bichat's Gen- eral Anatomy and Physiology. 6. We may now readily perceive the reason why, chemistry has undergone changes within a few years, while all that relates essen- tially to the properties and laws of organic beings may have been long since known. The chemist operates, and makes all his discov- eries, through the forces and laws of inorganic matter. These he may carry into his laboratory, turn into his test glasses, or involve in his crucible. He can therefore oblige nature to form the same inor- ganic compounds as she forms spontaneously. He can then separate the elements again, and again oblige nature to recombine them after their original manner. But, can he do the same thing with organic beings ? He cannot form the most simple organic compound — can- not even recombine the elements when they are once separated ; — although he has then the necessary elements, and in their exact pro- portions. The reason is obvious. The chemist has not at his com- mand in this case, as in the other, the necessary powers ; or, as the chemist expresses it, " he cannot place them in the same circumstan- ces as Nature does." It is clear, therefore, that while the laboratory is the proper place for the study of the inorganic kingdom, we must go to the organic being itself to learn the nature of the powers and laws by which it is governed. These, then, are the reasons why the laws of organic be- ings have been long so much better understood than those of chemis- try. Every thing is artificial in the laboratory, so far as experiments are concerned ; and, if these be not the right ones, or be imperfectly conducted, they will either fail to represent nature correctly, or will give her a wrong interpretation. Hence the great instability of this science ; and yet we are told that every new theory in chemistry is applicable to physiology and medicine. But, it is quite otherwise with organic beings. Here all the ex- periments are carried on by Nature herself, and they cannot deceive. The various results and phenomena are seen in the being itself, and can be seen nowhere else. They must, therefore, be the true guide, and the only guide, to the powers and laws by whicli organic beings are governed. These phenomena, too, are astonishingly multiplied in any given being, and new ones are presented as the being may come under new influences. But, this variety is extended almost to infinity when we consider that every distinct species of plants and animals has its peculiar manifestations of life. It is also true that each one of this endless variety is utterly different from any of the phenomena of the inorganic world. And when we take all the phe- nomena of organic beings in connection, and find a perfect harmony among the whole, the nature of the proof is so various and immense as to conduct us to a right knowledge of the principles and laws of life in all their aspects. PHYSIOLOGY. 15 Now all this variety has been perpetually before the observation of mankind, and always presented to our observation by nature her- self. It therefore ceases, I say, to be remar-kable that the science of life had so greatly outstripped that of chemistry ; and it will proba- bly forever remain better understood ; since nature is the experi- menter in one case, and man in the other. PHYSIOLOGY. 7. The sensible world is composed of animate and inanimate be- ings, which, with their difference in composition and structure, has led to their division into the organic and inorganic or mineral kingdoms. 8. The relations between the two gi-eat kingdoms of nature, and their conti-adistinctions, render a general reference to the inorganic indispensable to our physiological and higher branches of inquiry. 9. Animals and plants, wliich make up the organic kingdom, are essentially dependent on the inorganic ; but the latter kingdom is per- fectly independent of the organic. 10. The beginning of organization is in plants, which are the pri- mary source of nourishment to animals. 11. From the foregoing law arises the great fundamental distinc- tion between plants and animals — that the former subsist on the ele- ments of matter, while the latter are nourished by those elements in an organic state. It appears, therefore, that vegetables are more creative than animals (§ 303). 12. All organic substances are compounds of the simple elements of matter. They are combined by the vital powers, while inorganic compounds are produced by chemical forces. 13. As organization begins in vegetables, it is obvious that a de- compounded organic substance can be restored to an organic state only by that vegetable kingdom which was created for the specific purpose of organizing the mineral Icingdom, for the ultimate final cause of supplying food to animals. The plant reduces, the animal consumes (§ 303).— Notes N R pp. 1121, 1123. 14. a. If an animal compound be decompounded, the reunion of the elements into an animal substance requires the agency of both vegetable and animal organization ; and, not only so, but nothing can reproduce any given animal compound but the precise part of the same species of animal which gave origin to the part so decompound- ed (§ 12).— Note R p. 1123. 14, b. Owing to this universal law, by which the animal is rendered so perfectly dependent on the vegetable kingdom, the Creator has given a striking perfection to the grand design in the institution of an invisible world of animalcula for the cfmsumption of that vast pro- portion of organic matter which is passing through the process of maceration to its elementary state. Thus airested by these econo- mists of nature, it advances through an ascending series of animals, till, at last, it becomes the food of man (§ 151, 1052). The foregoing distinction is fundamental in nature ; and hore, at the very threshold, we are met by a barrier which the chemist and 16 INSTITUTES OF MEDICtNE. physical philosopher cannot pass from one side, nor the pihysiologist from the other (§ 1052). 14. c. I may also say, that it is no small proof of a Creator, that the elements of all combinations which are generated by animals and plants are derived from the inorganic kingdom, which will be allowed to be less productive than the organic. And since, especially, no or- ganic being can generate any elementary substance, nor the ele- ments unite, of themselves, into organic compounds, it follows that the whole was created by a Being of greater power. "We can go no farther back than the elements of matter. Here the atheist himself pauses in dismay. They proclaim a God, and reason submits to this limit of its powers. I may also propose another, and perhaps greater proof of the en-or of spontaneous generation. The kingdoms of nature are governed by inherent powers, and the organic possess powers peculiar to them- selves ; but the existence of matter, whether organic or inorganic, is also indispensable to their respective forces.- These forces, therefore, did not create matter ; and since matter cannot create matter, and therefore did not create itself, it follows that its associate powers did not create themselves. Whence it is obvious that some greater Power exists by which the powers of nature were created in union with matter (1079 &, 1083, 1085).— Notes Pp p. 1142, aQ p. 1145. These arguments, therefore, may be taken in connection with those which I formerly adduced for the purpose of exposing the fallacy of the doctrine implied by Carpenter, Pritchard, Fletcher, and others, by assuming that the vital properties exist in the elements of matter, and that, therefore, the elements are capable of arranging themselves into organic beings. (See my Exainination of Reviews, p. 37, and my Notice of Revieics. Also, § 1051, 1052.) 15. Exact analyses are readily made of mineral compounds, and the elements may be recombined into the same or other mineral com- pounds. The precise analysis of the most simple organic compound, solid or fluid, as fibrin or albumen, is very difficult, and always liable to doubt. 16. Excepting the earths, plants subsist upon the atmosphere and what it contains (§ 303) ; but they immediately derive much of their nourishment from decaying organic substances that are incorporated with the soil. But, before such compounds can be appropriated by plants, they must be resolved into their elementary state. They can be taken into the organization of plants only in the condition of min- eral substances ; and even then the most simple binary compound must be decompounded before organization can begin. All the re- combinations, as constituting parts in the vegetable economy, are es- sentially unlike any substance in the mineral kingdom. 17. If animal organization resolve an organic compound into a min- eral condition, such compound is useless in the animal economy (§ 13, 14). There is never present, therefore, in the animal organization, as a part of, or as a source of supply to that organization, any mineral substance (§ 360). Whatever mutations the materials of supply may undergo, they must always exist in an organic state, or be permanent- ly restored to the mineral kingdom. — Notes N R pp. 1121, 1123. 18,,.«. We learn from the foregoing premises (§ 17), that food does not lose its organic state during the process of digestion ; and since it PHYSIOLOGY. 17 becomes more and more nearly assimilated to the living solids fi'om the earliest action of the gastric juice, it is evident that chemical agencies have no connection with the transformations to which it is subjected in the alimentary canal (§ 350-376). 18, h. Hence, also, the fallacy of attempting, by chemical analysis, to indicate the proper sustenance of man and animals. " To deter- mine^'' says Liebig, " what substances are capable of affording nour- ishment, it is only necessary to ascertain the composition of the food, and to compare it with that of the ingredients of the bloods He then pro- ceeds to a practical application of this principle by setting forth the chief elements of the blood. The difficult subject, also, of identifying hay with the flesh of animals, and all the vegetable substances which enter the human stomach with the various tissues of the body, is so far disposed of as to require no other interposition between the nutri- ment and its conversion into living animal compounds than the chem- ical forces. This chemical doctrine is thus set forth by Liebig : " The most recent and exact researches have established as a univer- sal fact, to which nothing yet knoion is opposed, that the nitrogenized constituents of vegetable food have a composition identical xoith that of the constitxients of the bloods — Liebig's Animal Chemistry. 18, c. And such, too, is a common example not only of the assump- tions of this writer, but of that positive manner which has inspired such universal confidence (§ 3501-3505). There are, of course, in nitroo^enized vegetable food certain combinations more or less analo- gous to what are called the constituents of the blood, though never the same, and but comparatively few in many that are appropriate as means of nourishment ; nor could it be doubtful that the elements of the flesh and blood of animals subsisting on vegetables must exist in their food. But the identity of elements in any given vegetable and animal compounds is very different from identity of compounds, and this, too, with every imaginary latitude of the isomeric and polymeric problems. Nor have any two chemists agreed, as yet, in their analy- sis of blood, or of any animal compound ('J 1029, 1030,). But we have from the laboratory most ample admissions of the groundless nature of the preceding statement. Thus, again, Liebig : " As far as our researches have gone, it may be laid down as a law, founded on experience, that vegetables produce, in their organism, compounds of proteine; and that out of these compounds of proteine the various tissues and parts of the animal body are developed by the VITAL FORCE, icith the aid of the oxygen of the atmosphere and of the elements of water. " Now, although it cannot be demonstrated that proteine exists ready formed in vegetable and animal products, and although the dif- ference in their properties seems to indicate that their elements are not arranged in the same manner, yet the hypothesis of the jne-exist- ence of proteine, as a point of departure in developing and comparing their properties, is exceedingly convenient. At all events, it is certain that the elements of these compounds assume the same arrangement wJien acted on by potash at a high temperature''* ! ! — Liebig'? Animal Chemistry. Nor is this the end of the contradiction ; for we also read in the same work, that " We cannot, ir.deed, maintain that the animal organism has no B 18 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. power to form other compounds, for we know that it is capable of producing an extensive series of compounds, differing in composition frowj the chief constituents of the blood" (§ 409, b, and 53, b). But, if the foregoing quotations be conclusive of the specific inqui- ries before us, the following admitted facts not only establish the same conclusions, but prove that chemistry is entirely incompetent to any one of its pi'etensions as to a proximate analysis of the blood, or of other organic compounds, and that it is strictly limited to a mere ele- mentary decomposition, while they also concede the existence of a vital principle as an " immaterial" governing power, wholly different from any attribute of inorganic nature, and therefore render it certain in another aspect, that the chemist, from want of this agent, can,, at most, only effect the elanentary analysis of organic compounds. Thus, then, the organic chemist : " If the problem to be solved by organic chemistry be this, namely, to explain the changes which the food undergoes in the animal body; then it is the business of this science to ascertain what elements must be added, what elements must be separated, in order to effect, or, in general, to render possible, the conversion of a given compound into a second or third ; but we cannot expect from it the synthetic proof of the accuracy of the views entertained, because every thing in. the or ganization goes on under the influence of the vital force, an immate- rial AGENT ivhicJt the chemist cannot employ at will" — Liebig's An- imal Chemistry. 18, d. If we now tuni to section'409, b, we shall there find that it is in the blood alone that the reputed proximate principles of vegeta- bles are assumed to exist, and that many proximate compounds ars allowed by the chemist to be elaborated from the blood to which there is nothing at all analogous in the vegetable kingdom, or even in the blood itself This, then, is the sum of the whole subject: 1st. The chemist hashia favorite doctrine of digestion, as an important foothold for material- ism, forever present, to be extended as far as the obscurities of the subject will admit, and to borrow an apparent confirmation from these predicated assumptions. The absolute amount of that doctrine is thus expressed by Liebig: " In the natural state of the digestive process, the food only under- goes a change in its state of cohesion, becoming fluid without any other change of properties." — Liebig's Animal Chemistry. 2d. Now, the food undergoing no other change " in the digestive process" than that of becoming" fluid," it is the easiest matter to find it all in the blood just as it was taken into the stomach, — vegetable as well as animal ; while, in so finding it, a pretended confinnation is set up of the " universal fact, to which nothing yet known is opposed, that the nitrogenized constituents of vegetable food have a compo- sition identical with that of the blood," and vice versa. Or, as Liebig also has it, " vegetables produce in their organism the blood of all anitnals" (§ 350, no. 76). But, 6d. We are assured by chemists, that nothing is more diffi- cult of analysis than the blood, even as it respects its elementary com- position; while it is well known that the analyses of this fluid are always discrepant. Hence the impracticability of instituting unex- ceptionable comparisons between even the elementary composition of PHYSIOLOJ3Y. 19 " In the natural state of the digestive process, the food only undergoes a change in its state of cohesion, becom- ing fluid without any other change of properties." — Lie- big's Animal Chemistry. blood and the nitrogenized constituents of plants ; while the very nature of the chemical influences exerted upon a vital compound of 17 or 18 elements vi^ith a view to its analysis is conclusive of the arti- ficial condition of all the chemical compounds which may be thus fymed out of the homogeneous fluid. And so Lehmann, ^ 1029, 1030. Again, 4th It is finally said that many substances elaborated from the blood are utterly difterent from any thing discovered in plants, or in the blood itself (§ 409, h). Here, the composition of the organic sub- stances being simple, readily leads to an exposure of the assumptions which have taken refuge under the greater difficulties, and obscu- rities, and disagreements, attending the analysis of the most complex substance known in nature {§ 53). 18, e. But we shall see, farther on, that the chemical school main- tain, through their principal chief, those doctrines of digestion, to suit other hypotheses in organic chemistry, which are fundamentally opposed to each other, and which I shall now arrange in connection, that the reader may see, at a glance, not only the speculative nature of organic chemistry, but the feebleness of the assumption as to the identity of the blood and the nitrogenized constituents of plants Thus : B. " The VITAL FORCE CAUSES A DECOMPOSITION of the con- stituents of food, and destroys the force of attraction which is continually exerted be- tween their molecules. It alters the direction of the CHEMICAL FORCES in SUch wise, that the elements of the constituents of the food arrange themselves in an- other form, and combine to produce 7iew compounds. It forces the new compounds to assume forms altogeth- er DIFFERENT from those which are the result of the attraction of cohesion when acting freely, that is, without resistance." — Liebig's Ani- mal Chemistry. It will be therefore seen by the quotations B and C, that the state- ment is admitted to be a mere assumption ; while it necessarily fol- lows, by adopting either of the contradictory statements, B or C, that the veo^etable substances undergo a radical chana;e during: the process of digestion, and, therefore, that we cannot find those sub- stances in the blood, but their elements, only, in new and peculiar combinations. The differences, indeed, are probably often much greater than between calomel and corrosive sublimate (§ 3501). What, also, gives to the whole of this subject its proper interpre- tation is the parallel which is drawn by Liebig between the assimila- tion of the most virulent poisons and the most appropriate food, as set forth in Section 350, Nos. 41 and 42. The looseness of the clos- ing sentence of No. 41, abstracted from all the surrounding evidence of hypothesis, is abundantly conclusive of the conjectural natui'e of the whole of this pretended mathematical demonstration. There is no difliculty, however, in comprehending the source of the mistake which honest chemists have made in attempting, by C. "The most decisive ex- periments of physiologists have shown that the process of CHYMiFiCATioN is inde- pendent of the vital force ; that it takes place in virtue of a PURELY chemical ac- tion, exactly simitar to those processes of decom- position or ti'ansformation which are known as putre- faction, fermentation, or decay." — Liebig's Animal Chemistry. 20 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. chemical analysis, to indicate the proper sustenance of man and ani mals. It lies in a wrong conception of the economy of vegetable life, and thence reasoning from a mistaken coincidence of princi- ples, which exist in the two departments of the organic kingdom in a strikingly modified state, to their more analogous results {§ 1^, 13-17).— Notes N R pp. 1121, 1123. Since, however, plants subsist upon mineral substances, in their elementary state, the chemist may often successfully indicate those inorganic or organic compounds which will yield to any given species of plant (whose general elementary composition may be known) the elements that go especially to its nutritive economy. But, from a fun- damental distinction between plants and animals (§ 11, 13-17), it is ob- vious that no such thing can be done in relation to the latter. No better practical proof of this can be wanted than the perfectly indiges- tible nature of many compounds which contain the requisite elements. Such compounds, upon the chemical philosophy, as I have said, and as admitted by Liebig, include many virulent poisons in the vege- table kingdom, and many inorganic substances whose binary com- pounds embrace numerous elements. We need not, indeed, go any farther than the recent experiments by Dr. Beaumont upon the va- rieties of food, as will be subsequently noticed (366), and Magendie's analogous experiments with the food of animals,* to show that the whole of this subject must be left to natural experience. Nor does it appear to have occurred to the chemical physiologist, in the foregoing inquiries, that the elementary composition of animals is greatly alike, at least in all mammalia. It should follow, there- fore, upon the chemical philosophy, that the practical distinctions should not exist between the food of man and animals, but that a common diet should be as universally adapted as atmospheric air. To this conclusion it may be also added, that the same chemical phi- losophy refers chymification to a purely chemical pi'ocess ; or, in the language of Liebig, " it takes place in virtue of a purely chemical action, exactly similar to those processes of decomposition or trans- formation which are known ?i& putrefaction, fervientation^ or decay y — Animal Chemistry^ p. 16. And since, therefore, chymification is " independent of the vital force" {ibid.), and as chemistry identifies the gastric juice of man and quadrupeds, and even the chyme, it is obvious that chemistry can predicate nothing, upon this subject, of any difference in the vital constitution of man and animalst (§ 409, 350, d). 19. In respect to their general structui'e, inorganic bodies are ho- mogeneous, organic beings heterogeneous. This applies as well to the elementary constituents in their modes of combination as to the compound structure of the whole being. Each particle of a mineral compound is as much a whole as the gi-eater mass, and has the same combination of elements. Each element is as perfect as the com- jiound conditions. Animals have muscles, glands, nerves, vessels, &;c., with an endless variety in the elementary combinations in the same individual. All these parts are necessary to make a whole, and depend, mutually, upon each other for their existence. The same * See Medical and Physiological Commentaries, vol. i., p. 697, &c. t See my article on the foregoing subject in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal December 27, 1843. PHYSIOLOGY. 21 general principle is applicable to plants. Nevertheless, apparent ex- ceptions occur in both animated kingdoms, as in ])arts of many plants and of polypi. But, in these instances, each part possesses essential- ly the whole apparatus of organic life. 20. Organic beings grow from within by interstitial deposition of molecules derived from the blood or sap, according to the exact na- tui'e of each part. Inorganic bodies do not grow, but increase only by a superficial juxtaposition of parts, which may, also, be wholly unlike the original crystal, or other nucleus, in their elements. In the process of growth and nutrition the new material is con- veyed within from without, and subjected to many specific changes, till it is resolved into one homogeneous fluid. Atmospheric air is also indispensable to all organic beings, Thex'e is nothing analo- gous in the inorganic world ; while these, and an endless series of other facts, establish the similitude of the organic life of plants and animals. 21. A peculiar action of certain agents upon the whole organism of plants and animals, called vital stimuli, entirely unlike the action of chemical agents, is necessary to the growth and existence of or- ganic beings. They are both internal and external, and give rise to all the phenomena in organic life, and maintain the whole in one ex- act condition ; while the action of agents upon inorgaisic, or on dead organic, substances, does not elicit one of these multifarious phenom- ena (§ 74, 1881). 22. Every part of an animal or vegetable is forever distinguished by the same vital phenomena and physical results ; and the action of vital stimuli is forever the same on each part, respectively, but, like the vital phenomena and physical results, different in each ; the whole being liable to invariable modifications at different stages of life, and according to temperament, and according, also, to every other modifying influence. 23. Unlike inorganic bodies, organic beings require the coexist- ence of solids and fluids in their composition. 24. All organic beings have the power of generating motion within all their parts. Mineral compounds have no such endowment. If motion take place in their internal constitution, it depends upon in- fluences which have no existence in living beings. Nor is this all ; for motion is always generated in living beings by the operation of a power implanted in their constitution, and this power is brought into action by the mind, and by internal and external physical agents. 25. The solids and certain fluids of organic beings act upon each other. But the fluids act only upon the organic properties of the solids, while the solids transmute the most important fluid into their own substance. The stimulant action of the blood upon the organic properties, and the reaction of the solids upon the blood, are design- ed for a common end. The concurrence of the whole fabric is ne- cessary to these, as to all other, results. There is nothing analogous in the mineral kingdom. 26. When external or internal agents produce motion in organic beings, they do not affect the composition, in the natural state. It is quite otherwise with inorganic or dead organic compounds. 27. Organic beings are perpetually subject to a vital decomposition and removal of old parts, while the old are exactly replaced by new 22 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. ones. It is essential to mineral compounds that they remain without change. Any disturbance of their molecules deranges their structure or composition. "While, therefore, inorganic compounds are forever the same, or- ganic beings are subject to an unceasing loss of identity as respects their present component parts. 28. The external foi-ms of plants and animals are variously and greatly contradistinguished from those of inorganic bodies. The condition of one, also, is uniform ; that of the other, even when crys- talized, is vat'iable. 29. " The only character," says Muller, " that can be possibly compared in organic and inorganic bodies, is the mode in which sym- metry is realized in each ; that is to say, the character which miner- als possess in their state of crystalization." Yet there is not, in this respect, the slightest analogy ; since no true organic compound ever approaches the condition of a crystal. Here we may trust the au- thority of Liebig, who says of the "vital principle of the animal ovum, as well as the seed of a plant," that, " Entering into a state of motion or activity, it exhibits itself in the production of a series of forms, which, although occasionally bounded by right lines, are yet widely distinct from geometrical forms, such as we observe in crystalized minerals. This force," he goes on, " is the vital force, vis vitae, or vitality." 30. The foregoing considerations, each and all (§ 8-29), demon- strate a radical difference between the forces and laws of organic and inorganic beings, and a remarkable modification of such as are com- mon to plants and animals. But, as the institutions of organic life lie at the foundation of medical science, they should be still farther sought in the contradistinctions between the organic and inorganic kingdoms, and in those diversified phenomena which indicate a com- mon but modified government of animals and plants. All organic- beings possess in common the most essential conditions of life, though existing in the two great departments of living nature under specific modifications or varieties ; not, how^ever, very dissimilar, but inti- mately connected by a gradation of analogies, as we descend along the chain of either, till we arrive at their more absolute connecting link in the lowest being of one and the other. Other conditions are superadded to the nobler dej^artment, which, with the differences of structure and the modifications of their common properties of life, and their modes of subsistence, distinguish the two living kingdoms from each other. 31. Physiology may be divided into, 1st. The composition of or- ganic beings ; 2d. Their structure ; 3d. Their properties ; 4th. Their functions ; 5th. Modifications of properties and functions which arise from sex, temperament, climate, habits, age, &c. ; 6th. The relations of organic beings to external objects ; 7th. Death. These several topics will be considered with a special view to the great principles which form the Institutes of Medicine. PHYSIOLOGY.- — COMPOSITION. 23 FIRST DIVISION OF PHYSIOLOGV. COMPOSITION. 32. The principal object contemplated by this work in ascertaining the facts relative to the composition of organic beings is to settle the principles and laws upon which such beings are constituted, by tracing them out in the fundamental conditions of organic matter. 33. Composition is subdivided into ultimate or elementary, and the proximate parts; the latter being compounded of the former. 34. Of the sixty-six known elementary substances, the following seventeen have been found in the composition of plants : carbon, oxy- gen, hydrogen, nitrogen, potassium, calcium, ii'on, manganese, phos- phorus, sulphur, silicium, magnesium, aluminum, chlorine, sodium, iodine, bromine. 35. The same elements (34), with the addition of fluor, and the probable exception of aluminum, occur in animals. Arsenic is also often found in man.* Although animals are exposed to various sources from which other elements might be derived, they reject ev- ery other elementary principle ; or, rather, are incapable of their assimilation. — Notes N R pp. 1121, 1123. 36. The foregoing coincidence in the common nature of the ele- ments of plants and animals supplies no small proof of the peculiar properties and laws of organic beings. Others, however, more stri- king, lie at the foundation, and form, also, contradistinctions with the inorganic world. 37. Animal and vegetable substances are mostly composed of car- bon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, four out of the sixty-six ele- ments that go to the formation of inorganic compounds. The main bulk of plants, indeed, such as the cellular and vascular tissues, is probably composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen alone, as the essential elements ; though nitrogen is indispensable to many of the products of vegetable organization, and Liebig says it is found in all parts of a plant (§ 62, y, note). The three or four indispensable ele- ments compose 90 or more parts of 100 of all the soft textures of an- imals, and of all plants. These are selected, universally, by the veg- etable kingdom, as if by instinct. This circumstance increases great- ly the force of the conclusion in the foregoing section (§ 36). 38. The elements of mineral compounds are always united in a binary manner ; those of organic in a ternary, quater-nary, &c., being always intimately blended with each other. This distinction involves an absolute difference in the powers and laws of the two kingdoms. 39. No two elements, therefore, can form a true organic compound. The rare exceptions which have been made by the chemists are not organic substances, nor can they be rendered such by the animal or- ganization. They belong to the mineral kingdom, from which they cannot be elevated but by the properties of vegetable life (§ 14, 16, 17). All mineral compounds may be resolved into their elements, which are as perfect minerals as when united. Indeed, the most natural con- dition of a mineral is the state of a simple element. * Whence coiri« Uio fluor aiid the arsenic, unless through plants? ($ 14-18.) 24 INSTITUTES OP MEDICINE. 40. What, therefore, is so fundamental in oi-ganic beings as ex- pressed in sections 38 and 39, and universally admitted, allows of no introduction of powers, principles, laws, &c., which shall conflict with the poweis and laws upon which the simplest organic compound is constituted.* In the progress of this work it will be seen that this position is every where substantiated. Unity and harmony prevail throughout each department of nature, respectively ; and while the powers and laws of the organic are as fully contradistinguished from those of the inorganic kingdom as are their physical and all other attri- butes, we shall find that the former are apparently embarrassed by a great diversity of phenomena as manifested in health and disease, but that, in reality, all the variety goes to the conclusion that the funda- mental principles are the same throughout (§ 638, 733, d). 41. Again, we may suppose at least some 20,000,000 of distinct or- ganic compounds in the various species of plants, and some 30,000,000 more in the animal kingdom, formed greatly out of four elements (§ 37), wliile these same elements yield scarcely a dozen combina- tions in the mineral kingdom. 42. The foregoing organic compounds are formed in each individ- ual, respectively, out of one common homogeneous fluid, composed of about seventeen elements. No chemical hypothesis can interpret this universal characteristic of the organic kingdom ; while all the relative facts of inorganic chemistry are totally opposed to this almost endless and undeviating variety of new combinations out of a common fluid, according to the species of animal or plant, and according to the nature of every particular part. If chemical agencies operated, there would be no uniformity in any secreted product at any two successive moments (§ 741, b, 1052). It is one of the frequent concessions of the distinguished chemico- vitalist, Miiller, that " The opinion that the component principles of the organs exist in the blood in their perfect state cannot be possibly adopted. The com- ponents of most tissues, in fact, present, besides many modifications of fibrin, albumen, fat, and ozmd.z.omG, other perfectly peculiar matters, nothing analogous to which is contained in the blood." " Even the fibrin of muscle cannot be considered identical with the fibrin of the liquor sanguinis." — Muller. — So, also, Lehmann, § 1029-1031. John Hunter also laid down the following doctrine, as expressed by his editor, Mr. Palmer : " It is highly probable that the different proximate principles of vegetable and animal substances hold different ranks in the scale of organized substances, in the same manner that one animal ranks high- er in the scale of organized beings than another." — Huntek. And thus Liebig, as a vitalist, in opposition to himself, as a chemist : " In that endless series of compounds, which begins with carbonic acid, ammonia, and water, the sources of the nutrition of vegetables, and includes the most complex constituents of the animal brain, there is NO BLANK, NO INTERRUPTION. TlIE FIRST SUBSTANCE CAPABLE OF AFFORDING NUTRIMENT TO ANIMALS IS THE LAST PRODUCT OF THE CRE- ATIVE ENERGY OF VEGETABLES." — Liebig's Animal Chemistry. * Since the foregoing sentence was written, tlie new doctrine of the " Correlation of Physical and Vital Forces" has induced Chemistry to exalt a multitude of its fabrica- tions out of inorganic substances to the condition of organic compounds. But this will probably soon "mark a past epoch in Organic Chemistry." See Note 1>f p. 1150; also LiiiLMANX, p. 779-782. rKYSIOLOGY. COMPOSITION. 25 43. Although it be generally true that it is the wonderful province of organization to elect only four elements from the homogeneous fluid (§ 42) in the formation of organic compounds, yet there are some com- pounds which embrace a greater number, though unlike the elements of inorganic compounds, in intimate union with each other (§ 38). The blood, indeed, has not less than seventeen or eighteen elements thus united; a circumstance in itself conclusive that other powers than the chemitial must preside over the elaboration of the very limited number of elements that go uniformly to the formation of all other organic compounds. And, although the metallic and earthy sub- stances form no part of the essential organs of life, they are yet vitally united with the indispensable organic compounds in particu- lar parts, and are elaborated from the blood or sap by those parts only, and with an astonishingly relative proportion to the other elements, as sulphur by the brain, phosphate of lime by the bones, fluate of lime by the teeth, phosphate of magnesia by wheat, silex by the stem of wheat, and by the skeletons of many poriferi, &c. We shall not regard these substances as accidental, or as introduced by a physical process, but, as contributing a subordinate part with the essential organic elements toward the perfection of an unfathomable system of Designs, whose moving power is only short of the Creative Energy, in being substituted for that Great First Cause, with limita- tions that chain it to the fulfillment of secondary ends (§ 847). 44. Organic compounds are forever the same, in health, in any given part of any species of being at each stage of existence, but liable to be moi"e or less modified in an exact manner at the several stages (§ 153-159). And so of disease. The same morbid state of any given part, ccete- ris paribus, always produces the same modifications of the organic compounds of which it may be composed, the same alterations of the secreted fluids, and the same new formations. All this is distinctly seen in the phases of scrofula, in small-pox, cow-pox, lues, measles, hy- drophobia, &c. It is opposed, to all facts, that any chemical influences can decom- pound a fluid composed of seventeen or eighteen elements, not only in the exclusive manner represented in the last section, but according, also, to the exact vital constitution or vital modification of each part, 45. Nevertheless (§ 44), the general composition of animals is the same, whether they subsist upon grass, or flesh, or whatever be the nature and variety of the food. So of the chyme, the chyle, and the blood. There is nothing in chemistry that will throw any light upon these coincidences (§ 18, 409). 46. Contrary to what has been seen of the variety of organic com- pounds out of four simple elements (§ 41), only a few hundred, at most, of distinct inorganic compounds can be formed out of the 66 elements which compose the mineral kingdom (§37). Those few compounds, however, make up the great mass of the globe, while the organic are only scattered over its surface. Nor is there a globe in the universe that would not be as worthless as space, did it not administer to the purposes of life. 47. Different combinations of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitro- gen, constitute, mainly, the whole vegetable and animal materia medi- i26 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. ca; while their inorganic compounds do not contribute one remedial agent of any importance. 48. It is evident that the four principal elements of organic com- pounds combine not only in different proportions, but so variously, in respect to the proportions, among themselves, as to bevv'ilder the imagination (§41). Chemistry can give us no light upon these sub- jects but what is purely analytical ; while, in respect to their mineral compounds, the same elements unite only in a small number of pro- portions, upon which chemistry throws its light with a brilliancy that may be said to penetrate the unfathomable recesses of their organic compounds. This fundamental distinction is necessarily conceded ; and it were well for science if chemistry did not overstep the limit. But, the chemist shall always speak for himself. Thus Liebig : " 6 eq. tartaric acid, by absorbing 6 eq. oxygen from the air, form grajje sugar, with the separati(jn of 12 eq. carbonic acid. We can explain, in a similar manner, the formation of all the component substances of plants, which contain no nitrogen, whether they are pro- duced from carbonic acid and water, with separation of oxygen, or by the conversion of one substance into the other, by the assimilation of oxygen and separation of carbonic acid. We do not know in lohat form the froduction of these constituents takes place. In this respect the representation of their formation which we have given must not he received, in an ahsolute sense, it being intended only to render the na- ture of the process more capahle of comprehension. But, it must not be forgotten, that, if the conversion of tartaric acid into sugar, in grapes, he considered a fact, it must take place vmder all circumstances in the same proportions'''' ! — Liebig's Organic Chctnistrij applied to Physi- ology. The reader should never lose sight of the foregoing hypotheses and admissions. They should be ever ready to chasten his credulity as to the chemical interpretation of every organic compound. They stamp the whole " science of organic chemistry," in its synthetical aspects, as one of pretension, and' unworthy the confidence of an intel- ligent mind (§ 350-350^). And this is farther confirmed by the statements in the two next following sections. 49. " The particles of matter," says Liebig, " called equivalents in chemistry, are not infinitely small, for they possess a weight, and are capable of arranging themselves in the most various ways, and of thus forming innumerable compound atoms. The properties of these compound atoms differ in organic nature, not only according to the form, but, also, in many instances, according to the direction and place which the simple atoms take in the compound molecules. " When we compare the composition of organic compounds with inorganic, we are quite amazed at the existence of combinations in one single molecule, of which ninety or several hundred atoms or equivalents are united. Thus, the compound atom of an organic acid of very simple composition, acetic acid, for example, contains 12 equivalents of simple elements ; 1 atom of kinovic acid contains 33 ; 1 of sugar, 36 ; 1 of amygdalin, 90 ; 1 of stearic acid, 138 equivalents. The component parts of animal bodies are infinitely more complex even than these." — Liebig's Organic Chemistry, &c. »50. " Inorganic compounds differ from oi'ganic in as great a degree PHYSIOLOGY. COMPOSITION. 27 in their other characters as in their simplicity of constitution. Thus, the decomposition of a compound atom of sulphate of jaotash is aided by numerous causes, such as the power of cohesion, or the capability of its constituents to form solid, insoluble, or, at certain temperatures, volatile compounds with the body brought into contact with it ; and, nevertheless, a vast number of other substances produce in it not the slightest change. Now in the decomposition of a complex organic atom there is nothing similar to this." — Liebig's Organic Chemistry . &c. 51, "An essential distinction between organic and inorganic com- pounds is, that in organic products the combining proportions of their elements do not observe, as in mineral compounds, a simple arith- metical ratio." 52, An interesting corollary flows from the foregoing facts (§ 22, 41-50), namely, that all animal and vegetable poisons, all remedial agents of an organic nature, and all the varieties of food, depend upon the mode and proportions in which a few particular elements unite with each other. It is evident, also, from § 41, that uo two re- medial agents generated by different species of plants or animals, however similar, can be exactly alike in their morbific or remedial virtues. Hence the differences among cathartics, emetics, &c. As composition, especially of the sap, also varies more or less at the dif- ferent ages of plants and at diflerent seasons, and also from unhealthy conditions, so will corresponding differences arise in their remedial and morbific virtues. In all the cases, however, the characteristics of organic products as vital agents are uniformly the same under any given condition of the organic being; and so of each simple element, and of the physiological effects of all vital agents (§ 188^, d). The precise natural or morbid states of the organic properties lie at the bottom of the whole philosophy, since these properties, through their instruments of action, combine the elements exactly according to their existing state (§ 650, 741 5, Note Fff p. 1150). 53, a. From the facts now stated (§ 38-51), it is evident that the organic chemist can do no moi'e than effect an analysis of organic compounds. He can only present each simple element by itself, without the possibility of acquiring a knowledge of the modes and pi'oportions in which they combine with each othei*. 53, b. So, also, if the aggregate compounds, such as blood, sap, muscle, gastric juice, &c., be, in reality, made up of more simple compounds, or " proximate principles," by the union of compound atoms, chemistry can give us no information as to the conditions in which they naturally exist. Those combinations which are most alike are different from each other in eveiy distinct part of the or- ganic being, and different in the same parts of distinct species. This is so from the first development of the germ ; and what is then begun is perpetuated through the life of the individual, and transmitted to all succeeding generations (§ 63-81 , 1 55). The differences, as we have seen, result from the different proportions in Avhich some three or four principal elements are itnited together, and from the proportions of different compound atoms which may enter into the entire combi- nation, and from the manner in which they and their elements are combined among themselves. It must be obvious, therefore, that we can never reach the secret of these combinations. We should neces- 28 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. sarily expect, even from the shades of elementally distinctions, that chemistry would confound and even identify many compounds that are totally unlike in their nature. And this it actually does, in pre- senting to us sugar, vinegar, starch, gum-arabic, wood, &c., as the same substance ; and in identifying pus and cheese, and, again, the albumen of eggs, lymph, mucus, and the pi'oduct of certain cancerous affections. Nor is there generally any agreement among the chem- ists in their analyses of organic compounds. It is as true now, as when Bostock (a chemical physiologist) affirmed, ih^t " every subse- quent attempt to discover the elements of organized substances differs moi'e or less from those that preceded it" (s^ 1029, 1030). The moment chemical agencies begin their operation, artificial transformations necessarily ensue, and the nature of the organic com- pound is changed in a corresponding manner. A large proportion of the resulting products are perfectly new formations, particularly all , tliG binary compounds (§ 38, 39). Nor can there be any doubt that the reputed " proximate principles" are intimately incorporated in any given compound, and have no such separate existence as chemistry teaches. It lies at the very basis of chemistry, that all the elaborations ax'e the artificial results of affinities which have been set in motion by the agents employed, and which are employed for that very purpose. This I have already endeavored to demonstrate in the Medical and Physiological Commentaries (vol. i., p. 674-682), even so far as to show that urea may not be formed by the kidneys, but is the result of spontaneous changes after the elaboration of urine, as it is of artificial influences (§ 54, a). But, attentive observation will gen- erally detect the chemist in the admission of facts which are subver- sive of his speculative doctrines (§ 18, 350) ; and so it is in the case before us. The admission covers the whole ground as to the preten- sions of organic chemistry beyond the most simple elementary anal- ysis. Thus (Note Fff p. 1150), 53, c. " Were we able to produce taurine and ammonia directly out of uric acid or allantoine, this might perhaps be considered as an additional proof of the share which has been ascribed to these compounds in the production of bile. It cannot, however, be viewed as any objection to the views above developed on the subject, that with the means we possess, we have not yet succeeded in effecting these transformations out of the body. Such an objection loses all its force, when we consider that we cannot admit, as proved, the pre-ex- istence of taurine and ammonia in the bile; nay, that it is not even PROBABLE that those compounds, which are only known to us as the products of the decomposition of the bile, exist ready formed, as ingredients of that fluid. By the action of muriatic acid on bile, we, in a manner, force its elements to unite in such forms as are no longer capable of change under the influence of the same re-agent." — Liebig's Animal Chemistry. By the admissions, also, in § 18, 42, and 350, it will be seen that the Utopian nature of organic chemistry is equally established in all its pretensions by its own founders and advocates (§ 1030). 54, a. Organic substances alone undergo fermentation and putre- faction ; and this shows us, also, in the language of Tiedemann, that " even when the life of organic bodies is extinct, we should consider the qualities which they possess, from the time of death to the com PHYSIOLOGY. COMPOSITION. 29 plete resolution of organization, asfthe result of the vital powers which have been active in them." This obvious principle conducts us at once to the whole philoso- phy of those numerous transformations of which organic compounds are susceptible from chemical agencies, while they still retain their elementary combinations, and appear under uniform aspects when subjected to the same chemical influences, and often analogous to the natural condition of the compound. " It is the power of formation," says Tiedemann, " which, after the extinction of the individual life of organized bodies, renders the organic matters, separated from their organization, capable, provided they have not been reduced to their elements by external physical or chemical actions, of assuming new and more simple forms, according to the diversity of external in- fluences, such as heat, light, water, &c., which determine them in taking on this new form. This power appears, therefore, to be a prop- erty inherent in organic matters in general, rendering them able to take other more simple configurations when detached from the com- binations of living bodies" (§ 1029, 1030). Some organic compounds undergo transformations of the foi'egoing nature as soon as separated from the organic being. The homo- geneous blood is immediately reduced into three principal compounds, which have no natural existence as such. Nor is this all; for there is a fundamental change among the elements and the compound atoms of the entire mass. The changes arise from the loss of the vital properties, and the subsequent operation of chemical influences. Such, too, is the constitution of organic compounds that there may be a remarkable uniformity in the resulting products when the same chemical agents operate upon any given compound ; as exemplified in the various transformations to which sugar is liable, and as seen in the uniform production of morphia, narcotina, quinia, cinchonia, &c. 54. I). It is obvious, however, from the premises which I have set forth, that chemistry can, at most, present but a few compounds as appa- rently distinct from each other in their elementary composition; for, al- though there are many millions of these distinct combinations in organic beings (§ 41), they commonly possess such analogies that chemistry is obliged to confound all but a few which have strong characteris- tics. These few, which are denominated proximate principles, are supposed by the chemist to make up the entire composition of organic beings. But, a greater proportion even of these few are so inscruta- bly different from each other in their elementary combinations, that they are classed under common denominations, not only for the fore- going reason, but on account of certain resemblances in their physical properties ; while it is by these last, and by their differences in re- sults as vital agents, we come to know that broad distinctions may exist among them. Such, for example, are the various acids, oils, resins, &c. — Note Fff p. 1150. 55. All organic substances, while endowed with life, resist the de- composing influences of all surrounding agents. All inorganic com- pounds yield to these influences. 56. As soon as organic beings are dead, the very agents that had contributed to their growth and nourishment now become the causes of breaking up their elementary combinations, and with a rapidity un- known in the ordinary decomposition of mineral compounds. In the 30 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. former case, it is allowed by Dlebig, that the " vital principle op- poses to the continual action of the atmosphere, moisture, and tem- perature, upon the organism, a resistance which is in a certain degree invincible^ 57. In the seed and ovum the properties of life are in a state of ac- tion which maintains their elementary combinations against the chem- ical forces. They resist degrees of cold which operate destructively upon their composition when their life is extinct. Those agents, too, as heat and moisture, which speedily resolve the eg^ and seed, when deprived of life, into their ultimate elements, will in the same de- grees of intensity develop from the germ, when alive, a perfectly organized being. In the former case the operation of the principle of life is generally mistaken for " a force in a state of rest.'" Thus, Lie- big : " In the animal ovum, as well as in the seed of a plant, we recog- nize A CERTAIN REMARKABLE FORCE, the SOURCE of grOWth, S>CC.,aforce in a state of rest ^ — Liecig's Animal Chemistry, first sentence. See, also, my Examination of Reviews, p. 7-28. 58. It follows, therefore, that the power which resists the decom- posing forces and agents in living beings combined the elements of such beings, and that death is an extinction of that power. The chem- ical forces can have no connection with the combinations, since they are held together by a power in direct composition to '"hemical influ- ences. What, therefore, unites the elements and maintains them against the action of chemical agents, being the fundamental power, must ne- cessarily preside over all the processes and results to which organic beings are liable. 59. " The elements of dead organic matter," says Liebig, in his Or- ganic Chemistry, " seem merely to retain passively the position and condition in which they had been placed." " The atoms exist only by the vis inertice of their elements." So, also, Mulder, § 350|, n, and other chemical physiologists. This shows that the original union is effected by other powers than the chemical, which, otherwise, woiild still operate after death, and prevent decomposition. We also thus learn why dead organic compounds so readily undergo fermentation and putrefaction, and from the slightest influences. All of which, indeed, appears to be abundantly conceded by the chemical philoso- pher when he yields to the force of facts. For what can be more ample than Liebig's aflSrmation, that " The VITAL FORCE is manifested in the form of resistance, inas- much as by its presence in the living tissues, their elements acquire the power of withstanding the disturbance and change in their form and composition, which external age^its tend to produce ; a ]}Otver,which, as chemical compounds, they do not possess.^' — Liebig's Animal Chem- istry. And yet again may I press into the service of truth the organic chemist, when he temporarily loses sight of the laboratory, and con- tradicts those speculations which impart to his writings the zest of novelty. In his Lectures for the winter of 1844, Liebig appeal's to have been alarmed for the safety of his empire, and we have here an unusual amount of " vitality." The work on Anitnal Che?nistry applied to Pathology a?id Thera- PHYSIOLOGY. COMPOSITION. 31 peutics wus more of a distillation froin the laboratory than its prede- cessor, Organic CJiemistnj applied to Physiology ; and, as many of the most eminent physiologists in Europe, who were inclined to min- gle chemistry with vitalism, were nauseated by the dose which was last administered, Liebig came out in his Lectures with the following placebo for the vitalists, and the chemico-vitalists. Were it not con- tradicted by the lecturer, it should place him in the very front rank of vitalism. The doctrines are of the most fundamental nature, and lie at the basis of these Institutes, and of my " Medical and Physiological Commentaries." It will be seen that they are strictly relative to my present subject, and inculcate all that the most transcendental vital- ist can desire as to the distinct nature oj" tJic vital j^rinciple, its full con- trol over the processes of life, its extinction at death, and an absolute distinction hetiveen vital and chemical j^rocesses and results, tvJiHe those frocesses and results are, respectively , referred to forces of a totally dis- tinct nature. Thus : ' "After the extinction of the vital principle," says Liebig, " in or- ganic atoms, they maintain their form and properties, the state into which they have been brought in living organisms, only by reason of their inherent inertia. It is a great and comprehensive law of matter, that its particles possess no self-activity, no inherent power of origin- ating motion, when at rest ; motion must be imparted by some exter- nal cause ; and, in like manner, motion once imparted to a body can only be ari'ested by external resistance. " The constituents of vearetable and animal substances havinq-been formed under the guidance and power of the vital j)rincij)le, it is this principle which determines the direction of their molecular attraction. The vital principle, therefore, must be A motive power, capable of imparting motion to atoms at rest, and of opposing resistance to other forces producing motion, such as the chemical force, heat, and elec- tricity. We are able to reliquefy and redissolve albumen, after it had been coagulated by heat, but the. vital principle alone is capable of restoiing the original order and manner of the molecular arrangement in the smallest particles of albumen. Coagulated albumen is again converted into its original form, it is transformed into flesh and blood in the animal organism. — Notes N R pp. 1121, 1123. " In the formation of vegetable and animal substances, the vital principle opposes, as a force of resistance, the action of the other forces, — cohesive attraction, heat, and electricity, — forces which ren- der the aggregation of atoms into combinations of the highest order impossible, except in living organisms. " Hence it is, that when those comjjlex combinations which consti tute organic substances ai'e withdrawn from the influence of the vita force, — when this no longer is opposed to the action of the other dis- turbing forces, great alterations immediately ensue in their properties. and in the an-anojement of their constituents. The sliojhtest chemical action, the mere contact of atmospheric air, suffices to cause a transpo- sition of their atoms, and to produce new arrangements ; in one word to excite decomposition. Those remarkable phenomena take plac( which are designated by the terms fermentation, putrefaction and decay ; these are the processes of decomposition, and their ulti mate results are to reconvert the elements of organic bodies into thai Rtate in which they exist before they participate in the processes of life." 32 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE.- The reader, however, will be more astonished to learn that he h&s not discovered, amid the multitude of conflicting statements and doc trines, a passage in the work on Animal Chemistry which, even more than the preceding, identifies " the Reformer" with the most exclu sive vitalists, and completely annuls all his chemical and physical speculations as to organic life, and his radical distinctions between plantsand animals (§ 350, nos. 12, 15,20). It will be also seen with what pretense he has been denominated " the Reformer,^' and " tlic author of a neiv and the greatest era in physiology ^ The extract in- culcates the doctrines of an independent vital principle, its identity in plants and animals, the action of stimuli upon that principle, its susceptibility of influences from the nervous power in animals, the absence of that influence in plants, and the dependence of all organic processes and results, equally in plants and animals, upon that piin- ciple. Now these are exactly the doctrines which are also fundamental throughout the Medical and Physiological Commentaries and these Institutes. They are relative to the constitution and processes of organic beings as a whole, while the foregoing quotations from Lie- big's Lectures comprehend the principles by which I have interpret- ed the elementary condition of organic bodies. Thus our author : " The activity of vegetative life manifests itself in vegetables, ?tf?YA the aid of external influences ; in animals, hy means of influences pro- duced within the organism. Digestion, circulation, secretion, are, no douht, under the influence of the nervous system; hut the force which gives to the germ, the leaf and the radical fihres of the vegetable the SAME WONDERFUL PROPERTIES, is the SAME as that residing in the se- creting memhranes and glands of animals, and which enables every animal organ to perform its own proper functions." — Liebig's Ani- mal Chemistry. 60. " The diversity of the transformations and of the resulting products," says an able advocate ©f Liebig's physical doctrines of life, " indicate most certainly the complexity of an organic product" (§ 41). " The metamorphoses which occur after organic substances are rexnowedi from the influence of the vital force, constitute a separa- tion, or splitting up into new and less complex compounds" (§ 54). — Mr. Ancell, in London Lancet, Nov. 26, 1842. Thus, again and again, does the chemical physiologist unavoidably concede that the elements of organic beings are held together by a vital principle, and, therefore, that they are originally united by that principle. — Note Fff p. 1150. Vitalism becomes established in all its aspects, even in what has been denominated " transcendental vitalism," when it may be shown that the elements of organic beings are, in the language of Liebig, "united by a peculiar viode of attraction, resulting from the existence of a pjoiocr distinct from all other j^owers of nature, namely, a Vital Principle :''^ since, as I have said, the powers and laws which regu- late the composition must be at the foundation of all the subsequent results. Concessions of fundamental principles overthrow all oppos- ing "facts," and all secondary doctrines of a conflicting nature. These, therefore, may be advantageously connected with demonstra- tions of the truth. There are few intelligent minds that do not right- ly appreciate those grand phenomena of Nature which conduct us to PHYSIOLOGY. COMPOSITION. 33 a knowledge of her fundamental laws, or do not incidentally betray their conviction of the right, however the enticements of fame may beguile them into ingenious substitutions. I shall, therefore, as on all former occasions, continue to bring to the aid of my conclusions the powerful concessions of the most eminent men who belong to the adverse schools in organic philosophy. It is manifest that such au- thorities must weigh with the force of demonstration, since it is obvi- ous that their admissions can flow only from convictions that have been obtained in the school of Nature. Among the most illustrious of the adverse school is Liebig, and standing intermediate is the pro- found and erudite Miiller. And having thus refeiTed again to this great philosopher, I will not lose the opportunity of obtaining from him an important contribution to the doctrines of vitalism as they re- late to the very composition of organic beings, and in which he insti- tutes a broad contrast between the affinities which unite the elements of organic and inorganic compounds. Thus : " Chemical substances," says Miiller, " are regulated by the intrin- sic properties and the elective affinity of the substances uniting to form them. In organic bodies, on the contraiy, the power which in- duces, and maintains, the combination of their elements, does not consist in the intrinsic properties of those elements, but in something else, which not only counteracts those affinities, but effects combina- tions in direct opposition to them, and conformahhj to the laws of its own operation." — Muller, Elements of Physiology , p. 4. Liebig, also, variously inculcates the same great principle. Take, in the first place, a demonstration the converse of Miiller's. It is tho last paragraph in the work on Organic Chemistry. Thus : " The same nutnerous causes which are opposed to the formation of complex organic violecules, under ordinary circumstances, occasion their decomposition and transformations when the only antagonist POWER, THE VITAL PRINCIPLE, NO LONGER COUNTERACTS THE INFLU- ENCE OF THESE CAUSES. Ncw compounds are formed in which chem- ical AFFINITY HAS THE ASCENDENCY, and opposes any farther change, while the conditions under which these compounds were formed re- main unaltered." Again, we are informed by this chemist, that " The equilibrium in the chemical attractions of the constituents of food is disturbed by the vital principle, as we know it may be by many other causes. But'the union of the elements, so as to produce NEW combinations and forms, indicates the presence of a peculiar MODE OF attraction AND THE EXISTENCE OF A POWER DISTINCT FROM ALL OTHER POWERS OF NATURE, namely, the VITAL PRINCIPLE." " If the food possessed life, not merely the chemical forces, but this vi- tality would offer resistance to the vital force of the organism it nourished." " The individual organs, such as the stomach, cause all the organic substances conveyed to them, which are capable of transfor- mation, to assume new forms. The stomach compels the elements of these substances to unite into a compound fluid for the formation of blood." — Liebig's Organic Chemistry, p. 356, 357, 346, 384. 61. It is a remarkable characteristic of organic beings that they aie composed chiefly of combustible substances, properly so called, and a supporter of combustion ; with the principal exception of that anom- aly in the inorganic kingdom, nitrogen gas {^ 37). 34 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. 62, a. The general introduction of nitrogen gas into the constitution of animal compounds, and into many of a vegetable nature, while it is excluded from mineral compounds, is one of the most striking distinc- tions between the two kingdoms of Nature. Upon that distinction I have founded an argument, in my Essay on the " Philosophy of Vital- ity," in proof of the difference in the powers and laws by which the two kingdoms are governed. It appeal's also appropriate to this work that the proof should be here introduced. 62, b. I have said in the foregoing Essay, that it is abundantly ev- ident that living beings are endowed with 2)ropertie3 which protect their elementary composition against all those decomposing agencies which are perpetually separating the elements of all mineral com pounds. This shows that the properties, by which the elements of living beings are united, are utterly different from such as combine the elements of inorganic compounds. Nevertheless, the living or- ganization is undergoing a systematic change, a perpetual decomposi- tion, surpassing any mutations that are in progress in the surrounding world. These decompositions are, also, of a peculiar nature, govern- ed by established laws, various in different parts of the same individ- ual, yet forever the same in any given part (§ 44). I shall not stop to ghow how the old are replaced by new materials, and how the pro- cesses go Giifari passu, and in opposition to all the philosophy which chemistry teaches, but only say that the decompositions must be effect- ed by properties as peculiar to the living compound as are the results ; and that these results conspire with the peculiar modes in which the elements are combined in j)roving the existence of specific properties, which are the common cause of all the harmonious phenomena of liv- ing beings (§ 38-42). 62, c. When, however, the organic being dies, a new order of de- composition begins, eminently of a chemical nature, and in forcible contrast with that which concerns the vital process of renewal. This is due to the special element, nitrogen gas, which may be called the principle of dissolution. Wherever present, it gives rise to ti'ansfor- mations and disunion of all the other elements after the properties of life have lost their sway. The moment these cease, chemical decom- position begins, — confusedly, violently; and such are the nature and combinations of the elements, that their disrujDtion would go on with no other contribution from surrounding agents than water alone. Hence the more rapid transformations and dissolution of animal than of vegetable tissues, and of sap and other substances which are gen- erated by vegetable organization. 62, d. Liebig says of nitrogen gas, that "there is some peculiarity in its nature, which gives its compounds the power to decompose sponta- neously with so much facility. Now, nitrogen is known to be the most indifferent of all the elements. It evinces no particular attrac- tion to any OTieof the simple bodies, and this character it preserves in all its combinations ; a character which explains the cause of its easy separation from the matter with which it is united." And again, " When those substances are examined which are most pifone to fer- mentation and putrefaction, it is found that they are all, ivithout ex- ception, bodies which contain nitrogen." — Liebig's Organic Chemistry app)lied, &c., p. 241. G2, c. In the inorganic kingdom, nitrogen is mostly confined to the PHYSIOLOGY. COMPOSITION. 35 aJmosphere, where it probably exists in a state of simple intermixture with oxygen. " All bodies which have an affinity for oxygen abstract it from the atmosphere with as much facility as if the nitroo-en were absent altogether ;" and we have striking examples of the disposition of nitrogen to separate from its compounds, " in the easy transposi- tion of atoms in the fulminating silvers, in fulminating mercury, and In all fulminating substances," whose ready explosion is owino- to the presence of nitrogen. " All other substances," says Liebig, " con- taining nitrogen acquire the same power of decomposition when the elements of water are brought into play." 62,/! Now the foregoing characters belong to nitrogen only as it exists in inorganic or in dead organic compounds, while the former, also, are artificial, or due to accidental causes. In living beino-s, where it abounds,* it adheres to its associated elements with a tena- city which no agent can impair till it destroys the life of the part ; or, in other words, till it destroys those vital properties by which the ele- ments were truly united. It is then, however, that the forces of chem- istry take possession, and the elements may explode, I had almost said, with the facility of the fulminating compounds. 62, g. " There is," says Liebig, " in the nature and constitution of the (inanimate) compounds of nitrogen, a kind of tension of their component parts, and a strong disposition to yield to transformations, which effect spontaneously the transposition of their atoms 07i the in- stant that water or its elements are brought in contact with them." On the contrary, " it is found that no body destitute of nitrogen pos sesses, when pure, the property of decomposing spontaneously while in contact with water." — Liebig. But, although dead animal compounds readily pass into sponta neous decomposition under slight degrees of moisture, yet, composed as they are, in part, of the elements of water, and very largely im- pregnated with aqueous substances in their living state, neither those elements, this water^ nor any other agent, can disturb the exact com- binations. But, when the oi'ganic being dies, chemical agencies have their play, and it is then that " The result of the known transformations of substances containin" nitrogen proves," according to Liebig, " that the water does not mere- ly act as a medium in which motion is permitted to the elements in the act of transposition, but that its influence depends on chemical affinity. "When the decomposition of such substances is effected with the assistance of water, the nitrogen is in^riably liberated in the form of ammonia." — Liebig. In respect to the inorganic world, had nitrogen been incorporated in its compounds, there would have been no stability among them. They would have been perpetually undergoing decomposition, until finally the whole of the nitrogen would fly off by itself, and nothing of the original compound would remain ; and it could never be re- combined. 62, k. Besides the disposition of nitrogen to tear asunder the ele- * Niti-ogen is well known to abound in all the tissues of animals. Of vegetables, Lie- big says, that, " Estimated by its proportional weight, niti'ogen fonns only a very small part of plants, but it is never entirely absent from ani/ part of them. Even when it does not enter into the composition of a particular part or organ, it is always to be found in the fluids vrbich pervade it." — Liebig's Organic Chemistry applied to Physiology, &c., p. 4. 36 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. meiits with which it may be combined, the complexity of these ele- ments in organic beings contributes to the disorganizing results after death, and is another principal cause of spontaneous fermentation and putrefaction (§ 38, 41, 46, 48, 52, 53). 62, i. From the foregoing facts, especially from the universality and fixedness of nitrogen in organic beings, I amve at the conclusion that the elements of their compounds are united by forces as peculiar as the facts which relate to these compgunds, and that the forces of chemistry have no agency in combining the elements, or in effecting changes of their combinations during life. It is also abundantly man- ifest from my premises, that Liebig's declaration that " by chemical agency we can produce the constituents of muscular fibre, skin, and hair," is without the slightest foundation (§ 12, 13, 14). 62, k. The whole labyrinth of combinations in organic beings, and their ultimate return to binary compounds, are full of the most stu- pendous design. The final cause of the reduction of the organic being, when its own specific purposes are ended, is that of again supplying the means of growth to vegetables yet alive, that the elements may be again elaborated into ternary and quaternary compounds, to carry out the final purpose of the vegetable kingdom in supplying nutriment to animals (§ 303).— Note C p. 1113. 63. In the Essay to which I have referred in the last section, I have endeavored to deduce the principles of vitalism from the phenomena ihat attend the development of the incubated egg, as had been briefly set forth in my " Examination of Reviews." The considerations there made are peculiarly appropriate to the present work, and to the place at which I have now arrived. It was my object to considei', 1st. The constitutional nature of the ovum. 2d. To show by the philosophy of generation, and by the nature of the powers which are universally admitted to be alone concerned in developing the germ or ovum, and in forming the organs of the new being, that the same powers are, also, alone concerned in carrying on forever afterward the processes of life, and, of course, that no new powers, or principles, are introduced. 3d. To consider the manner in which the germ is impregnated, or its vital propeities so stimulated into action as to result in the devel- opment of the germ, and in unfolding the various attributes of the new being. 4th. To show that we may find in the physiology of generation, or the principles through which the ovum is impregnated, the whole phi- losophy of organic life, or ^e principles through which the actions of life are forever carried on. 5th. To state the manner in which the natural peculiarities of each parent, whether as it respects the properties of life, or the physical conformation, are infused into the germ and combined in the full- grown offspring. 6th. To show that hereditary diseases are transmitted in the same way as those more natural peculiarities which belong to parents. 7th. To show, also, that the principles which are concerned in the transmission of hereditary diseases are the same as concur in the pro- duction of ordinary diseases. 8th. To deduce fi'om the philosophy of generation the vital nature of hereditary diseases ; or, in other words, to show that the morbid PHYSIOLOGY. COMPOSITION. 37 impression is established upon the vital properties of the ovum, and of course, upon those of the new being ; and that the hereditary vitia- tion does not consist in any transmitted impurity to the blood or other fluids of the offspring, as is now supposed by the humoralists. If the foregoing propositions be true in relation to man, they will, of course, be equally so of animals, and of the whole vegetable king- dom (§ 169/, 1051, 1052). 64, a. If it be universally conceded, as a matter of course, that not only the elementary constitution of the ovum, but its whole develop- ment, depends entirely upon a vital principle or vital properties, it will follow that the same principle or properties are forever afterward concerned in organic processes, and alone concerned. Let us hear, in the first place, the most eminent in the school of vitalism, but who are inclined to lean upon chemistry after the full development of the ovum. 64, h. It is said, for example, by Tiedemann, " That it is the vital power, which in the fecundated germinative liquid, brings the molecules of the organic combinations to the solid form, and calls the first lineaments of the vegetable and animal em- bryo into existence. All the parts and tissues that are formed in it, according to a definite order of succession, are products of the power of formation, and on this they depend in all that relates to their first appearance, their development, aggregation, configuration, and ar- rangement. The phenomena exhibited in the act of formation of an embryo, are placed^ar above all the mechanical and chemical acts we ibserve in bodies not endowed with life." — Tiedemann, ComiKirative Vhysiology. 64, c. By the illustrious Miiller, it is said, " The creative force exists already in the germ, and creates in it the essential parts of the future animal. The germ is potentially the loliole animal. During the development of the germ, the essential parts which constitute the actual whole are produced." " The en- tire vital principle of the e,^^ resides in the germinal disk alone ; and since the external influences which act on the germs of the most different organic beings are the same, we must regard the simple germinal disk as the potential xoliole of the future animal, endowed with the essential and specific force or principle of they^- ture being, and capable of increasing the very small amount of this specific force and matter which it already possesses, by the assimila- tion of new matter." And again he says, " This force exists hcfore the harmonizing parts, which are, in fact, formed by it during the development of the embryo." " The vital force inherent in organic beings itself generates the essential organs which constitute the whole being." " The formative or organizing principle is a creative pow- er, modifying matter blindly and unconsciously;" yet with such won- derful precision that Miiller also says, that " this rational creative FORCE is exerted in every animal strictly in accordance with what the nature of each requires." "The vital principle," he says, "is in a quiescent state in the fi-g^ before incubation." — Mijller, Elements of Physiology. 64, d. Passing from the chemico-physiological school to that of pure chemistry, we shall find the same admissions as to the exclusive agency of a vital principle in the formation and development of the SS INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. seed and ovum. The extraordinary contradictions, which will aston- ish the reader, necessarily abound in all authors who are employed in identifying two subjects that have no relation to each other. 64, c. Take Liebig, as a first example; and take, in the first place, his chemical doctrine of life. " In the animal body," he says, " we recognize, as the ultimate cause of all force, only one cause, ilie chemical action which the ele- ments of the food and the oxygen of the air mutually exercise on each other. The only known ultimate cause of vital force, either in ani- mals or in plants, is a chemical process. If this be prevented, the phenomena of life do not manifest themselves. If the chemical action be impeded, the vital phenomena must take new forms." And yet only a few sections before, and in the very first sentence of Liebig's work on " Animal Chemistry applied to Physiology and Pathology," we read, " In the animal ovum, as well as in the seed of a plant, we recog- nize A CERTAIN REMARKABLE FORCE, the SOURCE of growtli or increase in the mass, and of reproduction, or of supply of the matter consumed; a force in a state of rest* By the action of external influences, by impregnation, by the presence of air and moisture, the condition of static equilibrium of this force is disturbed. Entering into a state of motion or activity, it exhibits itsef in the j^roduction of a series of forms, &c. This force is called the vital force, vis vitcs, or vitality." — Liebig's uini?nal Chemistry. Turning back to the same author's work on " Organic Chemistry applied to Physiology," we meet not only with a similar contradiction of his grand doctrine of the entire dependence of life upon chemical processes (and as we had before seen in respect to digestion, section GO), but with that which is particularly apposite to my present inquiry. " Our notion of life," says Liebig, " involves something more than mere reproduction, namely, the idea of an active power exercised, by virtue of a definite form, and production and generation in a definite form (§ 59). The production of organs, the co-operation of a system of organs, and their power not only to pi'oduce their component parts from the food presented to them, but to generate themselves in their original form and with their jjroperties, are characters belonging ex- clusively to organic life, and constitute a form of reproduction inde- pendent OF CHEMICAL POWERS. The chcmicul forccs are subject to the INVISIBLE CAUSE BY WHICH THIS FORM IS PRODUCED. This VITAL PRINCIPLE is only known to us through the peculiar form of its instru- ments ; that is, through the organs in which it resides. Its laws must be investigated just as we investigate those of the other pow- ers WHICH effect motion AND CHANGES IN MATTER." LiEBIg's Or- ganic Chemistry , &c., p. 355. 64, yi Roget, of high authority, maintains that, " However the laws which regulate the vital phenomena may ap- pear, on a superficial view, to differ from those by which the physical changes taking place in inorganic matter are governed, still there is really no essential difference between them." " It may, in like man- ner, be contended, that the affinities which hold together the elements of living bodies, and which govern the elaboration of organic products, ARE THE SAME vvitli those wliicli preside over inorganized compounds." * See my Examination of Reviews p. 7-28. PHYSIOLOGY. COMPOSITION. 'Si) " Hence it becomes every day more and more probatle that the forces immediately concerned in the production of chemical changes in the body ARE THE SAME as those which are in constant operation in the inorganic world ; and that we are not warranted in the assertion that the operations of vital chemistry are directed by distinct laws, and are the results of new agencies." " However natural it may he to conceive the existence of a single and presiding principle of vitality, we should recollect that this, in the present state of our knowledge, is only a fiction op the mind, not WARRANTED BY THE PHENOMENA THEMSELVES." RoGEt's Outlines of Physiology. Let us now hear this able writer on the subject of foetal development. "A portion of the vital power of the parent," he says, "is for this purpose employed to give origin and birth to the offspring. The ut- most solicitude has been shown in every part of living nature to se- cure the perpetuity of the race, by the establishment of laavs, of which the operation is certain in all contingent circumstances.^'' Roget ultimately describes, in his usual felicitous manner, the de- velopment of the ovum ; and here we have nothing from our author /)ut the agency of the vital powers. " The foundations of the edifice," he says, " are laid in the homo- geneous jelly hy the efforts of the vital powers." " At first, all the energies of vitality are directed to the raising of the fabric, and to the extension of those organs, which are of greatest immediate util- ity; but still having a prospective view to farther and more impor- tant ends," — and so on throughout the chapter ; the whole work of developing and fashioning the foetal organs being assigned, exclu- sively, to " the efforts of the vital powers," and to the " energies of vi- tality." — Roget's Animal and, Vegetable Physiology, Bridgeivater Treatise. 64, g. Finally, let us hear, also. Dr. Carpenter, who advocates the chemical doctrines of life so far as to lay down the following princi- ple no less than twice within six pages, and in nearly the same words. Thus : " Reason," he says, "has been already given for the belief that the affinities which hold together the elementary particles of organized structures are not different from those concerned in the inorganic world ; and it has been shown that the tendency to decoxMposition after death bears a very close relation with the activity op the CHANGES which TAKE PLACE IN THE PART DURING LIFE." CaRPEN- ter's Principles of General aiid Comparative Physiology, jj. 140 ; also, p. 146. Now the authority of such a writer, and a prominent leader in the purely chemical school of physiology, must be allowed to be impor- tant when any unavoidable concession is made to vitalism. Let us then hear him in the matter of the ovum : "Organization, and vital properties,'' he says, " are simultaneously communicated to the germ by the structures of its parent. Those VITAL PROPERTIES CONFER upon it THE MEANS of itself assimilating, and THEREBY ORGANIZING AND ENDOWING WITH VITALITY the materials supplied by the inorganic world." — Carpenter's Principles, &c., p. 138. And again, this mere chemist, in his general views of the philosojihy of life, observes, that 40 INSTITUTES OP MEDICINE. " The AGENCY of VITALITY, as Dr. Prout justly remarks, does not change the properties of the elements, but simply combines them [the elements] in modes which we cannot imitate." — Carpenter's Principles, &c., p. 146. 64, h. Dr. Prichard is strictly of Dr. Carpenter's school (see my " Examination," &c., p. 37), between whom there is a point of agree- ment which is worth noticing in its connection with the subject now before us, and to which I have referred in a former work, in its rela- tion to Dr. Carj)enter. Both of these writers see so much of peculiar design in organic nature, and find it so impossible to interpret the phenomena of organic beings upon the chemical and physical princi- ples which they have so strenuously set forth, and in their aversion to any other principles, and to the obvious rule of analogy as to second causes, that, in the end, they assign the functions and phenomena of life to the imviediate action of the Deity. " The theory of a vital principle," says Dr. Prichard, " has been applied in a different manner, to account for the phenomena displayed at the beginning of life in animals and vegetables, and to get rid of the mystery which attends the gradual evolution of organic structure from ova and germs. Here the vital principle is no longer considered, a chemical agent, but assumes the character of a plastic and formative power," &c. Now Dr. Prichard "cuts the knot" and "gets rid of the mystery" after the following manner : " We may," he says, " if we choose to do so, tei'm the cause which governs the organization and vital existence a plastic principle ; but it is a principle endowed with intelligence and design [ ! ] It is, in fact, nothing more than the Energy of the Deity." " The devel- opment of forms, according to their generic, specific, and individual diversities, not less in the vegetable than in the animal world, can only be accounted for by ascribing it to the universal energy and wisdom of the Creator." — Prichard's Preview of the Doctrine of a Vital Principle. See, also, Paine's Commentaries, vol. i., p. 10, 25 ; and his Exainination of Reviews, p. 37, 41, 43, 44. This is a far greater admission than the vitalist can desire ; since, if the development and growth of the germ depend immediately upon Almighty Power, so must all the analogous processes of the living being at all stages of its existence, and science would be merged in the direct manifestations of that Power. But, while this doctrine is utterly exclusive of all the assumed chemical agencies at all periods of life, and overlooks the analogy between the development of the germ and the subsequent processes, there can be no hesitation as to the disposition which should be made of it, without any reference to its prevaricating nature (§ 175 d, 699 c, 740). 65. Having now before us a plain statement of our necessary prem- ises as they respect the exclusive agency of the " vital principle," or " organic force," or " creative power," or " vital properties," or "vital powers," or "vitality" (whichever term may be preferred), in carrying out the full development of the embiyo, it may be interesting to know the details of that development and growth, which is thus allowed, on all hands, to be conducted by powers utterly distinct from the chemical and physical, and in which these have no agency. " The development of the separate parts," says Miiller, " out of PHYSIOLOGY. COMPOSITION. 41 the simple mass, is observable in the incubated egg. All the parts of the egg, except the germinal membrane, are destined for the nu- trition of the germ. The simple germinal disk is the potential whole of the future animal, endowed with the essential and specific force, or principle of the future being, and this germ expands to form the germinal membrane, which grows so as to surround the yolk; and by transformation of this germ, the organs of the future animal are pro- duced. The rudiments merely of the nervous and vascular systems, and of the intestinal canal, are first formed ; and from these rudi- ments the details of the organization are afterward more fully devel- oped ; so that the Jirst trace of the central parts of the nervous sys- tem must be regarded neither as brain nor as spinal marrow, but as still the potential whole of the central parts of the nervous system. In the same manner, the different parts of the heart are seen to be developed from a uniform tube ; and the first trace of the intestinal tube is more than the mere intestinal tube ; it is the j^otential whole, — the representative of the entire digestive apparatus ; for, as Baer first discovered, liver, salivary glands, and pancreas, are, in the far- ther progress of the vegetative process, really developed from that which appears to be merely the rudiment of the intestinal canal. It can be no longer doubted that the germ is not the miniature of the future being, with all its organs, as Bonnet and Haller believed, but is merely potentiall]/ this being, with the specific vital force of which it is endowed, and which it becomes actually by develop- ment, and by the production of the organs essential to the active state of the actual being. A high magnifying power is not necessary to distinguish the first rudiments of the separate organs, which, from their first appearance, are distinct and very large, but simple. So that the later complicated state of a particular organ can be seen to arise by transformation from its simple rudiment. These remarks are now no longer mere opinions, but facts; and nothing is more dis- tinct than the development of glands from the intestinal tube, and of the intestinal tube itself from a portion of the germinal membrane." — MiJLLER, ihid—{^ 1051, 1052). Such, then, is the history of the development of the germ in birds, and in all the higher animals ; and the whole work is ascribed by physiologists of every denomination exclusively to principles un- known in the inorganic world, and wholly distinct from any of a chemical nature. They are called, indiscriminately, vital properties, vital powers, vital principle, organic force, creative force, &c., to distin- guish the principle, or properties, from every thing that has any known existence in inorganic substances, or as the source of any in- organic results. But, physiologists of the chemical school stop here, and ascribe all organic compounds after the being is fully formed to chemical agencies. It is remarkable, however, that it has not occur- red to these philosophers, that precisely the same elementary combi- nations, the same formation into tissues, and the same secretions, take place at all stages of the rudimentary development as at all future periods of life, and that the rudimentary development consists in these formations of simple compounds and their union into tissues ; and if the early or rudimentary growth of the being, all its secreted products, all its elementary combinations, be determined by the vital properties, so are the same results determined by the same propertie.a 42 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. or power's forever aftei-ward. To call in the agency of chemical or physical forces, to accomplish precisely the same results at any future stage of the organic being as are admitted to be performed in the de- velopment of the "essential parts" of that being by the "vital prin- ciple" or " vital properties" alone, is a violation not only of the plain- est rule in philosophy, but of the clearest facts (§ 41, 42, 55-58). 66. We have thus before us a peculiar order of powers by which the organic being is developed, fashioned, and forever exclusively governed. It is these powers about which physiology, pathology, and therapeutics, are essentially concerned. We may, therefore, seek in the composition of organic beings, and in the laws of their development, yor the great rudimentary j^rinciples of medicine. The vital principle has also the extraordinary task of laying out, in the ovum, the whole organization of the future being ; so that its subse- quent labor must be comparatively simple, and it is then, least of all, that it can require any help fi'om the forces of the inorganic king- dom, or that it would, permit a violation of the great principle in na- ture of avoiding an unnecessary multiplication of causes. 67. It may be farther shown by the incipient development of the ovum, that the vital powers, or properties, are more concerned in the growth, nutrition, and all the subsequent physical results, throughout the whole existence of the being, than is generally supposed by even the exclusive vitalists. The usual supposition is that the vessels or instruments of action, which are moved by the vital powers, perform the work of decomposing the blood and other parts, and recombining them again in other proportions and forms, according to the particu- lar organization of parts, and the modification of their vital states. It has been the doctrine of most physiologists till a recent day, that the ovum, in its germinating part, is a mere organic fluid, destitute of vessels, and all other parts of the future apparatus. Later re- searches, however, have disclosed the existence of a rudimentary cell; and it is said by Miiller (1835) that "in the incubated egg the s-ole material for the first formation of blood is the substance of the germ or germinal membrane, which itself grows by assimilation of the fluid of the egg^ or the yelk. It may be distinctly observed that the blood is generated in the germinal membrane before the vessels are formed ;"* from which it appears that t*he first "assimilation of new matter" must take place without the agency of vessels, or of any parts which are subsequently formed ; and, therefore, the same powers which enabled the cell to generate vessels, nerves, Destined for waste. ) Conveying the means ) of repair. The Arrangement of Organs according to tlieir relative Functions. C Brain and cerebral nerves. < Spinal cord and its nerves. ^ Sympathetic ganglia and sympathetic nerve C Heart and its Pericardium. Arteries. Veins. Lymphatics. Lymphatic glands Lacteals. i Lacteal glands. Mouth, stomach, intestine Salivary srlands and pancreas. JO Spleen. ! Larynx and vocal system. Trachea. Lungs. Diaphragm. Muscles of thorax and abdomen. System of voluntary muscles. C Derma, or main portion. J Papillary tissue. [ Rete mucosum. [^ Epidermis, r Kidneys. J Ureters. S Bladder. ) Urethra. ( Organ of hearing. 3 " sight. ( " smell. Bones. Cartilage. Ligaments. Synovial capsules. Testes. ") Ductus defei'ens. Seminal vesicles. Prostate gland. Penis. Muscles of perinaeum Ovaries. Fallopian tubes. Uterus. Vagina. Hymen. Clitoris. Nymphce. Labia. I Constrictor vaginae, j ^. Mammae, — accessory parts. ^ Respiratory Sys- tem. 6. Cutaneous Sys tem. 7. Urinary System. 8. Special Sensitive System. 9. Osseous System. ■) 10 Genital System. < > Formative. \ Copul ative. Formative. •Copulative. > Male. Female. as INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. 126. The organic and animal functions are also naturally subdivi« tied into, 1st. Those which operate from without inward, as in digestion ; and, 2d. Those which operate from within outward, as in circulation, se- cretion, &c. 127, There are generally two sets of organs for the animal func- tions, having a harmony of action in their natural and healthy states. 128. When the organs of organic life are in pairs, as the kidneys, concerted action is not necessary; and here one organ may supply the place of both (§ 109). 129, a. The whole assemblage of organic viscera act together in concert ; but the animal organs, as a general system, act more or less independently of each other. 129, b. The mutual relations which subsist between the various or- gans and their several functions are of two principal kinds; namely, the vital, and the mechanical. 129, c. The first class of relations may be distributed into tlnee dif- ferent orders. The first order consists of the relations between the organs of sense. The second order embraces those between the brain and voluntary muscles. The third order comprises the relations which are especially maintained by sympathy. It is the last subdi- vision, mostly, which is relative to our present subject. It concerns, therefore, the organization by which organic life is carried on in ani- mals, and depends upon the nervous power in its function of sympa- thy, and upon a principle independent of the nervous power, called continuous sympathy, and which is probably also an important princi- ple in plants (§ 111-113, 222, 233, 495-500, 6381, 81 8i).— Note U. 129, d. The vital relations of a general nature evince the highest order of Design. They refer to the mutual co-operation of distinct systems of organs in the production of particular results, and of these various systems in the maintenance of universal life ; while the sev- ei'al individual organs possess distinct and specific offices that are more or less dependent upon the principle of sympathy (§ 222-233, 455), that is, reflex action of the nervous system. 129, e. The sympathetic relations are most strongly pronounced among organs which concur together in the performance of special functions, as the circulatory, the digestive, the urinary, the sexual systems, &:c. [^ 124). Other special relations subsist between the brairi and the organs of animal life through the medium, in pait, of the mental functions. Such is seen between the brain and voluntary muscles in the production of voluntary motion (§ 500, d). .Thus, also, the senses aid each other ; the sight being most independent. In this way, too, a concurrence is established between the teeth, mus- cles, eyes, nose, &c., in procuring food and supplying the stomach , each individual part having been also constituted with a reference to the nature of the food, and the mode of obtaining it (§ 323). 129, Jl Plants are devoid of all that intimate association of parts which is owing to reflex nervous influence in animals, as well as to peculiarities of structure and special modifications of the common properties of life. But, a general relation of functions obtains to a certain extent in plants through the ]a\v of continuous sympathy, which, as I have endeavored to show, depends upon the organic jn-opertiea and which 1 would designate as continuous influence (§ 498). PHYSIOLOGY. STRUCTUKi:. 59 1^9,^. The sympathetic relations in organic life are of the very highest moment in medicine. Disease is propagated, is maintained, and removed, very greatly, through these natural relations. 129, li. The sympathetic relations are variously modified by dis- ease, and are often more strongly pronounced than in health, though more or less diverted from their natural condition. Remedies also operate with greater effect through these modified relations, as well as through the greater susceptibility of the organic properties (§137, d). For the same reason, natural stimuli, as food, often prove morbific in diseased conditions (§ 152, h). The sympathies which grow out of morbific agents depend upon the natural principle, of wliicli they are only modifications. And so of those which spring from remedial agents ; these agents giving rise to greater influences in consequence of the morbid state of sympathy and of the organic properties, as well as in consequence of their own intrinsic virtues (§ 718, 901). 129, i. It appears, thei-efore, to be a most important law, that mor- bid states call into operation reflex nervous actions among organs, which, in their natural state, manifest but feeble, and perhaps no di- rect relations whatever; and that, in consequence of morbid changes, remedial agents will operate sympathetically through the stomach, &c., upon remote parts, when they would have no such effect in the healthy state of the organs. This principle is demonstrated in every case of disease, and constitutes our first position against the humoral pathology, and the doctrine of the operation of remedial agents by absorption (§ 819, &c.). New vital relations being developed by disease, our remedies continue to operate through those acquired re- lations so long as they exist; while, also, the remedies themselves may institute analogous sympathetic relations, and thus simultane- ously induce reflex nervous actions of a salubrious nature in organs not morbidly affected (§ 74, 117, 137, 143, 155, 156, 387, 422, 514 7i, 524 A, 525, 528, 733 &, 905, 980). 129. k. The mechanical relations are equally common to plants and animals. They are maintained by the motion of matter from one or- gan, or part, to another ; as the transmission of blood from the heart through the blood-vessels, sap from the roots to the leaves of plants, food through the intestinal canal, urine from the kidneys to the blad- der, and from the bladder through the urethra, &c. But, the move- ment of the matter is effected by the vital properties operating through the various organs. 130. Every part is a perfect labyrinth, anatomically considered. It is a labyrinth, also, of perfect designs ; while the harmonious con- currence of these designs in the aggregate organs and tissues is too profoundly complex for any exact analysis. The deep intimacy of parts in each tissue coiTOsponds with the union of the wliole, with the dominion of common laws, and with that concerted action of all parts, which, in a popular sense, makes up the life of the organic being. 131. It has already been stated, that a knowledge of the minuteness of structure which is supplied by the microscope is practically use- less, while the deceptions of that instrument have led to many im- portant errors in physiology and pathology (§ 83). It cannot be de- pended upon, especially, in exploring soft structures. If it lead to unimportant facts, it is equally liable to betray us into error and fal- 60 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. lacious hypotheses. The whole history of that instrument, so far aft physiolofry is concerned, has gone to confirm the foregoing conclu- sions, which were originally advanced in another work, and has con- clusively sustained the opinion of one of the most profound observers of the present age. Thus : "Authors," says Bichat, "have been much occupied with the in- timate structure of glands. Let us neglect all these idle questions, in which neither inspection nor experiment can guide us. Let us begin the study of anatomy where the organs can be subjected to the senses." " No methodical mind will attend to the minute nature of the muscular fibre, upon which so much has been written. The ex- act progress of the sciences in this age is not accommodated to those hypotheses, which made general anatomy and physiology a frivolous romance in the last." Microscopical information, so far as correct, goes to the amount of human knowledge, and to the perfection of science, though it may not contribute to useful ends. But experience shows us that we may not depend, as it respects the microscope, upon the vision of oth- ers, especially where a high magnifying power is required. Each must observe for himself; and, as allowed by Ehrenberg, long prac- tice, alone, can assure him of any general accuracy. The laborious student may attend to this accomplishment. But, vita hrevis, ars longa ; and he will be likely to live the subject of deluded sense rather than of enlightened understanding. " Enough is left besides to search and know. But knowledge is as food, and needs no less Her temperance over appetite, to know In measure what the mind may well contain ; Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind." — Milton. The following is another example in illustration of Milton'g prin- ciple, and another instance* of the revolutionary spirit of the micro- scopic observers. I quote from Wagner's " Elements of Physiology for the Use of Students.^' " The study," he says, " of the varieties of form presented by the seminal animalcules ought not to be held as any trifling matter, or as tending to accumulate superfluous details. Most important phys- iological CONCLUSIONS may be based on the information thus ac- quired" (§ 83, b). It is one of the few correct physiological conclusions to be found in the writings of Liebig, that " The most exact anatomical knowledge of the structure of tissues cannot teach us their uses ; and from the microscopical examination of the most minute reticulations of the vessels, we can learn no more as to their functions than we have learned concerning vision from counting the surfaces on the eye of a fly." — Liebig's Animal Chem- istry.— {k 83 c, 251, 699 c and d). When we consider, therefore, the constant deceptions of the micro- scope, especially in all explorations of soft substances, and the abso- lute uselessness of any knowledge it may convey as to the recesses of organization, it may be reasonably expected that the time is not • See ai-ticle on the Microscope, in Medical and Physiclogical Commeniaries, vol. i . p 699-712; and my Examination of Reviews, p. 6, 89; also, this work, § 515. PHYSIOLOGY. STRUCTURE. 61 distant when all this lumber will be excluded from practical woi'ka on physiology, and turned, at least, into a channel by itself.* 132. Each simple texture, when united into compound oi'gans, has as much its own specific function as the aggregate compound. It is even more important, in a pathological sense, to regard the individ- ual textures than the compound organ which they may form. 133, a. A consideration of the tissues in respect to their special character and functions, as well as their obvious anatomical differen- ces, being of the vqry highest importance to the physiologist and phy- sician, they can be studied advantageously only in these several as- pects. Much must, therefore, be now anticipated as to what will be subsequently stated more circumstantially in regard to the properties and functions of life. The student must be prepared with that anal- ysis before he can approach the tissues with any hope of enlightened knowledge. A simple statement of their apparent anatomical charac- teristics and relations, and of their products, would present a barren field. Nor is it alone their vital attributes which should most entja^e the attention of the medical philosopher, but he should be equally and simultaneously employed in learning how these conditions are modified in disease. Such, therefore, is my projected plan in relation to the tissues (§ 83, c). 133, h. Every distinct tissue, and often the same tissue as it occurs in different places and connections, and even the different parts of one and the same continuous tissue, possess, respectively, special modifi- cations of the vital properties and functions. Upon these modifica- tions depend the vai-iety of the natural vital phenomena, as, also, very greatly, those which are morbid. 133, c. But there would be no disease were there not another im- poitant condition in the constitution of the vital properties ; and this is their mutability. Its final cause is the well-being of organic nature ; since, as organization changes in the progress of the plant or of ani- mals to a state of maturity, so must there be an antecedent change in the properties which conduct the development of organs, &c. The same principle is displayed in gestation, lactation, &c. It is this, in connection with the susceptibility of the properties of life to the action of blood and other vital agents, which renders them liable to morbid changes when other causes operate. Such, therefore, is a necessary consequence of the final cause of the adaptation of the properties of life to the influence of salutary agents, and to the varying exigencies of organic nature. Nor would there be any recovery fi-om disease, but for the same mutability of the organic properties, and their liability to other chan- ges when yet other causes operate (§ 177, &c., 901). 134. Owing to the peculiarities in the vital constitution of the dif- ferent tissues, a common disease, as inflammation, is characterized by many peculiarities of symptoms, &c., in the several tissues, respect- ively. Differences also arise in their constitutional influences, and they may require corresponding variations of treatment (§718). This is even true of different paits of a continuous tissue, as the alimentary and pulmonary mucous membrane ; where inflammation of this mem- brane in the nose, larynx, trachea, lungs, fauces, stomach, and intes- tines, is distinguished by ahnost as striking peculiarities in the vital signs, and in their constitutional influences, as are the physiological * jSTot one disclosure has been j'et made bj- the microscope that can affect a doctrine in these Institutes — 1870. 62 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. functions of the different compound organs which it traverses (§ 140 752-754, 7S0, 783). 135, a. The special modifications of the vital properties in differ- ent parts of one and the same continuous tissue is often strikingly de- noted by the character of the natural product of the several portions, respectively ; as in the tissue last mentioned. Nothing, for example, can be more unique than the gastric juice, a product of all complex animals, while it can be generated by nothing but the mucous tissue of the stomach. Again, in the lungs we meet wiUi this tissue per- formino- the office of excretion ; being the only example in which an organ eliminates truly effete matter from venous blood. And here an important analogy occurs to show that the elaboration of carbon is a vital process (§ 316, 419, 827 h). In the uterus the same membrane appears as an organ of excretion in relation to the arteria] blood, but for the uses of the uterus alone ; nor is there any thing else in nature that is capable of generating a similar product. But, in all the cases, the analogy which is indicated by the coincidence of anatomical struc- ture is farther confirmed by the universal production of mucus by this remarkable tissue. The anatomical differences are microscopical. 135, h. All the foregoing is delicately exemplified by the great variety of formations which are generated by the granulations that spring from ulcers ; since, although in all the cases the granulations appear to be identical in character, we know from their production of parts analogous to such as had been removed by the ulcerative pro- cess, that, in every instance, the granulations must have been endow- ed, respectively, with specific modifications of the organic properties and shades of diflerence in organic structure (^ 733 c). 136. In consequence, also, ofthe foregoing peculiarities of vital con- stitution, every tissue, and often continuous parts of a tissue (as in the last example), are determined in their results by special vital influ- ences, as well as by any peculiarities of organization. This is denoted by the phenomena where structures are most alike. Owing, also, to the general coincidence in the vital constitution of all parts there are certain general stimuli adapted to the whole, especially the stimulus of heat. The blood has been regarded as a universal stimulus ; but, it is only so in relation to the sanguineous system. This fact, it may be now remarked, evinces, what is shown by diseases, a near identity in the vital constitution of all that part of the arterial system which conveys red blood ; while, on the other hand, the difference between arterial and venous blood shows a difference in the organic proper- ties ofthe aiterial and venous systems. This has its deep foundation in the whole physiological condition of man and animals, and I may also add, in the whole vegetable tribe (§ 847, c). While every sur- face has some secreted product adapted to its own special modifi- cation of initability, many of these products may be offensive to other parts. Again, the special irritability of one part may be exactly suited to some product of another part, and this may or may not be a natural vital stimulus, and perfectly inoffensive, to the second part, while it may excoriate all other parts. Bile, for instance, is the nat- ural stimulus of the intestine, but will injure other parts. Venous blood is harmless in the veins, and excites them, more or less, to a contractile action ; but is rapidly fatal within the arteries (§ 849). Urine is the natural stimulus of the bladder, but will excoriate most other parts (§ 74, 188^ d, Mb\, 500 m, 514/, 6471, 650, 847 e). PHYSIOLOGY. STRUCTURE. 63 137, a. In this relative sense the animal is filled with poisons;, each one of which, however, in its proper place, is not only inoffen- sive, but indispensable. Here is the principle. 137, b. It is, also, upon the foregoing organic constitution of differ- ent parts, and which gives rise to a mutual relation of the different vital agents and products of organs and of the various parts of the or- ganism, that the difference in the effects of remedial as well as mor- bific agents upon different parts is essentially founded. Wine in- flames the mucous tissue of the bladder, &c., but may be good for the stomach. Tobacco smoke is inoffensive when inspired in the or- dinary mode ; but it is a violent poison when introduced within the ahmentary canal. Other agents affect the stomach, or intestines, or livei', or uterus, or bladder, &c., each organ more than the others, and more than other parts (§ 233f , 872 c, 838.) 137, c. From not duly regarding these important facts, or fi'om an ignorance, or a disregard of physiology, many agents which have a specific relation to the vital constitution of some tissue in a particular part of the body, as the mucous, for example, are supposed to have the same relation to the tissue in all other parts. Hence the oil of turpentine, copaiva, naphtha, &c., have been abortively or injui'iously employed in pulmonary catarrh, phthisis even, diarrhoea, dysentery, &c., mostly for the reason that they exert a specific efi'ect u^Jon the mucous tissue of the urinary organs. This great law of adaptation is so universal as to extend through- out the whole domain of medicine, reaching as fully into pathology and therapeutics as it is conspicuous in physijology. If the blood be rendered morbid by morbid states of the solids it never becomes morbific, since there is a progressive adaptation of the vital changes in the solids to such as the solids induce in the blood. And so of va- rious morbid secretions in relation to the parts by which they may be produced. These results, in which the vital properties of the solids are always concerned as the primary cause, ai-e founded in an all- pervading law of the animal economy, and by which, and which alone, nature is enabled to throw off disease (§ 524 d, 944 c, 847 a-h). 137, d. Again, it is one of the most im^iortant laws in medicine, that the susceptibility of tissues and organs to the action of remedial agents is more or less affected by disease. Many agents which oper- ate powerfully in certain morbid states, and in certain doses, both lo- cally and sympathetically, may be perfectly inert in the natural states of the same organs. And so of the natural agents of life. The great- ness of the effects, also, will depend very much upon the nature and intensity of disease. The same principle applies to the impressions which are made by many remedial agents upon existing states of dis- ease, or upon organs in their state of integrity ; by which the diseased or healthy parts are increased in their susceptibility to the subsequent action of the same or other remedies, or to morbific causes (§ 143, c). 137, e. It is, therefore, one harmonious system of laws throughout. Were it, indeed, otherwise, remedial agents could have no existence,, and disease, of course, could receive no help from art. These, also^ are the beginning of a long series of facts which show us that the' effects of all agents, whether morbific or remedial, may be traced to the peculiar impression which they exert upon parts with which they come in contact; and by which, also, we overthrow the whole systtnr. 64 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. of chemical physiology, the humoral pathology, and the doctrines of debiUty, and of cure by the absorption of remedies (§ 847, e). 138. The natural modifications of the vital properties and functions, or the special vital constitution, of any particular tissue, or parts of a continuous tissue, and, therefore, their special modifications in any given disease, conform to the general nature of the complex organ of which the tissue may form a component part. Certain tissues of a compound organ are far more liable to disease than its other tissues. Thus, the mucous tissue of the stomach is quite liable, the serous rarely, and the muscular more rarely (§ 764, a) 139. Disease of any particular tissue, or parts of a tissue, is apt to be most severe, in its local and general character, according to tho importance of the functions of the conipou7id organ of which it may form a component part. This, however, is less true of the constitu- tional influence, than of the local intensity of disease. 140. The sympathetic influences of disease are also greatly detei- mined by the nature of the affection, especially the constitutional ef- fects. Inflammation of the serous, venous, and ligamentous, tissues, disturb the constitution far more than the same degrees of inflamma- tion affecting the mucous, arterial, and muscular, tissues. But much, also, as already said, will depend upon the nature of the compound organ with which the tissue, or part of a continuous tissue, may be associated ; though sometimes, where the compound organ is compar- atively unimportant, inflammation of one of its tissues may give rise to great constitutional disturbances. Such, for example, is true of some inflammatory affeptions of the mucous tissue of the throat; and few diseases are more intractable than laryngitis. Much, also, will often depend upon the special modification of disease; as in acute articular rheumatism (§ 525-530). 141. a. Tissues of the same organization are most allied in their vital properties, and hence are most liable to sympathize with each other in their diseases. 141, h. When a tissue of an organ becomes diseased the proper- ties and functions of the others are more or less disturbed ; though the primary disease is not apt to be propagated to them from the tis- sue first affected. It continues rather in the tissue first invaded. In- flammation, for example, beginning in the mucous tissue of the stom- ach, will extend along that tissue, so far at least as its connection relates to the stomach, without being often propagated to the other tissues of the compound organ. This principle has a broad founda- tion, and is owing to the general coincidence in the vital constitution of all parts of the same tissue, and to the differences between the vital states of that and the associated tissues. Exceptions, however, occur more frequently in some parts than in others ; as in the lungs, where pleuro-pneumonia is not unfrequent. Nevertheless, in these cases, the simultaneous affection of two distinct tissues of a compound or- gan may be rather owing to a general predisposition effected by some remote cause than to morbific influences exerted by one tissue upon the other. In other cases, especially of specific inflammation, the dis- ease is propagated directly from one tissue to another, as in scrofula, heumatism, &c. ; but in most other instances by reffex nervous action. 142. For reasons stated in § 133-136, morbific agents may readily excite disease in one part of a continuous tissue when they would have PHYSIOLOGY. STRUCTURE. 65 110 effect on another part of it ; or may operate more profoundly on one part than on another. And this holds true of the action of rerae. dial agents. The same is also true of the sympathetic influences which may be exerted by disease ; and a like principle applies to cer- tain sympathies that fall upon special parts which are immediately continuous with each other, but Avhich are determined, also, by cer- tain special vital relations of the diiFerent parts. Thus, the vital rela tions of the tongue to the alimentary canal being far greater than to the lungs, and as the canal readily sympathizes with other chylopoi- etic viscera, the tongue is far more sensitive to abdominal than to pul- monary derangements (§ 129 c, i, 689 ^, 694f). 143, a. A'gain, there may be varying susceptibilities of the differ- ent parts of a continuous tissue (arising from numerous causes not positively morbific), when the same morbific, or remedial, cause will affect one part or the other more in conformity with the acquired sus- ceptibilities, than with the natural modifications, of the vital proper- ties in the several parts, respectively. This is also more applicable to the tissue as it occurs in compound organs not anatomically con- nected, and to tissues which differ in their organization (§ 783). 143, h. Hence it follows, that, if all the organs be rendered preter- naturally susceptible, a general explosion of disease may follow the operation of some cause, which, in sounder health, would be harm- less. Under these circumstances, however, disease is most apt to spring up more or less sympathetically, and successively, in one part after another, till all parts may ultimately be brought into some, though variable, forms of disease (§ 514 h, 660, 666, 905). But, in these cases, it generally happens that some of the morbid states abate, or subside, as new ones come forward, the new ones, perhaps, subduing sympathetically the older in the series (§ 804, 905). The system, therefore, is rarely universally invaded by disease, except in idiopathic fever (§ 148, 783). Reflected nervous action applies in all the cases. Nevertheless, it probably does not often, if ever happen, except in fever, that the primary is the efficient predisposing cause of universal disease, but that disease of one organ proves the predisposing of dis- ease in another ; and as one organ after another becomes affected in this manner, they co-operate together in rendering other parts suscep- tible of disease (§ 644, &c., 715-719). 143, c. In proportion, therefore, as the susceptibility of the system at large is increased by morbid changes, or predisposed by morbific influences, so, in a general sense, will the alterative action of reme- dial agents be felt in a corresponding manner (§ 137 d, 152 b, 715). By the law of adaptation as set forth in the Medical and Physiological Commentaries (vol. i., p. 649, 653-655, &c.), and in various parts of the present work, the sympathetic influence of any local disease which is felt by distant organs modifies the vital states of those parts in. a manner that institutes harmonious relations to the part more pro foundly affected ; and thus remedial agents will extend their salutary alterative action to such distant parts, and render them the source of salutary effects upon the essential seats of disease (§ 73,80, 117, 1292, 133-137, 140, 155, 156, 169/, 387, 399, 422, 514 Ji, 524 d, 525, 528, 638, 649 (Z, 811, 848, "902/, 905). "When the whole system is inva- ded by disease, as in idiopathic fever, the alterative action of rem- edies is felt over the universal body (§ 148, 152 i, 222-232, 500, E 66 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. 904 d). It is owing, also, to the same law of adaptation, the same universal, however partial modifications of the vital states which local diseases often induce, that parts remote from the direct seat of dis- ease are protected against all morbific effects from any changes which the blood may undergo as a consequence of morbid action (§ 845, &c.). Independently, however, of any increased susceptibility of organs, the action of numerous agents upon the stomach may determine influences upon distant parts whose natural state is unimpaired, and these influ- ences may become the source of other impressions upon other parts. Circles of reflex nervous action may be thus engendered universally, by which all parts shall concur in the effects of the gastric irritation which the remedies may institute. In this manner a cathartic or an emetic may bring the whole organism to bear with favorable influences upon some slight inflammation of the throat which had exerted no mod- ifying effects upon other parts (§ 514 h, 692 a, 902 g). 143. d. Again, there are some remedial agents possessing general vital relations to the whole body, especially the several preparations of mercury, and others whose specific relations are more limited, like cantharides, which will affect profoundly the entire organization, or certain individual parts, and alter the condition of their vital states, in the most healthy conditions. These agents, therefore, approach most nearly the truly morbific ones, while they possess the grand charac- teristic of the Materia Medica of instituting morbid changes which are of transient existence (§ 1059, 854 d). 144. Many acquired conditions may be transmitted fi-om parents to child, which may thus form a constitutional predisposition to disease ; being a permanent and more or less universal modification of the vital properties (though of some parts more than others), which does not properly belong to them ; as in scrofula. Here, the absolute remote cause has operated upon the ancestor (§ 75-80, 661). 145. Subjects thus constituted (§ 144) are liable to morbific influ- ences which the more natural do not feel ; and such causes as would produce in the natural subject common inflammation of the nose, trachea, &c., will excite scrofulous inflammation in the lungs of the acquired constitution (§ 650, 659). 146. Hereditary predisposition to disease manifests itself in certain tissues and organs more than in others, according to the nature of the transmitted constitution (^ 143, a). 147. Sympathetic diseases may spring up in unusual constitutions, when they would not in the more natural. Thus, in certain heredi- tary conditions indigestion gives rise to scrofulous, rheumatic, and gouty inflammation of parts distant from the chylopoietic viscera. The same principle is also in operation when the vital constitution of parts is modified by habits, climate, age, the development of the gen- erative organs, &c. (§ 542), all depending upon reflex nervous action. 148. Certain causes appear to be capable of affecting, directly and indirectly, all the tissues of the body, as in idiopathic fever; though, in these cases the primary morbific effect is on particular parts, from which it is disseminated by morbific reflex nervous action (§ 649, 665, 666, 760). In these cases, however, it appears not to be a posi- tive state of disease in the part upon which the morbific agents may exert their primary effects, as on the mucous surfaces, which brings the iost of the system into a predisposition to disease; but a predis- PHYSIOLOGY. STRUCTURE. 67 position being established in those primary parts, the impression is of such a nature as to be propagated sympathetically over the universal body; just as when many remedial agents acting upon the mucous surface of the stomach exert powerful influences upon remote organs, but without inducing disease in the gastric mucous membrane. It is, therefore, in idiopathic fever, as well as in numerous local affections, that the parts on which the morbific agents exert their direct effects may not manifest any signs of disease till the explosion of fever takes place ; or as when pneumonia, or catarrh, is induced by the action of cold upon the skin ; while it often happens that the parts thus origin ally, but imperceptibly impressed, become sympathetically the seats of alDsolute disease by the reacting influence of the diseases which had been sympathetically produced through these parts. Very complex circles of reflex nervous action may thus arise. These general af fections may be also broken up by the action of a single remedy, as by an emetic, or mercury, &c. (557, 559, 712, 715-719). 149. It is a great and important law, resulting from the physiolog- ical considerations now made (§ 133-148), that morbific causes, ex- ternal or internal, determine disease upon the tissues of one com- pound organ or another according to the particular virtues of the morbific causes, and in accordance, also, with the natural modifica- tions of the vital properties in every part, and the susceptibilities which they may acquire from other causes (§ 642 Z>, 722 d, 725, 794, 795, SOS). Hence it follows that many of the natural stimuli of ^afe may become morbific. 150, a. It is a great fundamental law, that a genei-al coincidence exists between the natural susceptibilities of the properties of life to their ordinary stimuli (§ 136), and to those of a morbific, and of a re- medial, nature, according to the natural modifications of the vital properties, whether in a general sense (§ 148), or in their relation to particular parts (§ 136) ; the influences produced conforming, of course, to the natural modifications of the properties of life and the special virtues of the several agents, though modified by the tran- sient or permanent influences which spring from other sources, espe- cially from disease (584, 644-674, 772 c, 826, &c., 847 e, 904). _ Such is the inevitable result of the constitution of the properties of life (§ 177). It is, as it were, the great focal point from which all di- verges that is embraced in medicine ; the bond which unites every branch of the science. 150, h. All that is here said, and in § 149, is equally applicable to the nervous power, in all its modifications, as an agent in the produc- tion and cure of disease, as to agents of a physical nature (§ 222- 233J, &c.). 151. It is through the foregoing law (§ 150) that the natural stim- uli of life maintain all parts in their precise conditions ; through which, also, morbific agents alter those conditions in certain uniform ways, and through which remedial agents establish certain other changes which enable the properties and actions of every part to re- turn spontaneously to their natural states. The law involves an im- mense range of facts in physiology, pathology, and therapeutics, and groups many other fundamental principles. It should be the point of departure in all our medical researches and reasonings ; for it is, as it were, the polar star which will guide us safely upon our difl^icult aijd dap^erous vovase (\ 794, 795, &c.). 68 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. J 52, a. It follows, therefore, from § 150, 151, that the operation of all things upon the living organism, whether food, heat, cold, blood poisons, the nei-vous power, or remedies for disease, is upon one com- mon principle, which is relative to the natural constitution of the or- ganic properties. Food stimulates the stomach, and throws a genial sympathetic influence over the whole organism, warming the cold surface as soon as it enters its appropriate receptacle ; blood main- tains, in the same way, the actions of all parts ; poisons and morbific agents, put into the stomach, affect the vital properties of that organ injuriously, when, unlike the case of food, pernicious reflex nervous ac- tions are determined upon other parts, or the same food in excess • may do the same. We then introduce into the same organ another class of morbific agents that are less profound in their operation, and which prove remedial in certain doses, and therefore establish, through the same piinciple, a salutary change in the same properties which other poisons had affected injuriously (§ 638, 642 h, 854). 152. h. It is also worthy of repetition, that such is the analogy be- tween morbific and remedial impressions, that the organs which sus- tain the former are thus rendered susceptible of the latter, when they might be otherwise insensible to the same remedial agents, in their appropriate remedial doses. Such is the harmony of the laws of na- ture ; such their great final causes (§ 524, no. 3, d). For the same reason, also, many of the natural agents of life, such as the ordinary kinds of food, may be intensely morbific in most of the diseases of man (§ 849). Or, again, the agents which heal in their remedial dosea may establish severe forms of disease when administered in health. 153. Through the law of development, the tissues undergo natural modifications in their structure and vital endowments at many periods of life. In infancy, the organs are imperfectly developed, though the projDorties and functions of organic life, unlike those of animal life, are strongly pronounced in many of the viscera. A relation obtains, however, in organic life, between the properties and functions and the relative size of organs (§ 159). In childhood, there is another well-marked change. In adoles- cence, another ; when the organs become mature. . In old age, an- other; when life is naturally on the decline. 154. The foregoing stages of development (§ 153) are not sudden, but gradually progi'essive. 15o. The changes of organization (§ 153, 154) are preceded by corresponding changes in the vital properties, upon which the former depend (§ 445, y). This principle, too, like all others which relate to organic life, whether in health or disease, is universally ti'ue under any given combination of circumstances. It is true of the develop)- ment of all tissues and all organs, and all other products, from the be- ginning of conception to the end of life. Hence, also, the variety in the remedial or morbific virtues of many plants, at different stages of their growth. As structure varies, the vital properties have under- gone modifications, in conformity with that order of Design which was instituted, that where one specific end is accomplished, and others are to be fulfilled, the powers by which these final causes are to be ac- complished shall have their necessary adaptations. And while, also, the vital properties, under all their natural modifications, are so con- stituted as to receive certain exact impressions from the natural stim- PHYSIOLOGY. STRUCTURE. ' 69 uli of life, that vital actions may be determined according to the pur- poses ordained, so also will morbific and remedial agents be varied in their influences (§ 129 i, 387, 980). 156, a. The foregoing variations (§ 153-155), therefore, give rise to new dispositions to disease in many parts, and are productive of modifications of former diseases, or the latter disappear. This, as we have seen, is a necessary consequence of the physiological chan- ges, since the same properties which carry on nutrition and growth carry on all diseases. The relations of vital and morbific agents move on, j)a7-i -passu, with the natural changes in the properties of life ; and remedial agents undergo corresponding modifications of action. 156. h. The great law of adaptation is forever present to the eye of the naturalist; and when the same subjects are contemplated in a moral sense, the same evidences of Design meet him at every glance of the mind. Take an example of a compound nature, a universal physiologico-moral phenomenon in which our present topic is involv- ed. Thus, no sooner was man created than he was doomed to obtain his subsistence by the sweat of his brow. Roots, grains, fruits, «&c., were, therefore, as far as the wants of animals would allow, created mostly in an unedible condition, but rendered susceptible of the re- quisite improvement by cultivation ; and to carry out the great pur- pose, the nature of soils, air, water, &c., were made subservient (§ 74, 80, 117, 137, 143, 155, 169/; 266, 384, 385, 387, 399, 409/, 422 514 I, 524 d, 525, 526 d, 528, 638, 733 h, 847 g). 157. Organs are sofl:est and most fluid at the beginning of their de- velopment, and increase, progi'essively, in density through life. The animal ovum is scarcely more than an organic fluid (^ 67). 158. Vascular action is promoted by the greater fluidity of or- gans, and vice versa (§ 142). Inflammation is in part, therefore, more intense and rapid in infancy and childhood than at later peri- ods, which, with other causes, gives rise to the necessity of great promptitude of remedies. Other causes attending the vital condi- tions of old age render equally important a decisive treatment of the severe diseases that may befall that age (§ 574, &c., 1009, &c.). 159. The proportional size of organs varies at different stages of life. The cerebro-spinal system, for example, is largest in child- nood. Hence a greater development of the organic properties in those parts, and a greater consequent liability of the brain to inflammatory and congestive affections, and to hydrocephalus. The large propor- tional size of the nervous and arterial systems affects the physiolog- ical and pathological condition of all other parts ; giving activity to nutrition, and susceptibility and intensity to disease. « The glandular tissue of the liver has the largest proportional size in infancy ; but not so the venous system of the liver. Hence, again, ♦^he glandular function of that organ is especially liable to derange- ment in infancy, and its venous tissue to congestion at more advanced It is also important to understand, that the veins, in a general sense, " have a real inferiority as it respects the arteries, during the first periods of life." — Bichat. There are some exceptions, espe- cially in the brain. 160. What has now been said of the m.odifications of the vital con- Btitution of different tissues and organs may be illustrated by the rel 70 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. ative liability of different tissues, and parts of common tissues, to some given disease, by the relative danger of that disease as it may affect the different parts, and by the eff'ects of some remedial agent ujjon the various parts, respectively. The remedy may be loss of blood, and the supposed disease inflammation. The statement may be conveniently made in a tabular form, while, also, it may be con- verted to practical uses (^ 711). 161. The tables are intended in a general sense, and suppose the constitution to be naturally sound. If hereditary predispositions to disease exist, as in scrofula, or if the constitution be affected by in- temperance, or by pre\'ious diseases, &c,, the order of liabilities to inflammation, &c., as marked in the first table, will be more or less affected. In the scrofulous constitution, for example, instead of the mucous, the lymphatic tissue may be most liable. 162. The tables will be more or less modified by age. Thus, the veins of the pia mater are more liable to congestion in infancy and childhood than any other part of the venous texture. This liability afterward decreases, and returns at the age of fifty and upward, re- sulting in cerebral hemon'hage (§ 805). PHYSIOLOGICAL AND PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. Tissues most liable to disease, especially to inflammation, in the order of arrangement : 1. Mucous. 2. Venous {venous congestion). 3. Cellular. 4. Serous. 5. Ligamentous and dennoid [Jibrous). 6. Glandular. 7. Lymphatic. 8. Nervous. 9. Synovial. 10. Periosteum {Jibrous). 11. Osseous. 12. Tendons, cartilage, dura mater, and peiicardium (Jibrous). 13. Muscular. 14. Arterial. 1. Mucous texture TABLE II. '' of the nose. " lungs, fauces. " eyes. ( Ilium, *' small intestine, < Jejunum, Duodenum. stomach, large intestine, uterus and vagina, bladder. PHYSIOLOGY.— STRUCTURE. 71* 2. Venous texture (forai- ing, mostly, venous congestion) 3. Cellular texture 4. Serous texture . 5. Glandular texture , 6. Lymphatic texture . 7. Fibrous texture . . • . < 8. Nervous texture . . 9. Synovial texture . . 1 0, Osseous texture . . , of pia mater, in infancy and childhood. *' liver. " small intestine. *' pia mater of adults. " rectum implies). " uterus [phlebitis). " lungs {congestive asthma). " lower extremities [varix). " spermatic cord {circocele). sub-cutaneous, of the lungs. " pia mater. " voluntary muscles, of the lungs. " parietes of thorax. " parietes of abdomen. " liver. " small intestine. " large intestine. " heart and pei'icardium. " cerebral ventricles. " kidneys. " stomach, lymphatic glands, mammae [puerperal). salivary glands, liver, testis. lacteal glands, kidney. thyroid gland [goitre). thymus gland, pancreas, of the lower extremities. " upper extremities. " uterus (see Comm., vol. ii., p. 470) others rarely, ligaments, dermoid, periosteum, cartilage, tendons, pericardium, dura mater, brain. • nerves. ganglia of sympathetic, spinal cord, of the knee-joints. " ankle. " joints of upper extremities, spongy bone, solid bone. 72 INSTITUTES OP MEDICINE. ^ of the brain. , - . ^ . , , ^ ] arch of aorta. 11. Arterial texture . . . .< ,, } " extremities. (^rare in other parts. TABLE in. Relative danger of high inflammation affecting the tissues of dif ferent organs, according to the order of arrangement : 1. All textures of the brain. 2. All textures of the heart and pericardium. 3. Venous and lymphatic textures of the womb, iliac and other veins. 4. Peritoneum of abdomen [piterjyeral women). 5. Serous membrane of small intestine. 6. Veins of the liver (^venous congestion i?i congestive Jevers). 7. Parenchyma of lungs. 8. Glandular texture of liver. 9. Mucous texture of small intestines. 10. Mucous texture of stomach. 11. Serous texture of large intestine. 12. Textures of kidney. 13. Mucous texture of large intestine. 14. Serous texture of lungs and thorax. 15. Serous texture of liver. 16. Serous texture of abdominal paiietes [common inflammation). 17. Veins of lungs (lore, or sub-active, forming congestive asthma. See Comm., vol. ii., p. 494). 18. Textures of bladder. 19. Mucous texture of uterus. 20. Ligaments. 21. Bone and cartilage. 22. Lymphatics of extremities. TABLE IV. Tissues which require the greatest extent of general blood-letting, when affected with high inflammation, — according to the organs in which they are associated, and in the order of arrangehient. The remedy is supposed to be applied eai'ly. 1. All textures of the brain. 2. All textures of the heart and pericardium. 3. Serous texture of small intestine. 4. Peritoneum of abdomen (in puerperal women). Note H p. 1117. 5. Parenchyma of lungs. 6. Serous texture of storfiach. 7. Serous texture of large intestine. 8. Veins and lymphatics of uterus. [Early.) 9. Serous and glandular texture of liver. 10. Venous texture of liver. [Sub-acute, congestion in congestive fever. Often more largely.) 11. Mucous texture of small intestine. 12. Uterus. 13. Textures of kidney. PHYSIOLOGY. VITATi TROPERTIES. 73 14. Mucous texture of stomach. 15. Mucous texture of large intestine, 16. Serous texture of lungs and chest. 17. Serous texture of abdominal parietes. ( Common injlamviation.) 18. Ligaments. [Often more largely.) 19. Bladder. 20. Mucous texture of bronchiae. 21. Mamma, testis, parotid gland. 22. Absorbents of extremities. 163. In the treatment of disease, therefore, we should consider the precise pathology of each affected tissue, the natural vital peculiari- ties of the affected tissue in the compound organ, its general character as well |s that of the compound organ in the animal economy, the in- fluences which its morbid state exerts upon the other tissues in a compound organ, its own morbific influences and the combined influ- ences of the compound organ upon other parts, and how the remote sympathizing parts may react, or shed an influence on yet other parts. And then follows not only the general plan of treatment, but all that nice discrimination of cathartics, emetics, alteratives, and other gi'oups of agents possessing, in their individualities, respectively, analogous virtues, their combinations, altei'nations, precise dose, frequency of repetition, &c. (§ 675, 685, 686). The same variety of considerations are to be made when the condition of diseased parts may undergo changes, favorable or unfavorable, from the operation of remedial agents. We are mostly assisted in the foregoing inquiries by comparisons of the morbid with the natural vital phenomena and physical products of each part, and the whole collectively. We also acquire much of our knowledge of the natural constitution of individual parts by ob- serving the deviation of their phenomena when acted upon by mor- bific or remedial agents. The phenomena are then more strongly pronounced than in health, or new ones are developed. Indeed, it is sometimes through morbid conditions only that we acquire a knowl- edge of some of the important physiological conditions ; as, for ex- ample, the existence of common sensibility in all parts. Hence a corollary, that none but an observer of disease can expound the nat- ijral conditions and laws of life (§ 685, 686, 848). THIRD DIVISION OF PHYSIOLOGY. PROPERTIES OR POWERS OF LIFE. 164. A VITAL, or peculiar governing principle or power, in organic beings, has been recognized by all the most distinguished medical philosophers at all ages of the science. It is the fundamental cause of growth, nutrition, and of all other phenomena of organic beings. It is, in all but the vulgar acceptation, synonymous with the term life ; and Ife, therefore, is a cause, and not an effect, as has been assumed by many distinguished physiologists, and as taught by chemistry. 7'4 INSTITUTES OP MEDICINE. 165, a. " Until it is proved," says Andral (the rastorer of the hu moral pathology), " that the forces which, in a living body, interrupt the play oi" the natural chemical affinities, maintain a proper temperature, and pieside over the various actions of organic and animal life, are analogous to those admitted by natural philosophy, we shall act con- sistently with the principles of that science, by giving distinct names to those two kinds of forces, and employing ourselves in calculating the different laws they obey." — Andral's Pathological Anatomy. And, to the same effect, the distinguished organic chemist, Liebig, the chief of the school of pure chemistry (§ 4|) : " There is nothing to prevent us from considering the vital force as a PECULIAR property, which is possessed by certain material bodies, and becomes sensible when their elementary particles are combined in a certain arrangement or form. This supposition takes ^rom the vital phenomena nothing of their wonderful peculiarity. It may, therefore, be considered as a resting point from which an investi- gation into these phenomena, and the laws which regulate them, may be commenced ; exactly as we consider the properties and laws of LIGHT to be dependent on a certain luminiferous matter or ether, which has no farther connection with the laws ascertained by investi- gation." — Liebig's Animal Chemistry. So, also, Carpenter, Roget, and other eminent chiefs of the physical school (§ 64). And thus, the eminent Miiller, who leads in the school of chemico- vital physiology : " The only character that can be possibly compared in organic and inorganic bodies, is the mode in which symmetry is realized in each." " Whether the vital principle is to be regarded as imponderable mat- ter, or as a force or energy, is just as uncertain as the same question in reference to several phenomena in physics. Physiology, in this case, is not behind the other natural sciences ; for the properties of this principle in the functions of the nerves are nearly as well kno^yn as those of light, caloric, and electricity, in physics." — Muller's Physi- ology. Finally, we have the pure vitalist, teaching the same doctrine ; though, with greater consistency. Thus : " Physiology," says Bichat, " would have made much greater prog- ress, if all those who studied it had set aside the notions which are Dorrowed from the accessory sciences, as they are termed. But, these sciences are not accessory ; they are wholly strangers to physiology, and should be banished from it wholly." " To say that physiology is made up of the physics of animals, is to give a very absurd idea of it. As well might we say that astronomy is the physiology of the stars." — Bichat's General Anatomy, Sfc. Tiedemann, too, was right in saying that, " All the qualities of organic bodies should be looked upon as the effects of the vital powers. Even those phenomena seen in them, which they exhibit in common with inorganic bodies, undergo modifi- cations of their specific action, and should be considered subordinate to the vital powers." — Tiedemann's Physiology, Sfc. There is not, indeed, in the whole range of medical literature, one author, however devoted to the physical and chemical views of life, who does not evince the necessity of admitting a governing vital prin- PHYSIOLOGY. VITAL PROPERTIES. 75 ciple as a distinct entity, distinct from all other things in naUire. I say, there cannot be produced one author of any consideration, who does not summon to the aid of his discussion a vital principle whenever he touches upon the abstract phenomena of life. And this I have abun dantly shown by an extensive range of quotations in my various pub- lications {Except ^ 1034). 165, b. We are constantly asked, how we know the existence of the vital properties or powers ] Again, I say, precisely by the same means as the advocates of the chemical and physical philosophy of life defend their knowledge of the forces which govern the inor- ganic world. The question is important, as implying that physiolo- gists either do not ai'rive at their knowledge of causes through their effects, or, that there is nothing different in the phenomena of organic and inorganic beings. What would the metaphysician say, were we to ask him for any other demonstration of mind than its manifesta- tions ; or the mechanical or chemical philosopher, should we demand any other evidence of gravitation, magnetism, chemical affinity, &c., than the effects which they supply 1 And do we not distinguish one from the other, and regard them as wholly distinct forces, by the dif- ference in their effects ? The proof is clear and tangible, in all the cases. Where the results of power differ so materially from each other, it is as good a ground of ai'gument, that the phenomena depend upon specific powers in one case as in the other ; and, if it be " a cloak of ignorance" in either case to assume the existence of powers, it must surely appertain to him who attempts an explanation of the phenomena by assuming forces with which such phenomena have no known connection (§ 175, hh^ 1085). 166, Many of the eminent ancient physicians considered the vital principle an intelligent agent; and even Hunter has been supposed, though erroneously, to have been of that opinion. Some distinguish- ed physiologists, of the present day, are inclined to regard the soul as that agent. Others confound it with the Deity ;* while yet others, confounding the Deity with Nature, fall into a labyrinth of absurdi- ties.t Others suppose the vital functions alone to constitute life.| The ancient physicians generally distinguished the vital principle from the soul, and regarded both as immaterial (§ 175 d, 350^ k). 167, a. The vital principle was early known underthe names o£ An- ima and Calidum Innatum. It was gi'eatly lost sight of in the " dark ages," but reappeared among the earliest restorers of learning, when it took the name of Anima Vegetans, as significant of its organizing power in plants and animals. The eccentric philosopher, Paracelsus, substituted the name of Sidereal Spirit, to suit his dogmas of plane- tary and demoniac influence. Then came Van Helmont with his in- novation of a Spiritus Archceus, an immaterial principle, which he lo- cated in the upper orifice of the stomach. It presided over the body in a general sense, and had under its command several subordinate spirits (one for each organ), to execute the orders of the great spirit. But, like Paracelsus, he expounded much of his physiological results upon chemical principles, and had no definite conceptions of the office of his Archaaus. Stahl followed Van Helmont with his Rational Soul, * See my article on the " Vital Powers," in Medical and Physiological Commentaries vol. i. ; and my " Essays on the Philosophy of Vitality." t See my " Examination of Reviews, ' p. 43. t Comm., ut supra 76 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. and Lord Bacon had entered the field in defense of a vital principle, Then came Haller, with his great philosophical and practical distinc- tion of the Vis Insita and Vis Nervca. Here we enter into the midst of the profound theories of irritability and sensibility, which had been suggested by Galen (§ 476, b). Grlisson, too, had forced his way into the laws of irritability ; and Baglivi had already dealt his fatal blows upon the humoral pathology. We may, therefore, date the progress- ive and substantial foundation of vitalism and solidism from Baglivi to Haller ; a period of about one hundred years. 167, b. Whytt modified the Stahlian doctrine; and the visionary Des Cartes led the way in rejecting altogether, for awhile, the vital powers, in which he was aided by the hypothesis of a nervous fluid, which appeared about his time. The doctrine then followed, as a consequence, that matter acquires vitality in virtue of a peculiar or- ganization, and this became an easy step to the atheistical doctrine of spontaneous generation. Then came up the view as set forth by Monro, Sir Humphrey Davy, and others, analogous to the Cartesian, that a living principle pervades the universe, and governs all things. Some of this school suppose the universal principle to be subordinate to the Deity; but a greater number, like Carpenter, Prichard, and especially many of our present geologists, as Lyell, &c., regard it as the Deity Himself, whereby the latter, either directly or by implica- tion, confound nature with God. The doctrine becomes, here, either atheistical or of a direct atheistical tendency ; and we have, as a re- newed consequence, the assumption of spontaneous generation.* 167, c. Those gi'eat luminaries. Hunter and Bichat, came forward in good time to rescue the philosophy of medicine from the degrada- tion with which it was threatened by chemistry and physics, and have left an impregnable shield to all future ages. 167, d. Tiedemann, too, soon after appeared with his " Physiology of Man," in which the doctrines of life are ably expounded, and which must be ranked as one of the productions of an original mind. Tiede- mann could not believe that there was any sincerity in the absolute rejection of a peculiar governing principle of living beings. " How- ever different," he says, " may be the names chosen by physiologists and physicians to designate this power, however various the ideas they attach to it, yet all must agree on the essential point, that of re- garding it as intended to maintain living bodies, vegetable and animal, and all their parts, during a certain space of time, in a state of integ- rity, in the composition, organization, and vital properties that are peculiar to them, and to render those bodies capable, at a certain pe- riod of their existence, of producing beings of the same species as themselves, which beings are confined to the same determinate mode of formation and development, and exhibit similar phenomena." " We are bound, therefore, to consider the principle which presides over those different acts, as a power inherent in all parts of living be- ings, and we cannot assume that, either in vegetables or animals, it is limited to any one part or parts. All the parts of a plant, the roots, stem, branches, leaves, flowers, wood, and bark, are nourished. Nu- trition takes place in all the tissues and organs of animals. The con- * See Medical and Physiological Commentaries, vol. i., p. 25, and vol. ii., p. 124-.140. Also, "Examination of Reviews," p. 43 ; "Notice of Reviews," p. 4; "Essays en Vital' itj'," &c., p. 17. PH"J3I0L0GY. VITAL PROPERTIES. 7") tinual tendency of this power to preserve the individual and all its parts, forms the prominent character of individual life, and is present- ed to us as the most important internal condition of life. This power not only converts the alimentary matters, drawn from without, into nu- tritive fluids, endowed with special properties and assimilated by it, but it also introduces them into the solid organic form, determines and regulates the composition, the organization, and the vitality of parts. Every living body is exposed to externaV influences, which urge it to manifestations of activity. Every one, however, under certain exter- nal circumstances, retains its form, its composition, and activity. Cer- tain external impressions, however, of a mechanical or chemical na- ture, and divers organic matters, vegetable and animal poisons, are able to ANNIHILATE tliis power* and thus to cause the death of the living bodies on which they opel'ate." 167, e. Next came the illustrious Miiller to aid in arresting the al- most universal onslaugh, in Europe, that seemed to threaten the ex tinction of every sage in medicine from Hippocrates to the exit of Bichat. Under the magic wand of Andral the venerable doctrine of humoralism reared its portentous form ; while Louis substituted mor- bid anatomy for the science of pathology, and Liebig, and his school with fire and acids, overrun the whole domain of medicine. Although Miiller employs the language of Stahl, in relation to a vital principle, I think it rather designed as a forcible mode of ex- pression, than as imputative of intelligence. Thus, '■'•this rational cre- ative force^'' he says, " is exerted in every animal strictly in accordance with what the nature of each part requires.'" The fact is truly stated ; but it reposes on great laws of organization, not upon intelligence That such is Miiller's view appears from another expression, that, " the formative or organizing principle is a creative power, modifying viatter blindly and ujiconsciously." The radical fault of this philoso- pher consists, like that of Van Helmont, Stahl, Hoffmann, and Para- celsus, in referring many vital results of organic beings equally to a "vital creative principle" and to chemical forces. — See Muller's Physiology. 10)1, f So remarkably different, however, are all the results of life from those of dead matter, that some of the shrewdest physiologists, of our own day, can scarcely avoid the chimerical theory of Van Hel- mont. Thus, even Marshall Hall : " The principle of action in the cerebral system," he says, " is the ipvxq, or the immortal soul. Upon the cei'ebrum the soul sits en- throned, receiving the embassadors, as it were, from without, along the sentient nerves; deliberating and willing, and sending forth its emissaries and plenipotentiaries, which convey its sovereign viandates, along the voluntary nerves, to muscles subdued to volition,"! — (Hall * See " Examination of Reviews," p. 26-28 ; also, this work, § 189 h, 350^ h. t I have somewhere seen it suggested that the doctrines of vitalism may be applied in support of animal magnetism. But, while vitalism is fundamentally opposed, even to speculative theoiy, and rests alone on the absolute phenomena of organic beings, it is not less true that, with rare exceptions, the medical advocates of animal magnetism are, as in ancient times, among the physical theorists of life (^ 844). Dr. Elliotson is of that de- nomination. (See Med. and, Phys. Comm., vol. ii., p. 137, 138.) And, although I have, in the foregoing work (vol. i., p. 632), expressed my opinion of the countenance which has been given to this imposture by distinguished members of the medical profession, I will add my entire concurrence in the following sentiments by Hannah More. In a letter to Hor- ace Walpole, dated 1788, she remarks, " I give you leave to be as severe as you please on tbe demoniacal inummery which has been acting in this country ; it was, as usual with 78 INSTITUTES OF MEDICtNE. on the Nervous System.) Here I suppose the " emissaries and pleni- potentiaries" to be nothing more than the nervous power, a property prodigies, the operation of fraud upon folly. In vain do we boast of the enlightened eigh- teenth ceutuiy, and conceitedly talk as if human reason had not a manacle left about her, but that philosophy had broken down all the strong-holds of prejudice, ignorance, and su- perstition ; and yet, at this very time, Mesmer has got a hundred thousand pounds by animal magnetism in Paris. Mamaduc is getting as much in London. There is a fortune teller in Westminster who is making little less. The divining rod is still considered as oracular in many places. Devils are cast out by seven ministers. Poor human reason, when wilt thou come to years of discretion !" (9 844.) I may also add the foUowiug'exti'act from the New York Journal of Medicine for March, 1845: "New York, Feb. 14, 1845. "Mr. Editor, " Dear Sir — In a letter of the 11th inst, addressed to myself, you desire me to state what I witnessed of the firmness of a young gentleman, upon whom the operation of ex- section of the inferior maxillary bone was performed by Prof Mott, 'and the reflections to which it gave rise, as bearing on the subject of alleged surgical operations without pain in the mesmeric state.' "The case to which you refer is briefly reported in the January number of the New York Journal of Medicine, by some person, who, like myself, was present at the opera- tion. The subject is there stated to have been ' a fine intelligent young man, whose he- roic deportment greatly facilitated the operation.' " Perhaps it is enough that I should have quoted the expressive language of one, who appears to have looked on with the same admiration as myself; though these examples of ' heroic deportment' are common enough in the walks of surgery, especially among females ; and that, too, without mesmeric imposture. The same eminent surgeon, who operated in the case which is the subject of these remarks, wiU tell you that he has extirpated many breasts, rendered highly sensitive by carcinomatous disease, without observing any evi- dence of pain. But there was something in the case of Mr. Baker, which certainly better deserved the encomium of ' heroic,' than any thing I had ever before seen, or heai'd of, or even imagined as within the compass of human fortitude. " This case, therefore, is interesting at this moment, as evincing a perfect capability of enduring the most intense, and sudden, and prolonged pain, without emotion, and as form- ing a test by which ' the subject of alleged surgical operations without pain in the mes- meric state,' will receive the explanation which you seek. "The case is also physiologically interesting, and interprets the composure of those or- ganic movements, under similar conditions, which has been set forth in behalf of animal magnetism. "To appreciate properly the 'heroic deportment' of young Baker, you must imagine yourself to have been a spectator ; foUow the able surgeon in all the capital steps, and in all the minor details of the operation, and watch attentively the ' deportment' of the sub- ject. He was laid at a convenient elevation upon a table, his feet crossed upon each other, and his hands lapped. I mention this position, because he did not move his feet, nor displace his hands during the operation. " Now observe the operator ; first, making a long and deep incision among the muscles of the neck, and then tearing his way down to the carotid artery, and throwing and tying the ligature. It was, in itself, one of the most capital operations in surgery; but, owing to the dexterity with which it was performed, and with an operation stiU before us far more difficult, and tedious, and dangerous, this grand step toward the exsection of the jaw lost much of its usual interest to the spectator. But it was not the less painful to the sufferer ; who, however, sustained it without betraying the slightest evidence of pain. " Next came the circular incision, reaching all the way from the joint of the maxillary bone, down along its lower edge, up to the middle of the chin, 'riiis was done by one rapid, immense sweep of the knife; but there remained the same imperturbable compo- sure of the patient. Not a sigh, not a groan escaped, no muscle moved — the very eye did not wink. And then followed, as you may well suppose, a prolonged, tedious, painful dis- section, in which it became necessary to exasperate the suffering by securing many bleed- ing vessels ; till, finally, the operator was ready for his saw. But nothing had yet hap- pened to elicit a single manifestation that the patient was not in a profound slumber, ex- cepting that his eyes were open, and that he occasionally swallowed. " But, before sawing the bone at the middle of the chin, it was necessary to remove one of the incisor teeth, and this was so firmly rooted that a straight forceps slipped in the hand of a capable assistant. Another puU, however, brought with it the tooth ; but in neither attempt was there any more indication of suffering than in drawing a nail from a board. " Then came the process of sawing, and this was calculated to greatly amioy the patient from a shght accident which happened to the saw, and which prolonged this part of the operation. Still, however, the same ' heroic deportment' distinguished the patient for- bearance of the sufferer, the same unexampled complacency continued to mark every lin- eament of his face, his very eye displaying nothing but gentleness, softness, and calm resignation. PHYSIOLOGY. VITAL PROPERTIES. 7P of the vital principle of animals, and whose modus operandi in devel- oping voluntary motion I have endeavored to expound in sections 233, 245, 500, d, and references there. 167, g. For the proof of the existence of a vital principle, and of the government of organic beings by laws peculiar to themselves, as derived exclusively by myself from their composition, see that divis- ion of this work, and my Essays on the Philosophy of Vitality ; and for the proof which I have offered as founded on the phenomena of life, see Essay on the Vital Powers, in Medical and Physiological Commentaries, vol. i., p. 1-119. — Also, Rights of Authors, p. 912. IGS. It is practically useless to investigate the nature of the vital principle. That nature, however, may be as well inferred through the medium of its phenomena, as the nature of the most tangible ob- jects. The opinion of Miiller commends itself to every right-thinking mind. "Whether the vital principle," he says, "is to be regarded as im- ponderahle matter, or as a force or energy, is just as uncertain as the same question is in reference to several important phenomena in physics. Physiology, in this case, is not behind the other natural sci- ences ; for the properties of the vital principle are as well known in the functions of the nerves, as those of light, caloric, and electricity in physics." " But, without, in the remotest degree, wishing to com- pare the vital and mental principles with the imponderable agents, we must express our conviction that there is nothing in the facts of natural science which argues against the possibility of the existence of an immaterial principle independent of matter, though its powers be manifested in organic bodies — in matter." — Mijller's Physiology. " The bone being' separated at the chin, the dissection was resumed among the impor- tant parts, and though conducted with all possible skill and rapidity, it was necessarily tedious, as well as hopelessly painful, and, therefore, still calculated to try the firmness of the stoutest heart. A great extent of all kinds of tissues was divided, and, of course, no small proportion of nerves. Bleeding vessels continued to be secured, the difficult divis- ion of the articulating ligaments perfonned witii as much facility as its difficulties would admit ; and after the removal of the jaw, remaining portions of diseased muscle, &.C., were cut away, and which tended not a little to embarrass that ' heroic deportment' which had marked every stage of this great and triumphant operation. From its beginning to its ending, which occupied one hour and a half after the first incision till the final extirpation of all the diseased mass, the suiferer did not manifest the slightest evidence of pain, or of impatience, or of fatigue, either by language, gesture, expression of countenance, winking, groaning, sighing, or any other imaginable method by which the mesmerite might be dis- posed to evade the overwhelming rebuke which the recital of this case cannot fail to in- flict on his love of the marvelous, or his love of mischief, or his yet more culpable designs on human credulity. " I have said that there was something physiologically interesting in the foregoing case Deyond its simple merit of an 'heroic deportment,' and that it goes to the very depths of mesmeric assurance and duplicity. It was this : " On feeling the pulse of the patient twice during the operation (the last time after the lapse of an hour), I found it calm, undisturbed, and with about the same frequency it had before the operation was begun. This proves to us what I have before expressed, that it is not pain, but the consequent mental emotions which aifect the organs of circulation, whether the heart or blood-vessels. "Thus ended an operation, unequaled in ti^ie annals of surgery; alike triumphant to the surgeon, to American Genius, to the admirable subject, to the cause of truth, of moral- ity, and of sound religion. " If you desire it, you may publish the foregoing statement, to which I should add some comments had I not already contributed my part, in a medical work, toward the sup- pression of one of the greatest nuisances that has yet infected the moral and reflecting part of the community. I have, however, some developments in reserve, which will prob- ably see the light when the parties interested may be beyond the reacli of greater re- proof or mortification. " I remain, very truly, ycur friend and obedient servant, " Martyn Paisk." 80 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. In the language of Liebig, " In regard to the nature and essence of the vital force, we can hardly deceive ourselves, when we reflect^ that 2t behaves, in all its manifostations, exactly like other natural forces ; that it is devoid of consciousness^ or of volition, and is subject to the ac- tion of a blister" (§ 165, a). 169, a. We know, however, but little of the nature of the princi- ple of life, and as little of the most obvious material substances ; but, while this proposition is sufficiently plain, it is extensively ar- gued that the vital principle, or organic force, has no existence, be- cause it is not obvious to the senses. Thus neglecting its infinite phenomena (our only knowledge of the most sensible existences), the age has run into a materialism that takes in its way the soul itself. Our great interest lies in the phenomena of nature. Through these phenomena their causes may be sought ; their nature but veiy impei-fectly. We can only describe matter by its manifestations; and so of the soul, and the principle of life. Of the nature of the soul, however, we have, as it respects its spirituality and some other important attributes, a special Revelation, 169, b. If organized beings possessed a principle of life that could, like light, be seen, they would then be allowed to be governed by this agent, and we should be relieved of the encumbrance of the phys- ical and chemical hypotheses. But, though no such principle ad- dress itself to the sight like electricity or light, its existence is far more variously attested by other phenomena, and more so than all the other powers of nature ; and these phenomena being Avholly dif- ferent fi'om such as appear in the inorganic world, it is frima facie evident that powers or properties which are predicated of them carry on the processes of health and disease ; while the scrutiny of ages has never produced a fact in opposition. 169, c. Indeed, with so much light upon our subject, so much of fact to substantiate our conclusions, it would seem highly probable that all the facts which may be raised in opposition have no j-elative bearing, and that they are brought forward in the spirit of hypoth- esis. 169, d. The more comprehensive a law may be, the more readily is it known and determined, and the less likely is it that apparently conflicting facts will arise. Whenever such are produced, it is ow- ing to a pi'oper want of investigation. The facts are examined su- perficially ; and the speculative or the credulous mind seizes upon some prominent characteristic, and pushes its opposition to nature under the spur of novelty, or the delight of discovery, or the goad of ambition. (See Correlation of Forces, p. 921, § 1085.) Since, also, we seek, alone, for the existence and the nature of causes by means of their jjhenomena, he is no philosopher who refu- ses an inquiry into causes from want of other means of information. The objection has never been raised in any science excepting medi- cine ; but here we are told by many that we have no means of reaching even the existence of the properties of life as contradistin- guished from those of inorganic matter. It is this blindness, in part, which refuses to apply to the science of life the universal fact, that the phenomena are the only index to the forces which govern the inor- ganic world, that has embarrassed the progress of medicine, and en- cumbered it with a spurious philosophy. PHySIOLOGY. VITAL PROPERTIES. 81 1G9, e. Conscious, then, that I have taken my stand upon ground which true philosophy will recognize as her own, I shall go on with an investigation of the properties of life, as the source of all vital phenomena, of all morbid conditions, and which constitute life itself, and lie at the foundation of medicine. I shall enter far more exten sively into an analysis of those properties than any other writer, shall set forth original views as to the character and office of the nervous power, and as to the mode in which this power participates in the operation of remedial and morbific agents, and endeavor to show, also, that, in proportion as philosophy may depart from the deduc- tions which are founded on the phenomena of living beings, so must all such philosophy be fundamentally false, and become the unavoid- able cause of practical errors ofthe highest moment (Rights &c., p. 912). 169, /. Nor is it a small part of the proof that vitalism is founded in nature, that it is consistent throughout'; seeking no multiplication of causes, but serving as an impregnable and universal foundation for every fact and every rational principle in physiology, pathology, and therapeutics ; and, therefore, uniting all the principles relative to life, health, disease, and the art of medicine, into one consentane' ous, harmonious whole. What a contrast with the mechanical and chemical speculations, or those commingled with vitalism ! What a boundless source of stupendous philosophy for the votaries of one ; what unmitigated confusion, and corruption of knowledge, and mis- application of mind, for the disciples of the other ! How truly, and with what sublimity on the one hand, and imbecility on the other, is here exemplified the great distinction between man and his Creator, that the former devises in parts that may have no congruity, while the latter perfects the whole and aZ^ together (§ 63, &c., 74, 80, 117, 137, 143, 155, 156, 266, 323-326, 387, 399, 514 li, 524 d, 526 d, 638) ! 170, a. The vital principle is a whole, in respect to its substantial nature, and is common to vegetables and animals. Organic matter, or an organized substratum, is necessary to its existence ; and, since the perpetuity of organic matter depends upon the vital principle, it is manifest that both were brought into being without the agency of each other. The vital properties cannot be generated by matter, since upon them the existence of organization depends, nor is there a single phenomenon that indicates their presence in inorganic sub- stances ; nor can they be produced by the forces of physics, since they are perfectly incapable of restoring the sti'ucture, or even its elementary composition, after the organized matter is decomposed, or, of reanimating the machine before decomposition has begun ; while, on the other hand, these are the forces which lay waste the structure, and only so, after the signs of the vital properties shall have totally disappeared (§ 1079 h, 1085).— Notes Pp p. 1143, ftci p- 1145._ This unavoidable deduction goes far in confirming the Mosaic ac- count of the different steps observed by the Almighty in the creation of living beings ; that the sensible structure was first produced, and the spiritual and vital existences superadded.* The rudiments of that organization have been perpetuated in connection with the prop- erties of life since they came from the hands of the Creator, and are the present source of all animated beings. Any doctrine adverse to " See Medical and Physiological Commentaries, vol. i., p 86-92. F 82 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. this is not only atheistical, but is opposed to all the suggestions of reason* ( ^ 74, 350| k). Nor is this all. The varieties in the differ- ent tissues of each animal, and of every plant, all the modifications of the vital properties in each species of animals and plants, in each tissue, and in every part, as already set forth (§ 133, &c.), and to be yet expounded, all the various functions that correspond to the mod- ified structure and vital properties, all the secretions, even to the od- or of flowers, &c., are exactly the same now as at the day they were called into being. This shows us that the properties and laws by which organic beings are governed, though infinitely varied, are as precise as the principle and laws of gravitation, as the conditions of the solar beam and the laws which they obey. — Note Pp p. 1142. 170, h. Again, the moment inorganic matter is brought into a state to receive the vital principle, however low in degree or energy, it must be exalted to an organic condition. If chyle, blood, semen, the gastric juice, &c., possess life, so, also, must they possess an or- ganic state. This, indeed, is obvious from what we have seen of thn manner in which their elements are united. 170. c. The living principle appears, therefore, to be neither the result of organic compounds, as supj^osed by Hunter and others, nor, as stated by Proiit, Millengen, and others, the primary cause of organic conditions. Both have coexisted since they were the prod- uct of Creative Power, both are necessary to the vivification of dead matter, and the co-ojDeration of both to the farther development of each, 171. The vital principle appears entire in parts when separated from their connections, if such parts be constituted with the requisite structure for independent nutrition (§ 304). Hence the development of the egg, the germination of seeds and flower-buds, the growth of shoots, and the multijjlication of polypi from portions of the animal. Midler, and others, suppose the vital principle to be divisible in such cases ; but this construction regards the principle too much in the light of ordinary matter, and too little in that of a specific sub- stance endowed with a variety of properties. These properties, so far as necessary to organic life, are implanted in every part, and each part may be regarded as a whole as it respects its own organic con- dition. In simple beings, therefore, where no great complexity of organs is necessary to the great final cause, nutrition, many jDarts of such beings may be capable of carrying on the process independent- ly of the rest (§ 299, 302, 304, 322). It is probable, therefore, that the vital principle, in the foregoing cases, is no more "divided" than the soul or instinct as implanted in the ovum, — Medical and Physio- logical Commentaries, vol. i., p. 85, 87. 172. The principle of life, or life itself, may be summarily defined as a cause, consisting of certain specific properties, appertaining to organic matter, capable of being acted upon by external and internal physical agents, by the nervous power, and by mentalcauses, and of thus being brought into a state of action itself, and in no other way. Its action is exerted upon the organism, and upon certain external sub- stances, as upon food. In the former case its action gives rise to mo- tion, upon which all the functions depend ; in the latter its operation * See Med. and Phyaio. Comm., vol. ii., p. 123-140. Also, "Examination ofKevieirs, p. 43; and "Notice, nf Reviews," p. 2, (na., in "Med. and Physiolog. Comm.," vol iii. -Also, i, 1079 b, 1085. PHYSIOLOCy. VITAL PROPERTIES. 83 is through the medium of the gastric juice in animals, but is more obscure in vegetables. The principle is creative so far as it combines the elements of matter in peculiar modes, and arranges the compound molecules into tissues and organs, and in modes identical with those which came originally from the Creative Energy of God, Who thus far imparted to the principle of life a formative endowment. The principle is capable of protecting the matter which it endows against the decomposing influences of all the physical agents by which it is nat- urally surrounded, while the extinction of the principle exposes the or- ganic substance to an intestine chemical dissolution, and to the decom- posing action of surrounding agents, which proceeds with a rapidity without parallel in the natural state of the inorganic world. The principle is also susceptible of certain limited changes from the in- fluence of causes, mental and physical, which constitute the essence of disease ; while other causes are capable of modifying the morbid changes in such wise that the principle of life takes on a restorative energy, through which it recovers its normal condition. The prop- erties of the vital principle are variously and naturally modified in different j^arts, and undergo natural modifications at certain stages of life, giving rise to changes of organization, &c. (§ 62, 64, 133, &c.). These natural modifications will be farther explained in all the detail which is demanded by one of the most important topics in physiolo- gy ; and I now proceed to the various specifications relative to the principle of life. 173. It is the special province of the vital principle in plants to combine the elements of matter into organic compounds ; while in an> imals it can only appropriate compounds of an organic nature. This is a fundamental distinction between the two departments of the or- ganic kingdom ; from which it appears that plants are indispensable to the existence of animals (^ 1052). 174. The vital principle is subject to extinction, and this consti- tutes death. When speaking of the composition of organic beings 1 adverted to the manner in which they resist the decomposing eftects of chemical agents, and how the seed and egg are capable of being converted into complex living beings, or the whole animal and vege- table kingdom of being resolved into their ultimate elements, by the action of heat, air, and moisture. The same structure remains in either case when life is suddenly destroyed, and the exact difference which arises in the two cases, from the influence of the same causes, can be owing only to the presence of peculiar powers in one case which have disappeai-ed in the other. The cessation of the phenom- ena of life is the consequence of death ; and, there is nothing to die (certainly not the forces of chemistry) but the principle of life upon which the phenomena depended, and which held the elements of structure in vital union (§ 584, 633). 175. a. As set forth in the Medical and Physiological Commentaries, " I believe the vital principle, vital power, organic force, organic power, are one substance, whether material or immaterial ; and they refer, with me, to a universal cause of animal and vegetable life, or, rather, as constituting life itself I believe, also, that this principle has vari- ous attributes, common or generic, and partial or specific ; or perhaps I should call the former distinct pi'operties. Thus, of the generic, we have irritability, mobility, sensibility, &c., and the modifications of 84 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. each of these in the same or different tissues form the specific or pai- tial variations. These properties are also constantly varied in dis- ease, and these variations I call changes in kind. The partial modifi cations in their natural state I designate as variations 'in kind" (§ 133 163, 171). l75, h. The vital principle has certain analogies with the mind or soul, and with the instinct of animals (§ 241). Each is inherent in or- ganic matter, and the Generations of each are through the medium of that matter. Each, respectively, is one substance, and each possesses certain distinct attributes or properties. Each is not only capable of acting by means of organized structure, but of being acted upon, and modified in its nature, and only so in conjunction with that structure (§ 189, 191, 234/ 241, 5(56-568). Even in the inorganic world we meet with a substance which is not without its light in the way of analogy. This substance is light itself. It is apparently one homogeneous, imponderable, substance, yet said to consist of distinct component parts, each of which is endowed with specific attributes. These component parts would thus be distinct entities, which I do not recognize in relation to the properties of the vi- tal principle, or of the soul. But the distinction is not important to my present purpose, and I should also add that it is indifferent wheth- er we here regard the corpuscular or the more probable wave theory of light (§ 234 e), as the individuality operates in either case. 175, hh. It has been well said by Professor Draper, that " Just in the same way that I am willing to admit the existence of forty different simple metals, so, upon similar evidence, I am free to admit the existence of fifty different imponderable agents, if need be. Is there any thing which should lead us to suppose that the imponder- ables are constituted by Nature on a plan that is elaborately simple, and the ponderables on one that is elaborately complex % That the former are all modifications of one primordial ether, and the latter in- trinsically different bodies, more than a quarter of a hundred of which iiave been discovered during the present century 1" (^ 1085). " We are thus forced to admit that rays of light, rays of heat, ti- thonic rays, phosphoric rays, and probably many other radiant forms, have an independent existence, and that they can be separated, by proper processes, from each other." — Draper's Treatise on the For- ces wliich produce the Organization of Plants, p. 70, 71. Organic life, however, needs only a single principle, or " imponder- able," till it be showTi that its supposed properties are individual ex- istences (§ 165, h). 175, c. I have presented in the Commentaries, in the Essays "■on the Vital Powers,''' and '• Spontaneous Generation," and my " Notice of Reviews, ''' certain facts which go to the conclusion that the mind or soul is a distinct immaterial substance, and that the instinctive principle of animals is equally a distinct substance from the brain. I will now add a few words, physiologically, in respect to the main ar- gument of the materialists, drawn from analogy, that the mind, like the gastric juice, the urine, &:c., is only a product of the functions of the brain (^ 1076, c). The analogy is fictitious. Both the mind and instinct are entirely wanting in every known attribute of the product of other organs, and are sui gc7icris in all their characteristics. This is sufficiently obvi- PHYSIOLOGY. VITAL PROPERTIES. . 85 ous. But there are other considerations which establish the distinc- tion more fully, though they appear not to have engaged the attention of physiologists. What, for example, is the efficient cause of the pro- duction of bile, urine, &c. 1 Certainly the blood, in connection with organic structure and organic actions, and while these actions go on, bile, urine, &c., are uninteiTuptedly secreted ; or, if aiTOSted, it is from the failure of the organic processes. But, it is just otherwise in re- spect to the mind and the instinctive principle. These are completely suspended in all their manifestations during sleep, and often so with great instantaneousness. And yet there is every reason to believe that the organic functions of the brain continue to move on as per- fectly as those of the liver, the kidneys, &c. ; especially when it is con- sidered that sleep may happen in almost the twinkling of an eye. Indeed, were any change to befall the brain, it should be more or less manifested by some consequent modification of all the organic actions ; particularly as those of animal life undergo complete suspension. Again, other peculiarities which contradistinguish the mind and instinct from every organic product are the quick transitions from sleeping to waking, and the occurrence of the change without any change in the organic functions of the brain. Take in connection the act of sleeping and the act of waking, — the instant suspension and the instant reproduction of the intellectual operations, and in all their isolated aspects, and the most obtuse understanding must concede not only the entire want of analogy with any other phenomena of nature, but that there must be a unique cause for such perfectly unique effects. But, again, suppose some change in the organic condition of the brain as the cause of sleep ; what is it, I say, that so instantly rein- states its functions when we pass from the sleeping to the waking state 1 What rouses the organ to its wonted secretion of mind 1 Are there any analogies supplied by the liver, the kidneys, &c. (§ 241)1 What is it, I say, that brings the great nervous centre into operation in all the acts of volition, in all the acts of intellection 1 This ques- tion must be answered consistently, or in some conformity with the argument drawn from analogy. If that can be done, then it must be conceded that the analogy is forcible, and that the argument in favor of materialism is logically taken. So, on the other hand, should the ar- gument fail in this indispensable requisite, materialism must stand convicted of sophistry, insincerity, and a leaning to infidelity (§ 14, c). The premises are perfectly simple. They are also sound so far as it respects all organic actions and results. The blood, as with all other organs, is the natural stimulus of the brain, and here as there all the organic phenomena are distinctly pronounced. They proceed, in all parts, with uniformity, and without interruption. Nothing can suspend them or modify them in the brain, or elsewhere, during their natural condition. So far the analogy is complete. Now, as it can- not be the blood, according to the analogy, which rouses the brain to action in willing, reflecting, &c., I ask the materialist the nature of the stimulus which operates upon the brain in eliciting the phenomena of mind ] And again, I say, if he can sustain his answer by analogy, such is the consistency of Nature in organic philosophy, such the har- mony of Design, that it might be difficult to oppose Revelation itself to what is so fundamental in Nature. {Continued at p. 882, ^ 1076). 175, d. It is assumed by many late physiologists, as Drs. Carpew 86 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. ter, Prichard, &c., after admitting and denying the existence of vital properties, and contending for their existence in the elements of matter, and the organizing agency of the forces of chemistry, that, nevertheless, all the results of organic beings ai-e owing to the im- mediate acts of the Almighty (§ 64, li). This, therefore, as with the author of the "Vestiges of Creation," is only a circuitous method of confounding nature with God (§ 350f 7^.-350^ I). Let us, how- ever, suppose that there is a Supreme Being in their opinion, who is the Author of nature, and that He is the Power who presides in or- ganic beings, and regulates all their processes, and we shall see that the doctrine abounds with absurdities. Its advocates generally carry this sophistry so far as to affirm that the particles of matter are con- stantly maintained in union by Almighty Power, that chemical affini- ties are nothing but manifestations of that Power, that gravitation is only a constant emanation of the Deity, that digestion, circulation, secretion, excretion, &c., are only immediate acts of God. It is plain, therefore, that they can allow no other God than nature. But, let us now look physiologically at this pantheism. Organic beings are made up of matter, which, it will be conceded, is distinct from God, if we allow Jiis existence as distinct from matter. It is therefore perfectly consistent to suppose that this matter is endowed with distinct forces for its own government (§ 14, c). If we regard, next, the results of vital stimuli, we have a palpable proof that they elicit actions and physical results through principles which possess the power of acting, or we must take up the absurdity of supposing that they act on God himself The same may be affirmed of the poisons, medicinal agents, &c. But this will not hold either in religion or philosophy. Nevertheless, it is evident that some active agent is op- erated upon. If stimulants are applied to the nose, the heart may be thrown, on the instant, into increased action. Of course, it cannot be entertained that God is the agent acted upon in such a case, any more than when prussic acid destroys life with the same instantaneousness ; and, therefore, He cannot be assumed as the cause of the healthy and natural functions (64 h, 241 d, 350f g--350f o, 376i, 733 d). In my " Exam, of Reviews^'' (in Comm., vol. iii.) I have shown that the doctrine of " the jnopertks of life, in tJie elements of viatter" is thoroughly material as it respects the soul (§ 14 c, 189 Z>, 350| I, m). 176. Besides an organized substratum and a principle of life, there is something still beyond not less important to all the great purposes of life. This consists of the actions and various results of life. If all animated beings existed in the state of the seed and ovum, the whole universe would be nearly without any other apparent anima- tion than what is elicited by the forces of physics and chemistry. The movements of the heavenly bodies would be the principal de- monstrative source of power. Although, therefore, the actions and phenomena of organic beings, like the motions of the heavenly orbs, are merely the effects of a pe- culiar power which we call life, they are, nevertheless, the only at- tendants of life that interest our senses beyond the physical struc- ture. Hence, it is not remarkable, considering how liable the senses are to take the lead of the understanding, that even the soundest minds have supposed that life consists of its results alone, and have overlooked the great efficient cause or power upon which the results PHYSIOLOGY. VITAL PROPERTIES. 61 depend (§ 234^, 247). Had they considered for a moment, however, the analogy which subsists between the motions of organic beings and those of the heavenly orbs, and that the latter depend upon a power which is called gravitation, and without which all the orbs would suffer the stillness of death, the conclusion would have been unavoidable that celestial motion is merely an effect, and, therefore, that all organic motions and their results depend upon moving pow- ers. They should have seen, too, that when a drop of prussic acid, or of the spirituous extract of nux vomica, is apjslied to the tongue, all the phenomena of life are instantly extinguished, that nothing can reproduce them although the organized structure remains unimpair- ed, and that the whole being is immediately resolved into its ultimate elements (§ 1042). 177. The properties of life are the fundamental cause of all healthy and morbid phenomena. They are liable to be more or less diverted from their natural state by a variety of causes, and these new condi- tions constitute the most essential part of disease. This instability of the properties of life is at the foundation of all disease, and even of therapeutics (§ 642, b). Other causes, acting upon these morbid conditions, alter them in yet other ways, and contribute to their res- toration to the natural standard. This is the aim of all our remedies ; and the recuperative tendency of the properties of life [t7ie vis viedi- catrix naturce), when they are driven by morbific causos from their healthy state, enables them to recover spontaneously from the artifi- cial conditions which are substituted by remedial agents for the more intensely morbid (§ 172, 851 a, 853, 854, 893, 900, 901, 905, 1059). 178. Notwithstanding the natural instability of the properties of life, they have a definite character in every part of the body, accord- ing to the nature of each part, at every hour of existence (§ 153-156). 179. The exact nature of disease depends mostly upon the forego- ing definite conditions (§ 178), and upon the particular virtues of the morlji^c agents. The salutary changes produced by remedial agents invo^^ the same principles. But, these definite changes, and the ac- tion of morbific and remedial agents, are liable to contingent influen- ces fi'om habits, &c. ; as set forth under the fifth division of Physiol- ogy. Our calculation of results is thus embarrassed according to the nature and extent of the contingent influences (§ 756, V). 180. The vital properties are without renovation, or mutation in h-ealth, except as they are liable to certain natural modifications at different periods of life, or during gestation, or from the slow opera- tion of external agents, as in the artificial temperaments. They must remain without renewal, to be forever ready for the work of nutri- tion, &c. (§ 237, 570-630). 181. The permanency of the vital properties enables us to under- stand the nature of predisposition to disease, artificial temperaments, and hereditary diseases, which many refer to the ever-changing blood (§ 238, 666). 182. a. According as the vital properties may be modified, either in the foregoing manner (§ 181), or as in disease (§ 177), so will be the condition of the elementary combinations, and other physical products. 182, h. Nevertheless, the properties of life never undergo any rad- ical change till they shall have passed the limit of their recuperative 88 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. power (§ 177), and are therefore approaching a state of extinction. Hence, essentially, in connection with the nature of the remote causes, the analogies among diseases (§ 670, 756). 183. In their highest development, the properties of the vital prin- ciple are six ; namely, irritability, mobility, vital affinity, vivijicaiion, sensibility, and the nervous power (§ 175). They are called vital prop- erties, vital powers, and vital forces ; but are clearly attributes of a common principle, just as judgment, perception, the will, &c., are properties of the soul. They will be examined according to their nearest relations to each other in the most perfect beings, and their practical application. 184, a. The first four properties (§ 183) are common to plants and animals, and reside in all the tissues. Tlaey may be properly called organic properties, as they carry on the organic processes (§ 476-492, 516 a). The last two are peculiar to animals. This multiplication of vital properties in the animal kingdom harmonizes with the intro- duction of tissues and organs which have no existence in plants (§ 201, 222,232, 450, &c., 500). 184, b. The nervous power has been considered a principle by itself, and often regarded by eminent physiologists as the galvanic fluid, generated by the brain, or other organs, and conducted by the nerves {Med. and Phys. Com?7i., vol. i., p. 65-68, 107-119). Its phe- nomena, however, declare it to be entirely distinct in its nature from all things else ; while its analogies to the other properties of life show it to be an element of the vital principle (§ 227-232). If it be difli- cult for the limited comprehension of man to surmise how this prop- erty should prove an agent to others with which it is associated, the difficulty is no greater than the admitted fact that the will may con- trol other properties of the mind, and the passions. Nevertheless, it is unimportant in a practical sense, and in the institution of principles, whether the nervous power be considered a property of the vital principle, or a principle by itself (§ 175 bb, 186, 226, 1072 b). 185. Although the organic properties which are common to plants and animals ai'e essentially the same, they possess greater modifica- tions throughout than will have been seen to appertain to the same properties in the different parts of animals. But all the variations in the two organic kingdoms are intimately connected by close analo- gies ; just as they are in the different animal tissues (§ 133, &c.). Much of the difference in the general vital constitution of the two kingdoms is owing to the presence in one, and the absence in the oth- er, of the nervous system, and those corresponding properties which play so important a part in the animal tribes (§ 733,^"). In both de- partments of organic nature, however, there is, essentially, the same principle of life, its great organic elements, and the same great func- tions over which they preside. Here, too, in the vegetable kingdom, in the modifications of structure and of the organic properties and functions, and of the laws which they obey, we witness the greatest simplification of life. The vegetable tribes, being also exempt from most of those secondary influences which so constantly embarrass our inquiries in more complex organization, especially from the compli- cations that arise from nen'ous influence, are better subjects for the experimental researches which concern the philosophy of life ; and tlie facts, therefore, which they supply may be canied up, for the PHYSIOLOGY. VITAL PROFERTIES. 89 bame general pm'pose, as sound analogies, to more complex beings (§ 191 a, 409, 733, 853, 1052). 186. The mental property, perception, is necessary to the exercise of specific and common sensibility, and the will to that of mobility as modified in the function of voluntary motion (§ 194, &c., 226, 241 243, 500 e). Here we have not only other analogies between the in- tellectual and vital principles, but each is brought into direct action with the other (§ 175, 184 h). 187. The vital properties co-operate together in their functions, more or less, as they exist in any given being, 187^. The conditions now mentioned as to the principle of life, as well as all those to be hereafter stated, and the phenomena of which they are predicated, form other groups of facts, which, individually and collectively, contradistinguish the principle of life from all the forces of inorganic nature (^ 1041). IRRITABILITY. 188. a. Irritability belongs to all tissues, and is the property upon which all vital agents, external and internal, physical and mental, nat- ural, morbific, and remedial, produce impressions in organic life ; ex- cept as sensibility is concerned in reflex nervous actions (§ 201-203, 220), and as the nerves, from being incorporated in other tissues, take a subordinate part in organic functions, independently of reflex action (§4G1, 492). All actions or motions, in animal as well as organic life, ax-e brought about by impressions on irritability (§ 205, 233, 257, 486, 500 d). This may be either by the direct action of the agent, or by the indirect action of the nervous power (§ 222, &c.). When vital agents affect the organic functions in a direct manner, it is by direct action upon the irritability of the parts which perform the functions. This is true, in part, of the natural excitants of organs ; as blood acts directly upon the irritability of the heart and blood-ves- sels, bile upon that of the intestines, food upon that of the stomach, &c. In these cases, however, influences are also transmitted through sympathetic sensibility to the nervous centres, and thence reflected upon the muscular tissue of the organs (§ 201, 514/). So, also, re- medial agents operate upon the irritability of parts to which they are applied, and thus aflfect their functions in a direct manner. But their influences are commonly more extensive, and then they call into ope- ration the nervous power by their action upon sensibility (§ 201), thus giving rise to reflex nervous actions (§ 222, &c., 475i, 500). When mental emotions affect the organic functions it is by determ- ining the nervous power upon the irritability of the parts (§ 226, 227). And, although sensibility receives the primary impressions in the func- tion of sympathy, the resulting influences upon organic actions are brought about by a determination of the nervous power upon the irri- tability of the affected organs (§ 201, 226, 227, 4751 6471, 1041). 188, h. When vital agents act upon specific sensibility the results of their impressions are merely their propagation to the nervous centres, and a consequent action upon those parts (§ 194-204, 222-234). 188, c. I shall endeavor to show that the doctrine is entirely unfound- ed which supposes that vital agents produce their effects in organic life by direct impressions upon the nervous system, excepting so far as explained above (§ 188 a). This demonstration, indeed, was made in 90 .NSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. the Commentaries, but mainly by other processes than will be present- ed in the Institutes. The fact alone, however, should be adequate, that jjlants have no nervous system, yet carry on all the essential or- ganic processes that exist in animals ; while they are alike liable to corresponding results from the operation of morbific and remedial agents. ISSj, a. Every thing which is capable of affecting irritability, and sensibility, is a vital agent. These agents are either natural to the body, as blood, heat, bile, &c., or external, as food, air, heat, light, electricity, &c. Irritability is perpetually alive to the stimulus of blood in all parts of the sanguiferous system, as it is to that of the sap wherever it circulates (§ 136). This shows the exquisite suscep- tibility of the property. 1881, h. Many vital agents, those just mentioned, are indispensable to the maintenance of organic processes, either in animals or plants. Hence, from maintaining the organic powers in constant action, they are called vital stimuli. Those of a morbific or remedial nature are known by these epithets, though, in a philosophical sense, they are vital agents. They are distinguished by very different characteristics from the natural agents of life ; even all those which are stimulant to the organic processes ; for they not only excite the properties of life, but are capable, also, of affecting their intrinsic nature. But, there are others, whose effect, in certain degrees of intensity, is directly the reverse of the foregoing, as hydrocyanic acid, tobacco, &c. ; and these, when thus operating, are vital depressants (§ 441 d, 650, 743). 188|, c. Some of the vital stimuli which are natural to the body, as blood, and bile, and also food, subserve other purposes than that alone of rousing the action of organs. They are also acted upon and appropriated to the uses of the system. This is more extensively true of animals than of plants. In the latter case there are certain external stimuli which are indispensable to vegetation, and whose only operation is that of excitants, but which are comparatively un- important to animals. These agents are particularly light and heat, and pei'haps electricity. The heat which is most important to animals is generated by the living organism. 188^, d. An important error has prevailed among chemists, from their necessary want of physiological knowledge, in regarding the imponderable agents as the causes of life, and not as mere stimuli to those real causes which are implanted in the organization itself, and by which, of course, all the actions and results are determined. This vitiation of philosophy has beset, especially, the functions of animals as it regards their assumed dependence on electricity, and the func- tions of plants in their obvious dependence upon light. The fallacy of the former hypothesis is shown extensively in the Medical and Physiological Commentaries {Essay on the Vital Powers and its Ap- pendix). Of the latter I will now say, that in all the relations of light to plants we have the most distinct analogies with other vital stimuli to guide us to the same certain conclusion, that, like other stimuli, it does but rouse the properties of life to certain special modes of ac- tion, by which they decompose carbonic acid gas, carry on the work of appropriation, &c. {Parallel Columns, nos. 64, 65, 66, 68, 74).* But, thanks to my colleague, Professor Draper, whose name in early life glows upon the sunbeam, organic science is supplied with * See Correlation of Forces, p. 921, ^ 1085. PHYSIOLOGY. V:TAL rROPEETIES, 91 an adornment which vies in delicacy, yet sublimity, witn the capa- bilities of the nervous power (§ 222, &c., 234 e). The professor has obligingly furnished me with the following state- ment of the pi'ogress, and nature, of the discoveries in relation to the solar beam. Thus : " Until the time of Sir Isaac Newton, it was universally supposed that light was a simple elementary body, and therefore incapable of decomposition. " The great optical discovery of Newton consisted in proving that the white light of the sun, or of day, is in reality made up of many colored varieties. He fixed the number at seven : red, orange, yel- low, green, blue, indigo, violet. He indisputably established that that which we commonly call ligJit is made up of, and therefore con tains, the seven prismatic rays. They differ not only by impressing the organ of vision with different sensations, but also in intrinsic brill- iancy or illuminating power. It is to be remarked that of these the yellow is the brightest. " It was the opinion of Newton, and his followers, that when light falls upon bodies and disappears, it is converted into heat ; or, in oth- er words, that heat is extinguished light. Sir W. Herschel, the as- tronomer, proved the separate and distinct nature of these j^rinciples. The proof chiefly depends on the fact that the brightest ray is not the hottest, and that in the sunbeams there exist rays in abundance which are wholly invisible, but which can rapidly raise a thermometer. That which we cannot see we should scarcely call light. Moreover, a vessel of hot water in the darkest place is invisible ; yet common observation shows it is emitting calorific emanations. The independ- ence of light and heat may therefore be considered as established. " Some of the alchemists discovered that certain of the white salts of silver (the chloride) turned black under the influence of the sun- shine. Toward the close of the last century it was shown that the rays which produced this effect were invisible, and therefore could not be regarded as rays of light. At a later period I showed that they could not disturb a thermometer, or communicate to our organs the impression of warmth, and therefore must be distinct from heat. From the circumstance that they are always accompanied by light, I gave them the provisional name of Tithonic rays, from the fable of Tithonus and Aurora. " The same species of modification which light exhibits (as colors) has been traced by Melloni for the rays of heat, and by me for the Tithonic rays. But, as both these classes of rays are" invisible, their coloration must be necessarily so too, and is known to us only by in- direct facts. We speak of it, therefore, as ideal or imaginary. There are seven colors for heat and the chemical rays, as there are seven for " It is worth remarking how complex the constitution of light is now understood to be, when contrasted with the opinion held by the predecessors of Newton (§ 183, &c.). " I have established, as respects some of these rays, that they dis- charge extraordinary functions. It is the yelloio ray of light which has control of the evolution of plants. Under its influence their leaves effect the decomposition of carbonic acid gas in the atmosphere, set- ting free its oxygen and fixing its carbon. This wonderful phenom- 92 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. enon is unquestionably the first step in the production of organized matter, such as starch, woody fibre, &c., from inorganic gases. Tho carbon is first fixed under the form of chlorophyll in the leaf. Chloro- phyll occurs under remarkable circumstances as the coloring matter of bile. " Extended investigations have shov^^n that each particular ray of these principles exerts specifi: jDOvv^ers. The compounds in which silver enters are afl'ected by those of a violet color; chlorine is most acted on by the indigo; and carbon by the yellow. It is for this rea- son, as I have shown, that to the animal eye the yellow ray is bright- est. If nature could have formed a retina of which silver was the basis, the indigo would have been the most brilliant ray. All our conceptions of beauty in colors depend, therefore, on the physical pe- culiarities of the carbon atom. And it is a beautiful and interesting fact, that the ray which evokes from atmospheric air the multitude of forms composing the vegetable world has charge of the process of vision in all animals (p. 797, 798, ^ 1034). " Dr. Gardner discovered that the movements of plants are chiefly directed by the indigo rays of light. They grow in the direction in which it falls upon them ; and the blue color of the sky is one of the causes of the upright growth of stems. " Besides the three classes of rays which I have mentioned, there is a fourth, of which much less is known ; the phosphorogenic rays. These take their name from the fact that when they fall on certain bodies, such as the diamond, Canton's phosphorus, &;c., they cause them to glow with a pale or splendid light. The extraordinaiy pecu- liarity they possess is, that glass is opaque to them. " The advance of chemical optics has sufficiently proved that each of the constituent rays of the sunbeam, or of light derived from arti- ficial sources, has capabilities of its own. Thus, each of the seven rays of light impresses our minds with special sensations. The yel- low, moreover, controls the growth of plants, the indigo their move- ments. Of the Tithonic rays, the blue is the one concerned in Da- guerreotype portrait taking, and the red can bleach paper blacked with oxide of silver. The same peculiarities will undoubtedly be discovered as respects the rays of heat." Professor Draper's analysis of the sunbeam, by subjecting plants to the various elements of the solar spectrum, demonstrates, what was still conjectural, the individuality of its component parts, and estab- lishes their rank as distinct physical and vital agents. Analogy justi- fied this demonstration ; and had the professor proceeded upon the basis of analogy, and applied the spectrum to the philosophy of life, it would have been one of the most splendid achievements of the hu- man mind. But, like Philip and Muller, in respect to the nervous power, he lost the opportunity ; but in losing it, he reared another beacon upon the quicksands of chemistry (§ 476, 493, 514^ b). The chemical properties of the solar spectrum having been an- nounced by other philosophers, it only remained to infer that, like all other things, the integral parts of the spectrum which had manifested peculiar agencies in the physical world would probably, if each were specifically distinct, exhibit greater diversities in organic life (§ 52, 136, 175 lb). This would appear to settle the individuality of the numerous rays. The results of sensation, the test of the thermometer, and even PHYSIOLOGY. VITAL PROPERTIES. 93 of chemistry, with their united force, established only probabilities. Nature may have supplied the unerring, the " indisputable'' requisite, in the Vital Principle. And, although discovery is probably only be- gun, the principles of individuality, and of organic relations, are as well determined by the properties of one ray as by those of a dozen. That others than such as are known belong to the class of vital agents, there can be little doubt. The physical capabilities of other rays sup- ply a sti'ong analogy for this conclusion. Ikit the doctrine of individ- uality is unimportant to our purpose, since, if the homogeneous nature of light and the elegant wave theory become established, each prismat- ic ray will be as much distinguished by peculiar properties as if every ray were an entity (§ 175 bh, 234 e). It will be now observed that every tangible substance yields an overwhelming analogy in corroboration of the doctrine which I ad- vance as to the vital relations of the solar spectrum ; while the coin- cidence in the specific influences of its component parts upon organic life with every other distinct agent, equally in its own turn, surrounds the spectrum with a vital philosophy. Nor is this alone the importance to organic philosophy of the rich discovery. The individual parts of the spectrum not only affect sen- sibility and irritability in modes peculiar to each, but, in beautiful harmony with all tangible substances, each part, respectively, affect? certain oi-gans only, according to their special modifications of irrita bility or sensibility, and according to its own peculiar virtues (§ 133 b, 136, 137 b, 150 a, 188 a, 190, 194, 199, 203). Here, also, it will be seen, is another analogical proof of the vital nature of the influences of light upon organic beings (§ 74 a, 303 e). Much, also, may be found in Professor Draper's own conclusions to show the vital nature of the agency of light. Take, for example, the statement that the '■^indigo ray controls the movements of plants," and that "the blue color of the sky is one of the causes of the upright growth of plants." Now what intelligible explanation can chemistry offer of those phenomena in their undoubted relation to light 1 The unavoidable answer supplies an indisputable analogy for the vital in- fluences of the yellow ray, &c. As to the decomposition of carbonic acid gas, it is the only phenomenon in organic life, and I may add animal, which Liebig abstracted, unequivocally, from chemical agen- cies (§ 350, nos. 66, 68). If we now carry the foregoing analogies along in comparing the effects of heat and electricity with those of light upon vegetable or- ganization, we shall readily see that a common philosophy attends the operation of the whole, and that light, in its relation to vegetable life, is nothing but a vital stimulus, adapted to the peculiarly modified vital properties of the leaf, as blood is to the sanguiferous system, sap to the circulatory system of plants, bile to the intestine, semen to the ovum, pollen to the germen, &c. (§ 133, &c.). Consider, too, the analogy which is supplied, in the foregoing aspect, by the action of light upon the retina (§ 234, e), and how it contributes to the produc- tion of various hues of the skin, and how, on the other hand, the skin becomes blanched, like the plant, by the exclusion of light. And the analogy may be extended to the motions produced in the iris by the action of light upon the " carbon atom" of the retina (§ 514, k). Nay, more, the action of light, as I have shown, by its absence, at 94 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. least, reaches far beyond the peculiarly modified sensibility of the retina (§ 199) ; since, by its long privation, the entire organ of vision ceases to be developed (§ 74). Again, by what chemical philosophy shall we interpret not only the painful effect of light upon an inflamed eye, but its aggravation of the disease 1 And here, by-the-way, its simultaneous action upon the sensibility of animal life and the irri- tability of organic life concur together in the demonstration. And now to continue the analogies with electricity and galvanism. Either will promote the growth of plants which no degree or modifi- Ccltion of light can exert. So will they, also, promote nutrition in muscles that are wasted in paralysis ; and if the pneumogastric nerve be divided, the transmission of galvanism through the inferior portion will rouse the stomach to the production of the true gastric juice and partially restore digestion. And here I may stop to say, that the co- incidence in the effects of galvanism upon vegetable and animal organ- ization is one of the many facts which establish the general identity of the properties of life in both departments of the animated king- dom, while it proves that galvanism and the nervous power are per- fectly distinct, though each be a vital agent (§ 73 b, 74, 185, 226). Again, also, galvanism is a remedial agent, affecting morbid functions after the manner of other remedies, which, with its analogy to light in promoting the growth of plants, shows farther that the latter is, in the same sense, only a peculiar stimulus to organic functions (§ 74, 303). What is said by Professor Draper in the foregoing abstract on the subject of the yellow ray in its connection with sensation deserves a critical inquiry, not only for the sake of the facts, but as contributing light upon organic philosophy. The chemical doctrine of vision is so clearly fallacious, that any specific relations which may be shown between particular rays of light and the sensibility of the retina, may advance our knowledge, analogically, of the connection of the rays with organic functions, through irritability. But I see not how it is shown that the yellow ray " has charge of the process of vision in all animals," since " each of the seven rays of light impresses our minds with special sensations" (p. 797-798, I 1034). Moreover, if the yellow ray give rise to sensation by its action on the carbon atom, or by any chemical influence, then, also, do each of the remaining six, and each one in modes peculiar to itself, and in all the cases upon distinct bases. Nay, more, when the retina feels the united rays, each of the seven must simultaneously exert their specific chemical actions. Besides, how are those invisible rays employed which operate chemically upon inorganic compounds ? 'What means the important distinction between the visible and invisible rajs that the former act upon organic beings, the latter upon inorganic ? From the close analogies between the relation of physical agents to sensibility in animal life and irritability in organic life, if their action in the former case be not chemical, but vital, so is it equally in the lat- ter, and vice versa. It is either vital throughout, or chemical altogether. But, organic philosophy, through its analogies, should be able to explain what chemistry cannot as to the resulting sensation when the united rays of the sunbeam fall upon the retina. One example will do it. Thus, every distinct agent of positive virtues produces distinct impressions in organic life. But, by uniting two or more together, either mechanically or chemically, a new agent is created, which op- PHYSIOLOGY. VITAL PROPERTIES. 96 erates either in an individual sense, or if by several virtues, as an en- tire vi^hole. So, in i-espect to vision, the united virtues of the numer- ous rays of the sunbeam acting upon the sensibility of the retina give rise to sensation attended by a white light (§ 136, 188, 193, 199, 650, 872 a, 1054). In organic life they equally act separately or unitedly. The intelligent reader may now test the foregoing philosophy by what is perpetually observed within himself, and bring to its illustration the exact analogies which I have indicated as being supplied by the different passions of the mind ; how anger stimulates the whole vascu- lar system, — how fear depresses it, — how shame acts upon the capilla- ries of the face alone, — how joy acts upon the heart and kindles the eyes in its own peculiar way, or its antagonist, grief, seeks the lachry- mal gland, or expectation of food the parotids, — how fear, again, rouses the kidneys, or bathes the skin with perspiration, — how love poises its aim at the genital organs (§ 227, 234 g^ 509, 512, &c.). If, therefore, light do not affect organic actions, and influence organic results as supposed of the foregoing mental causes, and as imputed, also, to all vital agents, but, on the contrary, its operations upon plants, and therefore upon animals, be of a chemical nature, then, by the clear- est analogy, all other agents of life, the mind and its passions, every act of intellection, every voluntary movement, belong equally to the same category (§ 175 c, 349 e, 1072). 189, a. where physical views of life obtain, their advocates sup- pose that vital agents operate directly upon the structure. This is one of the first steps in materialism. Many of the chemical school imagine, as Liebig expresses it, that " every motion, every manifesta- tion of force, is the result of a transformation of the structure, or of the substance of parts ;" that " every thought, every mental affection, is the result of a change in the composition of the substance of the brain." And so of every pulsation of the heart (§ 350). Others, again, who belong to the school of vitalism, to accommodate their lan- guage to the physical conceptions of the day, speak of the action of vital agents " upon the structure through the medium of the vital: properties." This difference among vitalists is only verbal; since,; by admission, the structure can only be affected " through the medi- um of its vital properties," upon which, therefore, the impression must be made. Hence, distinguished vitalists. Professor Caldwell, for example, who defend the semi-physical mode of expression, often fall into the simple realities of their philosophy. Thus the professor, m his " Outlines of a Course of Lecttcres,^' observes that " irritability and sensibility can be acted on by stimulants alone." " Purgative medicines act chiefly on our irritability," &c. (p. 185, 187). And so it ever happens with inquirers after truth. They cannot adhere even to ambiguities of language ; and others who see the truth, but build upon hypotheses, are often betrayed into fatal contradictions (§ 64, 236, 345-350, 350f n, 699 c, 740, 819 b). 189, b. But, what is more remarkable, the most absolute physical phi- losophers of life, they who deride the existence of the " vital proper- ties," and speak of their " destruction" as an absurdity, not only fall into the language of the vitalists, but unavoidably contradict their wholo system of materialism, whenever they approach the realities of life. This is true even of Dr. Carpenter, who, in his review of my Com- mentaries, attempted their overthrow by satirizing the supposed exist- 96 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. ence of " vital properties," and particularly the supposition that prop erties could be "destroyed.'" Thus, then, Dr, Carpenter, at a subse- quent time, and in a work of great professional popularity. The cap- itals and italics are mine : " It is a fact of some importance, in relation to the disputed question of the connection of muscular irritability with the nervous system, that when, by the application of narcotic substances to the nerves, their vital properties are destroyed, the irritability of the muscle may remain for some time longer; and the latter must, therefore, be independent of the former. Hence we should conclude that contrac- tility [mobility, of these Institutes, § 205] must be a property really inlierent in muscular tissue, which may be called into action by va- rious stimuli APPLIED to itself, and which may be weakened by vari- ous depressing agents applied to itself ; and that the nerves have the power of conveying the stimuli which call the property into action, but have little or no other influence on it." — Carpenter's Human Physiology, Sectio?i 376. — See, also, this work, § 175 d, 167 d, 291, 350| b ; and Examination ofRevieivs, p. 8-12, 26-43. It is important to the great objects of medicine, that I should now say, that the foregoing is only an example of numerous palpable con- tradictions of the physical views which form the fundamental philoso- phy of life in the foregoing work, and, I may add, of most others which tire devoted to the propagation of medical materialism. It will be »een that enough is admitted in the preceding quotation to substantiate every doctrine advanced in these Institutes. There are the vital prop- erties, in all their individuality, called into action by stimuli, and " act- ing" of themselves even beyond the doctrine of vitalists, or, again, " weakened by various depressing agents," and liable to be " de- stroyed;" though I do not allow, as affirmed in the quotation, that "con/rac^z'toy" is the property acted upon (s^ 206). Finally, we have ad- mitted, " that the nerves have the power of conveying the stimuli which call the proioerty [contractility, or mobility^ into action ;''' and which is all that is necessary to the whole doctrine which I have propounded as to the nervous power (§ 222-233f , 500, &c., 512, &c., 893-905). 189, c. The impressions which are made on the vital properties be come the causation of the changes which may ensue in the actions, or structure, of the solids, where the impression is made. No vital agents elicit actions, or a single phenomenon of life, when applied to an in- organic compound, not even from an organic being just dead from in- stant destruction by hydrocyanic acid, or by a pin thrust into the me- dulla oblongata. On the contrary, indeed, all the agents which had before contributed to the maintenance of life, now caiTy out the work of destruction, and more speedily resolye the organic fabric into its ultimate elements than any inorganic compound {k 62). It follows, therefore, that agents do not elicit the actions of life by operating upon the organized structure ; but upon those properties which hydrocy- anic acid, &c., may extinguish in an instant of time ; nor do they op- erate upon the functions, since those are merely effects (§ 176). And is it not a greater paradox that hydrocyanic acid, or aconite, &c., should destroy life in a second of time by its action upon the mere structure than upon that living principle which imparts to the organic kingdom all its peculiar characteristics'? Or, as the blood, or joy, or fcnger, rouses the heart, or as fear brings on perspiration, micturition, PHYSIOLOGY. VITAL PROPERTIBS. 9T ^ 59. " It is thought very remarkable, 73. " The force which gives to that those plants of the grass the germ, the leaf, and the radi- tribe, the seeds of which furnish cal fibres of the vegetable the food for man, follow Mm like the same wonderful properties (di- domestic animals. But sali?ie plants gestion, circulation, and secretion), seek the sea-shore ov sali?ie springs, is the same as that residing in and the Chcenopodium the dung- the secreting membranes and hill from similar causes. Saline glands of animals, and which en- plants require common salt, and ables every animal organ to per- plants which grow on dung-hills, form its own proper functions." — only, need ammonia and nitrates, Liebig's Animal Chemistry. and they are attracted whither 74. "In the animal organism the these can be found, just as the vital force exhibits itself as dung-fly is to animal excrements." in the plant, in the form of " The roots of plants are con- growth, and as the means of re- stantly engaged in collecting from sistance to external agencies." the rain those alkalies which form- — Ibid. ed part of the sea-water, and also 75. " If we assume that all the those of the water of springs which phenomena exhibited by the oi"- penetrates the soil." ganism of plants and animals are 27. "Each new radical fihril to be ascribed to A peculiar cause, which a plant acquires may be re- different in its manifestations from garded as constituting, at the same all other causes which produce time, A mouth, a lung, and a motion or change of condition ; stomach. The roots perform the if, therefore, we regard the vital functions of the leaves from the force as an independent force first moment of their formation ; (no. 3), then, in the phenomena they EXTRACT from the soil their of organic life, as in all other phe- proper nutriment, namely, the CAR- nomena ascribed to the action of BONic ACID generated by the hu- forces, we have the statics, that is, mus." — Liebig's Organic Chem- the state of equilibrium determ- istry applied to Physiology. ined by a resistance, and the dy- 28. [" Nature speaks to us in a namics of the vital force" ! — peculiar language, in the language Ibid. of phenomena. She answers, at all 76. " Vegetables produce in times, the questions which are put to their organism the blood op all her; and such questions are exper- animals." — Liebig, ?'&?(?. iments. An experiment is the eX' To occupy space, nos. 26^ and pression of a thought. We are near- 27 are contrasted with nos. 25 and er the truth, when the phenom- 26 in the same column. And so enon, elicited by the experiment, with 5^, 23^. But here is more in corresponds to the thought ; the more appropriate place, upon while the opposite result shows this fundamental point. Thus : that tlte questiomvas f\IjSTS.i.y ST A- 77. "When it is considered, ted, and that the conception teas that sea-water contains less thar PHYSIOLOGY. ORGANIC CHEMISTRY FUNCTIONS. 167 CHEMICAL DOCTRINES. ERRONEOUS." — Liebig's Organic Chemistry, &c. (^ 1052, 1054). [I pause in my quotations for the pur- pose of indicating the important bearing of the '■'■chemistry of plaints" upon the chem- ical philosophy of digestion in animals as carried on b}' the gastric juice. Now, if in the latter case the agencies be of a chem- ical nature, there should be some analogy between the supposed chemical transform- ation of organic compounds by the gastric juice and the transformation of inorganic substances into organic compounds as ef- fected by plants, especially considering that "vegetables produce in their organ- ism the blood of all animals" (no. 76). Chemistrj' is prodigal of experiments, and of supposititious agents from pepsin to chlorine, in resolving digestion by ani- mals, but vouchsafes scarcel}- a word in behalf of tliat ^'creative function" by which " the blood of all animals" is generated by plants out of the elements of matter. Will Chemistry explain (§ 301, 360) ? ] 29. " The most decisive exper- iments of physiologists have shown that the process of chymification is independent of the vital force ; that it takes place in virtue of a PURELY CHEMICAL action, EXACTLY SIMILAR to those processes of de- composition or transformation which are known as putrefac- tion, fermentation, or decay." — Liebig's Animal Chemistry. " Those remarkable phenom- ena, fermentation, putrefac- tion, and DECAY, are the pro- cesses of Decomposition, and their ultimate results are to re- convert the elements of organic bodies into that state in which they exist before they participate in the processes of life." — Liebig's Lec- tures for 1844. 30. " The second part of the work will treat of the chemical processes which effect the com- plete DESTRUCTION of plants and animals after death, such as the peculiar modes of decomposition usually described d,s fir mentation, -putrefoction. and decay y — Lie- vital doctrines. To 00 00 o' ^^ ^^^ own weight of io- dine, and that all combinations of iodine with the metallic bases of alkalies are highly soluble in wa- ter, so7nc 2>rovisio7i Tnust necessarily be supposed to exist in the organ- ization of sea-weed and the dif- ferent kinds offeree by which they are enabled, during their life, TO EXTRACT IODINE in the form of a soluble salt from sea-water, and to ASSIMILATE IT IN SUCH A MAN- NER that it is not again restored to the surrounding mediuhi. These plants are collectors of iodine, JUST as land plants are of al KALiES ; and they yield us this el- ement IN quantities such as we could not otherwise obtain from the water without the evaporation of WHOLE SEAS." — Liebig's Or- ganic Chemistry applied to Physi- ology, &c. — (^ 1054). 78, " The equilibrium ixi the chemical attractions of the constit- uents of food is disturbed by the VITAL PRINCIPLE ;" and " the un- ion of its ELEMENTS, SO as to pro- duce neiv combinations ^.ndi forms indicates a peculiar mode of at- traction, and the existence of A POWER DISTINCT FROM ALL OTHER POWERS OF NATURE, namely, the VITAL PRINCIPLE." — Liebig's Or- ganic Chemistry applied to Physi- ology, &c. 79. " The VITAL force causes a DECOMPOSITION oi the constituents of food, and destroys the force of attraction which is continually ex- erted between their molecules. It altei's the direction of the chemi- cal FORCES in such wise, that the ELEMENTS of the Constituents of the food arrange themselves in an- other form, and combine to pro- duce new compounds. It forces the new compounds to assume forms altogether different from those which are the result of the attrac- tion of cohesion when acting free* 168 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. CHEMICAL DOCTRINES. VITAL DOCTRINES. big's Organic Chemistry aj^plicd ly, that is, without resistance.''—- to Tliysiology, &c. Liebig's Animal Chemistry. 31. " In the SAME WAY as Mus- 80. "It is well known that CULAR fibre, when separated from in many graminivorous animals, the body, communicates the state where the digestive organs have of decomposition existing in its been overloaded with fresh juicy elements to the peroxide of hydro- vegetables, these substances un- gen, so a certain product, arising dergo in the stomach the same by means of the vital process, and decomposition as they would at hy consequence of the transposition the same temperature out of the of the elements of parts of the stom- body. They pass into ferment a- ach and of the other digestive or- tion and putrefaction, whereby gans [ ! ] while its own metamor- so great a quantity of carbonic pilosis is accomplished in the stom- acid gas and of inflammable gas ach, ACTS ON the food. The in- is generated, that these organs soluble matters are digested" ! — are enormously distended, and Liebig's Animal Chemistry. sometimes even to bursting." — 32. " Is it truly vitality, which Liebig's Animal Chemistry. generates sugar in the germ for 81. " The vital force appears the nutrition of young plants, or as a moving force or cause of mo- which gives to the stomach the tion, when it overcomes the chem- power to dissolve and to prepare ical forces, cohesion and affini- for assimilation all the matter in- ty, which act between the con- troduced into it ? A decoction stituents of food, and when it OF MALT possesses as little power changes the position or place in to reproduce itself, as the stomach which their elements occur. The of a DEAD CALF. Both are, un- vital force is manifested as A questionably, destitute of life. But, cause of motion in overcoming when starch is introduced into a the chemical attraction of the decoction of malt, it changes, first constituents of food, and is, far- into a gummy matter, and lastly ther, the cause which compels into sugar. Hard-boiled albumen, them to combine in a new arrange- and muscular fibre, can be dis- ment, and to assume new forms.' solved in a decoction of a calf's — Liebig's Animal Chemistry. stomach, to which a few drops of 82. " It will be shown in the muriatic acid have been added, second part of this woi'k, that all precisely as in the stomach it- plants and vegetable structures *eZ/l" — Liebig's Organic Chemis- undergo two processes of decom- try., &c. (no. 11). position after death. One of 33. " All substances which can these is named fermentation, the an-est the phenomena oi fermen- other decay or putrefaction." — tation and putrefaction in liquids, Liebig's Organic Chemistry ap- also arrest digestion when taken j'^^^^^ to Physiology, &c., (§ 349, into the stomach" ! — Liebig's An- c, e). imal Chemistry . 34. " In the natural state of the 83. " The individual organs digestive process, the food only such as the stomach., cause all the undergoes % change in its state of organic substances conveyed tc cohesion, becoming fluid without them, which are capable of trans- any other change of properties." — formation, to assume new forms. Liebig's Animal Chemistry. The stomach compels the ele- PHYSIOLOGY. ORGANIC CHEMISTRY FUNCTIONS 169 CHEMICAL DOCTRINES. 35. Although "the process of CHYMIFICATION IS INDEPENDENT of the vital force, and takes place in virtue of a purely chemical action, EXACTLY similar to those processes of decomposition which are known as PUTREFACTION, FERMENTATION, or DECAY ;" nevertheless, " Inor- ganic compounds differ from or- ganic in as great a degree as in their simplicity of constitution " — Liebig's Animal Chemistry, and Organic Chemistry. 36. " The power of elements to unite together, and to form pecu- liar compounds which are genera- ted in animals and vegetables, is chemical affinity." — Liebig's Organic Chemistry applied to Vhysiology^ &c. 37. " We should not permit our- selves to be withheld, by the idea of a VITAL principle, from consid- ering in a chemical point of view, the process of transformation of the food, and its assimilation by the VARIOUS organs. This is the more necessary, as the views hith- erto held have produced no re- sults, and are quite incapable of useful application." — Liebig's Or- ganic Chemistry applied, &c. 38. " We know that an organ- ized body cannot generate sub- stances, but only change the mode of their combinations, and that its sustenance and reproduction depend upon the chemical trans- formation of the matters which are employed as its nutriment, and which contain its own constituent VITAL DOCTRINES. MENTS of these substances to unite into a COMPOUND j?^^e, 3501, 820 c).* 436, What, therefore, I may now say in refutation of this or of other chemical doctrines of organic processes and results, will con- sist, in part, of a summary view of some of the facts and arguments which are arrayed in copious detail in the Medical and Physiological Commentaries. And, truth being my only object, I shall begin the subject under consideration with a statement of the opinions of some of the most accurate and distinguished observers, which correspond with my own. But to show, however, that nothing but opinions have been expressed even by those who have comprehended the subject, I shall quote from each author all that I have any knowledge of his hav- ing said upon the question at issue, with the exception of the little which occurs along with Hunter's observations upon the temperature of trees. I will add, also, in proof of the necessity of these inquiries, that no preceding attempt had been made to show the errors of the chemical doctrines of digestion, and that I have incorporated in my prefatory remarks to that investigation all that I could learn from the distinguished authors whom I have there summoned in behalf of philosophy. — See Rights of Authors p. 919, no. 22, 437, a. Let us, then, hear the great French physiologist. " The extrication of caloric," says Bichat, " is a phenomenon exactly analo- gous to those of which the general capillary system is the seat." — " The disengagement of caloric is always subordinate to the state of the vital forces^ — " The state of respiration has no influence upon the actual heat of the body." — " When we place on one side all the phe- nomena of animal heat, and on the other the chemical hypothesis, it * That this opmion is not peculiar to myself appears from critical notices of the Com- mentaries. Thus, for example, it is said by the distinguished author of the " Climate of the United States and its Endemic Injluences," that, " It will be seen that Dr. Paine, in fact, anticipates the whole chemical theory of Lie- big, as set forth in his 'Animal Cliemistry.' This he does not only in his Essay on Vi- tality, in which he controverts some of the German professor's opinions, advanced in the ' Orf;anic Chemistry applied to Agriculture and Physiology! but likewise in his Medi- cal and Physiological Commentaries, published before the appearance of either of Lie big's works." PHYSIOLOGY. FUNCTIONS. 237 appears to me so inadequate to the explanation that I think every me- thodical mind can refute it without my assistance^' — Bichat's General Anatomy applied to Physiology and Medicine. 437, b. John Hunter, like Bichat, placed the elaboration of organic heat upon the same vital grounds ; regarding it as a secreted product. " It is most probable," he says, " that the power of generating heat in animals arises from a principle so connected with life, that it can, and does, act independently of circulation, &c., and is that power which preserves and regulates the internal machine." — Hunter's Observations on Certain Parts of the Animal Economy. 437, c. And thus Wilson Philip : " Among the secretions I havo ranked the evolution of caloric, although not taking place on any par- ticular surface, because it appeared to be performed by the same power acting on the same fluid ; and because, like secreted fluids, it fails when any considerable part of the influence of the brain or spi- nal cord is withdrawn." — Philip's Experimental Inquiry into the haws of the Vital Functions (§ 446, b). 437, d. And thus the philosophical Moore : " We must allow the bodies of living animals and vegetables to form an original source of heat, as much beyond our power of explaining as the source of the sun's heat." — INIoore's Medical Sketches. 437, e. And Miiller thus : " From the expex'iments of Dulong and Despretz, it results that, even if the chemical theory of respiration be adopted, there must be still some other source of animal heat.'' "A gen- eral source of animal heat is undoubtedly to be found in the organic processes, in which, by the organizing forces on the organic matter, heat is generated not in one, but in every organ of the body." Again, " Since all organic processes are chiefly dependent on the influence exerted by the nerves on the organic mattter of the body, it cajinot appear wonderful if the reciprocal action between the organs and the nerves is a main source of animal heat." — Muller's Physiology. 437, y. Tiedemann has the same view of the subject. " The only point," he says, *' that can be regarded as placed beyond doubt is, that the evolution of heat is a vital act which depends immediately on the process of nutrition, the conditional and preservative cause of life. The intensity of the evolution of heat, and the property of maintaining itself at a certain temperatui'e proper to each species, are, in animals, in direct ratio with the composition of their organization, and with the sum and intensity of their manifestations of activity." — Tiede- mann's Physiology. 437, g. Finally, it is even said by the distinguished chemical phys- iologist, Dr. Carpenter, that, " It is evident that the chemical doc- trine in its present form is insufficient to explain the phenomena of animal calorification." — Carpenter's Human Physiology, p. 611. Jjondon, 1842. 438, a. The very able Dr. Edwards, in his work on the Influence jf Physical Agents on Life, maintains that " respiration and animal heat stand related as cause and effect.'" This doctrine is maintained by Edwards with great ability ; far more so than by all other authors whom I have consulted. I thought it, therefore, important to dispose of his facts and arguments, in my former work, as far as their plausi- bility and my own advantage of the right position would admit. There is much said, in the Gomnventaries, in refutation of that doc* 238 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. trine, which is at the foundation of Liebig's (§ 440), and to which no farther reference will be made in this work (^ 1044). 438, h. Coming to the heterogeneous assumptions which distinguish the school of Liebig, there was no difficulty in anticipating the nature of such as might be relative to former theories. I had set forth the various doctrines in their ample dimensions, and brought them to the test of facts and philosophy. The combustion theory was then in vogue, and nearly in the terms as expounded by Liebig. In descant- ing upon its peculiarities I took for my guide the most recent and ap- proved phraseology, which, it will be seen, is coincident with the sup- posed novelty; and, although it had numerous and ai'dent admirers, it passed into such oblivion, in the brief space of two years, that when Liebig promulgated the same hypothesis, and in the same language, it was hailed as one of the most brilliant achievements of that distin- guished man (§ 349, d). The doctrine which had been thus nearly expressed by Billing, in his " Principles of Medicine," was taken for my text, and is now presented again, in its original typography. Thus : " We have in the lungs a charcoal fire constantly burning, and in the other parts a wood fire, the one producing carbonic acid gas, the other carbon ; the food supplying, through the circulation, the veg- etable or animal yi;c^, from which the charcoal is prepared that is burn- ed in the lungs. It is thus that animal heat is kept uj)." — Billing, 1838 (§ 447^ a, no. 4, 1044). 438, c. Somewhat pi-ior to Billing's day, Roget had embellished his " Bridgewater Treatise on Animal and Vegetable Physiology," by the following graphic desci'iption of the apparatus, and the office which each part fulfills in the generation of animal heat. Thus : " The food supplies \\\q fuel, which is prepared for use by the di- gestive organs., and conveyed by the pulmonary arteries to the place where it is to undergo comhustion. The diaphragm is the bellows which feeds the furnace with air ; and the trachea is the chimney through which the carbonic acid, which is the product of combustion, escapes." — Roget (§ 350f ,y). 438, d. Now, the only fundamental difference between the forego- ing and Liebig's hypothesis is this : The former supposes the com- bustion to take place in the lungs, the latter in every other part ex- cepting the lungs, where, as will be seen, a special provision is made for the temperature of those organs (§ 447^,/"). That no imaginary obstacle may lie in the way of the vital theory, and that truth may have the advantage of rival doctrines by their close apposition, and that knowledge may not be limited to the facts and deductions of unadulterated science, it remains to show, by a series of quotations from Liebig's Animal Chemistry, that the doctrine of the dependence of organic heat upon the chemical process of combustion has gained nothing from the Laboratory at Geissen ; while the atten- tive reader will find in the extracts themselves the most ample proof of its untenable nature. This, indeed, may have been well anticipa- ted from what I have shown of this philosopher's regard for facts and consistency in section 350. Indeed, the same incongruities, the same contradictions, and worse assumptions, go to form the whole fabric of Liebig's disquisitions upon animal heat, as I have shown to make up his jumble respecting digestion, and other great functions, as well as properties of living beings (^ 1044). PHYSIOLOGY. FUNCTIONS. 239 1 shall endeavor to execute my task with the same efficiency as was attempted in relation to the chemical views of digestion (§ 350), in the earnest hope that the chemist may discern the error of his ways, and leave to the student of Organic Nature those difficult prob- lems which concern the highest welfare of man, and whose consist- ency, in their philosophical bearing, cannot be disturbed without laying in ruins every principle in physiology, and carrying death into the chambers of the sick (§ 4 a, 5, 5^ a, 3761, 376f b, 819, &c.) 440, a. Let us begin, then, with a statement of the doctrine as sum- marily delivered by Liebig in his work on Animal Chemistnj, and we shall see from the first proposition that it is essentially the old speculation (§ 438, h), alike based upon artificial expedients, and upon the assumption that the living organism is a mere chemical apparatus, destitute of all properties and laws that are not common to dead matter. 1. " It is evident that the supply of heat lost by cooling is effected by the mutual action of the elements of the food and the inspired oxygen, which combine together. The animal body acts, in this respect, as a furnace which we supply icith fuel." " In order to keep up in the furnace a constant temperature, we 7nust vary the supply of fuel accord- ing to the external temperature, that is, according to the sujfply of oxy- gen.^' — Ani?}ial Chemistry. It will be seen, from the close of the foregoing quotation, tliat a capital error is made in assuming a law that the quantity of food is regulated by the temperature of the air (§ 440 cc, no. 12). That assumption is carried out in opposition to all well-known facts ; while it is also assumed as a law, that animal heat, whatever its uniformity in the warm-blooded animal, or its instability in the cold-blooded, de- pends upon the relative law of the temperature of the air and the quantity of food consumed, although this law is virtually contradicted by various other requisites for the promotion and maintenance of ani- mal heat. But let us have another unqualified proposition which de- fines the law in relation to the dependence of animal heat upon exter- nal temperatui'e and the food consumed. Thus : 2. " In different climates, the quantity of oxygen introduced into the system by respiration varies according to the temperature of the ex- ternal air. The quantity of inspired oxygen increases with the loss of heat by external cooling, and the quantity of carbon or hydrogen necessary to combine with this oxygen must be increased in the same ratio." — Animal Chemistry. Now compare the following, 3, 4, and 5, with the preceding 1 and 2, and observe the conflict between them, and the contingencies upon which the great law is made to depend that determines a uniform temperature. Thus : 3. " The quantity of oxygen consumed varies according to the tem- perature and density of the air, according to the degree of motion, labor, or exercise, to the amount and quality of the food, to the com- parative warmth of the clothing, and also according to the time within which the food is taken" ! A proposition mostly relative to man, and unfounded as to him (§ 440, c). 4. " The quantity of food is regulated by the number of respirations, by the temperature of the air, and by the amount of heat given off to ihe surrounding medium" ! (§ 447, c). 240 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. 5. '* The inutual action between the elements of the food and the oxy- gen conveyed by the circulation of the blood to every part of the body is THE SOURCE OF ANIMAL HEAT." " For a given amount of oxygen the heat produced is, in all cases, exactly the same J' — Liebig's Animal Chemistry (§ 447, c, 1048). 6. " There is not the smallest support to the opinion that there ex- ists, in the animal body, any other unknown source of heat, besides the mutual chemical action between the elements of the food and the oxygen of the air." — Animal Chemistry. No farther comment is necessary to indicate the complexities and contradictions involved in the foregoing quotations ; such as " the quan- tity of oxygen consumed depends on the amount and quality of the food," while " the quantity of food is regulated by the number of res- pirations," that is, by " the quantity of oxygen consumed," &c. If, also, we now add to the foregoing, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, other contin- gencies upon which it is assumed that animal heat depends, we shall have such a variety of accidental circumstances to interpret the uni- form temperature of each individual of every species of animal, and that, too, according to the constitutional peculiarities of each species, that the nature of the chemical rationale will be sufficiently obvious. Thus : 7. " Where the food contains meat, fat, and wine, by reason of the hydrogen in those kinds of food which is oxydized, and which, in being converted into water, it evolves much more heat for equal weights." 8. " The cooling of the body, by whatever cause it maybe produced, increases the amount of food necessary. The mere exposure to the cold air, &c., increases the loss of heat, and compels us to eat more than usual. [ ! ] The same is true of those who are accustomed to drink large quantities of cold water. It increases the appetite, [ ! ] and persons of a weak constitution find it necessary, by continued exer- cise, to supply to the system the oxygen required to restore the heat abstracted by the cold water" ! — Animal Chemistry . 440, b. Here I pause for a moment to advert to the ground of the assumptions in the quotations 7 and 8. The reason is one which goes conclusively to the vital theory of animal heat. When wine, for ex- ample, is taken into the stomach, an evolution of heat ensues as soon as the stimulant is swallowed, in virtue of its stimulant effect on that organ. In the same way meat stimulates more than vegetables, and will light up a glow upon a cold surface before its digestion has be- gun (§ 512, Z»). In respect to the superiority of cold water in pro- voking hunger, there is no other way of explaining the philosophy against the fact than by supposing " the Reformer" was pledged to the popular cause of temperance. But since wine, brandy, &c., far more than cold water, " increase the appetite" and " compel us to eat more than usual," and since these fluids are said to yield a far greater amount of "fuel" to the system than the food itself (whose main ob-- ject is also supposed to supj^ly the means of combustion), it should follow, upon our author's premises, that less food would be necessary to the pui-poses of life in proportion to the quantity of alcohol con- sumed, and therefore that wine should, in reality, diminish the appe- tite and " compel us to eat less than us/aal" (nos. 4, 7 ; § 441, e). It may be worth observing, also, in respect to the " cold water," that the assumption is foundec upon several important mistakes ; PHYSIOLOGY. FUNCTIONS. 241 namely, 1st, That the appetite is virtually regulated by the condition of the calorific process ; 2d. That " the animal body bears the same relation to surrounding objects (in respect to an interchange of calor- ic), as any other heated mass" (no. 14) ; and, 3d. That drinkino' cold water diminishes the temperature of the body (§ 442, b, c, d, e). And the most strenuous and extensive efforts have been made to choke down these absurdities under the penalty of being lampooned as an enemy to " experimental philosophy" (§ 5|, a). I have no doubt, however, that they will forcibly remind the reader of the parallel quo- tations, and of the pathological and therapeutical principles which emanate from them in the two subsequent sections. 440, bb. As to the "fat" (no. 7), the chemist assumed that to be an important source of animal heat because it is one of the best sub- stances for combustion " in the air or in oxygen gas" (no. 10) ; and this hypothesis conducts him to the ludicrous mistake of I'egarding it equally, and in the same aspect, as a source of animal heat, whether It be taken as an article of food and converted into chyme, or consist of food which has been converted into the fat that makes up a part of the consumer. The uniform temperature, therefore, among a variety of other things, will depend not only on the amount of fat eaten, but on the amount formed out of the blood. This leads our author to say that, 9. " If we were to go naked, like certain savage tribes, or if in hunting or fishing we were exposed to the same degree of cold as the Samoyedes, we should be able with ease to consume ten pounds of flesh, [ ! ] and perhaps a dozen of tallow candles into the bargain, daily, as warmly-clad travelers have related with astonishment of these people. [ ! ] We should then, also, be able to take the same quantity of brandy or train oil without bad effects, because the carbon and hydro- gen of these substances would only suffice to keep up the equilibrium between the external temperature and that of our bodies." — Animal Chemistry {^ 1050). And yet Alcohol is not absorbed § 350, no. 94, And that, too, in a critical work on science which professes a rigor- ous adherence to facts, as the only apology for a contemptuous deris- ion of long-established doctrines, and as the only basis for the attempt- ed substitutes. But let us now turn from " fat" as a combustible substance, via the digestive apparatus, to " fat" as appertaining to the organized tissues (§ 1048, 1049). — Note N p. 1121. 10. " The formation oi fat depends on a deficiency of oxygen. But, in this process, in the formation of fat itself, there is opened up a neio source of animal heat. The oxygen set free in the formation of fat is given out in combination with carbon or hydrogen, and there must have been generated by the formation of carbonic acid or water as much heat as if an equal weight of carbon or hydrogen had been burned in air or in oxygen gas." — Liebig's Organic Chemistry , &c. Introductory to the foregoing quotation, we are told, that, " The production of fat is always a consequence of a deficient sup- ply of oxygen, for oxygen is absolutely indispensable for the dissipa tion of excess of carbon in the food." And then we are refeiTed, in illustration, to the " lean, muscular, einewy limbs that are exhibited with pride by the Bedouin and Arab of (he desert" (c). But what says the variety in respect to fat, and oxygen! -nd heat, that prevails among the tenants of the ocean, who have but ono Q 242 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. common supply of food 1 Contrast, for example, the blubber of the whale, who breathes with lungs, with many a lean, voracious, cold- blooded animal that respires with gills. The hypothesis, therefore, falls (no. Ill, and § 443,4). Or, if it survive such difficulties, take, then, tlie following statement, designed as an important basis for the combustion theory, and which should have had a place among our au- thor's pathological doctrines (§ 350i). But our present interest liea in the fact that it appears, after all, that it is not " true without excep- tion," that " the production of fat is always in consequence of a defi- cient supply of oxygen." Thus : " Exercise and labor cause a diminution in the quantity of the men- strual discharge ; and when it is suppressed in consequence of dis- ease, the vegetative life is manifested in a morbid productio?i of Jut" / H^re is another " most trustworthy observation," and " perfectly conclusive" as to our author's doctrine. Thus : " The quantities of oxygen which a whale and a carrier's horse can inspire in a given time are very unequal. The temperature, as well as the quantity of oxygen, is much greater in the horse." — Liebig's Animal Chemistry, &c. Now the temperature of the whale in the frozen seas is more than 100° Fh., nor can the " carrier" bring up that of his horse to a higher degree, with the aid of a tropical sun. It is evident that our author has regarded the whale as a cold-blooded fish. 440, c. I shall not now stop to inquire farther into the factitious na- ture of the foregoing doctrine, but go on with other extracts in which the author endeavors to sustain his great law of animal heat (5. 6), and expound by other contingencies that exact temperature which distinguishes every warm-blooded individual of every species of ani- mal, and according to the nature of the species, and with scarce a va- riation, at all seasons, in all climates, at all ages, with all kinds and quantities of food, from him who "devours 10 lbs. of flesh and a dozen tallow candles into the bargain, daily, and the same quantity of brandy and train oil without bad effects" (no. 9), to him who, like " old Cor- naro," lives on "half an egg a day;" and whether clad in the flannels and woolen broadcloths that are preferred as matters of comfort by many inhabitants of tropical climates, or absolutely naked, with Fah- renheit at 40° and lower, like the Petcherai Indians (442, h) ; or, wheth- er sleepirig or waking, sitting or standing, running or walking, in an ice-house or in an oven, in all past time, now, and forever ; whatever statements our " Reformer" may make to the contrary notwithstand- ing. It will appear, therefoi'e, that the following affirmations should be carefully considered, before they are admitted as appendages to the general law ; namely, 11. "Our clothing is merely an equivalent for a certain amount of food. [ ! J The more warmly we are clothed the less urgent becomes the appetite for food, [ ! ] because the loss of heat by cooling, and con- sequently the amount of heat to be supplied by the food, is diminish- ed" (no. 9, and 12, and § 442 a,c, 1047, 1048, 1049). Here our author predicates two important errors of the hypothesis which they are intended to sustain ; the assumptions and the hypoth- .esis being mutually designed to support each other. 11-|. But again; having seen that (in the language of Mr. Ancell, •'the Rf former's" interpreter) "the deposition of fat is supposed to PHYSIOLOGY. FUNCTIONS. 243 act as a substitute for free respiration in the production of heat" (no. 10), we shall not be surprised to learn that " its absorption answers as a substitute for food in the production of animal heat." So it is ex- tensively affirmed in the work on Animal Chemistry. Why, then, is the temperature of a very fat ox and a very lean one, or of a very fat man and a very lean one, exactly the same in each Bpecies, respectively 1 Why does the fat man sustain a much less exaltation of heat than the lean one when emaciation is in rapid progress in febrile diseases 1 Why those daily periodical evolutions of heat (100° to 110° Fh.) in the emaciated subject of phthisis, sub- sisting on barley-water ; and respiring with lungs unfitted for half their usual functions ? And this leads me to state the chemical phi- losophy of mania and delirium, which flows immediately from the subject before us ; and by which we learn, also, what is more im- portant, the extent of our author's theory of combustion. Thus : " In the progress of starvation it is not only the fat which disap- pears, but also, by degrees, all such of the solids as are capable of be- ing dissolved. In the wasted body of those who have suffered starva- tion the muscles are shrunk and unnaturally soft, and have lost their contractility. All those parts of the body which were capable of en- tering into a state of motion have served to protect the remainder ot the frame from the destructive influence of the atmosphere. [ ! ] To- ward the end, the particles of the brain begin to undergo the process of oxydation, and delirium., mania, and death, close the scene." This construction of the cause of delirium and mania is conformable to the author's hypothesis of thought, mental emotions, &c. (§ 349, e) ; but that the phenomena are due to totally different influences " in the progress of starvation " is shown by the uniform preservation of the intellectual powers in the most emaciated subjects of phthisis pulmo- nalis (§ 441, c). — See Index II, Article Hunger. 440, CO. But, we are only beginning with the contingencies which contribute to the fundamental principle of animal heat, and which are designed to interpret its remarkable uniformity, yet variety, in differ- ent species of the warm-blooded tribes, and its variableness in the cold- blooded, and to bring the general doctrine into correspondence with a great law of caloric which prevails in the inorganic world ^§ 440 e, no. 14). 12. " In cold and temperate climates, the air which incessantly strives to consume the body [ ! ] urges man to laborious efforts in or- der to furnish the means of resistance to its action, while, in hot climates, the necessity of labor to provide food is far less urgent" (§ 445, b). — Afii?nal Chemistry. In the first place, all animals are overlooked in the foregoing state- ment, and our philosopher is actually regarding man as the only liv- ing creature who has a temperature above the surrounding atmo- sphere J for it surely will not be said of animals that they must work harder for a supply of food in temperate than in warmer climates. Nor will the reader fail to observe that much of the statements and reasoning, throughout, is predicated specifically of man, and of man, too, in a state of health. As to the necessity of more " laborious efforts to provide food" in cold than in hot climates, a very different philosophy lies at its bottom than assigned by Liebig, which consists in the greater necessity of 244 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. labor to cultivate the earth and raise the means of supply in the foi.' mer than the latter sections of the globe. It is evident, also, thai " the Refoi-mer" had not only man exclusively in view, but in that part of the contrast which relates to " hot climates," he was thinking alone of the indolent and luxurious master, without reference to the slave, who toils the day long under a torrid sun for his own scanty subsistence and his master's too. — Note Oo p. 1141. But again, although man be compelled to work in cold climates "to provide food" to keep up his temperature, while this "necessity for labor is far less urgent in hot climates," the cold-blooded finny tribe, and the warm-blooded whale, and beasts of prey are quite on an equality, in that respect, in all regions of the earth. 440, d. But, we are yet far from the end of the " contingent influ- ences" which modify the exact law of animal heat (nos. 5, 6), and which go to the preservation of its exact uniformity. One of our au- thor's hypotheses, which will be soon stated (no. 14), betrays him into a mistake, which has been often made and as often exposed. Thus : 13. " The contraction of muscles produces heat; but the force ne- cessary for the contraction has manifested itself through the organs of motion, in which it has been excited by chemical changes. The ultimate cause of the heat produced is, therefore, to be found in these chemical changes." — Animal Chemistry. Now, setting aside the sophistry of this reasoning in a ciicle, we have the simple proposition that " tlie contraction of musclti 'produces heat s^' and evidently because " a piece of caoutchouc, when rapidly drawn out, forcibly contracts again, with disengagement of heat." And to this conclusion the " Reformer" was impelled by his funda- mental doctrine that the living and the dead are undistinguishably governed by the same properties and laws, as implied by no. 14, and as extensively set forth in § 350. This assumption as to the effects of muscular motion I have sufficiently noticed in my former Essay on Animal Heat ; but it may be now said that it is disproved by the uni- formity of animal heat in all warm-blooded vertebrata, under all cir- cumstances of rest and exercise. When the latter is sufficient to give an impulse to the general circulatory and other organs, an increased evolution of animal heat is liable to happen, like an increased flow of saliva, sweat, or any other secreted product ; but it does not happen with any certainty, and is never due to the physical causes assigned ; neither the mechanical one of "muscular contraction," nor the "chem- ical changes." 440, e. I come now to one of our philosopher's parallelisms of or- ganic and inorganic beings in respect to their great laws and functions, and which necessarily flows from the grand physical hypothesis that the living body is a mere chemical apparatus. Thus : 14. " The animal body is a heated mass, which bears the same RELATION TO SURROUNDING OBJECTS AS ANY OTHER HEATED MASS. It receives heat when the suiTounding objects are hotter,' it loses heat when they are colder than itself;" — Animal Chemistry. (See § 350|, e, 1044 a, b). Thus we have throughout a consecutive series of mistakes and blun- ders, emanating from a false position in respect to the fundamental constitution of living beings ; while this perversion of nature is the monomania of materialism. But there remains much of the like na- ture yet in prospect. PHYSIOLOGY. FUNCTIONS. 245 From the last proposition, and from the common level in which liv- ing and dead objects are regarded, and in his unacquaintance vi^ith physiological facts, the chemist has been betrayed into the supposition that all the contingent circumstances which I have now stated (nos. ,1-14) contribute, along with the fundamental law, 5 and 6, to the pro- duction and maintenance of that uniform temperature by which every warm-blooded vertebrata is distinguished, while every other product of the tissues is forever variable in quantity, and which are to explain lequally, also, the vicissitudes of the cold-blooded race, and all the diversities of temperature which spring from disease. 1 The plainest facts in " experimental philosophy" contradict the as- sumption, and place the generation of animal heat upon its own inde- pendent ground. If we enter an apartment heated to 260° F., the temperature of the body remains unaffected ; and equally so in a bath of water, where all evaporation is prevented. If we pass the day in an ice-house, or dwell in an atmosphere at 50° below the zero of Fahrenheit, it is all the same (§ 442, c, d). If water, at zero, be dashed on the body, a glowing heat is instantly lighted up on the sur- face ; and so it is upon the cold and shriveled skin of the starving man as soon as food shall have entered his stomach. A flash of indig- nation, or an impulse of shame, will, on the instant, set the whole face in a state of " combustion ;" the face being then said, by common consent, to "burn" (§ 441, c).* With the last proposition (14) goes another which has the concur- rence of all ; namely, 15. " The heat given off to the surrounding medium is restored within the body with gi-eat rapidity." — " All living creatures, whose existence depends on the absorption of oxygen, possess within them- selves a source of heat independent of surrounding objects." 16. And (for the third time, 5 and 6), " This disengagement of heat is, uniformly and under all circumstances, the result of the com- bination of a combustible substance with oxygen." — Animal Chem- istry. Such a chemical machine, with an internal source of heat, and con- stantly liable to elevations and depressions of temperature from "sur- rounding objects like any other heated mass," could possess no sta- bility of temperature, — none comparable with the inanimate objects by which its own internal source of heat is said to' be influenced ; and when we superadd the various other contingencies, the varying quan tities and qualities of food, variableness of respiration, the oxygen respired, clothing, climate, season, weather, rest or exercise, age, fat, candles, train oil, and rum, which are said to have important influen- ces on animal heat (nos. 1-14), and then caiTy out the assumed rela- tion of the living body to " surrounding objects," and thus identify it with a " heated mass" of iron, a thousand other modifying contin- gencies present themselves, which, in connection with the " internal independent source of heat," should render the temperature of the living warm-blooded vertebrata variable at every moment, while that of the cold-blooded animal should be distinguished by the greater uni- formity. It need scarcely be added, that the warm-blooded vertebrata are remarkably exempt from the law which chemistry, to be consistent, imputes to them as conductors of caloric (no. 14). And herein, as * How absurd does the doctrine of combustion appear in the presence of those Metv- tal Emotions which instantly light up a glow on the surface of the body ! 246 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. every where else, chemistry betrays the fallacy of its fundamental as- sumption (nos. 5, 6, 16). The warm-blooded vertebrata are espe- cially contradistinguished from " other heated masses, in their relation to surrounding objects," by their resistance of heat from external ob- jects (§ 441 c, 442 c) ; and this contradistinction is not only shown by universal experience, but forcibly so by the comparative relation which cold-blooded animals and " other heated masses bear to sur- rounding objects." These animals depend mostly for their tempera- ture upon that of the surrounding medium, and consequently sustain much of the relation of " other heated masses." Still, they possess not only a feeble power of generating heat, but, what is more to my purpose, they have a corresponding power of resisting its ingress from surrounding objects, since it was ascertained by Crawford that "« living frog acquires heat more slowly than a dead oneT — London 'Philosoph. Trans., 1781, p. 485. It is also worthy of remark, that the chemist has mistaken the rise of animal heat, when occasioned by the heat of a fire, for that inter- change of caloric which takes place between inanimate substances of different temperatures. The phenomenon is peculiarly a fact for the vitalist, since, in the former case the rise of heat is due to the action of caloric as a stimulant to the organic functions (§ 1881). On the other hand, when the temperature falls from the direct ac- tion of cold upon the living body, it is from the abduction of heat from the superficial capillaries alone, by which the calorific function is ar- rested not only in the skin,but may be, by reflex nervous action, through- out the body. And what also forcibly shows the vital nature of this phenomenon is the frequent and speedy exaltation of the cutaneous heat after its sudden reduction by the application of cold water (i^ 1044). 440, yi In the midst of so much error and confusion, it is no diffi- cult matter, as already seen (§ 350), to paralyze an author by an ex- posure of palpable contradictions in fundamental doctrines. As an example of this nature in relation to the present subject I shall place in opposition the following statements : Affirmative. 'Negative. 17. " In whatever way carbon IS. " Carbon never combines may combine with oxygen, the act at common temperatures with ox- of combination cannot take place ygen, so as to form carbonic acid." without the disengagement of heat. "There is no example oI car- It is a matter of indifference wheth- hon combining directly with oxygen er the combination take place at a at common temperatures ; but nu- HiGH or at a low TEMPERATURE ; merous facts show that hydrogen, the amount of heat liberated is a in certain states of condensation, constant quantity." possesses that property. Lamp- " In the foregoing pages, it has black which has been heated to red- been assumed that it is especially ness may be kept in contact with CARBON and hydrogen which, by oxygen gas, without forming car- combining with oxygen, serve to bonic acid. The spontaneous in- produce animal heat." flammability of the charcoal used " The carbon of the food, which in the fabrication of gunpowder is converted into carbonic acid has been correctly ascribed to the within the body, must give out ex- hydrogen which it contains in con- Bctlv as much heat as if it had siderable quantity ; for during its PHYSIOLOGY. FUNCTIONS. 247 been directly bunied in the air or reduction to powder, no trace of in oxygen gas." carbonic acid can be detected in " The 13-9 oz. of carbon which the air surrounding it. It is not are daily converted into carbonic ioxmedi. walW the tenijoerature of the acid in the body of an adult, mass has reached the red heat. evolve 197477 degi'ees of heat, The heat which produces the in- which is sufficient to raise the tem- flammation is therefore 7iot caused perature of 370 lbs. of water to hy the oxydation of the carbon.'^ — 98*3'^, the temperature of the hu- Liebig's Organic Chemistry ap- man body." — Liebig's Animal plied to physiology , &c., p. 263, Chemistry., 1842. [See, also, nos. 311. o, 6, 16.]' 440, g. These contradictory doctrines were put forth in different works, but almost simultaneously, and each was designed to sustain important hypotheses that regarded, respectively, the negative and the affinnative statement. But, even in the work on Animal Chem- istry., a subject collateral to the general hypothesis of animal heat leads the author to a partial contradiction of his all-pervading idea of the ready combustion of carbon at temperatures as low, at least, as those of cold-blooded animals ; since, upon that collateral subject, he says, ""at the temperature of the (warm-blooded) body, the affinity of hydrogen for oxygen far surpasses that of carbon for the same ele- ment." (See § 441, e.) 440, h. I shall not undertake to decide whether oxygen unites sin- gly with carbon or hydrogen, in the living body, or along witii other elements from which the carbon is ultimately excreted, nor is it the province of these Institutes to inquire into a truth which belongs to the laboratory. In my former Essay on Animal Heat, I have exam- ined this subject in its physiological aspect adversely to the chemical doctrine, and in confonnity with the great law which excludes the formation of all inorganic compounds within the living organism, as set forth by chemistry (§ 38, 39, 419). 440, i. Of the remaining subsidiary causes, that relative to the bile should not be neglected. It is thus summarily expressed by Liebig's interpreter, Mr. Ancell : 19. " These facts, and the reasoning founded upon them, have led Liebig to the conclusion that the function of the bile is to support respiration and produce animal heat, by presenting carbon and hy- drogen in a very soluble form to the oxygen of aiterial blood." — Mr. Ancell, iii London Lancet, 1843. The reader will, therefore, the more readily comprehend the doc- trine of " the Reformer" as stated in the following language. Thus : " In the carnivora the bile contains the carbon of the metamorphos- ed tissues. This carbon disappears in the animal body, and the bile likewise disappears in the vital process. Its carbon and hydrogen are given out through the skin and lungs as carbonic acid and water ; and hence it is obvious that the elements of the bile serve for respiration and for the production of animal heat." — Animal Chemistry. That may answer for the "carnivora ;" while the graminivora de- pend more upon their "fat," and other tribes upon their special al- lotments. Having already adverted to the true uses of the bile (§ 314-316, 248 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. 409y), I shall proceed to say, without stopping to inquire how the foreo'oino' " facts" were ascertained, that this part of the doctrine will hardly abide the test of morbid conditions. It often happens, for in- stance, when the production of bile is nearly or wholly arrested, that the temperature of the body is exalted above its natural standard, while at other times, when the bile is redundant, the temperature sinks below its equilibrium. This, too, is familiar to physicians as occurring in the progress of the same disease ; and I have thus intro- duced this subject more for its bearing upon physiology and disease, than on account of its perversion by the chemist (^ 1031 b). 441, a. Having now set forth the principal doctrine, and the most important contingencies which are brought to its support, I shall pro- ceed to make some farther comments both upon the doctrine and its auxiliaries, and present a variety of facts in confirmation of the phys- iological theory of animal heat. 441, 5. In the first place, it is worthy of farther remark in regard to a principal element of the main hypothesis, that scarcely any two individuals, of whatever species, consume the same quantities of food in a o-iven time, while society abounds with habitual examples, where, under the same circumstances of age, health, sex, climate, tempera- ture, employment, &c., there is every gradation in quantity from a daily consumption of many pounds to a few ounces, or with slight va- riations as to quantity in many individuals. Without, however, now revertino- to the preceding relative statements of our author, let us adduce another for the sake of its logic and precision. Thus : " The consumption of oxygen in equal times may be expressed by the number of respirations. It is clear that in the same individual the quantity of nourishment required must vary with the force and num- ber of the respirations." — Ani??ial Chemistry. Immediately after this quotation, which has for its object an adjust- ment of " the quantity of nourishment required" for the assumed amount of carbonic acid generated in the body, we are told that, " A child, in whom the organs of respiration are naturally very ac- tive, requires food oftener than an adult." Thus, therefore, according to this statement (which has the merit of being true, not only as it respects a " child," but all young animals), the author has presented a fact subversive of his hypothesis relative to the source of animal heat ; since, if a " child" and all young ani- mals consume more food and oxygen in the ratio of their size than men and adult animals, the power of evolving heat should be gi-eater in the young than in the adult. But the experiments of Edwards, and others, have demonstrated that young warm-blooded animals may be cooled do^vn rapidly to near the temperature of the surrounding ail', which is impracticable with adults. But Edwards adds the fact, which farther confirms the vital doctrine of the generation of animal heat, that " the rajnd 2>rogress which they make in acquiring the power of producing heat is wonderful." The same facts are applicable to a " child," though probably less so than to unfledged birds, puppies, &c. (§ 153-155, 442 a, 445 /). I may finally add, that the whole of this subject is extensively considered in my former Essay on Animal Heat. 441, c. Nor can I neglect refemng the reader to the facts which I have arrayed in the Commentaries upon the subject of food, with a view as well to the humoral pathology as to the chemical doctrine of PHYSIOLOGY. FUNCTIONS. I| 249 animal heat, — how the northern savages, as known by obseiTation, and from the necessity of the case, consume much less food than the civilized man of the temperate and even equatorial climates; the for- mer, also, often breaking his fast only at distant intervals. There,* too, may be found a multitude of corresponding facts in relation to the endurance of Fasting without any sensible influence on the human system, — a general survey, also, of the habits of animals in relation to temperature, and which, like many of my arguments and other facts, have been advantageously employed by subsequent writers to accom- plish what I had already done. I have urged the fact, in respect to animals, that they enjoy, ex necessitate rei, but a scanty supply of food in the arctic regions, and that, when gorged with the same sustenance on their removal to warmer climates, they still maintain nearly their original constitutional temperature ; and there may be found a series of facts as to the relative temperature of the warm-blooded and the cold-blooded tenants of the deep, which, side by side in the arctic seas, subsist on food of the same quality ; the whale, with a temperature ot 102° F., and the far more voracious shark, whose heat is down to a lower standard. There it is urged, that when the emaciated hiberna- ting animal is roused by pricking, &c., ay, even by exposure to a still lower temperature, 25° F., his heat suddenly rises from 39° to 97° F. ; besides a multitude of similar proofs which should be examined in connection with what I have said extensively on the influence of th-e nervous system upon the generation of organic heat in the wann-blood- ed vertebrata (^ 1047, 1050). How poorly accords our author's assumption as to the gi'eater vo- racity of polar animals with the well-known facts relative to the hy- enas, tigers, lions, crocodiles, vultures, cormorants, &c., that range in temperate and equatorial quarters ! And what answer will chemisti-y make to the poor ability of all tropical animals to bear even the au- tumnal cold of the temperate zones, whatever the quantity of food"? But the facts are " the things," and let us, therefore, have them (§ 5i, a). They will show how far " the animal body bears the same I'elation to surrounding objects as any other heated mass" (§ 440 c, no. 14), and how far a large supply of food is necessary to the same animal temperature ih frozen regions as appertains to the inhabitants of warmer climates. In the Commentaries, then, I have called to witness, against the assumptions which I am again employed in refuting, the half-staired bears, and foxes, and reindeers, and hares, and even small birds, sub- sisting on a scanty amount of half-frozen food, and respiring and sur- rounded by an atmosphere at 30° to 50° below the zero of Fahrenheit ; yet maintaining about the same temperature as when transported to a southern climate. I have said that " in 15 out of 16 foxes, the tem- perature was 100° to 1063°, in the other 98° ; the thermometer rang- ing below zero from 3° to 32° Fh, Capt. Lyon found that the tetro albus maintained its temperature at 50° below zero. It was, also, equally so with the smallest birds" (§ 442 b, 446 d, 1046-1050). After what has been stated, however, of" tallow candles," "labori- ous eflbrts," " heated masses," " clothing," &c. (§ 440, nos. 9, 11, 12), the reader will not be surprised at our author's statement that, " every * Medical and Physiological Commentaries, vol i., p. 691-695. Also, the Essaj' on An- Vmal Heat, in vol. ii.— 1840. 250 p INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. owe knows that the animals of prey in the arctic regions far excvad in. voracity those of the torrid zone." And yet " every one knows" that the consumption of food is universally gi'eatest where it is most abun- dant, and therefore least where it is assumed to be most abundant. And what will the disciples of chemistry say to the fact that the low-born of the North of Europe, the exiles of Siberia, &c., often get little more than bread made from the wood of trees, and a wardrobe equally expressive of their destitution of the " comforts of life" (§ 442 h, and Cojnmcntaries, vol. i., p. 691-698) ] What is the contrast in temperature between the well-fed loungers of Europe and the half- starved laborers of the same countries '? AVhat, again, between the slave and his master % One, too, feasting on animal food and othei highly " combustible matter," in the shape of brandy, porter, wine, &c., while the other gets nothing but potatoes, yams, or bread, at best, and limpid water (nos. 7, 8) ? Their temperature is alike. The only contrast in the case is between truth and error. Is the balance, then, to be found in the difference of clothing (no. 11)1 Exactly otherwise ; for the man of ease is incased with flannels and broad- cloths, and lives in heated apartments (no. 14), while he of the shovel or the hod is no less contented and comfortable in rags, and whether he repose upon a bed of straw or a bank of snow. And here I may add, what is equally fatal to the chemical hypothesis, that this house- less sans culottes will maintain his warmth better with water than with rum, and that, the more he consumes of the " combustible substance," the greater will be his danger from frost (nos. 7, 9, Note Oo p. 1141). It is also manifest that the ever-varying quantities and qualities of food employed by man in temperate and torrid zones, while his heat is always nearly the same, 'shows, with my other facts, that it is less dependent on food than are other products of organization. More especially is this demonstrated in many acute diseases, where the temperature of the body, or of particular parts only, is often greatly exalted, and where, too, the patient is wholly deprived of food, and emaciation so far advanced that not only the "fat," but the veiy " tis- sues" are nearly " consumed." Without inquiring into the hypothesis that meat is more combustible, and yields a greater quantity of heat than vegetable matter, it is im- portant to place their relations to the calorific function in the proper physiological aspect. There is no doubt that the generation of heat is more promoted by animal than by vegetable food, until the system is accommodated to the latter by its habitual use ; and even then the preponderance will be in favor of the former in high northern latitudes. The princi- ple to which I now advert depends upon the law of vital habit and that which relates to the virtues of different natural stimuli, and is as foreio-n from chemistry as any two subjects can be from each other (§ 136, 150-152, 188f, 442, 512 Z>, 535-568). The whole philosophy, then, which concerns the greater tendency of animal than of vegetable food to promote the generation of heat, consists in the fact that animal is a greater stimulus than vegetable matter to the organic functions (§ 188^, 512 h). The fact is demon- strable, as I have said, while the food lies yet undigested upon the stomach of the famished wayfarer; and eveiy one knows that his warmth will be thus instantly increased to a greater degree by cold PHYSIOLOGY. FUNCTIONS. 251 meat than by cold potatoes (§ 512, h). And so is it, to a greater ex- tent, with the alcoholic liquors which the chemist assumes are burned in the recesses of the organization (nos. 7, 9).* The principle which concerns the whole is exactly the same as when warm water lights up a glow upon the surface, or determines perspiration, or an act of vomiting. Here, too, in all this development of heat, as in the other results, is involved a magnificent agency of the nervous system, but which to the chemist is impenetrable darkness (§ 350, no. 97, 500 wn, 512 b). — See a curious coiitradiction about alcohol, p. 172, nos. 43, 94. Those that have but imperfect views in physiology may compre- hend the merits of this subject by considering the relative effects of animal and vegetable food in fevers and inflammations. An ounce of the mildest broth may raise the temperature many degrees, while a liberal supply of appropriate vegetable food would have no such in- fluence ; though a great exaltation of temperature would ensue upon solid vegetable food that should not undergo digestion. The reason of all this gives the right interpretation to the relative effects of ani- mal and vegetable food in the generation of heat in ox-dinary states of the system, or till habit may interpose its influence. Irritability be- ing in an exalted state in febrile affections is more than usually sus- ceptible of the stimulus of animal food, and hence the increase of vas- cular action and the greater evolution of heat, both from the direct ef- fect of the food and the exciting reflex nervous actions it occasions. Where vegetable food remains undigested, in the foregoing case, it becomes a morbid irritant to the stomach, and the cause of reflex nervous influences that augment the fever or the inflammation, and thus engenders a rise of temperature (§ 137 d, 150-152, 222, &c., 512, &c.). The same philosophy is applicable to differences in climate. Little vegetable food is consumed in the arctic regions, and, as little animal food should be eaten by man in the equatorial. Nature has ordained this allotment to men and animals, by a scanty vegetation at the north, while she appears to have limited her provision of animal food in tropical climates to the wants of the carnivorous race. To the north she has given beasts and birds, but with a stinted hand, and has been scarcely more liberal of the tenants of the deep. To the tropics a profusion of esculent roots, fruits, &c. ; and has displayed a munifi- cence in animal and vegetable creation throughout the vast temperate regions. This ordination of nature is particularly suited to the exi- gencies of the human constitution. Animal food is especially stimu- lating to all the functions of man, and therefore to that which gen- erates heat. Irritability is greater, more susceptible to the action of stimuli, in equatorial than in other climates. The tropical heat is its measure of endurance ; and when the stimulus of animal food is su- peradded, the tropical man is extremely pi-one to fever, and dies early. If wine, brandy, &c., be added also, so much the worse ; but not because it is "burned" in the body (§ 188, &c., 615, &c., 618). Our author's philosophy, however, is too much of a curiosity to be neglected, and should have gone along with the pathological induc- tions (§ 350i). Thus: " The Englishman in Jamaica sees with regret the disappearance of his appetite, previously a source of frequently-recurring enjoy- ment; and he succeeds, by the use of Cayenne pepper and the most powerful stimulants, in enabling himself to take as much food as he * Alcohol appears to be in certain degrees digested, and in that state of transform' ation it undergoes absorption. — JSote N p. ]]21. 252 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. was accustomed to eat at home. But the whole of the carbon thus introduced into the system is not consumed. The temperature oi the air is too high, and the oppressiv,e heat does not allow him to increase the number of respirations by active exercise, and thus to proportion the waste to the amount of food taken. Disease of some kind, THEREFORE, cnsues" — Animal Chemistry. Again, also, for a like physiological reason that animal food is too stimulating for man in tropical climates, vegetable is not sufficiently so for the obtuse irritability of the northern man (§ 191, 585, &c.) ; and it is therefore true in this acceptation that the arctic man would be more likely to freeze upon vegetable than animal food, despite of the superabundance of carbon in the former (§ 447, h). But, as I have said, and shown, he may, by the mere force of habit, come to endure the cold nearly as well upon vegetable as on animal diet 1§ 442 h, 535, 1048). I will also say, that it is a vulgar prejudice that " train oil and tal- .ow candles" are appropriate food for man in any climate (§ 440 h, no. 9). The arctic, like every other man, would soon perish upon these indigestible substances. They would yield him neither flesh nor "fuel." And, having thus come again upon the philosophy of " fat" as a source of heat when taken into the stomach (§ 440, hh), the chemist is evidently embarrassed by the contrast which is presented by certain graminivorous and carnivorous animals (§ 440, ?') ; and so he clears the way by the following assumptions, which have only ref- erence, also, to a limited number of two genera of animals (§ 440, cc). The conclusion of the extract is a good specimen of our author's mode of disposing of former observation, and a profitable commentary upon what is requisite in " experimental philosophy" (§ 350, mottoes a-e, and no. 28). Thus : " We know, in fact, that the graminivora expire a volume of car- bonic acid equal to that of the oxygen inspired, while the carnivora, the only class of animals whose food contains fat, inspire more oxy- gen than is equal in volume to the carbonic acid expired. Exact ex- periments have shown, that in many cases only half the volume of ox- ygen is expired in the form of carbonic acid [3501 n, 440y) nos. 17 and IS, 447iy]. These observations cannot be gainsayed, and are far more convincing than those arbitrary and artificially produced phenomena, sometimes called experiments [by the " digestive mix- ture," retoits, acids, lamp- wick, &c. %\ ; experiments which, made, as too often they are, without regard to the necessary and natural con- ditions, possess no value, and may be entirely dispensed with ; espe- cially, when, as in the present case, Nature affords tlie opportunity for observation, and when we make a rational use of that opportunity." It remains only to say of the foregoing, that the chemist was not duly mindful of the fact that all the principal tenants of the deep, warm-blooded and cold-blooded, are alike carnivorous; and that the exalted temperature of the blubber-whale, the porpoise, &c., breath- ing, also, with lungs, and in their comparison with the low tempera- ture of their associates that respire with gills, contrasts forcibly with those carnivorous animals whose respiration of oxygen is said to pre- vent an accumulation of fat. Such, I mean, is the fundamental doc- trine of "fat" (§ 440 hh, no. 10). But since animal food, especially fat, contains m(^re of the "fuel" than vegetable food, how does it hap- PHYSIOLOGY. FUNCTIONS. 253 pen, acceding to the foregoing statement as to the relative propor- tions of oxygen consumed and carbonic acid expired by the graminiv- orous and the carnivorous animal, respectively, that the former should surpass the latter in the' formation of fat] Wherever, therefore, we look at the " facts" of the organic chem- ist, we find ourselves not only in the midst of contradictions, but em ployed in refuting assumptions that are opposed by universal experi- ence (§ 5i). That experience I had employed in the Commentaries for the very purposes to which its adverse assumptions are now con- secrated by the disciples of the " improved philosophy" (§ 349 d, 3501). 441, d. In the case of the hibernating animals (§ 441, c), the ex cessive cold, and mechanical in-itation, in rousing the calorific func- tion, operate as a stimulus to the nervous system, and thus restore the organic functions, and the natural temperature as a consequence, along with the other organic products ; though the heat more per- fectly than any other. In a less degree, cold is a sedative to the hi- bernating animals (§ 188j, 743). . This, also, is an example illustra- tive of the opposite influences of vital agents, according to their in- tensity of action, and the circumstances under which they are applied, and of the wonderful adaptation of the natural agents of life to the pe- culiarities of jaarticular species of organic beings (§ 191, 446 cZ, 500 6). The impression of cold, or mechanical imtation, in the foregoing case, is transmitted from the skin to the cerebro-spinal axis, where the nervous power is developed and radiated abroad upon the or- ganic properties of the entire body, by which they are brought into operation (§ 222-233, 500, 512, &c., 638, 1044, h\ Respiration and other organic functions nearly cease during the state of torpor ; but the restoration of heat is far more than com- mensurate with the progressive return of respiration. Of all the products, an evolution of heat takes the lead, as indispensable to the other important results. This appeal's to have been seen by Liebig. Nor is there any principle in physiology, nor any facts, which will at all explain the operation of cold in diminishing respiration, or cir- culation, till it has first reduced the temperature of the surface. And, were the chemical hypothesis true, the hibernating, and the young of other warm-blooded animals, should not sustain the remarkable re- duction of heat which is produced by an atmospheric temperature of 45^ F., since more oxygen is then consumed than at higher tempera- tures. There can be no such positive exceptions to a fundamental law. If peculiarity of constitution be assigned as the cause, then is the chemical hypothesis abandoned, and the vital theory admitted. It is therefore apparent, that the reduction of temperature depends essentially on other causes than diminished respiration. The con- verse of this must be equally true ; and when heat, therefore, is re- stored, the first step in the process is an increased action of the cap- illary blood-vessels, through the stimulus of the nervous power (§ 222, &c.), by which an evolution of heat is immediately started ; and then begins an increase of the respiratory movements. " Wo can al- ways hasten respiration," says Bichat, truly, " by making an animal suffer; but an acceleration of the pulse is always prior to that of res- piration, which appears to be determined by it." — (See § 484, Exp. C.) 441, e. That is a test. If the heat rises without oxygen, it certain- ly does not, in such a case, depend upon combustion. The "earners" 254 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. must be regularly supplied (§ 447^, a). I have said that Liebig ap- pears to have been sensible that internal heat is important to the or- ganic processes, though vastly more so in the w^arm-blooded than the cold-blooded race, and his statement upon this subject is one of his numerous contradictions of the hypothesis which he assumes. Thus : " It is obvious that the cause of the generation of force is diminished, because, with the abstraction of heat, the intensity of tJie vital force diminishes. It is also obvious, that the momentum of force in a living part depends on its proper temperature." " The increase of mass is effected in living parts by the vital force. The manifesta- tion of this power is dependent on heat ; that is, on a certain temper- ature peculiar to each specific organism." " The abstraction of heat must be viewed as quite equivalent to a diminution of vital energy." — Liebig's Animal Chemistry . Now, according to this reasoner, "in the animal body we recognize as the ultimate cause of all force only one cause, the chemical action which the elements of the food and the oxygen of the air mutually ex- ercise on each other." We are also told that " the mutual action between the elements of the food and the oxygen conveyed by the circulation of the blood to every part of the body is the source of animal heatJ'' — Liebig's Ani- mal Chemistry. But, we have just seen that the same reasoner affirms that these very movements are "dependent on heat" (§ 350, no. 17|, &c.). The cause depends upon the effect, and the effect depends upon the cause (§ 440, y). And how could it be otherwise Avith an hypothesis BO estranged from nature ] Indeed, our author not unfrequently quits, entirely, the chemical ground of animal heat, as we have seen of many other assumptions (§ 350), and gives way to the simple dictates of nature. For example, " Certain other constituents of the blood may give rise to the for- mation of CARBONIC acid in the lungs. But, all this has no connec- tion with that VITAL process by which the heat necessary for the support of life is generated in every part of the body." — Liebig's Animal Chemistry. And yet it is both a doctrine of this philosopher in physiology and medicine, that the evolution of animal heat is a purely chemical pro- cess, and that carbonic acid cannot be formed in the body without the disengagement of heat (§ 350, no. 17^ ; § 440, no. 17). Taking, also, in connection the two parts of the foregoing quotation, we have one of those palpable contradictions of a fundamental assumption which are the never-failing characteristic of false doctrines. There is the double affirmation that carbonic acid resulting from any other source than a vital process is not a cause of animal heat, and that animal heat is alone generated by a vital process. (See, particularly, § 440, nos. 6 and 16.) Or, allowing what the language does not admit, the dependence of animal heat upon carbonic acid " generated in every part of the body," we should then have the curious phenomenon in chemistry of the production in the animal body of carbonic acid by a chemical process and by a vital process, while that of the former, the very gist of the doctrine, does not, as avowed, contribute to animal heat (§ 1044). 441, y; Again, it is reiterated, that " the mutual action between the PHYSIOLOGY. FUNCTIONS. 255 elements of the food and the oxygen conveyed by tlie circulation oftht blood to every part of the body is the source of animal heat" (^ 350, no. 3). Now, frogs have a feeble power of generating heat, as have " all living creatures whose existence depends on the absorption of oxy- gen" (§ 443, c). But, these animals contradict our author's hypothesia as to the " carriers of oxygen," not only in its relation to animal heat, but other importanc matters, such as the production oi force, oi motion, &c. (see'§ 350, nos. 3, 4, 8). Spallanzani, for instance, deprived a number of frogs and toads of the heart, large blood-vessels, &c., and buried them in the snow, along with others which retained their circulation and vivacity. The whole soon became completely torpid, and " appeared as if frozen." In a few hours they were all removed to a warm situation, where all of them began to leap and make theii escape ; the reanimation being apparently as perfect in those which had been deprived of blood as in those which had not. When ex- posed to greater degrees of cold they perished in equal times (§ 441^ d, 443 b, 494). How simple an experiment, therefore, may overthrow the most pop ular hypothesis in philosophy. It cannot be true of frogs that will leap and jump without blood, as well as frogs with blood, after being " apparently frozen," that their independent source of heat is owing to " the oxygen conveyed by the circulation of the blood," any more than their " amount of motion is proportional to the quantity of oxygen inspired and consumed in a given time by the animal" (§ 350, no. 8). And then, too, according to our author, " Since physiology has proved that the globules of blood take no share in the process oi nutrition, it cannot be doubted that they play a part in the process of respiration." Especially in white-blooded ani mals. — Liebig's Animal Chemistry. From all which it is more and more apparent, that " the Reformer" was employed about a plan of human chemistry rather than of animal chemistry (§ 440, c). The foregoing subject is farther continued in § 443-445. 44I2-, a. What has been said in the preceding section of the hiber- nating and cold-blooded animals is true, in principle, of all other an- imals who suffer only a partial reduction of temperature. The differ- ences do not arise from different fundamental laws, but from different modifications of the properties of life in different species of animals, and at different ages of the same individual (§ 155, 185, 191). There are many animals that approximate the hibernating in their feeble power of maintaining heat ; and others, again, which sustain interme- diate relations to the more perfect of the warm-blooded vertebrate. *' The high temperature," says Edwards, in his Influence of Physical Agents on Life, " which seems to characterize the mammalia and birds, does not belong to them exclusively, since examples of it are found among insects ; and, on the other hand, among the mammalia themselves (as the hibernating), which, at certain periods, present the principal phenomena of the cold-blooded vertebrata ; and, lastly, a great number of non-hibernating mammalia and birds, in the early periods of their life, show, as far as the phenomena of heat are con- cerned, a strong resemblance to the cold-blooded animals." It may be thence inferred, that what is so remarkably conspicuous 256 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. in the torpid hibernating animals is only the result of a law that pre^ vails throughout the animal kingdom. This law extends equally to the vegetable kingdom, which possesses a far greater power of gen- erating heat than frogs and other cold-blooded animals. The trees and shrubs which belong to northern climates have, also, exactly the peculiarity of the hibernating animals, while those of tropical regions maintain a greater uniformity of temperature, and are destroyed by a degree of cold in which some northern herbaceous plants spring into active life, and pierce their way through snow and ice, 441^, h. And this leads me to say, that, through the same law, the warm-blooded vertebrata have their standard of heat modified by cli- mate ; and even man himself sustains variations of l'^ to 2° F. And, as I have said in my former Essay on Animal Heat, it is important to remark, as showing the entire independence of this phenomenon of respiration, this change does not take place till such as remove from one climate to another shall have been for some time subjected to the new condition of vital stimuli. It is the result of acclimation, and, trivial as it may seem, it is full of the most insti'uctive illustration to a reflecting mind. The phenomenon, I say, is owing to permanent modifications of the vital constitution, and is of the same nature as the change of temperament which the melancholic undergoes on passing from the temperate to the equatorial regions (§ 602), and about which the law of vital habit is interested (§ 561, 585, 602, 603, 1047). 4411, c. It is equally a fatal circumstance to the chemical hypothe- sis, that the standard of heat is lowest in cold, and highest in hot cli- mates, whatever the amount of clothing, &c., since more oxygen is respired in the former, and, according to our author, a far greater quantity of " fuel" is consumed both by the mouth and by oxygen gas (§ 440, nos. 8, 9, &c.). It is not difficult, therefore, to understand the bearinor of the followingf statement: " The most trustworthy observations prove that in all climates, in the temperate zones as well as at the equator or the poles, the tem- perature of the body in man, and in what are commonly called warm- blooded ammaAs, is invariabli/ tJie same." — Liebig's Ani?nal Cheynistnj. And why, again, is the temperature of man higher in tropical than in temperate climates 1 The reply is another proof of the tampering of chemistry with a subject utterly beyond its reach; since the heat of the tropics operates gradually as a vital stimulus to the calorific function, and thus slowly establishes that condition by which an ex- alted temperature is determined throughout the universal body (§ 350, no. 65, 441 c, 445 e). 44 li, d. Nor may I neglect the striking characteristic of the Ggg, which possesses the power of resisting cold " in a degree equal to that of many of the inferior animals." This is one of the facts which led Mr. Hunter to believe that the vital properties are capable of generating heat independently even of circulation (§ 441, y), while its greater evolution is seen to be the result of those properties in active operation through the mature organization (§ 65). The former con- dition, associated, also, with the power of resisting the causes of putre- faction, is a beautiful illustration of the nature of life, that it is an ac- tive, not a passive state, that it consists essentially of power, and that its laws are specific. But, how will the combustion hypothesis dis- }X)se of the internal source of heat in the eg^l PHYSIOLOGY. FUNCTIONS. 257 442, a. In respect to the affirmation that "clothing is merely an equivalent for a certain amount of food" (§ 440, no. 11), I have addu- ced, in my former Essay, many facts to prove that our clothing is greatly a matter of habit, and this is shown by the facts which will be soon presented. It is, indeed, a forcible illustration of the nature of the properties of life, of the dependence of animal heat upon vital ac- tion, and of its obedience to the law of vital habit, and to the consti- tutional law by which all results shall be so regulated as to maintain the integi'ity of organic processes, and, therefore, a unifoi-m tempera- ture of non-hihemating warm-blooded vertebrata ; while, as I have endeavored to show in the same work, the modifications of these pro- cesses in hibernating and cold-blooded animals, as well as in the veg- etable kingdom, are not only perfectly consistent with what is observ- ed of the non-hibernating warm-blooded vertebrata, but go to con- firm the whole philosophy which is founded upon the phenomena of these animals. There, too, I have shown by an examination of facts, that the rapid change in the power of elaborating heat in early life depends on the same common principle which determines the changes in all other functions and results, that they are all on a par in principle, and that the rapid increase of the resistance of cold in the young of the warm- blooded vertebrata proves the vital character of the calorific function (§ 153-159, 441 5, 1047, 1048). 442, h. In illustration of the law of vital habit as it respects the power enjoyed by man of resisting cold (§ 441, c), and in farther dis- proof of the assumption that a living animal is "like any other heated mass in relation to the temperature of surrounding objects," I shall quote from the Commentaries one of the facts which are there present- ed for the purpose which is now in view. Thus : " Mackenzie says, that some of the northern savages follow the chase in the coldest weather with only a slight covering. Lewis and Clark state, that two Indians slept upon the snow during the night in a light dress, when the thermometer was 40 degrees below the zero of Fahrenheit. The man was uninjured ; the boy had his feet frozen. Now it is evident that no civilized man could sustain such an exposure. The phenomenon is owing to the poicer of habit in rela- tion to the forces of life, and is utterly insusceptible of explanation on any other principle." — Comvientarics. — See § 1047, 1048. On the other hand, an individual froze to death in the woods of Peacham, Vermont, on the night of the 7th of June, 1817; notwith- standing, also, he was full, to intoxication, of the most combustible substance (§ 440, no. 9). But, again, we are informed by Captain Wilkes, that, when the thermometer was at 40° F., " the Petcherai Indians were entirely naked, with the exception of a small piece of seal-skin, only sufficient to cover one shoulder, and which is generally worn on the side from which the wind blows, affording them little shelter against its pierc- ing influence." Again, says Captain Wilkes, "On the 11th of March, three bark canoes arrived, containing four men, four women, and a girl about sixteen years of age, four little boys, w\^ four infants, one of the latter about a week old, and quite naked. The thermometer was at 46*^ R 258 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. Fh." — Wilkes's Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedi' tion, vol. i., p. 121, 124. 1845. The foregoing, in relation to the infants, should be considered m connection with what has been ascertained by Dr. Edwards as to tho comparative inability of infants to bear a cold atmosphere, when un- accustomed, and with what is known of hereditary constitution (§ 447 h, 540, 561. See, also, Medical aiid Physiological Commenta rics, vol. ii., p. 27, 52, 56, 69-74). " The power of the Russian Zincali of resisting cold," says Barrow, " is truly wonderful, as it is not uncommon to find them encamped in the midst of snow, in slight canvas tents, when the temperature is 30^ or 40^ below the zero of Fahi'enheit." — Barrow's Zincali of Spain. No two individuals under apparently eqvial circumstances, of the same health, age, sex, and with the same quantities and qualities of food, clothing, &c., are alike in the power of resisting cold. Place them in a temperature at zero of Fahrenheit, and one will perish while the other will not suffer. One shall enjoy a glow of warmth from athletic exercise, while the other shall perish with the same counteracting means. It is a common event to witness the blasters, in the vicinity of New York, at work in winter with heavy drills in their naked hands, while others, unaccustomed, would be frost-bitten at the same temperature. The difference is manifestly owing in part to a difference in constitution, but especially to the influence of habit, which engenders the power of enduring intense degrees of cold, and which no chemical principles can possibly expound (§ 535-568,1047). 442, c. The foregoing facts show us, also, how it has happened that animals have spread abroad from the spot where they were created, and become specifically adapted to different climates. The element of their adaptation was implanted in their vital constitution at the time of their creation, and relates to almost all physical agents. And so with vegetables, which may be gradually transplanted from the equator to high northern latitudes, where they also undergo changes of organization (§ 155, 535, 538, &;c.). Thus do we also again bring the philosophy of physiology to the overthrow of that infidelity which departs from the Mosaic account of organic Creation (§ 74, 350|, h-n). 442, d. Again, do the beasts or the birds of the polar clime change their fur or their plumage when transported to a temperate region 1 What, for example, answers the white bear, with which we are all familiar 1 And yet their temperature sustains but a slight change, though a change subversive of the combustion theory (§ 441 c, 441-2). Here, too, in truth, they consume a far greater quantity of food ; and, if the chemist's hypothesis as to an interchange of caloric with the at- mospheric air be adopted (§ 440, no. 14), these transj^lanted creatures should sustain a very exalted rise of temperature. But, upon the physiological action of external heat, as a vital stimulus, the high tem- perature of a warm climate would much more than compensate for any supposed deficiency of oxygen (§ 440 e, 441^- c, 1047). " And then, on the other hand," turning again to man, and as 1 have said in the Commentaries, " are the experiments of individuals subjecting themselves to an excessively high temperature without sus- taining any sensible variation of heat. This was fully demonstrated by Blagden, Banks, Fordyce, Solander, G. Home, Dundas, Dr. North, Phipps, Seaforth. and Dobson, who exposed themselves to260^ F."* * CI. Bernard's late Experiments of this nature upon animals do not affect these facts or the plii- osphy. They were like those of graduated poisons. — 18G0. PHYSIOLOGY. FUNCTIONS. 259 442, e. We see, then, in the various demonstrations, which have now been made, of the power of all warm-blooded, non-hibernatin"- vertebrata to maintain a uniform degree of heat under the greatest vicissitudes of atmospheric temperature that are compatible with life, a proof of a most astonishing law of the living body, in perfect con- flict with the laws of caloric as they exist in the inorganic world. " AVe know it" as exactly as we comprehend the nature and opera- tion of the most precise law in physics. It is, in itself, demonstrative of the government of living beings by specific forces. It establishes a positive distinction between these forces and the organized structure. If I am not right in this construction, I say, once more, let the ground of objection be shown. I mean not the usual denial, or by renewed misrepresentations of my statements. The objections must be found- ed upon a broad and ptilosophical survey of all the phenomena of heat that relate to living objects as they may be modified by natural causes, or by morbid states of the system ; and the ground must cover the general physiological condition of organized beings. How wide fi'om all this are the assumptions, and those mostly relative to man (§ 440, c), that have been lately consecrated as the true " experimen- tal philosophy" of animal heat''(§ 349 d, 1047) ! 443, a. As my former Essay embraces an extensive range of inquiry into the facts and philosophy attending the calorific function in the cold-blooded race, I shall now add only a few remarks to what I have already stated upon this subject, and as suggested by the present stage of my inquiry (§ 44iy, 441^ a). 443, b. Frogs and other cold-blooded animals are supplied with capacious lungs ; and, however it may be argued that their consump- tion of oxygen is less than that of warm-blooded animals, they have, nevertheless, the same respiration, nutrition, vital decomposition, and the same " charcoal fire," in the ratio of the food consumed, and yet is their tempei-ature principally regulated by that of the suiTOunding medium. They also emit a large amount of carbonic acid, which proves a free consumption of oxygen and a liberal supply of food. All this is as essential to frogs as to man ; and they equally perish when deprived of atmospheric air, and so of all the cold-blooded finny tribe (§ 350, no. 17-|, and § 440, no. 10). And what will chemistry answer to the exalted temperature which attends the inflammations of the cold-blooded vertebrata ? Chemistry must here be consistent, and in being so it necessarily abandons the hypothesis that the evolution of heat, in warm-blooded animals, depends on the union of oxygen with the carbon and hydro- gen of the body, and that it occui's in the ratio of that combination. "7;i the animal bod?/," says Liebig, " the food is the fuel ; with a prop- er supply of oxyqen toe obtain the heat given out during its combus- tionr (Also, § 440, nos. 5, 6, 17.) 443, c. The difference in the law regulating temperature is owing to a difference in vital constitution, of which the chemist takes no ac- count (§ 440, no. 12). But, there are also many other peculiarities in the vital phenomena of cold and warm-blooded animals which are due to the same condition of constitution, and by which their relative power of generating heat is shown to depend on a common cause, and which is common to all the phenomena. It is this which ren- ders cold-blooded animals greatly subject to the temperature of the 2tJ0 INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. RurrouTJtling medium, but whicli also enables them to resist its influ- ence by some 2 or 3 degrees at all seasons of the year. 443, d. If" the chemist resort to difference of constitution in explain- ing the foregoing phenomena, as is generally done, he resorts to the properties and functions of life, and abandons his own ground. In one case he says, it is because they are cold-blooded, and in the other, because they are warm-blooded, and so on. Such, indeed, is the fact. But, is it not because the organization and vital endowments are not adapted to the same generation of heat in one case as prevails in the other ; and this, too, when the organization may be in a high de- gi'ee simple (§ 409, e) ? 444, Let us, therefore, settle this question by reference to an animal without lungs, or gills, and in which, also, the temperature is clearly influenced by causes which can alone operate as vital stimuli. The temperature, for example, of a hive of bees is at about 90° F., when the air is at 40°, and upward of 70° in winter. Their power of gen- erating heat is also increased during the breeding season. This phe- nomenon corresponds with the observations that I have made upon vegetables ; having found the temperature highest when the leaves and blossoms are putting forth. — [Medical and Physiological Commen- taries, vol. ii., p. 75-78.) 445, a. Still more conclusively, than the obvious dependence of or- ganic heat in the cold-blooded vertebrata, insects, &c., upon vital principles, do the phenomena of vegetable heat evince the same great law of organic nature. This subject has been ably explored by John Hunter, and, as I have intimated in the foregoing section, has re- ceived a careful attention from myself. Senebier, also, saw the ther- mometer rise from 79° to 143° F., when placed in the midst of a dozen spathes of the arum cordifolium, at the time of opening their sheaths. And so Huber, and others. 445, b. That fact, and the ability of plants to generate a tempera- ture often far above the earth or the surrounding atmosphere, are so apparent that they are universally admitted ; but obtain from the chemist no farther notice. Indeed, the following is all that we have from Liebig on the subject of vegetable heat. Thus : " All living creatures, whose existence depends on the absorption of oxygen, possess within themselves a source of heat independent of surrounding objects. This truth applies to all animals, and extends, besides, to the germination of seeds, to the flowering of plants, and to the maturation of fruits." — Animal Chemistry. And yet is the " combustive process" always in progress, more or less, in all parts of vegetable organization. The question, therefore, arises as to the motive for not only concealing an important fact, but in thus implying, by circumstantial statements, that no other parts of vegetables "possess within themselves a source of independent heat." The very fact that such a source belongs to seeds in their germinating state, &c., is sufficiently conclusive that it extends to every part of the plant, and " the Reformer" could not have been ignorant that the very *igg resists a temperature below the freezing point in virtue of its in- ternal source of independent heat. But, all this is fatal to our author's hypothesis. Eggs do not con- sume oxygen, have no " caniers of oxygen," and trees, it is said, do not " burn" like the animal body (§ 302, 303|). Consequently, the PHYSIOLOGY. FUNCTIONS. 261 chemist, to carry out his hypothesis of animal heat, must maintain the anomaly that seeds, flowers, and fruits, during their development, are the only parts of the vegetable vv^orld. that possess " an independent, source of heat." The secret of all this w^ill be farther seen in the fol- lowing passage : '14:5, d. " The distinguishing character of vegetable life is a contin- ued passage of matter from the state of motion to that of static equilib-' rium. A plant produces within itself no cause of motion'''' (see § 350, nos. 7, 8, 10, and § 440, nos. 5, 6, 8, 9, 12, &c.). " In a word, no waste occurs in vegetables. [ % ] Waste, in the animal body, is a change in the state or in the composition of some of its parts, and consequently is the result of chemical action." — Liebig's Animal Chemistry. And, again : " Analogy, that fertile source of error, has unfortu- nately led to the very unapt comparison of the vital functions of plants with those of animals." — Liebig's Organic Chemistry, &c. 445, e. Thus is the problem solved. There is either no heat gen- erated by plants, or, otherwise, the chemical doctrine of animal heat is radically false. To show how this may be I shall now introduce an abstract of some observations made by myself on the temperature of trees. It is unnecessary to state the mode in which the observa- tions were conducted, or the precautions adopted, as they are record- ed in the Commentaries. On the 9th of April, 1839, in a neighboring forest, the following re- sults were obtained : Range of the thermometer in the shade during the observations, which lasted six hours, from 38° to 52° F. Near freezing at sunrise. A dead upright tree was selected as a standard of comparison. Its diameter was 12 inches. The temperature of this tree, at the close of my observations, was 45° at the centre and in all other parts (§ 440, nos. 14, 15, and 16). Juglans squamosa, diameter 10 inches. 48° Buds slightly enlargin Do. do. 6 49^'' do. Fagus sylvatica. " ]0- " 40° Buds swelling. Cluercus tinctoria. 7 49° No buddinsr. Castanea Americana, TO 50 do. Betula nigra, 4 51° Flowering. Salix Babylonica, 18 53 Buds unfolded. Do. do. 18 53° do. Pinus Canadensis, 18 54° Platanus occidentalis, 18 " 50° No budding Do. do. 6 54° do. Do. do. 4 55° do. Juniperus Virginiana, 4