First lines of physiology : designed for the use of students of medicine / by Daniel Oliver.

  • Daniel Oliver
Date:
1844
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First lines of physiology : designed for the use of students of medicine / by Daniel Oliver. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    organization. These are various poisons, especially the organic, and the causes of disease, the destructive influence of which is resisted, and very frequently with success, by the vital powers of the organization. These conservative powers of the organization, are collectively termed the vis medicatrix naturce, a property which it seems im- possible, without the grossest absurdity, to deny to living matter. All the instances just mentioned of resistance of the organiza- tion to mechanical, chemical, and physiological agents, of a noxious kind, are examplesand illustrations of the same power of self-preservation. The same property is the basis of nutrition. This property of being determined to certain movements or manifestations of force, under the influence of certain exciting causes or impressions from without, is supposed, by some phy- siologists, not to be limited to matter already organized and endued with vitality, but to be inherent in organic matter, which is still amorphous and devoid of life. This opinion is founded on what is called spontaneous generation, a process in which cer- tain organic substances, as albumen, fibrin, gelatin, starch, gluten, gum, &c. spontaneously assume, [as some have believed,] under the influence of certain external circumstances, some of the lowest forms of animal and vegetable life. 9. Another distinctive property of organized bodies is, that their growth and increase proceed from within, while inorganic matter increases by external accretion. The surface to which the new particles of matter are applied, is internal in organic, but external in inorganic matter. Organized bodies grow by a series of internal developments ; inorganic increase by the addi- tion of matter applied externally to them. With the nutrition of organized bodies, which is accomplished by the continual intus- susception of new matter, is connected an antagonist process of organic decomposition, in which the worn out elements are removed and discharged ; so that a perpetual round of composition and decomposition is going on in all organized bodies. 10. Further, organized substances possess the power of pro- ducing beings similar to themselves, or, the faculty of generation. This is a remarkable and exclusive prerogative of organized bodies, unless we admit, with some physiologists, that matter in certain forms and under particular circumstances, has the property of organizing itself into some of the lower forms of animal or vegetable life. 11. Organized bodies possess the power of being affected with, and of recovering from disease. 12. Organized substances have a determinate duration or period, beyond which it is impossible to prolong their existence. No power short of creative energy can prolong this duration beyond the period appointed by the laws of its own being. Its existence consists of a series of internal developments, each of