Volume 1

The works of John Hunter / edited by James F. Palmer.

Date:
1835-37
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The works of John Hunter / edited by James F. Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    certain established rules, form animals. This compounding of animal matter is what should be understood by organization. Now if this idea of organization is just, organization and life are two different things; for, according to this definition, a dead body is as much organized as a living one, for in the dead bod)'' the same mechan- ism exists as in the living one. Organization, then, comes nearest our ideas of the mechanical forma- tion of parts, and the ultimate effect must be mechanical; for it is impossible to produce motion in matter without having a mechanical effect. Having considered simple life, and the general idea of what is called organization, we shall next consider the Actions of an Animal. We have said that animal matter is so constructed as to be endued with a power of self-motion, as in a muscle; and as we can hardly conceive any part of an animal entirely passive or free from motion, since all parts grow and are nourished, we must suppose this muscular structure very universal in an animal body, though this power has been consi- dered principally in regard to muscles, properly so called, whose actions are plainly visible to the eye*. The different necessary circumstances attending the composition of a muscular fibre, with the mode of action of a muscle, we shall not touch upon, the field being too large for my present purpose. I shall only observe that they are the animal powers by the immediate actions of which every, the smallest, part of an animal is moved f. Every machine has its power; a clock has either a spring or weight, and so on. In mechanics the parts are dependent on one another, so that some one power is necessary to put the whole in motion; in me- chanics too there is commonly but one ultimate effect produced, whereas in an animal body there are a thousand. The powers therefore of an animal body are differently placed and circumstanced from what they are in an inanimate machine : it is not one power that is setting the whole to work, because if that were the case an animal’s actions would always be the same, but he is at rest in one part, moving in another, and so on; and as this is the case, he must have power in ever)'- part. * [The author has elsewhere (See Introd. to Inflam.) defined life to be that power which renders the body “ susceptible of impressions which excite actiona defini- tion' which, however brief, exhibits in miniature the leading features of Bichat’s celebrated hypothesis, according to which all the actions and phenomena of life are ultimately referred to two primary principles—namely, sensibility and con- tractility.] f [The reader is referred to Mr. Hunter’s Croonian Lectures on Muscular Motion, in the fourth Volume, where will be found a more full account of this subject.]