Hand-book of physiology / by William Senhouse Kirkes.

  • William Senhouse Kirkes
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hand-book of physiology / by William Senhouse Kirkes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    50/780 (page 32)
    ] CHAPTER III. ' \^TAL PROPERTIES OF THE ORGANS AND TISSUES OF THE HUMAN BODY. Some of the actions observed in living bodies indicate the operation of other properties and forces besides those which can be referred to the chemical and mechanical constitution of organized substances. These properties being the sources of phenomena which are pecuhar to hving beings, are named vital properties; the forces issuing from them, vital forces; the acts in which they are expressed, such as those enumerated at p. 1, 2, are vital acts or vital processes; and the state in which these processes are displayed is life. ]. The most general, perhaps an universal, property of Hving bodies, is that which is manifested in the ability to form them- selves out of materials dissimilar from them; as when, for ex- ample, the ovule develops itself from the nutriment of the fluids of the parent,—or when a plant, or any part of one, grows by appropriating the elements of water, carbonic acid, and ammo- nia,—or when an animal subsists on vegetables, and its blood and various organs are formed from the materials of its food. The force which is manifested in these acts is iQvmedi formative force (assimilative, or plastic force); and the processes effected by it are named assimilative, nutritive, or formative processes. This power of self-formation from dissimilar materials, which appears to be wholly peculiar to living bodies, and Avithout which, probably, none exists, manifests itself in three modes, which, though they bear different names, yet, probably, are only three expressions of one force operating in different conditions: they are development, growth, and assimilation^ or maintenance.