Text-book of physiological and pathological chemistry : in twenty-one lectures for physicians and students / by G. Bunge ; translated from the second German edition by ... L.C. Wooldridge.

  • Gustav von Bunge
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Text-book of physiological and pathological chemistry : in twenty-one lectures for physicians and students / by G. Bunge ; translated from the second German edition by ... L.C. Wooldridge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Therefore the deepest insight we can gain into the most essential pari of our nature shows us something quite different, shows us things wliicli are without dimensions, and processes which can liave nothing to do with mechanism. The opponents of vitalism, those who support the me- chanical explanation of life, usually seek to justify their views by saying that the further physiology advances, the more does it become possible to explain, on physical and chemical grounds, phenomena which have hitherto been regarded as associated with a special vital force; that it is only a question of time; that it will finally be shown that the whole process of life is only a more complicated form of motion regulated solely by the laws which govern inorganic nature. But to me the history of physiology teaches the exact opposite. I think the more thoroughly and conscientiously we endeavour to study biological problems, the more are we convinced that even those processes which we have already regarded as explicable by chemical and physical laws, are in reality infinitely more complex, and at present defy any attempt at a mechanical explanation. Thus we have been satisfied to account for the absorption of food from the alimentary canal by the laws of diffusion and osmosis. But we now know that, as regards osmosis, the wall of the intestine does not behave like a dead mem- brane. We know that the intestinal wall is covered with epithelium, and that every epithelial cell is in itself an organism, a living being with the most complex functions ; we know that it takes up food by the active contraction of its protoplasm in the same way as observed in inde- pendent naked animal cells, such as amoeba3 and rhizopods. Observations on the intestinal epithelium of cold-blooded animals have made it obvious that the cells grasp the particles of fat contained in the food by means of proto- plasmic processes which they send out; that they incorporate tho fat-globulos with the protoplasm of the coli, which finally
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