An elementary compendium of physiology; for the use of students / By F. Magendie ; Translated from the French, with copious notes, tables and illustrations by E. Milligan.

  • Magendie, François, 1783-1855. Précis élémentaire de physiologie. English
Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An elementary compendium of physiology; for the use of students / By F. Magendie ; Translated from the French, with copious notes, tables and illustrations by E. Milligan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    50/668 (page 14)
    / Chemical Properties of Fluids. ('liemical pro- For t]ie ])hysiologist, however, a knowledge of the Chemical fluicir ” pro}3erties of fluids is much more interesting: several of the most important actions of life depend immediately upon these proper¬ ties : but, unhappily, this branch of science is still but little ad¬ vanced. Yet chemistry has already furnished us with a consider¬ able number of precious facts, bearing upon this capital inquiry. We know that the composition of fluids differs not essentially from that of solids; we find in them the same proximate, and the same remote principles. Drawing off by evaporation, a part of the water which most fluids contain, we obtain a semisolid matter, which has much analogy with the original solids : but there is no¬ thing surprising in this, when we consider, that one of the pheno¬ mena proper to living bodies, is the continual transformation of solids into fluids, and fluids into solids. The greater number of fluids exhale carbonic acid, and absorb oxygen from the air: in general, the elements of fluids have a greater tendency to decomposition than the solids ; so that it is among the proximate principles of fluids that those containing most azote, as casein, urea, occur; and which the most rapidly undergo decomposition. VITAL PROPERTIES. Vital proper¬ ties. Besides the physical and chemical properties that the solids and fluids of the economy exhibit, a gi’eat many phenomena, of which no trace is to be observed in brute matter, are easily remarked, and constitute the essential characters of life. It would have been wise to study each of these phenomena separately, and to acquire thus a complete notion of the attributes of living bodies. But this is by no means the course that has been followed ; authors have laid down certain vital properties, and have not scrupled to affirm, that by virtue of these properties, living bodies maintain a perpetual struggle with the general laws of nature; one of the most childish absurdities to which the weakness of human understanding has ever oiven birth. O