Report of proceedings at the distribution of prizes in St. Mary's Hospital Medical School, Wednesday, May 20th, 1857 / with the address delivered by Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth.

  • Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, 1st Baronet
Date:
[1857]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of proceedings at the distribution of prizes in St. Mary's Hospital Medical School, Wednesday, May 20th, 1857 / with the address delivered by Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    development, when they have received the vital impulse by which they grow each into its own form. Strange analo- gies force themselves on the mind of the observer at every stage, until he presumes that he has grasped the most secret law of nature, by which, step by step, in myriads of ages, the monad cell became a man. Then again, we trace the tide of the arterial blood rich with oxygen, bathing every tissue in a blush of life and health, and the returning current of venous blood, loaded with the waste which every vital action causes, until it is exposed in the exquisite cellular apparatus of the lungs to the air, where carbonic acid gas is expired, and oxygen absorbed. In some organs the exact chemical process of secretion has been defined; generally the balance of the vital action, in its chemical relations, has been ascertained ; and it is clear that no function is sustained without a che- mical change. The eager chemist leaps to the conclusion, that chemical affinities alone exist, and that vital affinities are only another name for obscure phenomena, which science will ere long explore, and explain upon acknowledged and purely physical laws. If then, no motion nor sensa- tion occur without a chemical change, what, the presump- tuous student asks, is this frame but a mere subtle che- mical laboratory, and life itself but a series of molecular changes subject to purely chemical laws ? Every step that is taken in defining the functions of separate structures leads us to analyse the phenomena of life, and to trace each to its peculiar organ. These mus- cles are endowed with the power of contraction—this tissue with a tonic force. If you cut this nerve issuing from the spinal canal, you deprive the limb which it enters of sensa- tion, but the motive force remains; whereas, if you divide this other channel of nervous power the limb is paralysed,
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