Principles of organic life : showing that the gases are of equal importances with the solids and fluids in the laws which regulate the progress of matter from the lowest inorganic to the highest organic conditions / [Benjamin Ridge].
- Ridge, Benjamin
- Date:
- 1875
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Principles of organic life : showing that the gases are of equal importances with the solids and fluids in the laws which regulate the progress of matter from the lowest inorganic to the highest organic conditions / [Benjamin Ridge]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![same care of fat, fascia, &c. Then it begins to grow apace. They are seen on the liead and on the shoulders j)rincipally; but these fatty tumours occur everywhere. I never lost an opportunity of taking these out of the head, and have removed many. The tenaculum and scalpel are certainly the nicest instru- ments to use; because by first making an incision, the tenaculum can hold them up nicely, so that the scalpel can be passed round without breaking them. But I have frequently done it with a common lancet and forceps. If we examine one of these well when it is removed from the head, it is only a sebaceous or cheesy mass inside ; but the beautiful network of vessels round and about it, arid the vascular bed from which it has been extirpated, show how industrious Nature has been in perfecting this once simple inorganic deposit. A large fatty tumour from the shoulder, or any other part, has only a different sebaceous arrangement. So it is with the more important abdominal tumours, which grow quicker and larger from the very fact of their locality favouring this; like some ])lants, which grow small and stunted in the ojien air, but luxuriantly in the hot-house or conservatory. These tumours, then, of whatever kind, are first the depositions of inorganic elements, or secretions, till Nature dignifies and invests them with organic life, by supplying them with organic membranes. There is no doubt but that early life is far more indebted at first to the inorganic elements than to the organic; for the first steps to increased vital pow’ers or super-vital actions, are due to the redundancy of the inorganic elements. It is by subduing these in the first steps of functional <lis- turbance, that a balance of health is attained; not by](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2807256x_0146.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
