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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![^9 call the kidneys and skin organic structures, because the one has a double duty—first, to relieve the blood of a surplus element on the one hand, and carry away superfluous inorganic fluids on the other; so again, the skin which i-adiates superfluous heat and moisture, and absorbs a revivifying gas—the oxygen. But we are not accustomed to call muscle, fat, car- tilage, bone, and such like structures organic, because they are neither reproducers nor carry on given dis- tinctive organic currents. AVe can lose manv and much of them, as the case may be, and do Anthout them, as well as the great ri^’^er carriers—the arteries, veins, cajnllanes, absorbents, and lacteals in those parts : but there are some of all these descriptions which Ave cannot lose Avithout life at the same time. It is only for the sake of studying these matters that I put them in such a light, shoAvnng the propriety of the acknoAvledged physiological classification, and by Avhat means they are distinguished, as also their oavu distinctive uses, and that these AA'ould not be of the value they are, unless they played into each other’s hands by one furnishing to the other such ])roducts as are necessary to their oAvn, as Avell as mutual exist- ence. If Ave ask, Avhat are the organic and inorganic fluid elements of the body in contradistinction to the solids, Ave come first to the chyle made from neAV Ingesta and the different organic elements brought from all ]>arts of the body by the veins, absorbents, and lacteals, AA'liich Avould otherwise be Avasted. But Nature, knoAv- ing no Avaste, secures these in her OAAm marvellous manner, and in all the bases of these currents are true organic elements fitted to form fresh arterial fluid. O](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2807256x_0094.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
