General physiology : an outline of the science of life / by Max Verworn, tr. from the 2d German ed. and edited by Frederic S. Lee. With two hundred and eighty-five illustrations.

  • Max Verworn
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: General physiology : an outline of the science of life / by Max Verworn, tr. from the 2d German ed. and edited by Frederic S. Lee. With two hundred and eighty-five illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    the organic world. The not ion of the derivation of man from animal- like ancestors originally inhabiting the water, is found clei^Iy_ex- pressed bj Anaximander (b. about 620 Bx;.)-_and Heraclitus (about 5(J0 B.C.) had an idea of the significance of the struggle for existence (ept?). But the theory of Em])edocles (b. 504 B.C.) uj^on the origin of living things is the clearest and most surprising. According to him, plants appeared first, then the lower animals, and from them the higlier animals and, finally, men were developed by a jTrocess orperfecfioh. The effective principle in this perfecting process he perceived in the fact that ill-adapted individuals are destroyed in the struggle for life, while those that are capable of living produce offspring. Almost twenty-five hundred years elapsed before this simple conception of the descent and natural selection of organisms, clearly expressed by Empedocles, was empirically grounded by Darwin and was established as the natural explanation of the otherwise marvellous multiplicity of organic forms. Many ideas, more or less correct, regarding special physiological phenomena are found also among the earl} Greek philosophers. But these scattered truths are mingled with so many fantastic and purely arbitrary notions that, from their associations, they lose their real value. No coherent, systematic observations or reflections concerning vital phenomena exist before Aristotle. From the side of practical medicine, likewise, the investigation of life experienced no considerable advance, even when medical art, hitherto without a critic, was placed by Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.) upon a sound basis. A physiological doctrine appeared first among the followers of Hippocrates, probably under the influence of Plato's philosophy, and it was soon perfected and controlled all the medical ideas of that time. This is the doctrine of the spirits (Trvevfia), in the main thought of which can be found the first germ of a fundamental physiological truth. This doctrine asserts that the 2^ne}imri, an excessively subtile material agent, is attracted by tlieliuman lungs, passes~Tr6nr the lungs into the blood, and is distributed by the lal^ei' throughout the body. All vital phenomena depend upon the action of this agent. This conception, which, naturally, w^as adorned with all sorts of absurd accompaniments, suggests strongly our modern ideas concerning the Tole oi oxygen in the organism. B. THE PERIOD OF GALEN The first intimation of an attempt to explain vital phenomena appears in the early Hippocratic doctrine of the ^jneiimo. This was expanded, especially in the Alexandrian school, by Herophilus (about 300 B.C.) and Erasistratus (d. 280 B.C.), the latter of whom distinguished a irveufia ^cotlkov (vital spirits) in the heart and a TTveufxa -^v-^iKoi' (animal spirits) in the brain. From this it is