Currents and counter-currents in medical science : With other addresses and essays / By Oliver Wendell Holmes.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
- Date:
- 1861
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Currents and counter-currents in medical science : With other addresses and essays / By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
372/450 page 352
![(liicing ilio coinhiiuitioii of hydrogen and oxygen, Avithout undergoing any chemical change itself. Lei us see wh(^th(;r sonn^ of these same physical operations may not h(^ mimircstiMl in tiu; liver, taking this as the typical secreting organ. Its cell-walls may govern their currents of transudation hy laws of their own, as (;el-skins and frog-skins govern the currents of nlcoliol and water. The two kinds of hlood which meet in its capillary vessels may react upon each other, and ])ro(luci5 mutual docomjiosition, as well as any other couij)ound (hiids. M'Ik^ suhstani^e of the liv(M' has as nuicli I'ight to approj)i-iate fat, without a special license from vitality, as the iron, in the ex- ])(MMnient referred to ahovc, to appropriate copper. It may have as good a. title from tlu^ Supremie Au- thority t,o join the (^lenuMits that, form cholesterine, as spongy platinum to unite hydrogen and oxygon. Tliis catalytic agency — the ])riestly oOice of chemical natui-(* which giv(\s to one body the power of marry- ing innunuM'altle pairs of loving atoms, itself standing apart in elemental celibacy — is not to be denied its jmssible place in the living mechanism. Its action may, perhaps, be more extended than in inanimate bodies. The instances furnished by tho action of the pancreatic tluid and the gastric juice may belong to a far more numerous series of similar })henomena. V>\) may grant a difVercnce of degree between the separations or stHTiMions (^HectiHl by tho reactions among the complex eleiutMits of the organism, and](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21019745_0372.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
