Vni NOTES BY TOE EDITOR 



and structures of vegetable and animal life, marked a new era in 

 physiological science. Says Prof. Huxley, " Surely the knowl- 

 edge that the tough oak plank, the blade of grass, the lion's claw, 

 the contracting muscle, and the thinking brain, all emanate from 

 simple forms which, so far as we can tell, are perfectly alike, — 

 and further, that the entire plant or animal also emanates from a 

 single form or cell which is undistinguishable from the rudiments 

 of its several parts, is as full of interest, and as suggestive of high 

 thought as any one of the fragments of knowledge which man 

 has worked out for himself in the whole range of phj^sical science ; 

 and what better exercise can there be than teaching the operation 

 of tlie great law of uniformity ? " 



Organic chemistry has accumulated a vast aiTay of facts which 

 its professors are bringing to bear upon some of the most impor- 

 tant questions in physiology, and their habits of investigation and 

 knowledge of the nature of the forces acting within the body have 

 made them umpires in many of the sanitary and even medical 

 questions of the day. Such is the rapid advance of the chemical 

 knowledge of common things, that physicians must be chemists to 

 that degree as to be able to answer questions arising regarding 

 the air, water, food, drink, and medicine which, by means of 

 forces that exist in them, act upon the forces within the human 

 body, and give rise to the phenomena of health and disease. 

 From the researches of Traube, Playfair, E. Smith, Fick and 

 Wislicenus, Frankland, and others, we know that the amount of 

 labor which a man has undergone in twenty-four hours may be 

 approximately arrived at by an examination of the chemical 

 changes which have taken place in his body ; " changed forms in 

 matter indicating the anterior exercise of dynamical force." All 

 will admit tliat muscular action is produced at the expense of 

 chemical changes, but until recentl}' it was generally believed 

 that muscular power is derived from the oxidation of albuminous 

 or nitrogenous substances ; but more recent researches, detailed 

 in the text, show that the latter is only an accompaniment and 

 not the cause of the former, and that muscular force is supplied 

 by the oxidation of carbon and hydrogen compounds. Messrs. 

 Fick and Wislicenus, from their experiments in ascending the 

 Faulhorn, state that " so far from the oxidation of albuminous 

 substances being the only source of muscular power, the sub- 

 stances by the burning of which force is generated in the muscles 

 are not the albuminous constituents of those tissues, but non- 



