XIV BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND MEDICINE 367 



towards bringing physiology into its present state. 

 It is not too much to say that one-half of a modern 

 text-book of physiology consists of applied physics 

 and chemistry; and that it is exactly in the ex- 

 ploration of the phenomena of sensibility and con- 

 tractility that physics and chemistry have exerted 

 the most potent influence. 



Nevertheless, Bichat rendered a solid service to 

 physiological progress by insisting upon the fact 

 that what we call life, in one of the higher animals, 

 is not an indivisible unitary archaus dominating, 

 from its central seat, the parts of the organism, 

 but a compound result of the synthesis of the 

 separate lives of those parts. 



" All animals," says he, " are assemblages of 

 different organs, each of which performs its 

 function and concurs, after its fashion, in the 

 preservation of the whole. They are so many 

 special machines in the general machine which 

 constitutes the individual. But each of these 

 special machines is itself compounded of many 

 tissues of very different natures, which in truth 

 constitute the elements of those organs " {I. c. 

 Ixxix.). " The conception of a proper vitality is 

 applicable only to these simple tissues, and not to 

 the organs themselves " (Z. c. l^xxiv.). 



And Bichat proceeds to make the obvious 

 application of this doctrine of synthetic life, if I 

 may so call it, to pathology. Since diseases are 

 only alterations of vital properties, and the 



