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XXXVII. Some Accowit ofM. Bh.hat's Tlieorii of 

 Life."'' 



XJ^ VERY thing around living bodies, according to M. Bichat, 

 -■-^ tends constantly to their destruction. And to this influence 

 they would necessarily }ield, were they not gifted with some 

 permanent principle of reaction. This principle is their life, 

 and a living system is therefore necessarily always engaged in 

 the performance of functions, whose object is to resist death. 

 Life, however, does not consist in a single principle, as has 

 been taught by some celebrated writers, by Stahl, Van Hel- 

 mont, and Barthez, &c. We are to study the phaenomena of 

 life as we do those of other matter, and refer the operations 

 })erformed in living systems to such ultimate principles as we 

 can trace them to, in the same way that we do the oj^erations 

 taking place among inorganic substances. The chemist refers 

 the phtenomena of his science to the chemical, the natural 

 philosopher to the physical, properties of matter. So in phy- 

 siology we are to analyse the functions, as we study them, and 

 thus discover the properties or powers of living systems, to 

 which they are to be attributed. 



Living systems are thus found to be endowed with certain 

 properties, powers, or principles, the chief of which are those 

 of feeling and moving, by whose possession their organs are 

 rendered capable of performing the functions upon which the 

 continuance of life depends. Life, then, according to Bichat, 

 is the state of being, produced by the possession and exercise 

 of what he calls the vital properties ; yet he does not always 

 adhere with logical strictness to this definition, but rather uses 

 the term sometimes to designate collectively the vital properties 

 themselves, and this, perhaps, is its best and most convenient 

 sense. His essential doctrine, however, is, that there is no one 

 single, individual, presiding principle of vitality, which animates 

 the body ; but that it is a collection of matter gifted for a time 

 witli certain powers of action, combined into organs which are 

 thus enabled \o act; and that the result is a series of functions, 

 the connected performance of which constitutes it a living 

 thing. 



* From tfie North American Review, No. xxxvi. p. 145.— Marie Francis 

 Xavier Bicfiat was born in 1771. He stiutied under tlie celebrated Desault, 

 wfioni he assisted to the end of liis life in his practice, in his studies, and in 

 his lectures. At the age of 27 he published his Treatise on the Mem- 

 branes ; and in the succeeding year his Researches upon Life and Death. 

 His next worli was his General Anatomy; and he began a worlc on Descrip- 

 tive Anatomy, of which he lived to complete only two volumes. He died 

 in 1802 in the thirty-first vear of his age, greatly esteemed and regretted. 



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