118 On the Nature of the Vital Powers. [Feb. 



them, but that it is a principle pervading matter in a way analo- 

 gous to electricity and magnetism ; and bestowing on the matter 

 which it pervades certain properties. If it be said that we have 

 reason to believe that the vital power is not the effect of any 

 thing superadded to the matter which is the object of our senses, 

 but the result of a peculiar organization ■ this I conceive changes 

 but little the view taken of the subject by the above writers, 

 because electricity and magnetism may also, as far as we yet posi- 

 tively know, be merely the result of certain states of organization. 



Whether the living principle, electricity and magnetism, be 

 subtle fluids added to bodies, or only a peculiar arrangement of 

 their constituent parts, the fact, is, that they bestow on matter 

 certain properties, and all that is essential is, that our expressions 

 should convey this fact, and no more. Till the properties bestow- 

 ed on matter by these powers are found to be the same, and 

 surely it is impossible to conceive properties more dissimilar than 

 those bestowed by electricity or magnetism, and the living prin- 

 ciple, there cannot be a shadow of reason for supposing them the 

 same. The Galvanic experiments above referred to, as far as I 

 am capable of judging, go far to prove that Galvanism has nothing 

 in common with the living principle, because these experiments 

 exhibit them performing functions in the animal economy 

 wholly of a different nature. 



I here wish particularly to state, what, although fully expressed 

 in my treatise on the vital functions, has yet been overlooked by 

 some in alluding to my opinions, that the effects observed from 

 Galvanism, in the above experiments, are its effects on parts en- 

 dowed with the living principle, wholly ceasing, and by no means 

 renewable when this principle is extinct. Galvanism seems 

 capable of performing all the functions of the nervous influence in 

 the animal economy, and if so, must be regarded ' as identical 

 with this influence ; but neither can excite the functions of ani- 

 mal life, except when acting on parts endowed with the living 

 principle. Parts endowed with this principle collect the nervous 

 influence, and apply it where it is wanted, to act on parts also 

 endowed with the same principle ; but the nervous influence 

 itself seems to be nothing more than that influence which operates 

 in the production of all Galvanic phenomena. 



With regard to the muscular power, I have, in the above-men- 

 tioned treatise, had occasion to refer to Mr. Hunter's observa- 

 tions on the analogy which exists between the contraction of the 

 muscular fibre and the coagulation of the blood, and to dwell 

 particularly on one of the most striking of these analogies. In 

 the effects of Galvanism on the blood after it is removed from the 

 body, described in that treatise, and its effects on the muscular 

 fibre also removed from the body, we see another striking instance 

 of this analogy. 



When the whole of the facts on this subject are duly consi- 

 dered, the conclusion appears to be unavoidable, that the c n- 



