142 



thigh which is amputated three or four inches below the hip, should 

 be re-produced, bone, muscle, and skin ; for an original or a nucleus 

 of all its parts being left, the whole should be regenerated, if re- 

 production were commensurate with the elements. 



50. Although therefore the preceding account may shew how 

 some of the necessities of growth are supplied, it by no means de- 

 clares the laws by which the whole process, its varieties, &c. are 

 governed. The interspace of a fractured bone may be filled up, 

 yet the bone after amputation does not grow. The interspace 

 occasioned by the removal of a portion of a nerve, or even of an. 

 artery, may be rilled up; a certain extent of breach might be re- 

 paired, but not any extent. Then again, although there might be 

 supernumerary elements in the material, corresponding with the 

 amount of the textures which originally existed, yet it does not fol- 

 low, except from laws not adverted to, that the increase of assimila- 

 tion and of organization should take place where the chasm is to bt 

 Jilled up, rather than in any other place, seeing that the blood 

 which circulates in the vessels of the repairing surfaces is common 

 to all other parts. 



51. These facts suggest the theory that the constitution of the 

 life of respective parts tends to preserve a continuity, that if this 

 continuity ^of life is interrupted by the removal of a portion of 

 - structure in which it resided, then the continuity is restored 

 from the repairing surfaces; that this tendency to the establishment 

 of a continuity results from an affinity between a similar constitu- 

 tion of vital properties, which belong to the same structure, by the 

 force of which, an interrupted principle tends to coalesce; that this 

 affinity has certain limits, or that the affinity does not obtain if the 

 interrupted portions are too distantly removed. Thus, to illustrate 

 this theory by an example, suppose four inches of a nerve to be 

 removed, if the principle residing in the divided extremities is too 

 widely interrupted to admit the operation of the affinity, by which 

 these properties were in the ovum first assembled together, the 

 breach of continuity remains ; but if one inch of a nerve were re- 

 moved, the affinity then operating, the continuity of the principle, 

 or of the organic life of the nerve, would be restored ; and in this 

 process either the two portions or extremities must suffer a diminu- 

 tion of the quantum of the principle, corresponding with its exten- 

 sion, or their assimilation must be increased. The continuity of 

 the principle, however, under these circumstances, being from the 

 power of this affinity restored, the aggregation of a corresponding 

 structure must proceed in consequence in a ratio to the assimilation 

 of the disposed spirit in this seat, and to the organic particles sup- 

 plied, from whence the slow process of growth or regeneration. 



52. There is another remarkable property in this affinity of the 

 life of a structure, viz. that where a chasm is to be repaired, it super- 

 sedes a spiritual constitution of another kind, and destroys its cor* 

 responding organization. Thus, though the interspace of a nerve 

 be closed by the union of surfaces, or by granulation*, yet t-bt 



