VITALISM. 21 



The Seat of the Vital Principle. — Meanwhile, 

 another question was asked with reference to this 

 vital principle. It was a question of ascertaining its 

 seat: or, in other words, of finding its place in the 

 organism. Is it spread throughout the organism, or is 

 it situated in some particular spot from which it acts 

 upon every part of the body? Van Helmont, a cele- 

 brated scientist at the end of the sixteenth century, 

 who was both physician and alchemist, gave the first 

 and rather quaint solution of this difficulty. The vital 

 principle, according to him, was situated in the 

 stomach, or rather in the opening of the pylorus. It 

 was the concierge, so to speak, of the stomach. The 

 Hebrew idea was more reasonable. The life was 

 connected with the blood, and was circulated with it 

 by means of all the veins of the organism. It escaped 

 from a wound at the same time as the liquid blood. 

 It is clear that in this belief we see why the Jews were 

 forbidden to eat meat which had not been bled. 



TJie Vital Kfiot. — In 1748 a doctor named Lorry 

 found that a very small wound in a certain region of 

 the spinal marrow brought on sudden death. The 

 position of this remarkable point was ascertained in 

 18 1 2 by Legallois, and more accurately still by 

 Flourens in 1827. It is situated in the i^chidian 

 bulb, at the level of the junction of the neck and the 

 head; or more precisely, on the floor of the fourth 

 ventricle, near the origin of the eighth pair of cranial 

 nerves. This is what was called the vital knot. 

 Upon the integrity of this spot, which is no bigger 

 than the head of a pin, depends the life of the animal. 

 Those who believed in a localisation of the vital 

 principle thought that they had found the seat 

 desired; but for that to be so the destruction of this 



