54 MEMORIAL SKETCH. 



embodied in a memoir &quot; On the Mutual Relations of the 

 Vital and Physical Forces,&quot; chiefly written in 1849, and 

 communicated in 1850 to the Royal Society. To this paper 

 Dr. Carpenter looked back in after-years as one of his most 

 original productions. He did not seek in it, he said, &quot; to 

 &quot; increase the knowledge of existing facts, so much as to 

 &quot;develop new relations between those already known.&quot; Its 

 main thesis was that what is called &quot; vital force &quot; really 

 has its origin in solar light and heat, not (as generally 

 taught up to that date) in a power inherent in the germ ; 

 that which the germ supplies, according to his views, being 

 the directive agency by which forces derived ab externo are 

 used in the building-up and maintenance of the organism. 

 The paper was at first regarded as too abstract and hypo 

 thetical, and some doubt was expressed as to its admission 

 into the &quot; Philosophical Transactions.&quot; It ultimately ap 

 peared there in 1851 ; but it made little impression at the 

 time. Its line of argument, however, secured more and 

 more attention, and its conclusions were finally accepted as 

 a part of the general doctrine of the &quot; Conservation of 

 Energy,&quot; which had been previously promulgated by Mayer 

 and Helmholtz, but was not at that time known beyond 

 Germany.* 



V. 



While these speculations were occupying Dr. Carpenter s 

 thought, he was at the same time slowly elaborating a view 



* See the passages from the article entitled, &quot; The Phasis of Force,&quot; below, 

 p. 173. In a lecture on &quot; Present Aspects of Physiology &quot; (Edinburgh, 1874), 

 Professor Rutherford said, &quot; Much of the present aspect of physiology is owing 

 to Ludwig, who introduced into biological study the graphic method of record 

 ing movement invented by Thomas Young ; to Carpenter, who applied to 

 physiological phenomena Grove s principle of the correlation ol force, and so, 

 much about the same time as Mayer and independently of him, paved the way 

 to the application to physiology of Joule and Helmholtz s great principle of 

 the conservation of energy ; much of it is owing to Du Bois Reymond, on 

 account of his researches on animal electricity.&quot; 



