OF VITAL FORCE, AND THE CONDITIONS OF ITS EXERCISE. 141 



attributable to the accumulation of its appropriate materials in the blood. This 

 principle is one most fertile in Pathological applications; for there can be little 

 doubt that the development of many morbid growths is due, not so much to a 

 perverted local action, as to the presence of certain morbid matters in the blood, 

 which determine the formation of tissues that use them as their appropriate 

 pabulum. Such is pretty obviously the case with those disorders which (like 

 the Exanthemata) are universally admitted to be of " constitutional" character, 

 and which are distinctly traceable to a poison introduced through the blood, whose 

 first influence is exerted in modifying the physical and vital properties of that 

 fluid ; and the evidence has been of late accumulating, that it is true also of the 

 various forms of Cancer, the local development of an abnormal structure being 

 in this case, also, nothing else than the manifestation of the existence of that 

 peculiar matter in the blood, which is the appropriate nutriment of its compo- 

 nent tissues or, as Mr. Simon appropriately designates it, "a new excretory 

 organ, which tends essentially to acts of eliminative secretion, just as distinctly 

 as the healthy liver or the healthy kidney." 1 



121. But however abundant may be the supply of the nutritive materials, and 

 however complete may be their preparedness for organization, they can no more 

 become organized into cells by their own powers, than a mass of iron could shape 

 itself into a steam-engine or a spinning-jenny. They need to be acted on by 

 the appropriate force ; and this we have seen to be, in the first place, the vital 

 power of a pre-existing organism. For whether new cells are formed by the 

 subdivision of previous cells, or sprout from the granules of their nuclei (either 

 within the parent-cell, or after being set free from it), or originate in an organi- 

 zable blastema, we trace that influence everywhere exerted. When the cell 

 reaches a certain stage of its development, however, it becomes self-dependent ; 

 being capable of maintaining its own life, if the material conditions be supplied, 

 without the assistance of vital force imparted to it from without; and in its turn, 

 it comes to impart a similar power to the germs which it may itself prepare, or 

 to the plastic fluid which it may assist in elaborating. 



122. But the question next arises, what is the original source of that Organiz- 

 ing force, which the cell receives during the early stage of its development, and 

 which it subsequently itself exerts upon the nutrient matter it appropriates ? 

 And to this question it seems now possible to give a more satisfactory answer 

 than that with which Physiologists were formerly obliged to satisfy themselves. 

 For it was maintained by some, that the germ of every living being contains 

 within itself the whole of the force necessary to accomplish the organization of 

 its fabric, and to impart to each portion of it the peculiar powers with which it 

 is endowed; an obvious objection to which doctrine is, that, if this be true, not 

 only must the germ contain the whole vital force of the fabric into which it is 

 evolved, but also that which it imparts to its descendants ; so that the first indi- 

 vidual of a race must have concentrated within itself the vital force of its entire 

 posterity a palpable reductio ad absurd um. To escape from this difficulty, it 

 has been alleged that the vital force with which matter becomes endowed by the 

 process of organization, previously existed in it in a latent or dormant state, and 

 is made sensible when the nutrient matter is incorporated into a living fabric. 

 This doctrine could claim no higher value than that of a mere hypothesis; and 

 it rested on the idea that latent or dormant force of other kinds (such as 

 Heat) had a real existence an idea of which a more logical appreciation of the 

 facts of science has completely exposed the fallacy. For it is now coming to be 

 generally acknowledged, that all force must (from its very nature) be active in 

 some mode or other; that force can neither originate de novo, nor cease to be 



1 See Mr. Simon's " Lectures on General Pathology," pp. 87, 152; and Mr. Paget's 

 "Lectures on Inflammation," in "Medical Gazette," 1851, vol. xlv. p. 92. % 



