IMPORTANCE OF LIVING MATTER. 43 



what takes place in the living matter. In the formation of 

 every tissue, in its disintegration, in its repair, living matter 

 is concerned. Nor does the slightest morbid change take 

 place without the phenomena occurring in the living mat- 

 ter of the part being modified. No formation of structure, 

 no action occurring in the structure after it has been pro- 

 duced, no secretion can be accounted for without consider- 

 ing what goes on in living matter. In every form of in- 

 flammation, in every kind of fever, in hypertrophies, in 

 atrophies, in every general disease, and in every local dis- 

 ease, this "living matter," which physicists and chemists 

 completely ignore, plays a most important part. 



It is very well for the advocates of the new doctrines to 

 laugh at physiologists and physicians, but it would be better 

 if they would come into our work-rooms and wards and meet 

 the difficulties. Let them observe the movements in some 

 of the simplest living things, as an amceba, and then explain 

 to us, if they can, how these movements occur, the 

 movements and multiplication of a monad, the movements 

 and multiplication of a pus corpuscle, but all this is be- 

 neath the notice of the new philosophy. 



Grand indeed must that philosophy be which solves all the 

 great wonders of the universe, and tells us how worlds and 

 suns and systems and faunae and florae are formed, but can- 

 not teach us how a trumpery monad " grows," and gives 

 rise to a number of other monads like itself, or explain 

 why movements occur in a living amceba, or white blood 

 corpuscle, or pus corpuscle, and not in a dead one. It is 

 not surprising that the advocates of such a philosophy 

 should have made vigorous efforts to shunt the vital ques- 

 tion off the main line of intellectual inquiry, but hitherto 



