154 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



Moreover, this fluid represents the primordial fluid in 

 which the whole developmental events, constituting the 

 "life history" of organic nature in all its phases, is 

 wrought out, and the medium which gives or affords 

 currency to the whole chemico-physiological elements and 

 processes engaged in the great work of evolution of living 

 forms, and the peopling of our earth from its dead matter; 

 it is, therefore, a fluid whose imitation, or reproduction, by 

 scientific technique may enable us, when a human, or other, 

 life is sufFering from its exhaustion or over-abundance, to 

 lengthen out its otherwise unexhausted vital resources, 

 and to round ofF in full proportion the story of its 

 " completed life," as we see, for example, in the use of 

 "normal saline" in haemorrhagic crises, and syncopal 

 attacks, or of lumbar puncture in cerebro-spinal meningitis. 

 Further, it forms the basis of all the actively organic, or 

 formative, fluids throughout the body, and passes from one 

 form of structural and visceral physiological fluid com- 

 bination, or condition, to another, as the local and general 

 exigencies of inter- and intra-organic circulation necessitate 

 and determine ; hence it is the circulatory medium for all 

 material interchange, chemical and physiological, and 

 therefore, pathological, and requires to be studied locally 

 and in all its continuity of circulatory disposal and 

 functional sequence, ere we can hope to discover its full 

 significance and importance, and obtain its full practical 

 advantages. Therefore, to follow it thus is to follow the 

 organic disposal of the entire ingesta, from their imbibition 

 to their excretion as effete materials, or until they become 

 egesta, and thus to traverse the whole field of biological 

 integration and disintegration, or, in other words, the 

 entire area of physiological activity and organic evolution. 

 We, consequently, would advise that this aspect of the 

 subject should be viewed whenever we attempt to take a 

 broad or even a " bird's eye " view of the bearing of 

 physiological knowledge on the progress of clinical 

 medicine and surgery. 



In another respect it can be followed with great advan- 

 tage along the paths by which the cavities and inter-spaces 

 of the body, structural, visceral, and histological, are kept 

 occupied, and the physiological balance of circulation and 



