164 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



Hence we find that the processes of integration and 

 disintegration balance each other, in the highest and best 

 states of health ; the body weight being thus regularly 

 and steadily maintained amid all the disturbances of 

 everyday life. 



In any and all departures from the normal level of 

 good health we may expect to find an interruption in 

 the regularity of the processes, and a corresponding inter- 

 ference with the continuity of the conditions on which 

 that health depends. It will, therefore, under such circum- 

 stances, be of the greatest value to us as the conservers 

 and restorers of health, if we bear this in mind, and do 

 our best to discover where, in the circulatory chain, the 

 first indication of strain is observable, in order to be able 

 scientifically to begin and continue our treatment, pre- 

 ventive, palliative, and curative. 



For example, if we analyse the " sequence of events " 

 to be observed in the course of some well-defined disease, 

 or morbid entity, we shall perceive the relevancy of, and 

 the necessity for, the use of this advice. Diseases, there- 

 fore, such as a " common cold," or influenza, will afford 

 good examples for consideration on these lines, and they 

 will be found " dealt with " in the accompanying pages. 



Haemal circulation carried on through elaborately 

 constructed vessels and by the operation of well-defined 

 forces is operative up to that point in the human body, 

 where tissue metabolism begins, and where the cerebro- 

 spinal blood circulation ends by depositing its nutritive 

 materials in the neuroglial matrix. At the latter point 

 begins another circulation, or system of circulations 

 purely nervine, or neural, and for the most part confined 

 within the precincts of the systemic nervous system, and 

 its containing membranes. This circulation, the systemic 

 nervine, is sui generis, or, at any rate, very different from 

 the circulations which precede it, inasmuch as the textures 

 composing its circulatory apparatus are quite different, as 

 well as the fluids circulated. 



The pabulum on which the nervous system is supported, 

 and from which it extracts its nourishment, is represented 

 by the amorphous and faintly organised material depo- 

 sited amid the fibro-cellular meshes of the neuroglial, 



