378 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



in order to the maintaining of the functional integrity, 

 and the consequent freedom from material clogging, 

 and implied organic friction, on which the possession of 

 health depends. 



The basis of life, and health, therefore, must be sought 

 for, first, in that portion of the body, beholden to the 

 sympathetic nervous system for material, and dynamic, 

 support, and administration, and in this, when the con- 

 ditions required by that system are maintained, or restored, 

 by the aid of art, or nature, the status quo ante is 

 regained, and health again established. In doing so, we 

 find that the materials necessary for nutrition must pro- 

 perly, and regularly, be supplied, and that the economy 

 of nutrition, must be maintained aright, when it will 

 follow that life, and health, will be the inevitable conse- 

 quences, and the attainment of the usual physiological 

 balance, the necessary result. 



We are warranted, we think, in asserting that disease 

 can never enter into the living economy, unless by the 

 faulty working of the two great biological factors, the 

 material and dynamic, and their two supervising nerva- 

 tures ; the primal necessity will, therefore, arise, whenever 

 a disease problem presents itself for consideration, for 

 obtaining a clear understanding, of where that disease 

 has commenced, and at which point in the sympathetic, 

 or systemic, nervatures, it has taken origin, in order, that 

 treatment should be adopted on scientific lines, and carried 

 out with a clinical consistency, flowing from a full know- 

 ledge of cause and effect, and a full appreciation of the 

 sequence of morbid phenomena, in order to secure the 

 re-establishment of the physiological regime, and the, 

 consequent, restoration of health. 



The field of vital action is as wide as life itself, and 

 includes, contiguously, and contemporaneously, examples 

 of physiological, and pathological, methods of procedure ; 

 so that, throughout the whole extent of animated nature, 

 we see the advent, and departure, of living forms, in 

 every instant of time. We subject its problems to inves- 

 tigation, and are compelled to acknowledge that health, 

 disease, and death, are essential component parts of a great 

 whole ; and that what our very finite powers of observa- 



