4 i2 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



according to their importance in the economy of the 

 particular animal, or vegetable, organism that may happen 

 to be the subject of observation. 



Viewed thus, we may take it that the sympathetic 

 nervous system is, in reality, structurally composed of 

 every cell and connective fibre, forming the organised 

 and innervated body, with their contained nuclear and 

 nucleolar developments, or that the sympathetic energy, 

 or life, is generated and distributed through their instru- 

 mentality by the genetic and radiating powers of the 

 nuclei and nucleoli, and if this be so, we may further 

 conclude that the sympathetic nervous system, so called, 

 must have the further function, in analogy to the systemic 

 nervous system, of distributing by its cell processes 

 after having secreted- nutritive plasma, as well as energy, 

 to every texture with which it is in functional relationship. 



The function of nutrition would thus become entirely a 

 nervous function, every cell secreting from its surrounding 

 blood-borne organic plasma through its wall, or by some of 

 its processes, the necessary pabulum for its own main- 

 tenance, as well as that of its contained nuclei and nucleoli 

 and related organic texture, or cells, and excreting by others 

 of its fibrous processes, or through its wall, its effete 

 materials into the surrounding organic matrix, to be re- 

 moved by the various lymphatic agencies with which it 

 is so abundantly supplied, and by, or through, the free 

 surfaces of the coverings and the linings of the spaces and 

 inter-spaces with which it is surrounded and whence it 

 is directly removed. Therefore, every cell being a living 

 unit, and living in virtue of its histological connection 

 with, and innervation by, nerve structure and force, it 

 follows that nerve texture and nerve energy must regulate 

 and sustain the vital processes of nutrition, growth, and 

 repair, from their inception in the gastro-intestinal canal, 

 until their termination and disintegration and excretion by 

 an unbroken series of circulatory acts, following each 

 other in regular and unbroken succession, and once more 

 illustrating the truth of our assertion : circulatio circula- 

 tionum, omnia circulatio. Consequently nutrition, apart 

 from its purely chemico-metabolic aspects, is a physical 

 process dependent on nerve circulatory agencies, and 



