572 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



Thus, it follows that nutrition, of the non-systemically 

 innervated structural elements of the body, is accom- 

 plished by non-systemically innervated means, and that 

 the nutritive role of the systemic nervous system is 

 restricted to the neuro-dermal and the neuro-muscular 

 and skeletally continuous or related structures. It may 

 be claimed, however, that the inter-relationships of non- 

 systemic and systemic in nervations are so intimate that a 

 definite connexus, or a system of material and dynamic 

 continuity, pervades the entire areas of innervation and 

 nutrition, whereby a common system of material and 

 dynamic circulation is maintained throughout the entire 

 body, securing its vitality and functional integrity from 

 uni-cell to completed organism, so long as the conditions 

 of life of the units subsist. 



In all this we see alone the mechanism and working 

 of life, but do not once detect the great entity known as 

 life itself: like a watch, which we energise by a few 

 contractions of our arms and muscles and turns of a key, 

 and set moving in its determined way, so life is the 

 dynamic outcome of a supreme influence, or source of 

 energy acting " behind the scene " of human organism, as 

 well as every living organism, and using it and them 

 for purposes and in ways which " we wot not of." 



A wide field for pathological research here opens up, 

 where the physiological methods of nutrition become 

 merged in the pathological, often by unbroken material 

 and dynamic links, so seemingly similar that it is impos- 

 sible, by the knowledge we now possess, to say where 

 the one ends and the other begins health and disease 

 co-existing in the same organism, and contending for the 

 mastery. 



We would further conclude, that health alone can exist 

 where complete separation is maintained between nutritive 

 and effete materials within the areas of trophic, or meta- 

 bolic, change, and we claim that that is effected by a 

 continuity of onward circulation of the materials composing 

 the ingesta and egesta during their intra-corporeal progress 

 and their final restoration to the outer world. 



From the conversion of the raw materials of food and 

 drink into arterial blood, and their conveyance into the 



