280 OF NUTRITION. 



productive power appears completely bestowed upon no 

 similar parts which possess any other vital power besides 

 contractility, i.e. irritability, sensibility, or a vita 

 propria.* (B) 



461. In those parts, therefore, whose vital powers 

 are of an higher order, the parenchyma, constituting 

 their base, appears permanent and is liable to this 

 change only, — that the interstices of the fibres and pa- 

 renchyma, while nutrition is vigorous, are constantly 

 full of nutrient animal gelatine ; but when nutrition lan- 

 guishes, are deprived of the gelatine, collapse, and con- 

 sequently become thin. 



462. For as the plastic lymph, the importance of 

 which has been frequently mentioned, is readily con- 

 verted into cellular membrane, so it appears to con- 

 stitute the principal material of the body, and, as 

 it were, the animal gluten, which is nourished by its 

 means. 



463. During the growth of the body, peculiar powers 

 are exerted, by which the lymph deposited in the cel- 

 lular membrane from the blood-vessels is properly dis- 

 tributed and intimately assimilated to the substance of 

 each organ, &c. This is referrible both to the laws of 

 affinity, by which particles attract, and, as it were, ap- 



• That the coriura is not really reproduced, is probable, not only from its 

 perpetual cicatrices (for some contend that the matter of those does not con- 

 tinue, but their form only, which is preserved by a perpetual apposition of fresh 

 particles in the room of the decayed and absorbed) , but much more by the lines 

 and figures which are made upon the skin by the singular art of pricking it with a 

 needle, (a process denominated in the barbarous language of the Otaheiteans 

 tatooing) and imparting to the corinm a blue or red colour, as permanent as 

 the cicatriculx, by means of charcoal powder, ashes, soot, the juices of plants, 

 or galls; on the other hand, the red hue imparted to the bones, bv means of 

 madder, quickly disappears, as these parts undergo a rntitimial renovation. 



