PAN. 623 



hydraulics, or specially vital lesions of circulation forms of 

 hyperaemia, forms of anaemia ? What is the modus operandi 

 in its poise and strange momentary arrestation by the nutri- 

 tive function, or in lesions of nutrition, as by the irregular 

 arrangements of anatomical elements ; number of molecules 

 hypertrophy, atrophy, ulceration ; consistence of particles 

 hardening, softening; nature of architectural alteration by 

 distribution of molecules, as in transformations of cellular, 

 serous, mucous, cutaneous, fibrous, cartilaginous, and osseous 

 structures or tissues? What is its duty or work in the 

 troublesome and peculiar lesions of secretion modifications 

 of quantity, situation, quality, essential nature ? What agency 

 has it in the terrible lesions of the blood, vitally subversive, 

 metamorphic, poisoned, or specifically tainted by heteroge- 

 neous and vicious seeds of contagious diseases ? What part 

 does it play in the mysterious, ponderable, imponderable, 

 galvanic, vital lesions of innervation? "Old mole of the 

 ground !" art forever here substance and shadow, ubiqui- 

 tously present still ? On the wings of the rosy morning of 

 health, life, and joy, thou art with us, and in the anguish and 

 despair of the midnight of disease and death thou never 

 forsakest us. 



The actor at play in this dreary domain of abnormal 

 phenomena, called disease, is still the cell, under the grasp 

 of the imponderable, for "the aether imparts the substance, 

 the heat the form, the light the life." "The formative 

 nutrient process is the principal process of the organic 

 world;" but "death is only a continuous growth through 

 retrogression into the primary matter of infusoria." An 

 organ tending to death can thus only be in a stage of "con- 

 tinuous growth, through retrogression, into the primary mat- 

 ter or infusoria." Hence, in the calamitous forms of vital 

 phenomena, which are classified as diseases, we can only be 

 presented with the "aether the substance, the heat the form, 

 the light the life;" and when the aether resumes the sub- 

 stance, and the heat surrenders the form, and the light gives 

 up the life, it is but & continuous growth through the retro- 



