2 THE HUMAN BODY. 



upon man. According to them, the body had, like the earth, 

 an axis and two poles ; the head, the seat of the soul, corres- 

 ponded to the heavens where divinity resided, &c. 



Since that time, and especially in our own day, the ima- 

 gination has given way to a rigorous method of study and 

 to positive ideas. But whether we venturously follow Aris- 

 totle and Paracelsus, or whether we prefer the exact results 

 of science to their poetic theories, we shall always see in 

 the human body the highest and most perfect creation of 

 nature among living beings, and we shall admire the efforts 

 and the discoveries which the study of its organization has 

 enabled the mind to make from the time of the masters of 

 antiquity down to our own day. 



In the human body, as in animals and in the vegetable 

 kingdom, the organized matter is composed of what are 

 termed proximate (or immediate) principles and anatomical 

 elements. Of these proximate principles some are of mineral 

 origin, as oxygen, water, the carbonates, the chlorides, the 

 phosphates, &c. They penetrate the organism, and there 

 furnish the materials, by the aid of which other principles of 

 a different order are formed. These last essentially consti- 

 tute the body, hence the name organic substances is specially 

 applied to them. There is nothing in the mineral kingdom 

 analogous to these organic substances, though they borrow 

 their original elements from it. They are solid or semi-solid 

 (globuline, musculine), liquid or semi-liquid (fibrine, albu- 

 men, caseine), colouring or coloured (hematosine, biliver- 

 dine). They decompose where they are formed, and give 

 birth to another class of proximate principles. These last 

 are of very different natures, and possess different attributes; 

 they are acids, salts, alkaloids, fatty bodies; they are urea, 

 creatine, stearine, cholesterine, and the sugar of the milk 

 and of the liver, lactic acid, uric acid, &c. 



This double and continuous movement of combination 

 and resolution of proximate principles results in the forma- 

 tion of the anatomical elements. This is the term applied to 

 very minute bodies, free or attached, which present special 

 geometrical, physical, and chemical characters, as well as a 

 structure which has no analogy to that of minerals. They 



