LIVING MATTER. 



own specific and peculiar power, is demonstrated by 

 observation, but that this difference in power or pro- 

 perty should be associated with any recognizable 

 difference in appearance, form, chemical composition, 

 or any physical characters, is exactly what a careful 

 examination of the facts, and a judicial weighing of the 

 evidence, would not lead us to anticipate. If, indeed, 

 these poisons really consist of living matter, analogy 

 would lead us to conclude that they would not be dis- 

 tinguishable from one another, except by the effects 

 they produce. For we cannot distinguish one form 

 of healthy living matter from another. The living 

 matter which produces nerve, or muscle, or bone, is 

 just like at least as far as we can ascertain that 

 which gives rise to cuticle or to cartilage ? Though 

 the results of the life of these several kinds of living 

 matter are so very different, the matter itself appears 

 similar in all cases ; and, examine it as we may, we 

 cannot discover any distinguishing marks. Nay, the 

 living matter of one animal is like that of another. 

 No form of animal living matter can be distinguished 

 from the living matter of a plant, or from that of any of 

 the lowest simplest forms of existence. Discarding the 

 results of observation, some writers have indeed main- 

 tained that the anatomical elements or cells of morbid 

 growths have peculiar characters of their own, and 

 can invariably be distinguished from those of healthy 

 structures ; but repeated failure of the attempts to do 

 so on the part of those who held that the distinction 



