IN MEDICAL SCIENCE. 35 



which princes hoard in their cellars, and another the 

 wine which it takes three men to drink, — one to pour 

 it down, another to swallow it, and a third to hold him 

 while it is going down. Certain analogies between this 

 selecting power and the phenomena of endosmosis in 

 the elective affinities of chemistry we can find, but the 

 problem of force remains here, as everywhere, unsolved 

 and insolvable. 



Do we gain anything by attempting to get rid of the 

 idea of a special vital force because we find certain 

 mutually convertible relations between forces in the 

 body and out of it ? I think not, any more than we 

 should gain by getting rid of the idea and expression 

 Magnetism because of its correlation with electricity. 

 We may concede the unity of all forms of force, but 

 we cannot overlook the fixed differences of its manifes- 

 tations according to the conditions under which it acts. 

 It is a mistake, however, to think the mystery is greater 

 in an organized body than in any other. We see a 

 stone fall or a crystal form, and there is nothing stran- 

 ger left to wonder at, for we have seen the Infinite in 

 action. 



Just so far as we can recognize the ordinary modes 

 of operation of the common forces of nature, — gravity, 

 cohesion, elasticity, transudation, chemical action, and 

 the rest, — we see the so-called vital acts in the light of 

 a larger range of known facts and familiar analogies. 

 Matteucci's well-remembered lectures contain many 

 and striking examples of the working of physical forces 



