ORGANIC ELEMENTS 17 



of the body, in obedience to the developmental require- 

 ments of its various tissues, organs, and members, and 

 maintained in life by the play of vital energy along various 

 lines, mechanical, chemical, physiological, and what, for 

 lack of a better term, we must still denominate specific, 

 sui generis, or purely vital. 



Each histological element of the body has for its foun- 

 dation constituent protoplasm, and selects for its specific 

 formative necessities whatever else it requires from the 

 lymph, the liquor sanguinis, or other lymphoid fluid with 

 which it is surrounded and inter-penetrated, its nutrition 

 being thus effected from the fluids circulating throughout 

 its substance, and carried there by the omnipresent circu- 

 lation, alimentary, sanguineous, and lymphoid. 



The blood, as known to physiologists, may be roughly 

 divided into two distinct elements, viz. the liquor sanguinis 

 and the corpuscles, the latter being divisible into red and 



1 ' O 



white, the former, the liquor sanguinis, being composed, 

 to a large extent, of the amorphous organic constituents 

 of protoplasm, and is principally the result of immediate 



f astro-enteric absorption and direct transmission into the 

 lood vasculature of the stomach and intestines, while 

 the corpuscular elements, being mainly the products of 

 glandular arrangement and organisation, are the result of 

 intestinal digestive activity on the chyme, prepared in the 

 stomach and passed in ordered array through its pyloric 

 orifice, to be admixed with the intestinal juices and the 

 secretions of the great abdominal viscera, and thereby 

 rendered capable of absorption by the villi of the intestinal 

 mucosa, and circulation through the chyliferous vessels 

 and glands into the blood currents. 



No doubt the physiological operations of the corpus- 

 cular organisation and vitalisation of the chyle lay the 

 sanguineous foundation on which are ultimately reared the 

 whole anatomical structure of life, and there is little doubt 

 that the inverse process of devitalisation begins at the 

 high-water mark of absolutely complete or perfect tissue 

 incorporation, or metabolism, or at the acme of trophic 

 change, where the last atomic act of integration yields to 

 the first atomic act of disintegration, the process of integra- 

 tion representing the dynamic reign of vital phenomena, 



