504 DR. PRITCHAKD. 



meaning, but properties, laws, and powers with- 

 out any source, a superstructure without a 

 foundation, effects without a cause." 4 



Similar views have been expressed by Magen- 

 die, who thinks that " physiology is now in the 

 same condition that natural philosophy was 

 before the time of Newton, and only waits until 

 a genius of the first order shall arise to unfold 

 the laws of vital force, as Newton did those of 

 general physics." More than a hundred other 

 writers might be quoted who have denied the 

 existence of a vital principle, as maintained by 

 Hippocrates, Aristotle, Galen, Celsus, Para- 

 celsus, Servetus, Harvey, Van Helmont, Borelli, 

 Perrault, Stahl, Hunter, Lamarck, and Aber- 

 nethy ; while a large majority of modern philo- 

 sophers have, with an equal disregard of the 

 clearest evidence, rejected the materiality of ca- 

 loric, electricity, and light. 



Dr. Pritchard objects to the doctrine of a 

 subtile fluid as the cause of vital action, be- 



* The truth is, that laws necessarily presuppose the existence 

 of an agent ; for they are merely the mode in which it produces 

 effects in a regular or uniform manner. And it might as well 

 be said that " murder is the act of murderously killing a man ;" 

 that *' death is the process of dying ;" that " opium induces 

 sleep by means of a dormitive property ; " that " the heart 

 contracts by means of a pulsific virtue;" or that all the move- 

 ments of nature are the sum of the powers that prevent it from 

 falling into a state of quiescence ; as that " life is the sum of the 

 functions that resist death." It would be an abuse of reason to 

 refute such vagaries. 



