OF VITAL ENERGY. 377 



facts, it is well known to medical men, that a 

 broken bone of a young and healthy individual, 

 when rightly set, acquires its former strength in 

 from forty to seventy days, more or less, accord- 

 ing to the age and constitution of the patient.* 



The thorax is larger in men than in women, 

 its mean circumference being about thirty-six 

 inches in the former, and thirty-two in the latter. 

 It is therefore not surprising that the blood of 

 men is more highly organized, their muscles more 

 fully developed, their brains from four to eight 

 ounces larger, (as shown by Tiedemann,) with a 

 corresponding superiority of muscular and intel- 

 lectual power. Nor was there ever an indi- 

 vidual of great vital energy, whether of the brain, 

 stomach, or muscles, without large and sound 

 lungs, which are essential to the sanguine and 

 heroic temperament. The muscular and intel- 

 lectual powers of small men with large and sound 

 lungs, are greater than in large men with narrow 

 chests, who naturally belong to the phlegmatic 

 temperament. They are also greater in lean than 

 in fat men, ceteris paribus, because in the former, 

 the blood and vital energy of the system are ex- 



* But so rapid is the nutritive or formative process in birds, 

 that, when a bone is broken, it requires only about three or four 

 weeks to unite and become strong, if kept in apposition. The 

 vis medicatrix nature is, therefore, only another name for the 

 aggregate vital energy of animals, and is in proportion to the 

 quantity of caloric they derive from the atmosphere by respira- 

 tion. 



