588 DR. PHILIP. 



time of Harvey. And it is remarkable that he 

 should have rejected the humoral pathology, on 

 the ground of our ignorance in regard to the office 

 of blood in health, and of the changes it undergoes 

 in disease. 



The supposition that nervous influence is in- 

 dispensable to muscular contraction, was long ago 

 disproved by the experiments of Haller and 

 Fontana, who found, that when the chest of an 

 animal was laid open, and the nerves going to 

 the heart were stimulated, its contractions were 

 neither accelerated, nor renewed when at rest. 

 And Dr. Philip has since demonstrated, that even 

 the voluntary muscles retain their irritability as 

 long after their nerves have been divided, as 

 when left entire, that chemical stimulants which 

 excite them to contract when applied immedi- 

 ately to their fibres, produce no effect when ap- 

 plied to their nerves alone.* Yet the majority of 



* He says, that " the power of the muscular fibre is a property 

 depending on the mechanism of that fibre, and in no degree di- 

 rectly depending on the nervous power." Yet he maintains that 

 " animal heat must be ranked among the secretions:" that it is 

 evolved from the blood like the various secretions, by nervous in- 

 fluence, because the temperature of animals is reduced by injuries 

 of the brain, spinal marrow, and division of the vagus or eighth 

 pair of nerves, and their secretions diminished ; as if the cause 

 of muscular contraction were different from that of secretion. In 

 another place he observes, " we have reason to believe that 

 nervous influence is the galvanic fluid, collected by the brain 

 apd spinal marrow, and sent along the nerves. " But he says 

 again, that " neither nervous influence nor galvanism can excite 



