1 1 6 Traces of Unify in 



previously, ought to have credit there were nerves, 

 some of which had to do with movement and others with 

 sensation. Nay, it is scarcely just to speak of the 

 localization of the kinetic faculty in the muscles as being 

 only hinted at, for this was the definite conclusion at 

 which Aristotle arrived after witnessing the working of 

 the intercostal muscles of a living chameleon as displayed 

 under the transparent pleura. 



After this time, for a thousand years and more, when 

 anything was done in this direction it was little beyond 

 a servile copying of what had been said by Hippocrates 

 and Aristotle. Even Galen had nothing to say that .was 

 really new ; nor yet the schoolmen of the middle ages, 

 with many of whom the notions chiefly in the ascendant 

 were those of alchemy and magic and astrology. At the 

 revival of letters, indeed, the only light of importance 

 was that derived from the old Greek fathers in science ; 

 and at the end of this epoch no new light had arisen to 

 dissipate the darkness. No new light, for instance, was 

 shed by the doctrine of occult causes which found most 

 favour in these times that there were elementary spirits, 

 intermediate between material and immaterial beings, in 

 the four elements of air, water, fire, and. earth sylvans 

 or fairies in the air, nymphs and undines in the water, 

 salamanders in the fire, gnomes, trolls, pigmies, spirits 

 of the mine, little folks, little people, cobolds, in the 

 earth, that the body had its double or daemon, called 

 Archseus, whose primary function was to superintend 

 the work of the stomach, .and who managed the various 

 functions of the body, that of motion included, through 

 the instrumentality of a legion of underling deputies un- 

 dignified by any distinctive names. 



Indeed, it was not until Von Helmont, Stahl, and 

 Hoffman appeared on the scene that the notions handed 



