Vital and Physical Motion. 1 2 1 



acid and alkali, and the workings of ferments of one 

 kind or another, were supposed to supply the solution 

 of many problems in vitality. Then came the hope, 

 kindled naturally by the splendid discoveries of Galileo 

 and Newton in physical science, that the mechanical 

 principles of the macrocosm would supply the key to all 

 requiring interpretation in the microcosm a hope which 

 called into existence the so-called iatro-mathematical or 

 mechanical physiologists. The question was of the 

 cohesion, the attraction, the resistance, the gravity, which 

 operate in inert matter, and of mechanical impulse and 

 elasticity, not of powers of a higher order. It was 

 believed that all the various bodily functions were 

 problems to be solved, as so many hydraulic or hydro- 

 static problems chiefly, partly by gravitation and the 

 laws of motion, and partly by chemistry, which itself, as 

 far as its theory was concerned, was but a branch of 

 mechanics, working exclusively by imaginary wedges, 

 angles, and spheres. The restoration of ancient geo- 

 metry, aided by the modern invention of algebra, had 

 placed the science of mechanism on the philosophical 

 throne. It was thus, for example, that Borqlli dealt 

 with the problem of muscular motion, and after him 

 Bellini. 



As far back also as the time of the great Bacon, 

 Gilbert had struck out a new path in the same direction, 

 the following out of which has led to more satisfactory 

 results than any of those arrived at by the intro-mathe- 

 matical school in their own particular lines of enquiry. 

 He had investigated the phenomena of magnetism with 

 much success, and, by continually poring over this sub- 

 ject, had come to believe that magnetism supplied the 

 key to vital movement, and to vital and physical pro- 

 blems in general ; but his speculations bore little or no 



