Vital and Physical Motion. 1 3 7 



1852 about two years after the date of my own first 

 publication on the subject. 



I do not stand alone, then, in thinking that a great 

 change is necessary in the theory of vital motion a 

 change amounting to no less than a complete revolution ; 

 and I am glad that it is so, for, thus supported, I have 

 more courage than I otherwise should have to prosecute 

 the enquiry upon which I have ventured to enter an en- 

 quiry in which the problem of vital motion will be 

 regarded, first, from a physiological, and then, from a 

 pathological, point of view. 



II. 



Beginning with amaeboid movement, and passing 

 thence, through simple muscular and nervous action, to 

 cardiac a^nd other forms of rhythmical vital motion, and 

 thence to rigor mortis, it is seen that all the facts 

 belonging to natural electricity are in harmony with the 

 notion that vital motion is merely a mode of physical 

 motion for which the only key needed is that which is 

 supplied by the natural operations of electricity and 

 elasticity. And so also when the enquiry is extended 

 with a view to see how vital motion is affected by 

 artificial electricity, by blood, by nervous influence, and 

 in other ways, and why vital motion is exaggerated as 

 it is in convulsion, or spasm, or tremor or neuralgia, or 

 the like, there is no occasion to seek for any other 

 key. 



Arqeeboid movements, there is reason to believe, are 

 the simple result of certain natural electrical changes 

 which take place in all terrestrial bodies. 



The argument is sufficiently simple. As was pointed 

 out in the last chapter (pp. io6-7),the electrical conditionof 



