270 DR. PHILIP'S OBSERVATIONS ON 



from many experiments related in my treatise on the Vital Functions; 

 and that the nervous power under the same circumstances is still capable of 

 forming the secreted fluids, and supporting the other processes by which the 

 structure of every part is maintained, is shown by very frequently repeated 

 experiments on the newly dead animal related in the same treatise. From 

 these experiments it appears that some secretion of gastric juice takes place 

 after what we call death, and that some derangement of structure in the lungs 

 may be produced by dividing the eighth pair of nerves immediately after death ; 

 a proof that the processes on which the structure of the part depends, continue 

 for some time after the sensorial power can no longer influence them. 



We may thus trace the existence of the whole of the nervous functions 

 properly so called after the removal of the sensorial power. The former 

 therefore have no immediate dependence on the latter ; but in the entire animal 

 we know that the nervous, in many of its functions always, and occasionally in 

 all of them, is subjected to the sensorial, power. These powers therefore bear 

 the same relation to each other that the nervous and muscular powers do, the 

 muscular existing independently of the nervous, but being influenced by it. 



It was this independence of the functions properly called nervous on those 

 of the sensorial power, and the analogy which subsists between the former and 

 chemical processes, which suggested that the agent, on which the nervous 

 functions immediately depend, instead of being peculiar to the living animal, 

 may only be an agent employed by those powers which are so, in the same way 

 as any other constituent part which the living animal possesses in common 

 with inanimate nature ; and it appeared to me that the accuracy of this sug- 

 gestion would be placed beyond a doubt if the nervous power could be proved 

 to be capable of its function, after it had been made to pass through any other 

 conductor than the nerves ; for it will be admitted that the powers peculiar to 

 the living animal can only operate, and, as far as we see, can only exist in 

 the organs to which they belong. The brain cannot perform the office of a 

 muscle, nor a muscle that of the brain. 



If then the nervous power can be made to pass through any substance but 

 that of the nervous system in which it resides, it evidently has an existence in- 

 dependent of the mechanism of that system, and therefore is not peculiar to it. 

 This, after many vain attempts, I succeeded in effecting. It appears from ex- 



