390 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



nutrition, and the generation of animal heat.^ Already in 

 1783 Lavoisier and Laplace had presented a memoir to 

 the Paris Academy of Sciences, in which they attributed 

 the generation of animal heat mainly to a process of 

 combustion which took place by the conversion of oxy- 

 gen into fixed air during the process of respiration. 

 Lavoisier continued his researches on these and other 

 similar physiological processes, such as perspiration, 

 along with Seguin. They presented a joint memoir 

 on the subject in 1790. It is also known, through 

 the posthumous publication of Lavoisier's scientific 

 papers in 1862, long after Liebig had brought out his 

 series of researches on this matter, that the former had 

 entertained very correct views on the economy of organic 

 life as it exists in the balance of the animal and veo;e- 

 table creations. After Lavoisier, the application of the 

 new science of chemistry to questions of the individual 

 and collective life of organisms was extended in a series 



^ The two great discoveries of ] de riiomme ' (]798), by .1. P. T. 



oxygen and of the electric cur- ! Baumes of Montpellier, against 



rent at the close of the eighteenth which Fourcroy aimed his ciiticisnis 



century were not long in being in a letter to Humboldt. On these 



applied to the reform of medical extravagances see Haeser, ' Ge- 



doctrine. In both instances exag- j schichte der Medicin,' vol. ii. p. 



gerated theories were not wanting. | 737, &c. ; also I)r A. Hirsch, 



Fourcroy, himself a medical student I ' Gesch. d. medicin. Wissenschaften 



by profession and one of the most 

 ardent followers and promoters of 

 the new chemistiy, who, moreover, 

 edited a journal with the title ' La 

 medecine eclairee par les sciences 



in Deutschland ' (Miinchen, 1893, 

 p. .567). There is no doubt that 

 opposition to this one-sided ap- 

 plication of some chemical or 

 ])hysical theory, or of some special 



physiques'(1790-92), found itnever- [ therapeutic method, which might 



theless necessary to give warning ' be valuable to a limited and re- 



against the premature introduction , stricted degree, partly accounted 



into medical teaching of the new ! for the fact that the more thinking 



ideas of chemistry. Of this many 

 instances existed, both in France 



members of the pi-ofession clung 

 to the notion of a vital force or 



and Germany, such as the 'Essai \ principle, as yet undefined but 

 d'un systeme chimique de la science 1 nevertheless existent. 



