THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND MEDICINE. 351 



leave to chemistry its affinity; to physics, its elasticity 

 and its gravity. Let us invoke for physiology only sen- 

 sibility and contractility." * 



Of all the unfortunate dicta of men of eminent abil- 

 ity this seems one of the most unhappy, when we think 

 of what the application of the methods and the data of 

 physics and chemistry has done towards bringing physi- 

 ology into its present state. It is not too much to say 

 that one half of a modern text-book of physiology con- 

 sists of applied physics and chemistry; and that it is 

 exactly in the exploration of the phenomena of sensi- 

 bility and contractility that physics and chemistry have 

 exerted the most potent influence. 



Nevertheless, Bichat rendered a solid service to 

 physiological progress by insisting upon the fact that 

 what we call life, in one of the higher animals, is not 

 an indivisible unitary archseus dominating, from its cen- 

 tral seat, the parts of the organism, but a compound 

 result of the synthesis of the separate lives of those parts. 



"All animals," says he, "are assemblages of differ- 

 ent organs, each of which performs its function and 

 concurs, after its fashion, in the preservation of the 

 whole. They are so many special machines in the 

 general machine which constitutes the individual. But 

 each of these special machines is itself compounded of 

 many tissues of very different natures, which in truth 

 constitute the elements of those organs " (I. c. Ixxix.) 

 " The conception of a proper vitality is applicable only 



* "Anatomic g6n6rale," i. p..liv. 



