* A HISTORY OF METABOLISM 5 



* 



moist or dry or whatever else they choose (thus reducing their subject within 

 a narrow compass and supposing only one or two original causes of disease or 

 of death among mankind) are clearly mistaken in much that they say. 



Aristotle (B-. C. 384-322) created the conception of a functioning 

 organism in the following celebrated passage: 



The animal organism is to be conceived after the similitude of a well gov- 

 erned commonwealth. When order is once established in it there is no more 

 need of a separate monarch to preside over each separate task. The individuals 

 each play their assigned part as it is ordered, and one thing follows another in 

 its accustomed order. So in animals there is the same orderliness nature taking 

 the place of custom and each part naturally doing his own work as nature has 

 composed them. There is no need of a soul in each part, but she resides in a 

 kind of central governing place in the body and the remaining parts live by 

 continuity of natural structure and play the parts nature would have them play. 



Galen (A. D, 131-200), a physician from Troy who practiced in 

 Eome six hundred -years after Socrates, was unable to add anything to 

 the ancient doctrines taught by the Greeks. Galen remarks, "The blood 

 is like the oil, the heart is like the wick and the breathing lungs an 

 instrument which conveys external motion." 



The Dark Ages 



For thirteen hundred years after the time of Galen knowledge of nu- 

 trition did not advance. The alchemists were at work striving to make 

 gold from the baser metals and endeavoring to produce infallible medi- 

 cines. But in the absence of a knowledge of the chemistry of living things 

 there could be ho knowledge of the function of food. 



Carl Yoit(d) } possibly with a slight national bias, thus portrays the 

 events in the dark ages: 



One usually regards this period of the world as intellectually barren, during 

 which only a blind imitation of the old and senseless scholasticism prevailed. 

 However, one makes a great mistake to condemn the human race as having 

 been incapable for a thousand years. We should rather understand why a 

 rapid development was impossible. The conditions for a continued expan- 

 sion of scientific knowledge were about as unfavorable as imaginable. The 

 Age of Antiquity reached the highest standard of cultivation possible from the 

 knowledge of the time and it needed entirely new ideas in order to move 

 forward, for the cultivation of mankind is not accomplished like a constantly 

 growing branch, but rather like one which is stimulated anew after having been 

 formerly ripe. I doubt whether the ancient Greeks and Romans with their pe- 

 culiar mental temperament had the power further to extend knowledge. The 

 Empires in which the old cultivation had flourished went down, and younger 

 races reigned in their stead. These rough victors eagerly acquired the intellectual 

 treasures which the conquered people had accumulated in the days of their glory ; 

 they regarded themselves as pupils and fell for a time into intellectual dependence 



