ORGANISM NOT A FORCE-SYSTEM. 5 1 



Physiology and medicine are not branches 

 of physics, and, like many other departments 

 of human knowledge, cannot be comprised in 

 mechanical philosophy. If the facts of health 

 and disease could have been explained by 

 chemistry and mechanics we should have had 

 the explanation long ago. It is now quite 

 time that chemists and physicists admitted 

 their inability to account for them, and ceased 

 to exhibit hostility towards those who refer 

 the phenomena peculiar to living beings to 

 the influence of vital power until some suffi- 

 cient physical explanation shall have been given. 

 At present no one who uses his reason rightly 

 can admit that the facts of the case justify him 

 in looking upon his organism, or any other 

 organism, as a mere force system, the normal 

 equilibrium of which may be somehow me- 

 chanically or chemically disturbed in disease — 

 as a clock crystallised from its mother liquor, 

 having the property of ticking monotonously 

 for a time, capable of receiving a new wheel 

 or spring if either be broken or lost, but when 

 damaged by dirt or rust, or worn out by age, 

 good for nought but to be cast into the melting- 

 pot, where its " properties " become " modified," 



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