23 



predecessors, as well as his contemporaries, the justice they had a right 

 to expect from him. 



The simple, or elementary fibre, about which so much has been writ- 

 ten, may be considered as the philosopher's stone of physiologists*. In 

 vain has Haller himself in his pursuit of his chimera, told us, that the 

 elementary fibre is to the physiologist what the line is to the geometer, 

 and, that as all figures are formed from the latter, so are all the tissues 

 formed from this fibre : Fibra enim fihysiologo id est quod linea geametrae, 

 ex qua nempe jigurse omnes oriuntur. The mathematical line is imaginary, 

 and a mere abstraction of the mind, while the elementary fibre is allowed 

 a material or physical existence. Nothing, therefore, can make us ad- 

 mit the existence of a simple, elementary, or primitive fibre, since our 

 senses show us in the human organization, four very distinct materials. 



Among the organs, whether single or combined in systems, which en- 

 ter into the human organization, there are some whose action is so essen- 

 tial to life, that with the cessation of that action, life at once becomes 

 extinct. These primary systems, whose action regulates that of all se- 

 secondary systems, are as numerous in man as in the other warm-blooded 

 animals. None of them can act unless the heart sends into the brain a 

 certain quantity of blood, vivified by the contact of atmospherical air in 

 the pulmonary tissue. Every serious wound of the brain or heart, every 

 lasting interruption to the access of blood into the former of these organs, 

 is invariably attended with death. The oxydation of the blood, and its 

 distribution into all the organs, is consequently the principal phenome- 

 non on which the life of man and of the most perfect beings depend. 



VI. OF THE VITAL PROPERTIES; SENSIBILITY AND 

 CONTRACTILITY!. 



By sensibility is meant that faculty of living organs, which renders them 

 capable of receiving from the contact of other bodies, an impression 

 stronger, or fainter, that alters the order of their motions, increases or 

 diminishes their activity, suspends, or directs them. Contractility is that 

 other property by which parts excited, that is, in which sensibility has 

 been called into action, contract or dilate, in a word, act, and execute 

 motions. In the same manner, as we have not always a consciousness of 

 the impressions received by our organs, and as, for example, no sensa- 

 tion informs us of the stimulating impression by which the blood calls 

 the heart into action, so it is by reflexion only, that we are induced to 

 admit the existence of certain motions; of those, for instance, by which 

 the humours, when they have reached the smallest vessels, become in- 



* Almost every physiologist who has written on Animal Organization has proposed a 

 new arrangement of the primary textures. We will only take notice of the two follow- 

 ing : WALTIIER considered the different organs and compound textures to result from 

 the cellular or membranous, the vascular orjibroiis, and from the nervous. J. F. MECKEI. 

 founds his classification of organic substances on microscopic researches. He is of opi- 

 nion that the solids and fluids of the human body can be reduced to t~co elementary sub- 

 stances, the one formed by globules, the other by a coagulable matter, which, either 

 alone or united to the former, constitutes the living fluids, if it be in the liquid state, and 

 -ivc 



to the solid tissues, when it assumes the concrete form. See APPENDIX, 

 Note C, for a more detailed account of the opinion of this eminent Anatomist. -Copland 

 f See APPENDIX, Note D. 



