44 



When a tumbler throws himself backwards, the blood does not flow 

 altogether to his head, though this is become the lowest part; yet the 

 natural tendency of fluids downwards is not altogether overcome; it is 

 only diminished; for if he preserve long the same attitude, the struggle 

 of the hydraulic and vital powers becomes unequal: the former prevail; 

 they accumulate the blood upon the brain ; and the man dies. 



The following experiment proves incontestibly, what has just been said 

 of the power of resistance, which, in the human body, more or less, effec- 

 tually counterbalances the force of physical laws. I applied bags filled 

 with very hot sand, along the leg and foot of a man whose artery had 

 been tied by two ligatures, in the hollow of the ham, for popliteal aneu- 

 rism. Not only the limb was not chilled, which is what happens when 

 the course of the blood is intercepted, but the extremity thus covered, 

 acquired a heat much above the ordinary temperature of the body. The 

 same apparatus applied to the sound leg, did not produce this excess of 

 heat, certainly, because the fulness of life, in that limb, resisted the 

 physical action. 



The vital principle seems to act with the greater energy, as the sphere 

 of its activity is narrowed; which has led Pliny to say, that it was 

 chiefly in the smallest things that Nature has shown the fulness of 

 her power*. 



The circulation is quicker, the pulse more frequent, the determina- 

 tions more prompt, in men of short stature. Such was the great Alex- 

 ander! ; never did man of colossal make display great activity of imagi- 

 nation : none of them have glowed with the fire of genius. Slow in their 

 actions, moderate in their desires, they obey without murmuring the will 

 that governs them, and seem made for slavery. Agrippa (says Omilius 

 Probus, in his History of Augustns) advised that they should disband 

 the Spanish guard, and that in its room, Caesar should choose one of 

 German, " wotting well, that in these large bodies, there was little of 

 " coverte malice, and yet lesse of subtiltie, and that it was a people more 

 " minded to be ruled than to rule." 



To judge soundly of the remarkable difference which inequality of sta- 

 ture brings into the character, compare extremes; set against a Colos- 

 sus, a little man of diminutive stature; granting, nevertheless, to this 

 last, full and vigorous health. You may guess that he is talkative, stir- 

 ring, always in action, always changing his place ; one would say that he 

 is labouring to recover in time, what he has lost in space. The probable 

 reason of this difference in the vital activity, following the difference of 

 stature, arises from the relative bulk of the primary organs of life. The 

 heart, the viscera of digestion, &c. are of nearly the same bulk in all 

 men : in all, the great cavities are nearly of the same extent, and it is 

 principally in the length of the lower limbs that the difference of stature 

 will be found to lie. It is easily conceivable, that the viscera supplying 

 the same quantity of nutritious juices to a smaller bulk, that the heart 

 giving the same impulse to blood which is to traverse a shorter course, 

 all the functions will be executed with greater rapidity and energy. 



By an obvious consequence, the diseases of little men have a more 

 acute character; they are more vehement, and tend more rapidly to their 



* Nusquam magis qiiam in minimis est Ma JVatwa. Hist. Nat. lib. II. cap. 2. 



f Such was the Greater NAPOLEON ; still the subsequent assertions are too gene- 

 ral. We have not forgotten the size of Dr. JOHKSOJT, and mankind will never forget, 

 how he " glowed with the lire of genius." ' 



' genius. " Gocbnan . 



