45 



crisis*. They have in them something of the velocity, I wtfuld even say 

 the instability of morbid re-action during infancy. There is nothing 

 even to the duration of life, on which the differences of stature have not 

 some influence. With this suspicion, and some curiosity to ascertain 

 its justness, I hare made inquiries in the hospitals, when people in ad- 

 vanced life are taken in, and I found them, for the most part, occupied by 

 old men above the middle size; so that reasoning and observation concur 

 in showing that all things else being equal, those of superior stature have 

 a grounded hope of prolonging their life beyond the ordinary term. 



I have observed with many others, that the whole body unfailingly re- 

 ceives an increase of vigour, from the amputation of a limb. Frequently, 

 after the loss of a part of the body, you will see a manifest change take 

 place in the temperament ; those that were weak, even before the disease 

 which brings on the necessity of the operation, becoming robust: affec- 

 tions, chronic from debility, such as scrophula, tabes mesenterica, dissi- 

 pated $ glandular swellings resolved; which indicates a very remarkable 

 increase in the actions of all the organsf. 



The parts most remote from the centre of circulation are, in general, 

 less alive than those which are nearer. Wounds of the legs and feet, are 

 more liable to ulcerate, because, besides the circulation of the fluids, 

 which the slightest weakness greatly retards in them, their life is too fee- 

 ble for their wounds to go quickly through their periods, and readily 

 cicatrize. The toes freeze first, when we remain too long exposed to 

 severe cold ; it is in them too that the mortification begins, which some- 

 times attacks a limb after the ligature of its vessels. 



Thus, although we may say, that the principle of life is not seated in 

 any part of our being, that it animates every system of organs, every se- 

 parate organ, every living molecule, that it endows them with different 

 properties, and assigns to them, in some sort specific characters, it must 

 be confessed, thai there are in the living body some parts more alive, 

 from which all the other? seem to derive motion and life. We have al- 

 ready seen that these central organs, these foci of vitality, in whose life 

 that of the whole body is involved, diminish gradually in number in the 

 animal kinds, as they are more removed from man, whilst the fewer they 

 are, the more they are spread out over the body; so that life is more ge- 

 nerally diffused, and its phenomena less rigorously and strictly connect- 

 ed, as we descend in the scale of being, from the red and warm-blooded, 

 to the red and cold-blooded animals, from these to the mollusca, the 

 Crustacea, worms and insects, to the polypus, who forms the extreme 

 link of the animal chain, and lastly, to plants, of which not a few, like 



* The acute diseases of tropical countries, especially fever, prove more fatal to short 

 men, or those of middle size, than to the tall, 



j- The extraordinary development of an organ never takes place but at the expense 

 of those about it, of which it draws off the juices. Aristotle observes, that the lower 

 extremities are most always diy, and wasted in those who are of ardent temperament, 

 or in habits of frequent venery. Hippocrates relates in his work (De sere, locis, et aguis, 

 Foe's : fol. 293.) that the Scythian women seared their right breast, that the arm on 

 that side might grow in size and strength. Galen speaks of Athletes, who, in his time, 

 kept the sexual organs in the most entire inaction, that withered, shrunk, and perished, 

 in some sort, by this absolute repose, they might not draw off the nutritious juices 

 from the sole nourishment of the muscular organs. A young man, who several times 

 carried off the prize by runinng at the public fetes, abstained from venery for some 

 months, before entering 1 the lists, in perfect certainty of victorv. after this privation. 

 Author'? Mte. 



