144 



NATURE 



[Dec. 2 1, 1871 



Physical and Vital." As I am very anxious that my 

 amende to Dr. Carpenter should be all that he could de- 

 sire, 1 shall deem it a favour to be permitted to publish 

 in Nature the passages to which, by marginal pencil 

 mirks, he has directed my attention. The first of them 

 is this : — 



" We now come to the memoir ' On the Mutual Rela- 

 tions of the Vital and Physical Forces,' communicated to 

 the Royal Society by Dr. Carpenter, which bears date 

 June 20, 1S50, and which is published in the ' Philosophical 

 Transactions' for last year. This, we believe, is the first 

 systematic attempt that has been made, in this country at 

 least, to work out the subject, and, as it is mainly an 

 expansion of the ideas which had been put forth in our o^n 

 pages at the beginning of 1848, the author may claim 

 priority as regards the enunciation and development of 

 the idea, both of Dr. Fowler and Dr. Radcliife, although 

 to a certain degree anticipated by iNIr. Newport. We 

 shall presently find, however, that both these gentlemen 

 were themselves anticipated in a quarter they little guessed, 

 and the whole case is obviously one of a kind of which 

 the history of physiology as well as of other sciences 

 furnishes many examples, in which a connecting idea, 

 developed in another department of inquiry, struck many 

 individuals at once as applicable to the same class of 

 facts, and was wrought out by them in different modes, 

 and ^^■ith various degrees of success, according to their 

 previous habits of thought." 



The impersonal way in which this and other passages 

 of the article distribute merit among scientific authors 

 caused me to ask Dr. Carpenter who wrote it. His reply 

 to me was " 1 thou-;ht I had made it sufficiently plain 

 to you that the article was written by myself" 



Here follow the other marked passages quoted in 

 full :— 



" We must not omit, however, to give our readers some 

 account of the remarkable production of Dr. Mayer, who 

 seems to have arrived at conclusions in all essential 

 respects similar to those of Prof Grove and Dr. Carpenter 

 previously to the publication of the first edition of the 

 ' Correlation of the Physical Forces,' though subsequently 

 to the delivery of the lectures in which Prof Grove first 

 announced his views and to the publication of the abstract 

 of them. Of the existence of this treatise we have only 

 recently been made aware, and we venture to affirm that 

 Prof. Grove and Dr. Carpenter were alike ignorant of it. 

 We bring it before the public now, both as an act of 

 juslice to its author, and also because it affords additional 

 evidence in favour of the Correlation doctrine, that it 

 should have been independently worked out by a clear 

 and intelligent thinker. 



" The first part of Dr. Mayer's treatise is concerned 

 entirely with physical forces. He starts with the two 

 axioms, ' Ex nihilo nil fit,' and ' Nil fit ad nihilum,' and 

 founds upon abstract considerations his first argument for 

 the unity of force, and for the convertibility of those 

 which are commonly accounted distinct forces. Of this 

 convertibility he then proceeds to adduce experimental 

 proof, in very much the same mode wiih Prof. Grove, 

 and he at last arrives at the following scheme e.^pressive 

 of their relations. 



1. P'orce of Gravity. | Mechanical Force. 



2. Motion. i Mechanical Effect. 

 A. Simple. 



1j. Undulating, vibiatory. 

 i 3. Heat. 

 Imponderables. I 4. Magnetism, Electri- 

 ( city. Galvanic current. 

 5. Chemical decomposi- 

 tion of certain ele- 

 ments. \ 

 Chemical combination I 

 of certain other ele- 

 ments. J 



Chemical 

 Force. 



" He then passes on to the study of vital phenomena, 

 and he finds, like Dr. Carpenter, the source of all change 

 in the living oganism, as well animal as vegetable, in 

 the forces acting upon it ab externa ; whilst the changes 

 in its own composition he considers to be the immediate 

 sourci of the forces which are generated in it. He 

 does not enter, like Dr. Carpenter, into an analysis of 

 the phenomena of growth and development, but fixes his 

 attention rather upon the production of heat, light, elec- 

 tricity, and (above all) motion by living bodies, and aims 

 to show that all these forces are developed in the course 

 of material changes in the organism, and hold a certain 

 definite relation to them. On these points his exposition 

 is very full and complete, and the perusal of his essay 

 will amply repay any who desire to see how much miy be 

 done in imparting precision and clearness to physiological 

 reasoning by minds trained in the school of exact science." 



To these passages I would add one other brief quotation 

 regarding the conversion of heat into electricity : — 



■' Of the production of electricity by heat, the 

 phenomena first brought into view by Seebeck, and known 

 under the name of 'thermo-electricity,' afford the most 

 characteristic example. When dissimilar metals are made 

 to touch, or are soldered together, and are heated at tire 

 point of contact, a current of electricity is set in motion, 

 which has a definite direction according to the mital 

 employed, and which continues as long as an increasing 

 temperature is pervading them, ceasing when the tempera- 

 ture is siationary, and flowing in the contrary direction 

 whilst it is decreasing" (pp. 213-14). 



Having thus, it may be tardily, done justice to Dr. 

 Carpenter, a very few words regarding his letter will com- 

 plete the subject. 



1. Dr. Carpenter has «6i/ correctly apprehended what I 

 said at the dinner of the Royal Society in regard to Dr. 

 Mayer. Neither at that dinner nor on any other occasion 

 did I say that the ignorance of Mayer's labours in this 

 country was " cntii-e.'" 



2. I have not been altogether unmindful of Dr. Car- 

 penter's desire to have his name mentioned in con- 

 nection with this subject. In the printed report of 

 the lecture referred to by Dr. Carpenter, delivered 

 not in 1863 but in 1862, and published in the Pro- 

 ceedings of the Royal Institution for that year, 

 these words appear — " Mayer's physiological writings 

 have been referred to by physiologists — by Dr. Car- 

 penter, for example — in terms of honouring recogni- 

 tion. We have hitherto, indeed, obtained fragmentary 

 glimpses of the man, partly from physicists, partly from 

 physiologists ; but his total merit has never yet been 

 recognised as it assuredly would have been had he chosen 

 a happier mode of publication." 



3. If this be not sufficient, my error was one of ignor- 

 ance, not of will ; for it is an entirely new idea to me that 

 Dr. Carpenter regarded his relationship to Dr. INlaycr in 

 the light of a " spontaneous abdication," and it explains 

 to me, what I could not previously understand, the im- 

 portance attached by Dr. Carpenter to the passages above 

 quoted. 



4. 1 have looked at p. 227, and, indeed, throughout the 

 entire article mXhz Medico-Chirurgical Kcviexv (and else- 

 where), for evidence to prove that " at that date " (or at 

 any other date), Dr. Carpenter had "correctly appre- 

 hended Mayer's fundamental idea," which is that of 

 quantitative or numerical equivalence. Had I found such 

 evidence, it would give m.e sincere pleasure to reproduce 

 it here, but my search for it has not been successful. 



5. This however entirely depends on my ability to 

 appreciate such evidence. Holding the opinion that he 

 does regarding the claims of his work to public recogni- 

 tion. Dr. Carpenter is perfectly consistent in deraandmg 

 that even in an after-dinner speech those claims shall not 

 be ignored. 



John Tyndall 



