REVIEWS — HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY. 247 



popularity of their author, and his pre-eminent power of awakening 

 interest in the subjects to which he is devoted ; they also form a noble 

 and durable monument of his genius and learning, which his friends 

 and his adopted country will contemplate with proud gratification. 



W. H. 



Human Physiology, Statical and Dynamical : or, the conditions and 

 course of the life of man. By John "William Draper, M. D., LL.D., 

 Professor of Chemistry and Physiology in the University of New 

 York, Harper & Brothers, New York. 1856. 

 Well may a retrospect of the last thirty years bring to the chemist 

 cause for congratulation and quiet triumph ; for during that period 

 the march of chemistry has been an ever-accelerating, almost culmi- 

 nating power, and ever more comprehensive in its application to the 

 laws of physiology : indeed far beyond that period its influence and 

 history may be traced even to the latro-chemical schools of the middle 

 of the 17th century. But we have no msh to recall that time, not 

 from shame, however ; and we prefer leaving the statement as it is, 

 inasmuch as exact chemistry may justly be said to date from the dis- 

 covery of oxygen in 1772, and its association with the phenomena of 

 life in rational connection cannot strictly be placed at a period earlier 

 than that given, viz., at thirty or forty years past. 



At this day more than at any other, without figure, the chemist 

 perceives that the cosmos — universal nature — is an illimitable labora- 

 tory : — that in the abyss where sparkle distant worlds, and in the micro- 

 scopic cell, its laws are unremittingly at work producing those cosmic 

 mutations and transformations by which planets are built up, and, as 

 in ours, are probably stratified and geologically arranged ; and that in 

 cell evolution its affinities are unweariedly developing those com- 

 plex relations which end in the expanded membrane — the deployed 

 tissue — the rolled canal — the elongated fibre — the rigid bone — the 

 perfected animal : — whole — complete — self-contained — independent. 



If we trace the influence of chemistry in explaining the functions 

 of organisms — which is nothing other than an assemblage or system 

 of organs — beyond the last forty years, we shall find that from the time 

 of Scheele, Priestley, and Lavoisier, almost up to that of Liebig, little 

 disposition was shown to give it the prominence which in later years, 

 at first sparingly and with reluctance, and more recently without 

 stint, has been, conceded. Look at the history of oxygen which 



