166 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1075 



truth, but experimental proof was lacking. 

 We gather from ^sop's fable that it will 

 not do for the various members of the body 

 to fall out with one another, and the medi- 

 cine of an older time has long used the ex- 

 pression consensus partium as indicating 

 the interrelationship of the various organs. 

 Even in quite modern times this consensus 

 of the various organs was supposed to be 

 entirely effected through the intermedia- 

 tion of the nervous system, a view tersely 

 expressed by Cuvier when he said, 



Le Bystfeme neiveux est, au fond, tout 1 'animal, 

 ies autres systfemes ne sont la que pour le ser^ir. 



Side by side with this view of the pre- 

 ponderating role of the nervous system we 

 find the old humoral doctrine, having ob- 

 tained new support in Harvey's discovery 

 of the circulation, struggling to prove the 

 importance of the blood stream for the 

 interrelationship of the organs. In 1775, 

 Theophile de Bordeu^^ of Montpellier and 

 later Paris, a fashionable practitioner with 

 considerable knowledge of anatomy, pro- 

 pounded the doctrine that every organ lives 

 its own life and is the source of specific 

 chemical substances (humeurs partic- 

 ulieres) which are yielded up to the blood 

 and which are necessary to the integrity 

 of the body. The idea that every organ has 

 its own special life is repeated again and 

 again in Bordeu's writings: 



It must be remembered that each organic part 

 of the living organism has its own manner of ex- 

 istence, of acting, of feeling and of moving: each 

 has its own particular savor, structure, external 

 and internal make up, odor, weight, manner of 

 growth, of expanding and contracting; each com- 

 petes after its own manner and for its share in the 

 ensemble of all the functions, in the general life; 

 each organ, in brief, has its own life and its own 

 functions quite distinct from all others.-^ 



-2 See his ' ' Eecherches anatomiques sur la posi- 

 tion des glandes et sur leur action," Paris, 1752; 

 and his "Analyse mgdicinale du sang," 1776. 



23 P. 942, "Analyse mfidicinale du sang," Vol. 

 2, ' ' CEuvres competes de Bordeu, ' ' edited by Eich- 

 erand, Paris, 1818. 



From the organs the blood derives a 

 multitude of humors and "emanations" 

 (nuees d 'emanations qui composent et 

 animent le sang). 



Comparable at bottom to fecundated white of 

 egg, the blood (a fluid tissue which fills the ves- 

 sels of the body) is animated by the semen, that 

 is to say, it contains a eertairi quantity of semi- 

 tial emanations which vivify it; it contains in the 

 same way a portion of the bile, and also a portion 

 of the milky juices, especially in infancy and in. 

 women at the time of pregnancy; it contains a 

 colored part which is elaborated in the entrails; 

 it has serosity in abundance; it contains an ex- 

 tract of each glandular organ which contributes 

 its share to the emanations in which all the solid 

 parts (of the blood) swim; a certain quantity of 

 air; a portion of mucous substance. . . M 



Bordeu's theories in respect to the dis- 

 eases that are consequent to a superabun- 

 dance or wrong admixture of these various 

 special principles or emanations, his vari- 

 ous cachexias (cachexie bileuse, albumi- 

 neuse, etc.) can not be considered here. 



Three quarters of a century after Bordeu, 

 in 1849, we find a German professor of 

 physiology, in Gottingen, A. A. Berthold, 

 giving the first experimental proof of the 

 correctness of this theory. This experi- 

 menter, in a beautifully concise monograph 

 of only four pages, describes his experi- 

 ments upon young cockerels. By removing 

 the sex glands from their normal position 

 and transplanting them to another part of 

 the body (to the outer surfaces of the intes- 

 tine in the peritoneal cavity) where it was 

 impossible for them to expel a secretion or 

 to play any external role as sex glands, he 

 was able to prove that these glands have 

 two functions: (a) the well-known repro- 

 ductive function, and (&) an important 

 function in maintaining, as he says, the 

 "consensus partium." Such cockerels did 

 not show the changes that were seen in the 

 castrated bird ; on the contrary, they devel- 

 oped into the usual type, remaiaiag male 

 birds in respect to their vocal capacity, 



24 P. 1,006, Hid. 



