36-(6) MINERAL PHYSIOLOGY. 



tion from this conception that the art thus exercised 

 came to be called the practice of physic, that is to say of 

 nature, and that the drugs used in the treatment of dis- 

 ease were themselves often spoken of as physic. 



The history of the word physiology is not less curious 

 than that of physic. To the beginning of our own cen- 

 tury it still ke}>t the old sense in which it was used by 

 the writers of classic antiquity, as meaning the study of 

 nature in general. The physiologist was something more 

 than what we understand in modern speech by the term 

 naturalist, now generally limited to the student of organ- 

 ic nature ; — and included in the range of his studies all 

 natural phenomena. In Newton's time, terrestrial, at- 

 mospherical and astronomical problems, as well as min- 

 eralogical, botanical and zoological investigations, were 

 classed under the general title of physiology. There was 

 thus a physiology of the inorganic as of the organic 

 world, a terrestrial and a celestial physiology. 



It is by a limitation analogous to that which we have 

 already pointed out that, in our own time physiology 

 has come to be popularly understood to refer to the pro- 

 cesses and functions of vegetable and animal organisms ; 

 while the simpler processes of inorganic nature are in- 

 cluded under the title of physics. Thus, by a curious 

 anomaly in language, two terms having the same etymol- 

 ogy, and originally synonymous, have come to be used 

 in senses antagonistic and mutually exclusive of each 

 other ; physical being now generally employed in didac- 

 tic language to relations which are to be distinguished 

 from those now designated as physiological. Thus, in 

 our schools we speak of physical research and a phys- 

 ical laboratory, meaning thereby something wholly dis- 

 tinct from physiological research and a physiological 

 laboratory wherein are made investigations of vegetable 

 or of animal organisms; yet the professor of animal phys- 

 iology will still (like the professor of physics) in ordinary 

 speech use the adjective physical in its wider sense to 

 designate all the material activities of the human organ- 

 ism . 



The words physic, physical and physiology properly 

 apply to the world of nature as a Avhole. The study of 

 nature as generally defined, presents two great divisions, 

 the inorganic or mineral, and the organic. This latter 



