422 Observations on Organic Chemistry 



we can produce heat by rubbing together two pieces of wood, or of 

 metal ; there may be unknown sources of heat in the organism." As 

 if I had intended to prove the nature of heat ! or as if it were worth 

 while to enquire for unknown causes when the known ones give us a 

 satisfactory and perfect explanation ! What are unknown causes but 

 the offspring of the imagination, the issue and manifestation of weak- 

 ness, when the real causes of phenomena lie beyond the sphere of our 

 apprehension. 



Is the animal body a piece of wood or of metal, and can the same 

 cause which produces heat by friction exist in the organism ? And is 

 it not altogether apart from the question to mix up the production of 

 electricity in fishes with the enquiry into the production of animal 

 heat? The natural philosopher knows, with positive certainty, that 

 the electric currents in fishes are not the cause of their temperature ; if 

 they were so, these animals would not be able to produce electric effects. 



When Volta constructed his admirable pile, he thought he had 

 succeeded in making his apparatus similar in all points to the organs 

 upon the existence of which, in the gymnotus and torpedo, the power 

 of these animals to produce electricity depends. Is it in accordance 

 with the logic of science to consider electricity to be the cause of 

 phenomena and effects in organisms where no such apparatus can be 

 found? When we have positively, and beyond the admission of a 

 doubt, ascertained that nature herself, in order to produce electric cur- 

 rents, employs apparatus precisely similar to those which the philoso- 

 pher employs for the same purpose, is it possible to deduce any other 

 conclusion from this fact than that wherever we perceive electric effects 

 in the organism they originate in the same manner as the electric cur- 

 rent in the battery ? 



All the objections against my views which have hitherto come to my 

 knowledge are precisely similar in their character to this reference 

 of all the phenomena of heat to electricity. Berzelius says (23rd Annu- 

 al Report, page 383),—" When, in consequence of a violent mental emo- 

 tion, the feet of an individual acquires a temperature far below the nor- 

 mal temperature, while the forehead of the person thus affected feels 

 heated far beyond the normal temperature, must it not be obvious to 

 any reflecting mind that the mutual action between the constituents of 

 the aliments and oxygen cannot be said here to be the cause that the evolu- 

 tion of heat increases in one place and diminishes in another." 



What can be said to such an objection as this, except that Berzelius 

 has not understood what I intended to prove; that he has altogether 

 misconceived my object? 



