ROCKY MOUNTAIN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 1 9 
No science comprehensive in its scope and capable 
of progress can reasonably hope to escape contests 
condensed its atmosphere at the surface from nebulous matter, 
which aggregated first into bands and then into isolated spheres, thus 
commencing the formation of new revolving suns and planets. It is 
supposed the earth and all the other planets were in time thrown off from 
the sun's surface into space to revolve as independent bodies in defined 
orbits. There was in this theory a period when, in the language of 
the Bible, "the earth w^as without form and void." In the consider- 
ation of such a problem we are compelled to estimate measures of time 
or eons stretching so far back into eternity as to be incomprehensible 
to man. Calculations as to the time required for the condensation of 
the sun's original atmosphere and the radiation of its heat into space, 
have also been made by Sir William Thompson, showing that it must 
have required millions upon millions of years. One of these estimates 
is put down at 500,000,000 years. The hypothesis that the earth 
passed in its process of condensation from a gas to a semi-fluid molten 
mass, and that it is still liquid toward the center and is gradually cool- 
ing, is generally accepted. Professor Haughton, in a lecture on geol- 
ogy, estimates that it required 350,000,000 years for the earth to cool 
from 2,000° to 200° centigrade ; that the time required for cooling from 
212° (temperature of boiling water) to 122° Fahrenheit (at which or- 
ganic life is possible) would require 1,018,000,000 years, and that it 
would require 1,280,000,000 years to cool from 122° F. to 77° F. 
(Pre-Glaciai Man, by J. S. Moor, p. 7.) 
As a further illustration of the subject, I present the chemical theory 
of the formation of our globe out of the sixty-four elements, supposed 
by Laplace to have been thrown off from the surface of the sun, in a 
state of vapor, at a high degree of heat. This abstract is arranged from 
views of Lockyer, Metscherlich, Daubree, and T. Sterry Hunt, but more 
particularly from the recent able presentation of the subject before the 
Washington Philosophical Society, by Dr. Thomas Antisell. It has 
been estimated that the temperature of the incandescent atmosphere 
when it left the sun had a heat of at least 22,000° centigrade. A 
degree of heat such as this was sufficient to vaporize all the elements 
composing the earth and keep them in a gaseous state. All molecules 
and substances of every kind were thus held in a condition of disso- 
ciation, and no solid could form until the temperature had fallen to or 
below 2,500°. The time required for the cooling of the primal atmos- 
