V H Y 
421 
PHY 
P H Y 
Physetertursio, high-finned eaehalot. This 
is particularly distinguished by the great 
length and narrow form of its dorsal fin, which 
is placed almost upright on the back, and is 
said by some authors to appear at a distance 
like the mast of a small ship; the animal 
growing, if we may believe report, to the 
length of a hundred feet. In its general ap- 
pearance it is said much to resemble the 
former species, of which it may perhaps be a 
variety rather than truly distinct; but so 
much obscurity still prevails with respect to 
the cetaceous animals, that this point must 
be considered as very doubtful. 
PHYSICIANS. No person within Lon- 
don, nor within seven miles of the same, shall 
exercise as a physician or surgeon, except he 
is examined and approved by the bishop of 
London, or by the dean of St. Paul’s, calling 
to them four doctors of physic, and for sur- 
gery, other expert persons in that faculty, of 
them _ that have been approved; upon the 
pain of forfeiture for every month 5 1. one 
half to the king, and the other half to any 
that will sue. 3 H. VIII. c. 11. 
One that has taken his degree of doctor of 
physic in either of the universities, may not 
practise in London, and within seven mfiesof 
the same, without licence from the college of 
physicians. And it has been held, that if a 
person, not duly authorized to be a physician 
or surgeon, undertakes a cure, and the patient 
dies under his hands, he is guilty of felony; 
but he is not excluded from the benefit of 
clergy. 
PHYSICS, called also physiology, and 
natural philosophy, is the doctrine of natural 
bodies, their phenomena, causes, and effects, 
with their various affections, mo ions, opera- 
tions, &c. So that the immediate and proper 
objects of physics, are body, space, and mo- 
tion. 
PHYSIOLOGY is a word which, in its 
etymological signification, comprehends, the 
science of nature in general; modem use, 
however, has restricted it to that department 
of physical knowledge which lias atone rela- 
tion to organic existence; and, indeed, when 
employed as a generic term, without any 
specific indication, it is made exclusively to 
denote the science of animal life. Natural- 
ly organized bodies are those which have 
“ an origin by generation, a growth by nu- 
trition, and a "termination by death.” In en- 
deavouring, however, to mark the precise 
distinction between living or organic, and 
matter which is inanimate or destitute of vi- 
tality, it will be found of considerable import 
to ascertain the prime characteristic of either, 
or that to which all other laws influencing 
them act in subordination. 
It is indivisibility, or mutual connection of 
parts with the whole, which appears to con- 
stitute the essential character of a living or- 
ganized body. “ The mode of existence in 
each part of inanimate matter belongs to itself, 
but in living bodies it resides in the whole.” 
Separate a single branch from a tree in the 
full vigour of vegetation, and the part thus 
separated shall immediately droop, and shall 
shortly die; that is, it will cease to be influ- 
enced as formerly by air, heat, and other 
powers which support vegetation ; will no 
longer display those phenomena which had 
'previously resulted from the agency of such 
powers ; will become, in. the language of the 
11 
Rrunonian philosophy, unexcitable, and sub* 
ject to the government of new laws. In the ani- 
mal creation, also, the same effect will result 
from the same- process ; if a limb is sepa- 
rated from an animal body, the life of such 
limb, without any apparent injury to its or- 
ganization, will be inevitably destroyed. 
Supposing we have thus reduced organic to 
inorganic, living to dead matter, in an ani- 
mal body, for instance, let us pursue our ex- 
periments on the material thus changed; let 
the part to which we have given a new mode 
of existence be itself divided, and we shall 
now find nothing of the like result, as in the 
first process, to take place ; its quality by this 
last operation will only be altered inasmuch 
as its quantity is diminished. Each part will 
be found to have a separate and independant 
existence. There has been no connecting 
integral principle interfered with ; and, placed 
exactly under the same external circum- 
stances, an identity in the mode of existence 
would be retained to the end of time bv each 
division. Let us pursue our experiments 
still further. Let us subject the two parts to 
a difference of external circumstance ; en- 
close one in an atmosphere of 40° of heat, the 
other in 100°, and the consequence will be a 
deprivation of that identity which till now 
they had retained. Each part will not con- 
tinue- the same mass of dead matter, but will 
assume a new character. Now it will be 
evident that in these experiments we have 
operated an essential change ; and in each, of 
an essentially different nature. By seperat- 
ing a part from the whole of an organic body, 
we effect the loss of its vitality, even though 
such external agents shall continue to be ap- 
plied as previously operated its life and 
growth. By a further mechanical separation 
we do not effect an alteration in quality, in 
any other wav than as this will depend on 
quantity, until we occasion a change in exte- 
rior agents ; by which change, however, we 
finally ensure an actual alteration of principle 
or composition, as well as of aggregate 
power. 
We have thus endeavoured to illustrate the 
simple and prime characteristic of organic as 
separated from inorganic being. But physi- 
ology we have said, according to the general 
acceptation of the word, confines its researches 
to animal life; what this last has peculiar to 
itself, it will be proper further to state. The 
usual division of organized existence is into 
animal and vegetable; the former possessing 
those faculties from which result sensation 
and loco-motion ; the latter being destitute of 
such faculties : an opinion indeed has recently 
been hazarded that such division is unfounded, 
and artificial ; that vegetable and animal life 
are subject to the same laws; that plants are 
not merely organized, but animalized; that 
their motions indicate sensation and conse- 
quent volition. To enquire into the grounds 
of these assumptions, does not fail within the 
province of the present article ; we are to take 
for granted the negative of the proposition, 
and proceed to consider first, the primary fa- 
culties, and secondly, the resulting functions, 
of those existences which are universally ac- 
knowledged to be, possessed of the powers of 
feeling and of motion, and are truly and evi- 
dently animalized. 
Of Sensibility, Irritability, and the Vital 
Principle. 
Sensibility has been defined, the faculty 
which organs have of feeling; the aptitude 
they possess of perceiving, by the contact of 
an extraneous body, an impression more or 
less powerful, which changes the order of 
their motions, accelerates or retards, sup- 
presses or completes them. “This faculty,” 
says the author from whom we have taken 
the definition (M. Richerand), “ generally 
diffused in our organs, does not exist in all to 
the same degree. In some it is obscure and 
scarcely apparent, and seems reduced to a 
degree absolutely indispensable for the fluids 
to determine "the actions necessary to the 
functions they ought to perform. It should 
seem that no part of the body can do without 
this sensibility absolutely necessary for life. 
Without it, how could various organs act 
upon the blood, to draw from it the means of 
their nutrition, or materials for the different 
secretions? Therefore this degree of sensi- 
bility is common to every thing which has 
life; to animals and vegetables; to a man 
when asleep and awake; to the foetus, and the 
infant; to the organs of assimilating functions; 
and to those which put us on a level with sur- 
rounding beings. This low degree of sensa- 
tion could not have been sufficient for the ex- 
istence of man, and of beings resembling 
him, exposed to numerous connections with 
every thing that surrounds them; therefore 
they possess a sensibility far superior, by 
which the impressions affecting certain organs 
are perceived, judged, compared, &c. This 
sort of sensibility would be more properly- 
called perceptibility, or the faculty of judg- 
ing of the motions experienced. It requires 
a centre to which the impressions have a mu- 
tual relation; therefore it only exists, in ani- 
mals which, like man, have a brain, or some- 
thing equivalent in its place ; whilst zoophytes 
and vegetables, not possessing this central' or- 
gan, are both destitute of this faculty; how- 
ever, polypi, and several plants, as the sensi- 
tive, have certain spontaneous motions, which 
seem to indicate the existence of volition, and 
consequently of perceptibility ; but these ac- 
tions, like that of a muscle from the thigh of 
a frog excited by the galvanic stimulus, are 
occasioned by an impression that does not 
extend beyond the part itself, and in which 
sensibility and contractility exist in a con- 
fused state.” Elements of Physiology by 
A. Richerand, translated edition. 
By the above definition and description of 
simple sensibility, as opposed to percepti- 
bility, it will appear that our author does not 
consider sensation as the necessary conse- 
quence of the faculty which he terms sensi- 
bility. 
The author, however, whom we have 
quoted, admits that this kind of latent and 
imperceptible sensibility “ cannot be exactly- 
compared to that of vegetables, since the 
parts in which it resides, generally possessing 
such a small share of sensibility in a state of 
health, have an increased or percipient de- 
gree of sensibility when in a state of disease 
and after giving examples of this, he adds, 
“ should it not be suspected that if we have 
not a consciousness of impressions made upon 
our organs by the fluids contained in them 
during health, it is from our being accustom- 
ed to the sensations they excite almost unin- 
terruptedly, of which, we have only a con- 
fused perception, that terminates impercep- 
tibly? And may we not be permitted in this 
point of view to compare these organs to. 
