DR. PHILIP ON THE POWERS OF LIFE. 
355 
witnessed the results, that these functions were as effectually performed by it, as by 
that influence itself ; and the experiments were afterwards publicly repeated both in 
London* and Paris in the latter on a great variety of animals, and in both instances 
with the same results. In the first of my papers published in the Philosophical Trans- 
actions for 1829 entitled Some Observations relating to the Function of Digestion, 
several circumstances are enumerated which it is necessary to keep in view in con- 
ducting such experiments. 
Only one of the functions of the nervous influence now remained which had not 
been effected by voltaic electricity, the process by which animal temperature is main- 
tained. For the purpose of determining how far it is capable of this function, it was 
judged the most satisfactory means to expose the living blood to its effects, both in 
its arterial and venous state. If voltaic electricity operate on the same principle as 
the nervous influence, it will raise the temperature of the former, but not of the latter, 
which has already undergone the operation of that influence. Such was found to be 
the case. The arterial blood immediately rose several degrees on coming into contact 
with the voltaic wires, but there was no increase of temperature in the venous blood, 
although, in both instances, the blood was subjected to them as it flowed from the 
vessels ; it having appeared from previous experiments that the delay of even a few 
minutes, although no apparent change had taken place in the blood, and no elastic 
fluid had been disengaged from it, prevented any rise of temperature; so rapidly do 
some of the properties of living blood undergo a change after its removal from the 
vessels 
Such being the facts, I could no longer doubt that the nervous influence and vol- 
taic electricity are powers of a similar nature, and it appeared to me that this would 
be most convincingly illustrated, by causing the nervous influence to pass through 
other conductors than the nerves ; because such a fact would, independently of all 
others, prove that it is not a vital power properly so called, it being acknowledged 
on all sides that no such power admits of separation from the texture to which it 
belongs in the living animal. 
With this view I made many vain attempts, and hardly escaped the ridicule of my 
associates for expecting that the nervous influence could exist in any texture but that 
to which it belongs in the living animal. 
In the third edition of my Inquiry into the Laws of the Vital Functions, the reader 
* The Journal of the Royal Institution of London for 1822. See also the London Medical and Physical 
Journal for May, 1820, vol. xliii. p. 385. 
t De l’lnfluence du Systeme Nerveux sur la Digestion Stomachale ; par MM. Breschet, D.M.P., Chef de 
Travaux Anatomiques de la Facultd de MSdecine de Paris, &c. ; H. Milne -Edwards, D.M.P. ; et Vavas- 
seur, D.M.P. (Memoire lu a la Societe Philomatique, la 2 e Aout, 1823.) Extrait des Archives Ge'n&ales de 
M&decine, Aou, 1S23. 
+ See the second part of my Inquiry into the Laws of the Vital Functions, Experiments 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 
and 85. 
2 z 2 
