376 
DR. PHILIP ON THE POWERS OF LIFE. 
within such limit, is so trifling that it may be safely overlooked. Hence it is that the 
vital system appears to possess an excitability which is not exhausted by stimulants 
except when applied in excess. It is essential, we have seen, in the treatment of 
disease to keep in view these properties of all agents capable of influencing the func- 
tions of life, that we may, as much as the nature of the case admits of, keep within 
the stimulant range of our remedies ; and within that range, as far as possible, avoid 
the degree of excitement which produces sensible exhaustion of the vital organs. 
WITH respect to the nature of the powers of the living animal which we have 
been considering, the sensorial and muscular powers and the powers peculiar to living 
blood we have found belong to the living animal alone, all their peculiar properties 
being the properties of life. The functions of life may be divided into two classes, 
those which are effected by the properties of this principle alone, and those, by far 
the more numerous class, which result from the cooperation of these properties, 
with those of the principles which operate in inanimate nature. The nervous power 
we have found to be a modification of one of the latter principles, because it can 
exist in other textures than those to which it belongs in the living animal, and we 
can substitute for it one of those principles without disturbing the functions of life. 
Late discoveries have been gradually evincing how far more extensive, than was 
supposed, even a few years ago, is the dominion of Electricity. Magnetism, chemical 
affinity and (I believe, from the facts stated in the foregoing paper, it will be impos- 
sible to avoid the conclusion) the nervous influence, the leading power in the vital 
functions of the animal frame properly so called, appear all of them to be modifica- 
tions of this apparently universal agent ; for I may add, we have already some 
glimpses of its still more extensive dominion. 
IN the preceding paper my objects have been to review the whole of the functions 
of the more perfect animal, to ascertain the nature of the powers on which they de- 
pend, the seat of each of these powers, the manner in which they are employed in 
effecting their several functions, and the manner in which they are associated in pro- 
ducing their more complicated results. Nothing in any part of the subject has been 
taken for granted, no position having been advanced without a reference to the obser- 
vations or experiments on which it is founded. 
I have here for the first time made an attempt which could not be done till all the 
facts on the subject had been ascertained, to point out the manner in which the 
different powers of the living animal influence each other, and thus conduce to their 
more complicated results ; by which, being enabled to analyse these results, it might 
easily, were this the proper place, be shown, that we better see the operation of its 
different powers in the various deviations from a state of health, and can, under cer- 
tain circumstances, better regulate the means of obviating them. 
