rroLOGY

R

G

NATURE AND LIFE.

FACTS AND DOCTRINES RELATING TO

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER, THE NEW DYNAMICS,
AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE.

BY

FERNAND PAPILLOK

TRANSLATED FROM THE SECOND FRENCH EDITION, BY

A. E. MAODONOCTGH, ESQ.

NEW YOKE:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,

549 AND 551 BKOADWAY.

1875.

1 '

BIOLOGY

LIBRARY

G

ENTEEED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by

IX APPLETON & COMPANY,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR

THIS volume contains a series of essays written and
published at different times, some of a general charac-
ter, and others more special, and all relating to the
activity of natural forces, especially those of life. The
mere bringing together of these fragments has present-
ed an opportunity of completing a methodical and uni-
form whole, combining exactness in details with gen-
erality of doctrines, and distinctly tracing the precise
aspect of each group of phenomena in the picture of
the close and universal relations that bind the whole
together. An exposition is thus offered under an ele-
mentary form, in language freed from technical dress,
of the most essential truths established of late by phys-
ics, chemistry, and biology, regarding the mechanism
of natural forces, and the arrangement and combina-
tion of the fundamental springs of being in the world,
especially in the living world. I indulge the hope that
such a work might meet a kindly welcome from minds,
ever increasingly numerous, that regard science as the
subject neither of idle curiosity nor of passing entertain-
ment, but as the object of earnest sympathy and of se-

iv PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR.

rious examination. Such, at least, is the principal pur-
pose of this book.

It has another, also. The evident disposition of the
present day is to repose infinite hopes on the natural
sciences, and to expect unlimited benefits from them.
I certainly shall not view this inclination as an illu-
sion, and this volume sufficiently attests the high value
I set upon all that can encourage and foster such feel-
ings. But precisely because I am not suspected of en-
mity to those sciences, it has seemed to me the more
necessary to indicate a fatal mistake accompanying
those commendable sentiments; I mean the mistake
of those who, after loudly praising the excellence of
science, denounce the weakness and deny the author-
ity of metaphysics.

Now, my reader will come upon more than one
page manifestly inspired by the conviction that science,
properly so called, does not satiate the mind eager to
know and to understand, and that therefore metaphys-
ics holds a large and an authorized place in the activity
of human thought. While I have retouched every thing
in these essays which seemed to me, from an exclusively
scientific point of view, susceptible of a higher degree
of exactness and precision, I have, on the contrary,
preserved with jealous care the literal tenor of all the
passages expressly written under the influence of that
conviction. And I have done so, not because of any
peculiar value in those reflections, many of which are
nothing more than a very imperfect representation of

PKEFACE BY THE AUTHOR v

my way of -seeing, but because those reflections were
then made for the first time, with absolute spontaneous-
ness, and without the slightest system or premeditation.
The reader will thus be able to see how general ideas
naturally emerge from deep and close contemplation of
a group of various details, how forcible their unsought
impression is ; in other words, how surely thought, fol-
lowing orderly and regular evolution, without studied
intention as without dogmatic aim, arrives at the loftiest
philosophic certainties.

The thinker who freely seeks for truth, continuously
changes his position in his aspirations toward mind and
the ideal. He deserts the regions of phenomena and
concrete things, to rise to those of the absolute and
eternal. The farther he withdraws from the former,
which had at first absorbed all his attention, the more
strikingly does the perspective in which he viewed
them alter. At last, he discerns nothing else in them
but spectres without substance, and delusive phantoms.
And in the degree and extent of his drawing near to
the eternal and the absolute, reality comes more surely
within his ken, and he gains a more vivid feeling and a
keener conception of it. He measures the distance he
has traversed, and values the worth of his own contem-
plations by the fullness of lucid clearness which enlight-
ens his faint view of the first principles of things, and
by the depth of humble reverence with which he bows
before the mysterious Power which created all !

CONCARNEAU (FlNISTERRE), May, 1873.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER, AND THE NEW DYNAMISM.. 1
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, AND LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS...... 30

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS 62

LIGHT AND LIFE 101

HEAT AND LIFE 129

ELECTRICITY AND LIFE 165

ODORS AND LIFE 179

MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE 204

ANIMAL GRAFTS AND EEGENERATIONS 229

FERMENTS, FERMENTATIONS, AND LIFE 255

GREAT EPIDEMICS — ASIATIC CHOLERA 278

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH 303

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, AND IN PSYCHOLOGY. 330

NATTJEE AND LIFE,

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER, AND THE
NEW DYNAMISM.

WHATEVER empirics and utilitarians may say on the
subject, there are certainties apart from the experimental
method, and there is progress disconnected with brilliant
or beneficent applications. The mind of man may put forth
its power in laboring in harmony with reason, yet discover
genuine truths in a sphere as far above that of laboratories
and manufactures as their sphere is above the region of the
coarsest arts. In a word, there is a temple of light that
unfolds its portals to the soul neither through calculation
nor through experiment, which the soul nevertheless enters
with authority and confidence, so long as it holds the con-
sciousness of its sovereign prerogatives. When will pro-
fessed scientists, better informed of the close connection be-
tween metaphysics and science, whence our modern knowl-
edge of Nature has sprung, better taught in the necessary
laws that govern the conflict of reason with the vast un-
known, confess that there are realities beyond those they
attain ? When will science, instead of the arrogant indif-
ference it assumes in presence of philosophy, admit the fer-
tility beyond estimate of the latter ? It may be that the
hour of this reconciliation, so much to be longed for, is less
remote than many suppose ; at least, every day brings us

2 NATURE AND LIFE.

nearer to it. The spirit of Descartes cannot fail to arouse
before long some genius mighty enough to revive among
us a taste and respect for thought in all the departments
of scientific activity. Deserted as high abstractions are for
the moment, they are not, thank Heaven, so utterly aban-
doned as to deprive study of its ardor, and essays of their
success, when these relate to the problem of the constitu-
tion of matter. In fact, this is a question which for several
years past has occupied some among our own savants and
thinkers, as completely as it has employed most of those
of the rest of Europe, a question which bears witness with
peculiar eloquence to this fact, that, if philosophers are
forced to borrow largely from science, in its turn science
can retain clearness, and elevation, and strength, only by
drawing its inspiration from, and recognizing its insepa-
rable connection with, the abstract consideration of hidden
causes and of first principles.

Matter is presented under a great variety of appear-
ances. Let us consider it in its most complicated state, in
the human body, for instance. In this, ordinary dissection
distinguishes organs, which may be resolved into tissues.
The disintegration of the latter yields anatomical elements
from which direct analysis extracts a certain number of
chemical principles. Here the anatomist's work ends. The
chemist steps in, and recognizes in these principles definite
kinds arising from the combination, in fixed and determi-
nate proportions, of a certain number of principles that can-
not be decomposed, substantially indestructible, to which
he gives the name of simple bodies. Carbon, nitrogen,
oxygen, hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, calcium, iron, which
thus set a limit to experimental analysis of the most com-
plex bodies, are simple substances, that is to say, they are
the original and irresolvable radicals of the tissue of things.

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 3

We DOW know that matter is not indefinitely divisible,
and that the smallest parts of the various simple substances
existing in those that are naturally compound have not all
the same dimensions, nor equal weights. Chemistry, by a
course of analyses and measurements, has succeeded in de-
termining the weights of atoms of the different elements,
that is to say, taking as a unit an atom of the lightest ele-
ment, hydrogen, in determining the weight of the atoms
which are equivalent to this conventional unit in the various
combinations. Though many savants continue to maintain
that atomic weights are nothing but relations, and that
the existence of atoms is a mere logical device, it seems
more reasonable to admit, with the majority of those who
have studied this difficult problem closely, that these atoms
are actual realities, while it may be very far from easy to
settle precisely their absolute dimensions. In any case, we
may affirm that these dimensions are very much less than
those presented by the particles of matter subjected to the
most powerful and subtile methods of division, or decom-
posed by the imagination into its minutest elements. " Let
man," says Pascal, " investigate the smallest things of all
he knows ; let this dot of an insect, for instance, exhibit to
him in its diminutive body parts incomparably more dimin-
utive, jointed limbs, veins in those limbs, blood in those
veins, in that blood humors, and drops within those humors
— let him, still subdividing these finest points, exhaust his
power of conception, and let the minutest object his fancy
can shape be that one of which we are now speaking — he
may, perhaps, suppose that to be the extreme of minute-
ness in Nature. I will make him discover yet a new abyss
within it. I will draw for him not merely the visible uni-
verse but all besides that his imagination can grasp, the
immensity of Nature, within the confines of that impercep-
tible atom." In this Pascal displays a feeling as true as it
is deep of the infinitely small, and it is interesting to ob-

4 NATURE AND LIFE.

serve how the amazing revelations of the microscopic world
have justified his eloquence and foresight ; and yet this mi-
croscopic world, whose minutest representatives, such as
vibrios and bacteria, are hardly less than the ten-thousandth
part of ^5- of an inch, how coarse it is compared with the
particles thrown off by odorous bodies, and with the incon-
ceivably minute quantities which chemistry, physics, and
mechanics, now measure without seeing them, or make
their existence plain without grasping them. We may
mention some instances which can give us an idea of these.
According to Tyndall, when very minute solid particles,
smaller than the luminous waves, are diffused in a medi-
um traversed by light, the light is decomposed in such a
way that the least waves, the blue ones, predominate in
the reflected rays, and the largest ones, the red waves, in
the transmitted rays. This ingenious physicist thus ex-
plains how the blue color of the sky depends and must de-
pend on the existence of solid particles, excessively minute,
diffused in infinite quantity through the atmosphere. Tyn-
dall is not disinclined to the idea that these imperceptible
atoms might very well be no other than those germs of
microscopic organisms the presence of which in the atmos-
phere has been proved by the labors of Pasteur, as well as
the part they take in the phenomena of putrefaction and fer-
mentation. The ova of these beings, which are barely vis-
ible under the microscope after attaining full development,
and of which the number, ascertained by the most decisive
evidence, confounds the boldest imagination, these would be
the elements of that vital ether, as we have termed it, that
dust which gives its lovely blue tint to the vault of the sky.
" There exist in the atmosphere," Tyndall says in closing,
" particles of matter that elude the microscope and the scales,
which do not disturb its clearness, and yet are present in
it in so immense a multitude that the Hebrew hyperbole
of the number of grains of sand on the sea-shore becomes

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 5

comparatively unmeaning." And, to give an idea of the
minuteness of these particles, Tyndall adds that they might
be condensed till they would all go into a lady's traveling-
bag. Manifestly these particles escape any kind of direct
measurement arid observation. Their objective reality can
no more be demonstrated than that of the particles of ether
can be made evident. Yet there are certain facts which
aid us to form a clear conception of them. Let us dissolve
a gramme of resin in a hundred times its weight of alcohol,
then pour the clear solution into a large flask full of pure
water, and shake it briskly. The resin is precipitated in
the form of an impalpable and invisible powder, which does
not perceptibly cloud the fluid. If, now, we place a black
surface behind the flask, and let the light strike it either
from above or in front, the liquid appears sky-blue. Yet, if
this mixture of water and alcohol filled with resinous dust
is examined with the strongest microscope, nothing is seen.
The size of the grains of this dust is much less than the ten-
thousandth part of ^g- of an inch. Morren makes another
experiment, proving in a still more surprising way the ex-
treme divisibility of matter : Sulphur and oxygen form a
close combination, called by chemists sulphuric-acid gas.
It is that colorless and suffocating vapor thrown off when a
sulphur-match is burned. Morren confines a certain quan-
tity of this gas in a receiver, places the whole in a dark
medium, and sends a bright ray of light through it. At
first nothing is visible. But very soon in the path of the
luminous ray we perceive a delicate blue color. It is be-
cause the gas is decomposed by the luminous waves, and
the invisible particles of sulphur set free decompose the
light in turn. The blue of the vapor deepens, then it turns
whitish, and at last a white cloud is produced. The par-
ticles composing this cloud are still each by itself invisible,
even under strong microscopes, and yet they are infinitely
more coarse than the primitive atoms that occasioned the

6 NATURE AND LIFE.

sky-blue tint at first seen in the receiver. In this experiment
we pass in steady progress from the free atom of sulphur
parted from the oxygen-atom by the ether-waves to a mass
apparent to the senses ; but, if this mass is made up of iree
molecules which defy the strongest magnifiers, what must
be the particles which have produced those very molecules !

A last instance of another kind will complete the proof
as to the minuteness of the elements of matter. "When a
clear solution of sulphate of aluminum is poured into an
equally clear solution of sulphate of potassa, the mixture
at once grows turbid, and after a few seconds myriads of
little crystals, sparkling like diamonds, make their appear-
ance in the liquid, which are nothing else than crystals of
alum. If we suppose the diameter of these crystals to be
•^ of an inch, it will follow from this experiment that in
the lapse of a few seconds crystals had the power of pro-
ducing themselves containing tens of millions of molecules,
each composed of ninety-four atoms, grouped in admirable
harmony. The motions of these chemical atoms take place
under the influence of the same forces that guide the
motions of those enormous agglomerations of atoms called
stars. The revolution of one sun around another takes a
thousand years, while these atoms in course of combination
perform hundreds of millions of such revolutions in the
millionth part of a second !

By varied and delicate calculations, Thomson has suc-
ceeded in establishing the fact that, in liquids and trans-
parent or translucent solids, the mean distance between the
centres of two contiguous atoms is comprised between the
ten-millionth and the two-hundred-millionth part of -^ of an
inch. It is not easy to form an exact conception of dimen-
sions so small, of which nothing, among the objects that
affect our senses, can convey any idea. Thomson judges
that the following comparison may aid us to appreciate
them : If we imagine a sphere as large as a pea magnified,

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 7

so as almost to equal the earth's volume, and the atoms of
that sphere enlarged in the same proportion, they will then
have a diameter greater than that of a shot, and less than
that of an orange. In other words, an atom is to a globe
the size of a pea what an apple is to the terrestrial globe.
By arguments of quite another kind, drawn in part from the
study of chemical molecules, in part from the phenomena
of capillarity, Gaudin has ascertained, for the dimension of
the smallest particles of matter,, figures very nearly the
same as Thomson's. The maximum distance apart of the
chemical atoms in molecules is the ten-millionth part of -^
of an inch. Gaudin follows Thomson in the attempt to give
some sensible notion of the truly amazing minuteness of a
dimension like this. He calculates, upon this estimate, the
number of chemical atoms contained in about the size of a
pin's-head, and he finds that the number requires for its ex-
pression the figure eight followed by twenty-one ciphers.
So that, if we attempted to count the number of metallic
atoms contained in a large pin's-head, separating each sec-
ond ten millions of them, we should need to continue the
operation for more than 250,000 years !

There are, then, atoms in matter, and atomism is a fact,
whenever we rest in the affirmation of the existence of
atoms. But these are not the real principles, the simple
and irreducible elements of the world. After decompos-
ing sensible matter into atoms, we must subject the latter
to an analysis of the same kind. Let us, then, consider
any two heterogeneous atoms whatever, an atom of iron
and an atom of hydrogen, for instance, and examine in
what respect they can really, essentially, differ from each
other. What is it which at bottom truly distinguishes
these two atoms, as atoms ? It is not any peculiarity of
form, solidity, fluidity, hardness, sonorousness, brightness,
because these properties evidently depend on the mutual
arrangement and disposition of atoms, that is, because

8 NATURE AND LIFE.

they are not relative to the individuality of each atom,
but to that of the whole which they form by being grouped
together. Neither is it any caloric property, or optic, or
electric, or magnetic one, because these properties result
from the movements of the ether, within the more or less
complex aggregate of the respective atoms of these two
substances. Now, if these atoms, taken separately, differ
from each other in virtue of none of the properties just
enumerated, they can only be dissimilar as regards two
attributes, dimension and weight ; but difference in weight
results from difference in dimension, and is not a quali-
tative difference, but simply a quantitative one.1 Con-
sequently, any two heterogeneous atoms whatever, com-
pared together, as atoms, have scarcely any of the differ-
ential attributes peculiar to the groups which they make
up by aggregation, and represent no more than two dis-
tinct functions, two different values of one and the same
initial matter, of one and the same primitive quality or
energy. This simple demonstration establishes the unity
of substance, not as a more or less plausible physical
hypothesis, but as a metaphysical certainty, alike underiv-
able and necessary. If we add now, reserving the demon-
stration for a later period, that dimension, corporeal ex-
tension itself, as Leibnitz said and as Magy has lately
proved, is only a resultant of force, it will become evident
that matter, in the last analysis, is reduced to force.

Tyndall, in his biography of Faraday, tells us that one
of the favorite experiments of this physicist gives a true
image of what he was : " He loved to show how water, in
crystallizing, eliminates all foreign substances, however
intimately mingled they may be with it. Separated from
all these impurities, the crystal becomes clear and limpid."

1 We purposely take no notice of chemical forces, which can only be
regarded as attractions, and must therefore be explained by forces acting
outside of the atom itself.

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 9

This experiment is especially the true image of what
Faraday was as a metaphysician. For him nothing had
so great a charm as those serene transparent regions, in
which science, cleared of impurities, appeared to his great
mind in all the glory of its power and splendor. He
yielded himself to it with absolute abandonment. He
particularly loved to dwell upon the problem which is
now engaging us : " What do we know of an atom apart
from force ? " he exclaims. " You conceive a nucleus
which may be called a, and you surround it with forces
which may be called m / to my mind your a or nucleus
vanishes, and substance consists in the energy of m. In
fact, what notion can we form of a nucleus independent
of its energy ? " As he holds, matter fills all space, and
gravitation is nothing else than one of the essentially con-
stitutive forces of matter, perhaps even the only one. An
eminent chemist, Henry Saint-Claire Deville, lately de-
clared that, when bodies deemed to be simple combine
with one another, they vanish, they are individually anni-
hilated. For instance, he maintains that in sulphate of
copper there is neither sulphur, nor oxygen, nor copper.
Sulphur, oxygen, and copper, are composed, each of them,
by a distinct system of definite vibrations of one energy,
one single substance. The compound, sulphate of copper,
answers to a different system, in which the motions are
confounded that would produce the respective individuali-
ties of its elements, sulphur, oxygen, and copper. More-
over, Berthelot long ago expressed himself in exactly the
same manner. As long ago as 1864 that savant said that
the atoms of simple bodies might be composed of one and
the same matter, distinguished only by the nature of the
motions set up in it. This decisive saying a great num-
ber of savants and philosophers in France and abroad have
repeated and are still repeating, with good reason, as the
expression of a solid truth.

10 NATURE AND LIFE.

If the smallest parts which we can imagine and distin-
guish in bodies differ from each other only by the nature of
the motions to which they are subjected, if motion alone
rules and determines the variety of different attributes
which characterize these atoms, if, in a word, the unity of
matter exists — and it must exist — what is this fundamental
and primary matter whence all the rest proceed? How
shall we represent it to our minds ? Every thing leads to
the belief that it is not essentially distinguished from the
ether, and consists in atoms of ether more or less strongly
held together. It is objected that the ether is imponder-
able ; but that is an unfounded objection. Doubtless it
cannot be weighed ; to do that we must compare a space
filled with ether to a space empty of ether ; and we are
evidently unable to isolate this subtile agent, whose par-
ticles counterpoise each other with perfect equilibrium
throughout the universe. Yet many facts attest its pro-
digious elasticity. A flash of lightning is nothing more
than a disturbance of equilibrium in the ether, yet no one
will deny that lightning performs an immense work. How-
ever this may be, it is impossible to think of the energies
that make up the atom otherwise than as of pure force,
and the ether itself, whose existence is demonstrated by
the whole of physics, can be no otherwise defined than by
the attributes of force.1 It follows from this that atoms,
the last conclusion of chemistry, and ether, the last con-
clusion of physics, are substantially alike, although they
form two distinct degrees, two unequal values, of the
same original activity. All those physico-chemical ener-
gies, as well as the analogous energies of life, only show
themselves to us, save in rare exceptions, clothed with that

1 " Setting aside any theory, it would be hard to find in all these terms,
dilatation, propagation, radiation, vibration, reflection, refraction, attrac-
tion, repulsion, polarization, etc., any thing else than phenomena of mo-
tion."— CHARLES DE REMUSAT, " Philosophical Essays," vol. ii., On Matter.

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. H

uniform we call matter. A single one of these energies
shows forth, stripped of this dress, and bare. It rules all
the others, because it knows them all without their know-
ing it. It is not power merely, but consciousness besides.
It is the soul. How define it otherwise than as force in its
purest essence, since we look upon it, as on the marble of
the antique, in splendid nakedness, which is radiant beauty
too?

Whether we consider coarser matter which can be
weighed and felt, or that more subtile, lively, and active
matter we call ether, or again the spiritual principle, which
is energy simple, we have then always before us only har-
monious collections of forces, symmetrical activities, or-
dered powers, more or less conscious of the part they play
in the infinite concert whose glorious music the Creator
Composed. Let us set aside for a moment the variety of
groupings which determine the succession and the manifold
aspects of these forces, and there will remain, as constitu-
ent principles of the web of the universe, as irreducible
and primordial ingredients of the world, nothing but dy-
namic points, nothing but monads.

The term of the rigorous analysis of phenomena is,
definitely, the conception of an infinity of centres of simi-
lar and unextended forces, of energies without forms, sim-
ple and eternal. We ask what these forces are, and we
assert in answer that it is impossible to distinguish them
from motion. Force may be conceived, but not shaped to
the fancy. The clearest and truest thing we can say of it
is, that it is an energy analogous to that whose constant
and undeniable presence we feel dwelling in our deepest
selves. " The only force of which we have consciousness,"
says Henry Sainte-Claire Deville, " is will." Our soul,
which gives us consciousness of force, is also the type of it,
in this sense that, if we wish to pierce to the elementary
mechanisms of the world, we are imperiously driven to

12 NATURE AND LIFE.

compare its primal activities with the only activity of
which we have direct knowledge and intuition, that is to
say, with that admirable spring of will, so prompt and sure,
which permits us every moment to create and also to guide
motion.

Motion may serve to measure force, but not to explain
it. It is as subordinate to the latter as speech is to thought.
In truth, motion is nothing else than the series of successive
positions of a body in different points of space. Force, on
the other hand, is the tendency, the tension, which deter-
mines the body to pass continually from one to the other
of these points ; that is to say, the power by which this
body, considered at any instant in its course, differs from
the identical body at rest. Evidently this something which
is in one of these two bodies and is not in the other, this
something that mathematicians call the quantity of motion,
which is transformed, on a sudden stoppage of motion, into
a certain quantity of heat, this something is a reality, dis-
tinct from the trajectory itself ; and yet nothing, absolutely
nothing, outside of the inner revelation of our soul, gives
us the means of understanding what this initial cause of
the motive forces may be. The distinguished founder of
the mechanical theory of heat, Robert Mayer, defines force
to be " whatever may be converted into motion." There
is no formula that so well expresses the fact of the inde-
pendence and preeminence of force, or so completely in-
cludes the assertion of the essential reality of a cause pre-
existing motion. The idea of force is one of those ele-
mentary forms of thought from which we cannot escape,
because it is the necessary conclusion, the fixed and unde-
stroyable residue from the analysis of the world in the
alembic of our minds. The soul does not find it out by
discursive reasoning, nor prove it to itself by way of theo-
rem or experiment ; it knows it, it clings to it by natural
and unconquerable affinity. We must say of force what

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 13

Pascal said of certain fundamental notions of the same
order: "Urging investigation further and further, we
necessarily arrive at primitive words which cannot be de-
fined, or at principles so clear that we can find no others
which are clearer." When we have reached these prin-
ciples, nothing remains but to study one's self with pro-
foundest meditation, not striving to give an image to those
things whose essence is that they cannot be imagined.
From the most general and abstract point of view, then,
matter is at once form and force, that is, there is no essen-
tial difference between these two modes of substance.
Form is simply force circumscribed, condensed. Force is
simply form indefinite, diffused. Such is the net result of
the methodical inquiries of modern science, and one which
forces itself on our minds, apart from any svstematic pre-
meditation. It is of consequence to add that the merit of
having formulated it very clearly and noted its importance
belongs to French contemporary philosophers, particularly
to Charles Leveque and Paul Janet.

II.

If the web of things, the essence of matter, is one
single substance, who was the Orpheus under whose spell
these materials gathered, ranged, and diversified them-
selves into natures of so many kinds ? And, first of all,
how can the extension of bodies proceed from an assem-
bling of unextended principles ? The answer to this first
question does not seem difficult to us. Extension exists
prior to matter. They are two distinct things, without any
relation of causality or finality. Matter no more proceeds
from extension than extension proceeds from matter. This
simple remark suffices to settle the difficulty of conceiving
how the dimension of objects results from a group of dy-
namic points which have no dimension: Extension exist-
ing before every thing else, it is quite clear that, when

14 NATURE AND LIFE.

certain primal energies come into union to give rise,
through a thousand successive complications, to phenom-
ena and to bodies, what they really produce is not the ap-
pearance of extension, which is the mere shadow of reality,
but it is that collection of varied and diverse activities
which enable us to describe and define phenomena and
bodies.

It is no longer a subject of doubt, in the minds of sa-
vants who have got beyond experimentation, that exten-
sion is an image and a show rather than an essential con-
stituent property of bodies. The extension of bodies is a
phenomenon which takes its rise in the collision of force
with our minds. Charles de Remusat, so long ago as 1842,
gave an original and remarkable demonstration of this.
He maintains that force is the cause of extension, meaning
by that that the sensation of extension is a modification
of our sensibility, occasioned by forces analogous to those
which produce sensations of a more complex kind. When .
you experience an electric shock, you are struck. Percus-
sion is the sensation of contact, in other words, of impul-
sion by something that has extension. Now, in this in-
stance, Remusat says, the cause of percussion, electricity,
has no extension. Therefore, he adds, either electricity is
nothing, or else it is a force which affects us in a way that
may be compared to the effect of extension. So that a
force, wanting the usual appearances of extension, may
produce the same effects on us that a solid body in motion
does. Within a few years a profound metaphysician, Magy,
has pointed out by new arguments that corporeal exten-
sion is merely a show which springs from the internal reac-
tion of the soul against the impression made on the sen-
sorium, and which the soul translates to outward bodies,
by a law analogous to that which makes it localize in the
separate organs of sense the impression which it has nev-
ertheless perceived only in the brain. Each sensation of

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 15

taste, smell, light, or sound, is a phenomenon of psycho-
logical reaction which occurs in the soul when it is teased
with a certain degree of energy by nerve-action, which in
its turn depends on an outward action ; but there is no re-
lation of resemblance between the latter and the sensation
it provokes. The ether, which, by its vibrations in unison
with the elements of our retina, produces sensations of
light in us, has in itself no luminosity. The proof of this
is, that two rays of light meeting under certain conditions
may annul each other, and produce darkness. Now, Magy
maintains that the subjectivity of extension is of the same
order with that of light. Extension in general is explained
by purely dynamic reasons, as readily as that particular
extension is which serves as a kind of support for luminous
phenomena, which evidently result from vibrations of the
unextended principles. Helmholtz, in his latest writings,
fully adopts this doctrine of corporeal extension.

We thus see that there is no difficulty in reconciling ex-
tension with unextended forces, and the phenomena of ex-
tension with principles of action ; but this is only the first
part of the problem, and it becomes necessary now to as-
cend from these unextended forces and active principles to
those more or less complex manifestations which make up
the infinite universe, adorning space with imperishable
variety. Let us imagine this universe filled with the great-
est conceivable number of active principles, all identical,
diffused uniformly throughout immensity, and consequently
in a state of perfect equilibrium. All will be torpid in ab-
solute repose, in which form without shape and force with-
out spring will be as though they were not. Between a
homogeneous, motionless substance, identical with itself
throughout space at all points, and nihility, reason per-
ceives no difference. In such a system, nothing has weight,
for there is no attracting centre ; heat is no more possible
for it than light, since these two forms of energy are bound

16 NATURE AND LIFE.

up with the existence of systems of unequal vibrations, of
diversified media, and varying molecular arrangements.
A fortiori, the phenomena of life will be incompatible with
this universal unity of substance, this unchanging identity
of force.

The objective existence of things, the coming into re-
ality of phenomena, can only be conceived, therefore, as
the work of a certain number of differentiations taking
place in the deep of that universal energy of primal mat-
ter, which is the last result of our analysis of the world.
Motion, of itself alone, is enough to explain a first attri-
bute of that energy, namely, resistance, and its conse-
quence, impenetrability ; but this is only on the condition
that this motion shall take place in various directions.1
Two forces urged in opposite directions, and coming to a
meeting, manifestly resist each other. It is probably by
collisions of this sort that those variable condensations of
matter, and those heterogeneous groupings of which the
world presents the spectacle, have been determined. A
rotary movement, communicated to a mass without weight,
can only engender concentric spheres, which gravitate
toward each other in consequence of pressure by the inter-
posing ether. The famous experiments of Plateau are de-
cisive in this respect. That accomplished physicist intro-
duces oil into a mixture of water and alcohol, having
exactly equal density with the oil itself. He inserts a me-
tallic strip into the midst of this mass of oil, which is free

1 " Any relation of action implies at least twofoldness. We have then
at once dissimilarity, and it would be more correct to say, action takes
place only between dissimilars. Between like things, action requires at
least a difference of place, yet even with that difference like things act
but slightly on each other. The production of such a phenomenon re-
quires opposition in forces between them. In chemistry, only dissimilars
act on each other, All Nature witnesses that a certain degree of differ-
ence between bodies is needed for their mutual action." — CHARLES
MUSAT.

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 17

from the action of any force, and turns it about. The oil
takes the form of a sphere, and, as soon as the rotation
grows very rapid, breaks up, and parts into a number of
smaller spheres. The celestial spheres were probably
formed in the same way, and an exactly similar mechanical
action produces those clear dew-drops, glittering like dia-
monds, on the leaves of plants.

All physical phenomena, whatever their nature, are at
bottom only manifestations of one and the same primordial
agent. We can no longer question this general conclusion
of all modern discoveries, S6narmont explicitly says, though
it is, as yet, impossible to formulate with precision its laws
and its particular conditions. If this be true, and we hope
we have proved it to be so, it is plain that those con-
ditional particularities of which Senarmont speaks, that is
to say, those diversified manifestations of the sole agent
to which he alludes, can depend only on differences in the
motions which impel it. Now, the very existence of these
differences necessarily implies a coordinating and regulat-
ing intelligence ; but how much more extreme is the ne-
cessity for such a cause in chemical phenomena, which dis-
play such endless complications issuing from that primal
energy to which every thing in the last analysis is reduced !
We have seen that the variety of those stable and homo-
geneous energies known under the name of simple bodies,
the number of which is now increased to sixty, depends on
the variety of the vibrations that each one of these little
worlds performs. This is the earliest intervention of a
principle of difference. This principle does not merely de-
termine the multiplication of simple bodies ; it also acts in
any one element with such intensity that the same element
can acquire very unlike properties and attributes. What
things are more heterogeneous than the diamond and char-
coal, or than common phosphorus and amorphous phos-
phorus ? Yet charcoal and diamond are chemically identi-
2

18 NATURE AND LIFE.

cal, just as the two sorts of phosphorus are. These cases
of isomery, which are quite numerous, attest with the
strongest evidence the excessive variability of which com-
binations of force are capable. When we see the same
elements, combined in the same weight-proportions, pro-
duce' sometimes harmless substances, sometimes terrible
poisons, in one case evolve colorless or dingy products, in
another brilliant hues, we become convinced that primal
matter is of little consequence in comparison with the
power of the weaver who arranges its threads, and knows
beforehand what the aspect of the web will be. Besides,
it is not alone in the whole that the formative principle is
displayed ; it shows forth also in the elements, considered
individually, since every one of them exhibits tendencies,
elective affinities, that bear witness to some obscure instinct
toward harmonious completion.

There is not only a prodigious variety in the disposition
of the atoms which make up molecules, and in the arrange-
ment of the molecules among themselves, but this arrange-
ment is governed, besides, by admirable geometric laws.
The atoms that make up molecules are not heaped and
flung together at random and in disorder ; they enter into
composition only in fixed proportions and in fixed direc-
tions. Marc-Antoine Gaudin has proved, in a late treatise
devoted entirely to these refined inquiries, the existence of
some of the most important laws in the geometry of atoms.
This ingenious and persevering writer demonstrates that
all chemical molecules, whether they are fitted to produce
crystals or not, are formed by a symmetrical aggregation of
atoms. The latter are arranged in equilibrium in two direc-
tions, perpendicular to each other, one parallel to the axis
of grouping, and the other at right angles to that axis, so as
always to compose a symmetrical figure. The most compli-
cated bodies, so soon as they are brought under the law of
definite proportions, and compose chemical species, are made

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 19

up of molecules in which the atoms are grouped in prisms, in
pyramids, in a word, in polyhedra more or less many-sided,
but always of perfect regularity ; so that, in this case, the
differentiation is regulated with marvelous harmony.

We must now rise another degree, and pass from in-
organic matter to living matter. What is it that distin-
guishes the latter from the former ? When we make the
answer depend on the results of direct experiment, nothing
is easier than to establish the differential characteristics of
living matter. In the first place, it is organized, that is, the
anatomical elements, instead of being homogeneous and
symmetrical in all points of their mass, are composed by
the association of a certain number of different substances,
in which carbon predominates, and which are termed im-
mediate organic principles.1 Then these elements grow.
At no time the same throughout, as to the substance which
makes them up, they are in a state of unceasing molecular
renewal, of constant metamorphosis, of simultaneous and
continuous assimilation and disassimilation. Besides, the
various properties these elements may exhibit, contractility,
neurility, and so on, are, in consequence of the growing
state that characterizes them, in so unstable a condition of
equilibrium that the slightest variation in the surrounding
medium is enough to occasion some change in the expres-
sion of their activity ; in other words, they have excessive
excitability and irritability. Such, at least, is the region
within which physiology is limited ; but the fact which it
does not clearly enough bring out, yet the thing which is
the distinctive mark of life, is the harmonious seeking for
each other of all these vital monads, the disposition of

1 " The structure of chemical compounds is subject only to mathemati-
cal laws, which laws do not control that of organized matter. In germs
and their products there exists a want of symmetry in their axes, which
indicates a formative purpose, or, more properly, a creative omnipotence."
— GAUDIN, "Architecture of the World of Atoms," p. 3.

20 NATURE AND LIFE.

biological energies to compose groups of which the end and
the reason are found in what we call the individual. The
differentiations of inorganic matter occur in molecules that
are specific, in whatever bulk they are regarded. The dif-
ferentiations of living matter take place only in individuals
whose build and proportions are strictly determined. An
iron bar, an iron crystal, and iron-dust, are all still iron.
An organic substance fitted for life is nothing, whenever
deprived of connection with an organism. It can display
energy, can act, in a word, can be, so far as to be a living
substance, only in virtue of taking place and rank in a
certain whole, and assuming certain dependencies and con-
nections with other more or less analogous substances.
By itself it is not distinguished in essence from dead mat-
ter. It is raised to the rank and clothed with the dignity
of life only from the time of its reception into that gather-
ing of which the steps all move toward the same end, which
is the functional action of the organism, and the perpetu-
ation of the species.

What takes place in the ovule is a miniature image of
what takes place in the universe. The differentiations oc-
curring in that mucous drop are a copy of the differentia-
tions unfolding and expanding in the ocean of the world.
It is at first a microscopic mass, homogeneous, uniform in
all its parts, a collection of energies identical with each
other, and the group of which does not differ perceptibly
from a drop of gelatine, hanging, hardly seen, from a
needle's point. Yet soon a dull motion spontaneously stirs
these nearly inert atoms, and this motion is expressed by a
first condensation of the ovular or vitelline substance, which
is the germinating vesicle. This passes off, but at the same
time other vibrations arrange the molecules of this shape-
less, transparent microcosm, in the order of more com-
plicated groups. The vitelline substance swells toward
the surface, where it forms the polar globules, while at the

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 21

centre it thickens to produce the vitelline nucleus. This in
turn cleaves and breaks into a great number of secondary
nuclei, around each of which the ovular mass distributes
itself while contracting. Instead of a single cell, the ovule,
which has enlarged, is now found to contain a great num-
ber. These cells, called blastodermic, then tend to arrange
themselves in two layers, two leaflets placed back to back,
within which the elements of the embryo appear, and little
by little develop, pursuing a continuous growth, in which
forces becoming forms go on incessantly producing and
multiplying new forces and new forms.

Now, these separations and distributions, these order-
ings and classifyings, these harmonies that are set up in
the ovule to compose by slow degrees the structure of the
embryo, reveal a principle of differentiation analogous to
that which has caused the infinite variety of things we see
come forth from the confused mass of cosmic energies.
There is, as many biologists had felt assured, and as Coste
has had the glory of clearly demonstrating in a work which
is one of the noblest scientific monuments of this age,
there is a force which gives reality, direction, life, to the
forms of organized matter in the egg. All eggs are alike
at first. There is a complete similitude in structure and
substance between those which will produce a lion and
those which will produce a mouse. The forms are iden-
tical, though the futures of those forms differ. It is, as
Coste very well says, that " beneath that form, and beyond
what the eye views, there is something which sight cannot
reach, something which contains in itself the sufficient
reason for all those differences now concealed under unity
of configuration, and to become visible only later." This
guiding idea, which Coste has brought forward, and which
is admitted by all physiologists at this day, is as far from
issuing out of the elementary forces of nutrition as the
painter's picture is from being the creature of his palette.

22 NATURE AND LIFE.

Yet nothing in the ovule reveals its hidden and potent
virtually. Claude Bernard, who has repeated Coste's ideas
on this subject, dwells strongly on the guiding force which
is in the egg, and those savants who agree with Robin in
denying this force, so far as it acts on the totality of ele-
ments in the embryo, regard it at least as shared, distrib-
uted, and acting in each of these elements separately, which,
at bottom, is the same thing. We see, in any case, that
there is in the inmost depth, and there dates from the most
rudimentary sketch of the organized being, the fixed and
formed idea of those differences in choice and those sym-
pathies in work whose system shall build up the individual.
The differential coefficient of organized matter is thus of a
far higher order than that of mineral matter. It is this
which is a distinct and peculiar result from the impotence
which experimental science betrays more plainly every
day, when attempting to convert physico-chemical activi-
ties into energies of the vital order. Even could this con-
version really be effected, and it is not metaphysically
impossible that it might be, the existence of a spiritual
principle of differentiation would be in no wise put in
doubt. Hitherto, at least, such a conversion seems beyond
the reach of man.

Something that yet more completely baffles his research,
while commanding too his highest admiration, is the su-
preme degree of complexity together with refinement of
that energy which is the soul. Human thought is the sum
of all the forces of Nature, because it assimilates them all,
while distinguishing between them, by the work that it
performs upon sensations. Sensations are to thought what
food is to growth. Growth is not a result of feeding ;
thought is not a result of sensations. Nutrition, in shap-
ing the living organs, determines the differentiation of the
concrete forms in the individual's substance ; thought, in
shaping general ideas, determines the differentiation of the

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 23

abstract forces in the world. Thus thinking energy is as
much superior to sensations as nutritive energy is to ali-
ments. In another order of thought, we might compare the
soul to a paper covered with writing in sympathetic ink.
At ordinary temperatures, the letters are unseen, but they
appear in fine color whenever brought near the fire. So
the soul has within itself dim marks and confused shapes,
which sensation tints and brightens. We have seen that, in
the mucous drop, a two hundred and fiftieth part of an inch
through, called the ovule, the forces" and tendencies of the
whole nutritive and intellectual life of man lie prisoned and
asleep. So, too in that force without form or extension
which is the soul, there dwells a miniature picture of the
whole universe, and, by some mystic grace of God, a dream,
as it were, of that God himself. Thought consists in be-
coming acquainted with all the details of that picture in
little, and unfolding its meaning. Thus, that which makes
the whole reality of material things is form, and form, such
as it is shown to us in the world, is at once a principle of
differentiation and a principle of agreement ; in other words,
it is the work of an intelligence. Body and motion are
mere phenomena. The first is only an image of substance,
the last an image of action ; but substance and action both
are only effects of intelligent force, that is, of activity
operating in view of a result. That activity, however, pre-
sents infinitely varied degrees of condensation, and we may
say, with Maudsley : " One equivalent of chemical force
corresponds to several equivalents of lower force ; and one
equivalent of vital force to several equivalents of chemical
force." It is thus that modern science unties the Gordian
knot of the composition of matter.

m.

A first exclusively analytical view of the world has
led us to a first undeniable certainty, the existence of a

24 NATUKE AND LIFE.

principle of energy and motion. A second view of the
universe, exclusively synthetic, leads us, as we have seen,
to another certainty, which is the existence of a principle
of differentiation and harmony. This principle is what is
called mind. Thus mind is not substance, but it is the
law of substance ; it is not force, but it is the revealer of
force. It is not life, but it makes life exist. It is not
thought, but it is the consciousness of thought. A distin-
guished English savant, Carpenter, has said lately, with
decisive clearness, " Mind is the sole and single source of
power." In a word, it is not reality, yet in it and by it
realities are defined and differentiated, and consequently
exist. Instead of saying that mind is a property of mat-
ter, we should say that matter is a property of mind.
Of all the properties of matter, in fact, there is not one, no,
not a single one, which is not bestowed on it by mind.
The true explanation, the only philosophy of Nature, is
thus a kind of spiritualistic dynamism, very different from
materialism, or from the mechanism of certain contemporary
schools.

Materialism is false and imperfect, because it stops short
at atoms, in which it localizes those properties for which
atoms supply no cause, and because it neglects force and
spirit, which are the only means we have, constituted as
our souls are, of conceiving the activity and the appearings
of beings. It is false and imperfect, because it stops half-
way, and treats compound and resolvable factors as simple
and irreducible ones ; and because it professes to represent
the world by shows, without attempting to explain the pro-
duction of those shows. In a word, it sees the cause of
diversity where it is not. and fails to see it where it does
exist. The source of differentiations cannot be in energy
itself; it must be in a principle apart from that energy, in a
superior will and consciousness, of which we have, doubt-
less, only a dim and faulty idea, but as to which we can yet

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 25

affirm that they have some analogy with the inner light
which fills us, and which we shed forth from us, and which
teaches us, by its mysterious contact with the outer world,
the infinite order of the universe.1

The danger from materialism is not, as we usually in-
cline to think, corruption of morals by degradation of the
soul. Too much use, for censure's sake, has been made,
against this system, of the seeming ease with which its
professors have convinced themselves that they cut up by
the roots the very principles of morality and duty. Histo-
ry proves, by examples too infamous, that barbarism and
license are the privilege of no philosophic sect. The real
enemies of society always have been, and always will be,
the ignorant and the fanatical, and it must be frankly
owned that, if these exist within the pale of materialism,
there are quite enough of them outside. The danger in
the doctrine which reverses the natural relation of things,
and asserts that spirit is the product of matter, when in
truth matter is a product of spirit, this danger is of another
kind ; materialism is fatal to the development of the experi-
mental sciences themselves. If, in such a case, the exam-
ple of men of genius might be appealed to, how eloquent
would be the testimony of the two greatest physicists of
this age, Ampere and Faraday, both so earnestly con-
vinced, so religiously possessed by the reality of the un-
seen world ! But there are other arguments. " All that
we see of the world," says Pascal, " is but an impercep-
tible scratch in the vast range of Nature." The claim of

1 " That cause, mould, or type, of all constitutions of beings," says De
Remusat, in a famous essay on this subject, " that general Nature, the
original or principle of all natures, that force which fashions, specifies,
and characterizes all these kinds of beings, cannot be conceived of as
a constant property of any being, because the diversity between all these
beings is what it has to account for. I look upon this as the strongest
proof of the presence of a will and an intelligence exerting their power
throughout all Nature."

26 NATURE AND LIFE.

mere experimentalism is that it may sentence men to the
fixed and stubborn contemplation of this scratch. What
folly ! All the history of the development of the sciences
proves that important discoveries all proceed from a differ-
ent feeling, which is that of continuation of forces beyond
the limits of observation, and of a harmony in relations,
overruling the singularities and deformities of detached
experiences. To hedge one's self within what can be com-
puted, weighed, and demonstrated, to trust such evidence
only, and bar one's self inside the prison of the senses, to
hush or scorn the suggestions of the spirit, our only true
light, because it is the spark of the flame that vivifies all —
this is, deny it or not, the condition and the subject state
of materialism. Only reason can conceive the fixity, the
generality, and the universality of relations, and all sa-
vants admit that the destiny of science is to establish laws
possessing these three characteristics ; but to admit that is
to confess by implication that partial, incoherent, imper-
fect, relative details must undergo a refining, a thorough
conversion in the alembic of the mind, whence they issue,
with so new an aspect and meaning, that what before
seemed most important becomes as mere an accessory as it
is possible to be, and that which looked most ephemeral
takes its place among eternal things.

The conception of atoms dates from the highest antiq-
uity. Leucippus and Democritus, the masters of Epicurus,
several centuries before the Christian era, taught that mat-
ter is composed of invisible but indestructible corpuscles,
the number of which is as boundless as the vastness of the
space in which they are diffused. These corpuscles are
solid, endowed with shape and motion. The difference of
their forms regulates the difference of their movements,
and consequently of their characteristics. The conception
of a principle guiding these diversities, that is, of an intel-
ligence as the supreme cause of differentiation, is not less

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 27

ancient. "All was chaotic," Anaxagoras of Clazomene
said ; " an intelligence intervened, and regulated all." Pla-
to, after defining matter as an existence very hard to under-
stand, an eternal place, never perishing, and furnishing a
stage for whatever begins to be, not the subject of sense
and yet perceptible, and of which we only catch glimpses
as in a dream, tells us that the supreme ruler " took this
mass which was whirling in unchecked and unguided move-
ment, and made order come out of disorder." And this
ordering grows real in conformity with ideas, the proto-
types of things, whose totality makes the divine essence
itself. The world's activities are reflections of God's
thoughts. To these two fundamental notions, that of at-
omism and that of idealism, Aristotle added a third, that
of dynamism. As he holds, indeterminate matter, in the
highest degree of abstraction, is without attributes. If it
tends always toward form and action, that is because it
contains a principle of power, a force. Force is, in Aris-
tfltle's view, the principle of form. The latter is actually
existent. We have here the whole ancient philosophy
regarding the world. Modern philosophy has taught us
nothing different. Atomism, strengthened and widened
by Descartes, and borrowed from him by Newton, is iden-
tical at bottom with that held by the teachers of Epicurus.
In the same way, Leibnitz's dynamism is only a revival
of Aristotle's. And, just as Descartes and Leibnitz repro-
duce the old Greek masters, contemporary science renews
Descartes and Leibnitz.

" But what ! " it will be said ; " always repeating,
never inventing, must that be the fixed doom of meta-
physics ? " Not so ; these renewals contain continuous
growth toward perfection. The old truth has been pre-
served, in its original sense, but it has been constantly
illuminated and made exact in the lapse of time by happy
efforts of speculative genius. Greek atomism left an im-

%8 NATURE AND LIFE.

mense chasm which Descartes filled by the conception of
ether, the most marvelous of modern creations. Aristotle's
dynamism was vague, and Leibnitz gave it precision by
showing that the type and the fountain of force is and can
be nothing else than mind. He lifted the conception of
force to the conception of soul. And what has been done
in our days? We have computed the motion, we have
detected the action, of that subtile ether ; we have proved
the absolute imperishableness of force ; we have shown by
many instances the fundamental identity of the appetitive
and elective powers of chemistry and crystallography with
those which psychology reveals. Here is the future of
science and of metaphysics. Both will henceforth follow
in their development the very course they have held to
since the first day; they have never, like Penelope, de-
stroyed yesterday's work the day after. They have pur-
sued the same end with continuous advance, that is, the
conception of invisible principles, and of the ideal essence
of things. This end will remain the ever-unattained goal cff
their ambition. The farther we shall advance, the more
clearly and convincingly will they persist in defining those
primal forces and elementary activities half guessed at from
the very dawn of thought. Never false to themselves, they
will always, at whatever point in history we appeal to
them, represent the human soul unchanging in its nature,
its powers, and its hopes. Let them never muse over the
mournful question whether the work of the past will not
vanish at some time without leaving a trace. All of it will
survive, and from this confidence those who strive to in-
crease the sum of knowledge draw their courage and con-
solation.

The conceptions of matter now entertained agree not
only with the boldest deductions and most splendid dis-
coveries of contemporary science, as well as with the oldest
truths and the most instinctive faiths of humanity, but also

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 29

with those loftier convictions, more precious and as solid,
which form our moral and religious inheritance, and the
crowning prerogative of our nature. The most advanced
science rejects none of the traditions and objects to none
of the great lasting sentiments of past ages. On the con-
trary, it fixes the stamp of certainty on truths hitherto lack-
ing adequate proofs, and rescues from the attacks of skep-
ticism all that it coveted as its prey. No proof of the soul's
immortality is so strong as that we have drawn from
the necessary simplicity and eternity of all the principles
of force. Nothing bears witness so powerfully to the
majestic reality of a God as the spectacle of those diversi-
ties, all harmonious, which rule the infinite range of forces,
and bind in unity the ordered pulses of the world. Enough
has been said to prove the truth that the moral greatness
and the intellectual dignity of a nation must always be
measured by the standard of the esteem and credit it accords
to high metaphysical speculations, and chiefly to such as
relate to the constitution of matter. Meditation on the
constitution of matter is the best method of teaching us to
know mind, and to understand that every thing must be
referred to it, because from it every thing flows.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, AND LEIB-
NITZ'S IDEAS.

WHILE science in our day is pouring unexpected floods
of light upon the solution of those problems which are at
once the highest and the most subtile in natural philoso-
phy, the great systems of metaphysics become an interest-
ing subject of review. Forgotten or despised by a science
. wholly devoted to experiment, given over to the routine
judgment of unprogressive criticism, those systems had
ceased to have any worth except as proofs and records of
laborious study. Subjected to fresh investigation and
searching exposition, they now reveal proportions worthy
the attention of the savant, who may find in them conclu-
sions expressed with a breadth that can cover the wider
range of the results he has himself reached. A movement
of this kind in favor of the philosophy of Leibnitz is just
now taking place. The buried germs of that philosophy
had long been slowly developing, under the brooding
thought of later science, and we find them now breaking
forth with singular power of life. The conception of spir-
itual and material principles formed by the Hanoverian
thinker seeming indisputably the most probable and plau-
sible one, we are forced to give up our settled and accepted
ideas as to those things, and to adopt another, confessed
by scientists and metaphysicians alike to be effective in
removing many difficulties. Nor does that correspondence
between the maxims of Leibnitz and the results of most

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE— LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS. 31

modern research dwell in the general philosophy of Nature
only; it reaches also to special branches of knowledge,
which often exhibit the existence as facts of what were
conjectures on the part of the author of the " New Essays."
Thus the slow progress of these sciences has reached the
revelation of truths seized by the thinker's rapid intuition.
This consideration increases our admiration for that daring
genius who pierces with so natural an ease to the knowl-
edge of the secret springs of the world, as if he had won
his way to communion with the absolute.

Leibnitz's intellect, indeed, could not tolerate either
the geometrical exactness or the unyielding persistence
displayed by that of Descartes. All the ideas of the latter
are deduced by rule and method; all his systems are rigid-
ly disposed in order; he reveres precise lines and clear
drawing. Leibnitz has the ways of a colorist ; he goes on
without rule, or sequence, or control, almost by starts,
flinging out his ideas here and -there, as his fancy bids,
whensoever and howsoever reflection or impulsive intuition
hint them to him. Incessantly diverted from one thought
to another, he expatiates on the various subjects that at-
tract him, instead of arranging his conceptions in an order-
ly whole. For him, philosophy seems like a contrasting
relief from the profound and tedious studies that employ
his sustained attention and the controversies in which he
displays extraordinary activity. He loves action and social
intercourse. He aims at being a statesman. If he gives
himself up to metaphysics, he handles the most intricate
questions with simple ease, but in a manner indirectly, and
solves them by deep sayings. Clearly that pursuit is not
the great business of his life, but is its dignified amuse-
ment. In matter and in manner alike, Descartes and
himself are opposed. They agree neither as to methods
nor as to conclusions. They are at variance upon first
causes, upon final causes, upon man, the world, the soul,

32 NATURE AND LIFE.

and God. The demon of geometry, accused of having been
the evil genius of Descartes, never tormented Leibnitz ; his
philosophy does not issue from that source. Nevertheless,
that philosophy is a star that, after seeming eclipse, rises
anew to illuminate us. In the light of its rays, it may be
unwittingly, sciences gain unlooked-for power, and are in-
vigorated by grand inspirations. Be its term of revolution
long or brief, it will have been the guiding star, through
all the course of its circuit, for the most useful' and produc-
tive studies. We shall attempt to prove this assertion ; but
first we must renew the recollection of the principles lying
at the foundation of Leibnitz's metaphysics, and the too-
unfamiliar aggregate of his scientific teachings.

Our senses are struck by an endless variety of per-
plexed and intertangled phenomena ; our mind is a restless,
limitless ocean, full to overflow of impressions, thoughts,
and longings. By what means do we attain the concep-
tion of any single distinct thing in this measureless chaos ?
By unceasing action and reaction of the external upon
ourselves, and of ourselves upon the external. We begin
by dividing the Tfrom the not T, and this process gives us
the perception of a profound difference between these two
terms. The not Z, the external, impresses us at once, from
the most general point of view, that of motions and forms,
with something purely geometrical; but we also discern
in it another, more hidden element, which Leibnitz dis-
cusses admirably; that is, resistance, spring, inward and
latent force. At the bottom of those phenomenal shows,
which Descartes reduces to what he calls material points,
and to motion, the Hanoverian philosopher detects a. very
different notion, that of " force not myself," as Maine de
Biran uses the expression, in virtue of which the external
object resists the effort of will, limits and confines it, and

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE— LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS. 33

reacts against our own force as strongly as our own force
acts to surmount it. Whether this resistance makes itself
known directly, in the immediate apperception of the
effort put forth by the I outside of itself, or whether the
mind clothes it in some other conception, that force is de-
finitively conceived in the same way as the I is conceived,
as a pure and absolute category, with no appreciable
shape. This active force, Leibnitz holds, differs from bare
force of which the schools talk, in this respect, that the
entire power, or faculty^ of the scholastics, is only the im-
minent possibility of action, which still requires, before
passing into action, an impulse from without ; but the active
force we speak of intends a kind of actuality which holds
a middle place between the power to act and the act itself,
and takes effect as soon as the obstacle is removed. As a
clear illustration, take the instance of a weight stretching
the cord that holds it up, or of a strung bow. Or, again,
we cannot possibly describe in what respect a body in
motion, at each one of the points it successively occupies,
differs from a body at rest, unless we add that at each of
those points it tends to go onward.

The mind thus takes in, by the method of metaphysical
abstraction, the primitive capacities of action, the actuali-
ties, the powers that give to matter its dynamic charac-
teristics. Leibnitz considers these capacities, to which he
also gives the name of monads, as real and absolute prin-
ciples, the sum of which in Nature is always the same,
while the quantity of motion in Nature is variable. Every
sort of phenomenon resolves itself into these substantial
unities, the number of which is infinite, and which are the
only mode we have of conceiving bodies and souls. Atoms
of matter are contrary to reason — apart from their being
themselves made up of parts — because, however invin-
cible the attachment of one part to another may be, that
does not alter the fact of their diversity. There exist only

34 NATURE AND LIFE.

atoms of substance, that is, real unities, absolutely devoid
of parts, which are the sources of action, the first principles
in the composition of things, and the last elements, so to
speak, in the analysis of substances. These might be
called, as Leibnitz calls them, metaphysical points : they
possess some vitality, and a kind of perception ; and mathe-
matical points are the mode employed in using them to
express the universe; but, when corporeal substances are
compressed, the aggregate of their organs makes but one
physical point, as we regard it. Thus physical points only
seem to be indivisible, but are not really so ; mathematical
points are exact, but they are only modes of thought.
Nothing is complete and real except metaphysical points,
or points of substance (the forms or souls of Leibnitz), and
without them no reality would exist, since without true
units there can be no multitude.

Points of substance, or monads, without extension or
form, are then truly the inner and specific forces of things.
We can conceive them, but cannot shape their image. Just
as we should be incapable of knowledge if we had not the
signs of language, so, without the support of those repre-
sentations to the senses furnished by body and motion, we
must remain ignorant of force. They do not, however,
help us to escape the inference that force is the reality of
which body and motion are merely the concrete and sen-
sible images, not intelligible ones. Briefly, there is some-
thing more in the world than a display of phenomena, some-
thing more than visible forms and express motion : there is
energy, spring, concealed activity at rest, concentrated and
condensed inner potency, ever ready to be translated into
numberless appearances. Beyond perception and without
extension, these mother-forces, fertile sources of all action
and all life, compose, as Leibnitz teaches, the very essence
of things.

How do these forces engender bodies and souls, and

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE— LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS. 35

what are the latter' s mutual relations ? On this subject
Leibnitz develops completely original ideas. Souls are
monads of more perfect kind and higher activity, the prin-
ciples of all those forces that are specially translated into
organization, life, thought, etc. There are souls every-
where—if not thinking souls, at least forces that have the
power of occasioning appearances resembling those of life.
Leibnitz thus holds that the number of souls is infinite, and
that there is no portion of matter, how small soever it may
be, in which a living actuality is not always found ; but,
just as the monads of mere matter are manifested by it, the
monads of organized matter are manifested by organization.
The perfection of the substance accords with, and is propor-
tioned to, that of its original. While Descartes makes an
essential separation between soul and body, Leibnitz can-
not conceive of them apart. He says distinctly, in the
" New Essays," " The soul is never separated from some
kind of a body ; " and he writes to Arnauld, " Our body is
the matter, and our own soul is the form, of our substantial
existence." We find exactly the same propositions in
several of his works, especially in the " Monadology." The
rational soul must be distinguished from the sentient soul.
Animals, in the condition of germs, have only sentient
souls ; but, as soon as those germs are elected, and arrive at
a perfect nature, their sentient souls are raised to the pre-
rogative of reason.

The reasoning soul is, for Leibnitz, the source of all
highest revelation. The foundation of things, as he holds,
is everywhere the same, and we must judge of every thing
according to that which is known to us, that is, the soul.
Our self is, in fact, the only substance of which we have
direct consciousness. The true unity we feel to exist in
it we must attribute to other substances, just as we must '
judge of force, not as an object of the senses and the
imagination, but in accordance with that type which we

36 NATURE AND LIFE.

discover in the will. We can conceive of spiritual sub-
stance in an infinite number of various degrees, which may
be either superior or inferior to the self '/ we can conceive
of nothing active that is not similar to it. Since all our
ideas proceed from profound reflection on ourselves, we
could know nothing of being, if we did not find being in
ourselves. This is the same as saying that the intellect
contains in itself certain primordial notions, which are the
starting-point and the condition of all others. In other
words, it is declaring that ideas exist in the mind anterior
to experience, dependent on the very constitution of that
mind. Aristotle and Locke compared the soul to a blank
tablet, on which the senses and experience proceed to in-
scribe their teachings. Leibnitz maintains that it origi-
nally holds the principles of many ideas and doctrines,
which outward objects merely call into action at fitting
times. With Plato, with St. Paul, when he declares that
the law of God is written in our hearts, with Scaliger, who
called them seeds of 'eternity ', the author of " Monadology "
admits these fundamental concepts of the understanding as
the bases of all knowledge. He compares them to livkig
fires, to luminous rays hidden within us, which the contact
of sense and of outward objects brings to view, as sparks
that leap out on striking flint witli steel. And these
flashes are visible more than in any other thing in the gift
of perceiving the connection of things, that is, in the reason.
In what relation does the soul, this especially active
monad, find itself to be with those monads of a lower
order, the elements of the body ? In Leibnitz's view, that
organized mass by which the soul makes itself known, being
of a nature very similar to it, acts in turn of its own accord,
whenever the soul wills it, without any clashing between
the laws of either, the spirits and the blood performing at
such times exactly the required motions in correspondence
with the soul's passions and perceptions. It is this mutual

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE-LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS. 37

relation established beforehand in every substance in the
universe which creates its general communion, and creates
particularly the union between soul and body. We may
hence understand how the soul has its seat in the body
by near and direct presence, for it is in it as unity is in
multitude. The soul, a thinking monad, acts in conso-
nance with inferior but still vital monads, which, concur-
rently with it, are manifested by the organized substance in
which thought has its seat. The soul is in relations with
the lower activities of life, as they are with the still duller
activities of mere matter, in a companionship which is not
a dependence.

We must now rise higher, and study the relations and
the communion between monads in the universe. Three
principles, that of preestablished harmony, that of con-
tinuity, and that of the sufficient reason, are here the basis
of Leibnitz's philosophy. Preestablished harmony ex-
presses nothing else than the combination of all monads in
the universe. Our mind perceives an infinity of relations
among them, of which it does not grasp the physical ne-
cessity. It does not know why two monads act in concert,
or the one upon the other, to bring about some special
results. It cannot explain how monads of a lower order
exert influence over those of a higher order, those of the
body on those of the soul, and reciprocally. In a word, as
Hume demonstrates, we perceive no logical and necessary
connection between phenomena which follow each other in
the successive relations of cause and effect. Yet we are
certain that no single molecule in the world is alien to the
rest, that not one is isolated from the whole, that all are
conjoint and act together in the whirl of general existence.
We remark that every effect depends on an infinity of
causes, and that every cause has an infinity of effects. The
concourse, the common action, the consensus of all these
monads toward a regular order, manifestly prove an estab-

38 NATURE AND LIFE.

lished harmony among their essential activities. There is
a perfect concord, in virtue of which every substance, fol-
lowing its own laws, agrees with what all the others re-
quire. Leibnitz believes this harmony to cover something
besides mere relations of causality. He sees in the rela-
tions of monads influences of the same kind as those the
soul exerts over the body ; he believes that they have an
intuitive feeling one for the other, each having a kind of
apperception of what is not itself. He believes that, hav-
ing this reciprocal feeling, they exhibit a kind of irrita-
bility, attended by more or less consciousness, in respect
to their mutual qualities. He even judges that, while they
receive the harmonious impression of the complete world
in which they are factors, they reflect it in a certain way,
and express its law. Every substance, he says, is percipi-
ent and representative of the total world, according to its
point of view and its impressions. A Persian poet had
said before him, " Cleave an atom, and you will find in it a
sun." In a word, monads, though each possessing in itself
its peculiar principle of activity and direction, all act to-
gether in an ordered concert of energy. But what bond
unites them ? Are those relations we observe among them
only relatioas in our own reason ? Do mutual necessary
relations among them exist ? How does unity rule in the
world ? This is the absolutely unknown in our science, and
is one of the arguments urged by Leibnitz to prove the
existence of God. God makes the bond, the communion,
among substances. Moreover, these substances, logically
connected, though each performing its distinct part, tend
toward one final end.

The law of continuity displays new, closer relations
among monads, and fixes the place in the scale of their
various conditions. Future characteristics are traced be-
forehand, and the marks of the past are always preserved
in every substance. Thus every event issues from those

PHILOSOPHY OF NATUKE— LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS. 39

that precede it. On the other hand, monads, in their in-
finite diversities, succeed each other without a break from
the most rudimentary to the most perfect ones. That pro-
gression which we conceive of in the abstract quantities
of mathematics exists among the real quantities of the
world, which monads of every kind are. Force, life, will,
are assigned in different proportions to all the degrees of
that immeasurable series — in the lower ones dull and imper-
ceptible, in the higher ones potent and fruitful. The pas-
sage of inferior monads to higher planes takes place gradu-
ally through a thousand intermediate ones. The principles
of bodies advance incessantly nearer to perfection, and do
not differ essentially from those of the souls with which
they are connected. Souls in their turn are numerous, and
they too obey a law of progress. Thus there is a measure-
less quantity of degrees of life, some more or less dominant
over others, from the faint and dull activity of the atom of
sand up to the sovereign power of absolute mind. Des-
cartes had said that all the facts of Nature follow on in
connection like geometric truths. Leibnitz shows us a yet
deeper and more universal order in things. Every thing
is proportioned, analogous, harmonious : all is held, is con-
tinued, in unbroken interdependence. Thus we no longer
recognize two distinct worlds, the natural and the spiritual
one. Spiritual existences compose a part of one and the
same series with corporeal ones. The only differences be-
tween them are differences of degree.

The principle of the " sufficient reason " discloses to us
the strict economy of things. Nothing occurs in Nature
without a reason, but she is not wasteful of her reasons.
She always chooses the shortest ways. Magnificent in
effects, miserly in causes, she produces the greatest amount
of work with the least amount of force. The reasons of
the world, Leibnitz holds, are hidden in something extra-
mundane, which differs from the interdependence of states,

40 NATURE 'AND LIFE.

the series of substances, whose totality makes up the
world. We must rise, therefore, from physical or hypo-
thetical necessity, which determines the succeeding state
of the world accordantly with an anterior state, to absolute
or metaphysical necessity, of which we can give no ac-
count, and this last reason is the reason of all the others.
As a thoughtful interpreter of Leibnitz's teaching says,1
thought, will, are at the bottom of all things ; phenomena,
in all their degrees, appear in the last result only as so
many refractions in the variously-disturbed media of sole
and universal light — -light which shines most of all in our
own soul, because it is the focus in which are concentrated
the everywhere dispersed rays of that diffused effulgence.
From action to action, from power to power, we must thus
soar to a potency which at last suffices singly for itself —
that is, to perfect spontaneity.

In time, then, as in space, all things are subject to a
law of inflexible interdependence. This idea of beholding
the universe in the microcosm, of regarding the infinitely
great in the infinitely little, monads in incessant reciprocal
action, each part bearing the stamp of the absolute which
shines forth in the all, and this all moving onward in grand,
harmonious might toward an end of which our intelligence
can catch perchance but a dim glimpse, but which it feels
in deep conviction — this idea is the glory of Leibnitz. It
is determinism in its all-embracing fullness. Descartes, too,
had formed an image of the world accordantly with supreme
laws ; but he had shut up those laws within the limits of
mechanism. Leibnitz beholds a grander sphere, and views,
beyond mechanism, energy, life, love, and good ; he gazes
upon the true God in his magnificence. The God of Descartes
is number and force ; the God of Leibnitz is life and beauty.
From his bosom all wells forth and radiates in floods of
eternal light, as thoughts emanate from our own existence.

1 Ravaisson, " Philosophy in France in the Nineteenth Century."

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE— LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS. 41

H.

Leibnitz has thus led us on to the loftiest heights of
thought, the furthest bounds of speculation. Let us now
come down again with him to the special questions he has
explored and transmitted to modern science, which still
lacks the power to solve them all. We shall learn how
serviceable that science has found the general principles
settled by him as the grand laws of the world's order.
Leibnitz has the clearest and strongest sense of the diffusi-
bility of life. He defines exactly the characteristic which
lies at its base, that is, the incessant molecular replacement
of matter in the permanence of active forms, namely, of
souls. He holds that the minutest portion of matter con-
tains a world of creatures, lives, animated beings, actuali-
ties, souls. Every particle of matter is to be conceived of
as a garden full of plants, or a pond full of fishes ; but every
twig of each plant, every limb of each animal, every drop
in its humors, is again such a garden, or such a pond, full
of decreasingly minute lives, similar in kind. All these
bodies, he adds, move like rivers, in unresting flow* Por-
tions pass into them, and pass out of them, incessantly. In
this way the soul changes its bodies by very fine degrees,
and is never suddenly stripped of its organs ; vital proper-
ties are continuous, while the matter of life is transitory.
Leibnitz conjectured, consequently, that some animals must
have the faculty of multiplying by scission, like plants.
The discovery of polyps by Trembley, the facts of the mode
of increase in vorticelli, paramecias, and bursars and opa-
lines, since noticed, have justified the philosopher's guess.

Descartes regarded animals as machines, as soulless
automata, made up of atoms the movements of which are
coordinated in the manner of those of plants. He denied
them intelligence, and supposed that the sensibility and in-
stinct noticed in them might be explained by purely me-
chanical causes. Leibnitz does not admit that there are
3

42 NATURE AND LIFE.

any specific differences between man and animals. He
grants that they have a soul inferior to ours in being less
rational, but still a rational soul, a soul fundamentally of
the same essence as ours, a principle of activity quite other
than the energies of the inorganic world. He considers it,
moreover, equally indestructible and immortal with our
own. Those, says Leibnitz, who conceive that an infinity
of little living things exists in the smallest drop of water,
as Leuwenhoeck's experiments prove, and who do not think
it strange that matter should be filled everywhere with ani-
mated substances, will not think it strange either that
there should be something animated in ashes, and that fire
may transform a living being, may reduce it, instead of de-
stroying it. Thus, life does not vanish. Only the arrange-
ment and agreement of the monads are modified ; the es-
sences that compose them remain with their original and
incorruptible properties, ready to reappear in other living
things. That which never begins never perishes either.
These reflections led Leibnitz to a very profound way of
looking on the phenomenon of death. As life is not a
breath coming suddenly and all at once to animate the
body, death cannot be attributed to the sudden vanishing
of such a breath. As generation is only the developing of
an already-formed animal, corruption, or death, is only the
enveloping of a living being which does not cease to re-
main living. Death takes place by degrees; it attacks
first the imperceptible parts, and does not strike our atten-
tion until it has seized the whole being. And we do not
see the gradual steps of that retrograding as we perceive
those of the slow forward movement that constitutes birth.
The facts of transformation and renewed life among insects,
the return to life of men nearly frozen, drowned, or stran-
gled, seem to Leibnitz a proof that death thus comes on
by very slow degrees, and he advises medical science to
attempt the task of bringing men to life again. Later

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE— LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS. 43

science has confirmed these ideas. Life does dwell in the
infinitely little ; it holds its silent and secret flow under the
" manifold disguises " Hamlet speaks of, eluding search
while it still plays in every pulse, and finding its food in
death.

Leibnitz also turns his attention to species, which he
defines by generation in such sort that the being similar to
another which comes from the same origin, or the same
seed, is also of the same species. The various classes of
beings appear to him only as ordinates of the same curve,
and form but one chain, in which these classes, like so
many links, hold so closely to each other that it is impos-
sible to fix the point at which any one of them begins or
ends. All species, he says with remarkable exactness,
which border upon or occupy parts of the curve where it
is bent or returned on itself, must be endowed with equivo-
cal characteristics. Then, looking at the subject as a whole,
and bringing it under the law of continuity, he arranges
species, and beings generally, in an immense series, from
man to the simplest existences ; he holds that there is so
close an approach between animals and vegetables that,
taking the least perfect of the former and the most perfect
of the latter, they can hardly be distinguished. It accords,
too, with the superb harmony of the universe, with the
grand plan as well as with the goodness of its Sovereign
Architect, that the various kinds of creatures should rise by
degrees toward his infinite perfection. Leibnitz admits the
existence of creatures more perfect than ourselves, but of
whom he confesses that we can have no clear conception.
He also believes that in the series of existing things there
are voids, possible things non-existent. The variation of spe-
cies, several instances of which he examines, seems to him
to be real, but not their transmutation ; he is for limited
variableness, that is, he allows the action of modifying cir-
cumstances within a wide range, yet does not go so far as

44 NATURE AND LIFE.

to believe that they can transform the species. On exam-
ining the impressions of fishes and plants in the schists of
Halle, Leibnitz, for the first time, perceived in those re-
mains, not a sport of Nature, but testimonies to revolutions
on the globe, and to the existence of faunas and floras that
have perished. The " Protogaea," in which this important
question is particularly and deeply studied, fixes the start-
ing-point for modern geology and paleontology, and for all
explanations, on the Plutonic theory, of the earth's crust.
Hutton, Buffon, and Cuvier, drew inspiration for their la-
bors from this sketch of Leibnitz.

He argues that, if it often happens in science that we
fail in the power of distinctly marking differences, that
results from our ignorance of both the minute parts and
the inward structure of things, that is, the principles by
which their fundamental nature might be accounted for.
That want of knowledge obliges us to pronounce by guess
on many phenomena, the full understanding of which is
reserved for the future. Therefore he builds great hopes
upon the use of the microscope, and upon comparative
anatomy (the term is his own), in which he believes that
the confirmation of many of his ideas will be found.
Among other conjectures he distinctly foresees the func-
tion and importance of the spermatozoa, in making the
assertion that it will be discovered how each sex supplies
some organized thing in the phenomena of generation.
And this assertion has a very just effect in correcting his
theory of the syngenetic preformation of beings, or the
incasement of germs, according to which all ova exist be-
forehand from the origin of the world, inclosed in that of
the first representative of each species. That theory,
proved to be erroneous by the whole result of observation
in embryogeny, is thus erroneous, precisely because the or-
ganized element contributed by the male sex is indispen-
sable to the growth of the embryo.

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE— LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS. 45

The classification of genera and species in the vegetable
kingdom is a difficult task. Botanists in the seventeenth
century thought that distinctions, founded on the shapes
of the flower, made the nearest approach to the natural
order in arranging a series of classes. Leibnitz judges
that it would be best to make the comparison not only in
respect to a single characteristic, such as that of the flower,
which may after all be the most useful in arranging a con-
venient system, but also in respect to the characteristics
of other parts in plants. He thus suggests the rule of
subordination in characteristics, as a result of his ideas
upon the harmony of beings.

Thus all these labors and hypotheses issue directly from
Leibnitz's metaphysical conceptions as to the system of
mundane elements. A still more direct outcome from them
is the invention of the infinitesimal calculus. Were the
calculus of itself nothing more than a splendid curiosity,
even then it would be much to have discovered a means
of working upon and with infinite quantities as with finite
ones. Fortunately that method of calculation has found
occasion in astronomy, mechanics, and physics, for applica-
tions so rich in results that those sciences have gained a
new being from it. It is a new instrument, a new lever
supplied to them for the highest researches. We thus
learn the extent of Leibnitz's familiarity with the most
difficult problems.

m.

What has been the influence of the metaphysics of
Leibnitz over the great processes of advance in modern
science, beginning with those of the last century ? It is
an old saying that the eighteenth century had no original
philosophy; in fact, it lived on borrowed doctrines. It
had among others one system of teaching proceeding from
that of Leibnitz, and Diderot may be said to have been its

46 NATURE AND LIFE.

true representative. At the first glance, that abounding
and undisciplined mind seems devoid of the qualities of
dogmatism and method which properly make the philoso-
pher ; but on a closer study we become aware that he did
develop an exact and settled system, in which the ideas
of Leibnitz hold a large place, and the principle of dyna-
mism, the notion of mother-forces, governs. In the " In-
terpretation of Nature," in " D'Alembert's Dream," and in
" Philosophical Truths as to Matter and Motion," Diderot
shows himself a pure scholar of the Hanoverian thinker,
rather a fanatical one even, since he goes so far as to write
that Leibnitz by himself alone gives as great a fame to
Germany as Plato, Aristotle, and Archimedes together
confer on Greece. Diderot's dynamism, by which we mean
his strong, full conviction of the activities of substance,
exists also in the minds of Charles Bonnet, of Buffon, of
Bordeu, and other famous naturalists of the same era. He
inspired at that period a whole school of investigators and
philosophers, some of whom found an excess of negations
in Hume's doctrine, and others an excess of analysis in
Condillac's system.

Buffon, like Leibnitz, sees in Nature arranged plans,
continuous relations, regulated facts, ends everywhere fore-
seen, conforming to an order dictated by supreme control.
Those organic 'molecules and those penetrant forces (im-
manent) which in his view compose life, and go on from
one mould into another, to perpetuate it, are precisely
Leibnitz's monads. The great ideas unfolded in the
" Epochs of Nature," which, however disputable in some
points, have had so real an influence over the later advances
of geology, are for the most part borrowed from the " Pro-
toggea." Buffon's general physiology is not less similar to
that first pronounced by Leibnitz. Such is the fact also
as to those of two of his famous contemporaries. Bordeu
and Barthez, protesting at once against Cartesian geome-

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE— LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS. 47

trism, erroneously extended to comprise the phenomena of
life, and against analysis pushed to extremes, as preached
by Condillac and applied by his school, demonstrate and
maintain vital forces in all their splendid independence of
action and simplicity that cannot be further simplified. No
doubt they exaggerate the weakness of mechanical ex-
planations, and the perils of analysis, and it would be an
error to suppose that later science has always pronounced
them right. But it has at least justified them in holding
the opinion advanced by Leibnitz in opposition to Des-
cartes, namely, that life -is a higher force which involves
lower ones without dependence on them, that the organ-
ism is a system of energies in which not every thing takes
place mechanically, that the forces which act in animals
are essentially analogous to those which act in man, and
that they all, consubstantial with organized matter, can
come to act only in it and by it. It is thus that those two
great physicians at the same time destroyed the medico-
mechanics of Boerhaave and the animism of Stahl, and
made the way ready for Bichat. Neither does the same
recent science wholly confirm the conjectures risked by
Charles Bonnet, by Telliamed, and more lately by Delame1-
therie, Lamarck, and Darwin, upon the connection of be-
ings, the origin and transformation of species, conjectures
of which Leibnitz had furnished the cautious outline ; yet
it would be unjust not to acknowledge that they have
aided in giving a strong impulse to zoological researches.

So also Vicq-d'Azyr, and those other anatomists who
lay the foundation of comparative anatomy, and examine
the harmonious relations, the various connections, the dy-
namic adjustments of the organs, are faithful to the con-
ceptions formed by Leibnitz as to Nature's plans. Goethe,
who openly expressed his respect for Diderot, shows him-
self a follower of Leibnitz as well as of Spinoza, not only
in his works on comparative anatomy, in which he points

48 NATURE AND LIFE.

out the latent symmetry of living parts and examines fine
proportions in bodies, but also in his general doctrines as
to the world. He admits that all Nature is filled with
forces, lives, and souls, a feeling most eloquently uttered
in " Faust," in " Werther," in the " Poesies ; " and, still
more, he expressly approves of the " Monadology." In his
magnificent funeral discourse upon Wieland (1812), he
unfolds, in language that Leibnitz would not have refused
to adopt, all the details of that belief he resorts to in ex-
plaining the immortality of thought, that is, of conscious
monads. All that school distinctly supplies us with proof
of the influence philosophic teachings exert over the mind
of savants, and consequently over the advance of discov-
eries. We thus discern of what advantage it always is to
guide researches and experiments by the loftier hints of
speculative genius, and we perceive, too, the need there is
for the consideration by philosophers of objective reason-
ings.

Our age has been too long neglectful of these impor-
tant lessons. We have seen its philosophy take leave of
science, to ally itself with literature and morals. While
science and philosophy, continuing closely united, were
destined, by the natural progress of things, to gain more
intimate mutual intelligence, their divorce has retarded the
moment of a reconcilement and good understanding, so
highly desirable. No doubt, very well-written books, full
of excellent thoughts, were still published among philo-
sophic schools; no doubt, grand discoveries were still
brought to light in the schools of science ; but doctrines
had vanished, and with them labored and fruitful meditation
had ceased to exist. Science, departing from high thought,
lost its dignity and contracted an empirical character.
Philosophy, by dint of ignoring experimental facts, lost it-
self in the chimerical. The Cartesian spirit, even more
perhaps than the spirit of Descartes, rose predominant, and

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE— LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS. 49

urged metaphysicians to empty spiritualism, and physicists
to sophistical materialism. While knowledge of mind was
thus wasting itself in literary declamation, and knowledge
of Nature in desultory research, idle discussions multiplied,
of tener inspired by passion than by reason, giving weapons
to the least noble purposes that passion suggests, and
paralyzing the most praiseworthy undertakings of reason.
At the present time this state of things is disappearing,
and Leibnitz's philosophy, it seems, must be the strongest
ally of all who long for a fruitful union between science
and metaphysics. The highest minds in schools most
widely apart give us grounds for indulging that hope.
They do not rest satisfied with wishing for its fulfillment ;
they are laboring for that direct purpose, disregarding all
impediments of prejudices or of objections.

The result most clearly ascertained by vivisections in
experimental physiology, and by observations in microsco-
pic anatomy, mainly through the labors of Claude Bernard
and Charles Robin, is, that living beings are agglomera-
tions of infinitely fine and delicate particles, real individu-
alities, each endowed with characteristic and consubstantial
properties. These active units, forms and forces in one,
bring about, following upon manifold interminglings, the
whole organization and the whole working of animal and
vegetable parts. Animals and plants have ceased to be
machines vivified by a power distinct from them, which
possesses and moves them ; they are systems of combined
monads in which life is deeply lodged, and by which it ex-
presses itself — they are marvelously ordered collections of
minute springs, possessing certain innate tendencies. As
Leibnitz had said, every living being is made up of an in-
finity of living beings. Now, these corpuscles, known to
modern science as anatomical elements, have as their es-
sential principle what Leibnitz described by the term
" souls," forms of substance, essential powers, monads. In

50 NATURE AND LIFE.

fact, that which gives their character to these primordial
elements of life is dynamic actuality. Let us consider a
dead cell and a living cell. What makes the difference be-
tween them ? Nothing at all, either from the geometrical
point of view, or from the physical or chemical one ; noth-
ing which may be detected by measurement, or balances,
or reagents. The difference between them is, that the for-
mer is devoid of the activity which exists in the latter.
That activity is a continuous inmost transmutation, by
which the matter of the cell is incessantly renewed, with-
out any modification of its morphological appearances or
of its other properties. Life consists in this tide which
flows deep through every element in the organization, in
that virtue of instability which effects unceasing change
in the matter of appearances, while the form and the force
do not vary. It exists in those organic properties, pure
forces, which are constant, while the organs, the visible
forms, are passing. Therefore, in opposition to the belief
of materialism, and in accordance with Leibnitz's views,
matter, in such case, is merely the shifting envelope ; the
unchangeable base is force. In addition to nutrition, which
has just been defined, other manifestations of life are,
through organization, development, contractility, feeling,
thought, will. These other aspects yield us the same dem-
onstration. The utter impossibility of producing any
thing organized with mere inorganic forces, the impotence
of spontaneous generation in the first place, testifies that
organization possesses a higher principle than that of the
phenomena of the mineral kingdom : but organization is
not the only thing that it is forbidden to attribute to the
working of physico-chemical means ; the same holds true
of contractility, sensibility, and a fortiori of thought and
will. The greater the development of experimental science,
the more decided is the difference between these two or-
ders of phenomena, which theory held might be con-

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE— LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS. 51

founded, the organic and the inorganic order, namely, and
the more evident it becomes that the forces of life and
those of a stone cannot be identified, even in their princi-
ple. The monads that engender cells are higher than those
that slumber in the grain of sand, just as the coarsest por-
tion of an animal is otherwise and more intricately com-
plex than the most perfect crystal. Very clearly, if form,
personality, thought, memory, will, all that makes up the
life of self, and the self of life, persists in identity, while
the matter of the organs suffers change and renewal, it
must be because life consists in a system of activity essen-
tially different from geometrical extension and from mass
that has weight ; it is because it is the peculiar property of
a substance which involves physico-chemical action indeed,
but involves besides that something quite different.

Every monad, says Leibnitz, has its principle, its essence,
its law, and is not made subject to the will of external im-
pulses. This is the very basis of the doctrines as to life
enounced by Charles Robin. Instead of granting that the
body is ruled by a vital principle which coordinates and
guides physiological motions, he believes that, thanks to a
complete concord in virtue of which every substance, obey-
ing its own laws, assents to what other substances require,
the effective working of the latter follows or attends the
effective working of the former. The development of liv-
ing beings, which consists in a progressive and ordered ac-
cumulation of anatomical elements, is explained, as he avers,
not by one force which holds them under its guidance, but
by the successive coming into view, in some sort the revela-
tion, of elementary substances which express life, every one
of those substances duly appearing when the conditions
needed for its manifest existence concur.

But is life everywhere in the world, as Leibnitz insists ?
Undoubtedly, if by life is to be understood spontaneity of
all things, activity peculiar to each monad. Or again, when

52 NATURE ALD LIFE.

we reflect that every portion whatever of substance vir-
tually contains some aspiration toward life, since it is ready
to enter as a component part into the constitution of a liv-
ing being, we may surely say that every thing lives. But
if by that word we mean to express special energies, of
the nature of nutrition, sensibility, and will, then we must
acknowledge that life belongs only to organized substances,
that is, to a single category of monads. There no doubt
is in the lowest monads, and those furthest removed from
life, some dim tendency toward a determined order ; but it
seems to me erroneous, as yet, to view in this a conscious
purpose. It is rather by a sort of reflex action that such
monads exert their powers, under the influence of superior
monads, exactly as the elements of the nerves, for instance,
sometimes act on those of the muscles unwittingly to us,
and in spite of us.

Another question, and one not less grave, here arises.
The thinking soul, as Leibnitz holds, is a dominant monad,
a solitary monad. Science seems not to authorize such an
assertion. For science, in its highest interpretation, the
soul is a concurrent power of monads, all of them sentient
and intelligent, but in different degrees, which accounts for
the variations in degrees of feeling and of reason. In one
living being there exists no monad expressing self, in an-
other self is only very vaguely perceived, in another again
it is conceived in its fullness. In one and the same living
being the soul is evidently manifold, because it shows it-
self under distinct aspects, as affection, feeling, intellect,
will. Thus, far from being single and indivisible, it con-
sists of a combination of monads which are not all equally
perfect, some being found occurring in the lowest animals,
others being characteristic of man exclusively. An intri-
cate system of primordial forces, a concordant action of
energies without extension, expressing themselves in the
anatomical elements of the gray matter of the brain, and

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE— LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS. 53

radiating thence by its peculiar virtue into the infinity of
things, the human soul is like Milton's lion, half lion and
half mud, and still struggling, under the moulding hand of
the divine sculptor, to get free from chaos. Half spirit,
half matter, our soul aspires to absolute purity: it is
checked and fettered by the bonds of the body. The great
mystery is to know how it releases itself from them when
passing into eternity.

Leibnitz did not merely distinguish those virtues which
he called substantial forms, or souls, and which are the
properties of corpuscles endowed with life, such as we now
know them ; he drew a further distinction, in these corpus-
cles and in all bodies generally, between mass and matter.
Now what he termed mass is the grouping of our geo-
metric and mechanical properties, and matter is the asso-
ciation of our physico-chemical properties. Mass and matter
belong to all bodies, soul does not belong to all. Yet it is
perhaps allowable to regard as a quasi-vital thing that
tendency of inorganic molecules to form regular groups in
crystallization, and even that more general property they
possess of always combining in definite proportions, assum-
ing figures of the generating law of which chemistry is
beginning to gain a glimpse. At all events, whatever may
be the principles of those inward motions, of those har-
monious struggles that have their seat in the inmost depths
of substance, chemistry in our days is a copy of Leibnitz's
thought in all its parts. In fact, it reduces those compli-
cated phenomena that are the object of its study to simple
elements known under the name of atoms, and having
nothing but the name in common with those of Leucippus
and of Descartes. Pure idealities, and yet the principles
of all that is real, these atoms are distinguished and classi-
fied by functions that are absolutely dynamic. Chemistry
proves the action in those atoms of primitive forces, which
it designates by the term atomicities, and which it measures

54 NATURE AND LIFE.

not by weight or motion, but by the direct product of the
actual play of those forces. "The energy with which one
body combines with another body," says Wtirtz, " is inde-
pendent of the power it possesses to attract the latter.
The first is atomicity, the last is affinity." Atomicities are
capacities of action, powers of combination, immanent in
atoms, or rather consubstantial with them. Such is the
language at this day of the most authoritative chemists.
They contemplate in bodies elective virtues, tendencies to
saturation, appetencies which imply something prior and
subsequent to motion, something like that which in us
brings about action. Chemistry no longer dwells in ap-
pearances and sensible forms, in those brilliant shows
which delight or dazzle the senses ; it dwells in those mute
forces, in those acting monads, the substances of substance,
the matters of matter. Bodies are no longer characterized
by their outward and momentary physiognomy alone ;
they are also characterized by that which is most secret
within them, by the principle of their past and coming ex-
istence, by a spring which is as inwardly theirs as our soul
is ours. That in them which strikes our senses is merely
the veil of their real nature. Faraday and Dumas alike,
Berthelot and Wtirtz too, here find the whole in a dynamic
harmony. A distinguished English chemist, lately deceased,
Graham, the discoverer of dialysis, even went so far as to
conceive, under the name of ultimates, of certain principles
yet simpler than atoms, real points of substance, the essence
of which is determined by the kind of vibrations they are
subjected to, and in its turn determines the various natures
of bodies. Thus monads have become, in vital phenomena,
anatomical elements with their consubstantial attributes,
and, in chemic phenomena, atoms with their consubstantial
attributes. Greek atomism and Cartesian atomism formed
the conception of geometric and mechanical corpuscles;
Leibnitz formed the conception of the principles of appar-

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE— LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS. 55

ent activities, explainable neither by geometry nor by
mechanics.

Let us last question the physical science of our own
day, and we shall discover in it still the same ideas. It re-
duces every thing to vibrations, both those of what it terms
material atoms, and those of what it calls ether. In its
view, physical phenomena are explained by the system of
motions of atoms and of the ether, and, since these motions
may be transmuted into one another according to a mathe-
matical law, it follows that relations of equivalence exist
among the various manifestations of physical activity —
that there is such a thing, for instance, as a mechanical
equivalent of heat, a calorific equivalent of electricity, etc.
Now, that internal motion revealed by analysis and induc-
tion, that corpuscular agitation which gives bodies the qual-
ities without which they could not be perceived, namely,
weight, color, heat, etc. — that motion, under every form,
implies a moving principle, something simple and irredu-
cible, a spontaneity similar to that Leibnitz conceives of in
monads. What is that living force, that potential energy,
that virtual energy, which physicists so often employ in
their speculations, if it is not the same thing as metaphys-
ical actualities, the intelligible cause of acts of force, of
tendencies like those the soul feels within itself? Will it
be said that all these manifold and varying aspects of phys-
ical force are derivative from the sheer mechanical force,
whose sum in the universe is unchanging ? But, then, why
does motion become at one place heat, at another light,
and still at another electricity ? Must it not be because,
besides those monads that are the spring of motion, others
exist, whose special function, from the point of view of our
sensibility, is to act on different perceptive capacities from
those by which we cognize motiofi ?

Under another aspect we recognize in our sciences of
to-day some of the great thoughts of Leibnitz, thanks to

56 NATURE AND LIFE.

which those sciences have gained a wholly new character :
we allude to those logical formulas into which the mind
condenses the materials of knowledge, those synthetic ideas
which are the summary of grand inductions. After having
shown how we must conceive of mind in Nature, we should
point out how it is necessary to conceive Nature in mind,
for our sensations, in undergoing elaboration by the mind
in order to become knowledge, borrow, and borrow very
much, from the peculiarities of the spiritual essence. In-
tellectual processes, says Charles Robin, form a whole with
the rest of science, in such a way that history proves the
exposition of a general idea to be proper, and to be ad-
missible as equivalent or superior to the exposition of
facts.

What, then, are these intellectual processes, these gen-
eral ideas ? These processes may be briefly stated as dia-
lectics, either synthetic or intuitive, and these ideas as the
concepts about form and force, of which we proceed to
point out the chief ones. The idea of series is perhaps the
most important. In contemplating mineral or chemical
species, or in contemplating animal or vegetable species,
the mind arranges them in a series. That is the form un-
der which it conceives the totality of beings. It sets up a
continuity among them, resembling that of series in the
higher algebra. It ranges forces and qualities in an un-
broken graduated progression, the effective cause of which
is perfection, in this sense, that beings rise to a higher
point in the scale just in the degree of their approach to
the conditions of that which is perfect, to wit, intelligence.
So luminous is this order, that Gerhardt effected a magnifi-
cent renovation in recent chemistry by bringing into it
the idea of series. The real relations and the true charac-
teristics of bodies have been settled with new exactness
by that method. This conception stamps itself so forcibly
on the savantfs mind that he feels a tendency, as spontane-

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE-LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS. 57

cms as it is irresistible, to fill up the voids that he observes
in the series, and to imagine rationally possible species in
order to do it. In this way he sees beforehand the exist-
ence of some being unknown in reality, just as he foresees,
in accordance with the laws of celestial mechanism, the ex-
istence of a planet never yet observed. This doctrine,
which Leibnitz had deduced from the principle of continu-
ity, and from that of the " sufficient reason," has been un-
deniably rich in results for the sciences. We name a late
instance, taken from chemistry. " The synthesis of neutral
fats," says Berthelot, " not only enables us to make artificial-
ly the fifteen or twenty natural fatty substances heretofore
known, but allows us also to foresee the formation of some
-hundreds of millions of similar fatty bodies. . . . Every
substance, every phenomenon, represents, we may say, one
link involved in a more extended chain of similar and cor-
related substances and phenomena. . . . Without quitting
the range of reasonable expectation, we may assume to
conceive the general types of all possible substances, and to
produce them." *

Another general idea is precisely that of type. We
cannot define type better than by using the old expression,
" creature of reason." In truth, it is a grouping together
of elements which maintain themselves in an harmonious
arrangement in such wise as to form a whole, conceived by
the reason as perfect. Such ideal and rational creation,
answering to certain conditions of fixity, necessity, and
generality, becomes a pattern, a standard to which the
mind refers and compares existing beings outside of itself.
The mind thus has the power of using reality to abstract
from it certain conditions which it groups in a higher,
clearer, in brief, in a truer, order than that manifested in
the outward world. We may add that the creation of
types is an imperative need for the mind ; it shows it in

1 " Organic Chemistry," vol. ii., p. 800, ct seq.

58 NATUKE AND LIFE.

the sciences as well as in literature and the fine arts. It
grasps reality only by referring it to such ideas, that is to
say, to wholes in which the mutual relation of the parts is
perfect. In chemistry, as in zoology and in botany, the
type is the fundamental idea from the point of view of
classifying. The great discoveries of our day, especially
the late discoveries in organic chemistry, bring this strong-
ly into view. They all issue from some speculative theory
as to the peculiarly rational structure of things. The true
philosophy of mind consists, perhaps, in the study of these
fundamental conceptions of the understanding, as the true
philosophy of Nature lies in the study of the primordial
forces showing forth by the sensible phenomena of the
world external to us. Thus, by a new path, we reach the
confirmation of Leibnitz's ideas ; for these general concepts,
these logical expressions, these universals, on the one hand,
furnish proof of those innate aptitudes in the mind upon
which Leibnitz endeavored to construct mental philoso-
phy ; and, on the other, they imply in Nature a tendency
toward development, toward metamorphosis and perfec-
tion, in other words, an intelligent force.

A brilliant school of mathematicians and physicists
has lately pronounced against the doctrines the progress of
which in the natural sciences we have just traced. Its dis-
ciples profess an exaggerated Cartesianism, denying any
real existence to inner forces, to spontaneities, to actuali-
ties, to monads. It is an avowed return to geometrism,
with all its strictnesses, and with all its illusions too.
That school rejects attraction and affinity under the pre-
tense that it is impossible to form any conception of those
forces without imagining in matter a multitude of little
hands hooking on to each other. It throws every thing
into the shape of a formula, and asserts that any thing is
chimerical which wants the capacity of being expressed
mathematically. That school defines force as the product

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE— LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS. 59

mg of mass multiplied by momentum, and active force as
the product mv* of mass multiplied by the square of the
velocity. Let us in the first place remark how highly un-
philosophical it is to regard the most simple and irredu-
cible things in the" world as products, to confine within the
strict limits of a one-term statement the living pulsations
of the infinite and the absolute in things. In the next
place, the attempt to define force by any calculation of
figures seems like aping a man who should insist that the
arrow-marks used in geometrical diagrams to denote the
direction of forces were exact likenesses of the forces
themselves. The cipher is the sign of quantity, the line
that of motion. Force is something else than quantity, a
very different thing from motion. But let us grant these
definitions are proper : the question still remains, What are
the causes that produce acceleration, velocity, resistance,
in the mass ? Now, it is impossible to avoid connecting
these causes with some principle higher than geometries,
with a spontaneity more or less resembling that effort
which in ourselves goes before action. We are thus al-
ways brought back, whether we would or not, to active
monads, whose infinite varieties, infinite relations, and in-
finite interminglings, bring forth all. The accomplished
writers we speak of will in vain strive to reduce to measured
fractions of space and of time that which is in its essence
the opposite of space and time — force ; and the attempt is
futile to prove that we have not a consciousness of the
dynamic resistance of the elements of the world as clear
as that which we have of our own individual effort to
counterpoise it.

It is easy to point out the cause of such specious abuse
of geometrical and mechanical considerations in natural
philosophy. It grows out of ignorance of those biological
facts by which the profound spontaneity, and the reality
of forces consubstantial with bodies, are revealed in a

60 NATURE AND LIFE.

special way. Geometry and mechanics, in their specula-
tion, separate material points from forces, while biology
teaches us to keep them bound together in an indestructible
and necessary unity. The science of motions and of the
forms they take, shows us only the outside of the energy of
the universe. The science of life, on the contrary, unveils
to us its throbbing heart and its splendid plan. Such is
the measureless and priceless service it yields to knowledge
and to discussion. Descartes, and those who attempt in
our day to revive his system by deducing physics from
mechanics, and physiology from physics, by explaining the
higher through the lower, as Auguste Comte says, by for-
bidding anj^ endeavor to conceive first principles by the aid
of last principles — all those philosophers, whatever their
merit in other respects, have misunderstood the lessons
yielded by the living being in its twofold physiological and
psychological relation. The evidences of soul making one
and the same with life might have displayed to their view
images of the soul and of life throughout the universe,
instead of blind and misleading geometrism. They would
have understood that ciphers and diagrams do not solve
.every thing, that computation is not the only method.
That which does solve every thing is the soul, because it
alone embraces every thing, or at least discovers in itself
alone, rapt in abstraction, instinctive secret affinities with
all. Besides, the certain and enduring fame of Descartes
is great enough to permit us, without fear of dimming its
deserved lustre, to pronounce sentence of impotence upon
any attempts made in our day toward the introduction into
natural philosophy of false principles borrowed from his
teachings. The guidance and inspiration which modern
biological science owes to them attest the increasing honor
paid to the ideas of Leibnitz.1

1 This article, written during the siege of Paris at the ambulance of
Conflans, where I was serving as physician, having access only to a few

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE— LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS. 61

memoranda, is unfinished in several respects. Still it has an interest as
the sketch of some ideas upon history and opinions which I have since
unfolded at greater length. See particularly my essay entitled " Leib-
nitz, the Naturalist, Physiologist, and Physician" ("Comptes rendus of
the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences," 1873).

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING
BEINGS.

PHYSICS, chemistry, and physiology, are making marvel-
ous advances in our day, in their superficial range ; but it
is, perhaps, not so clearly remarked that they are at the
same time rising in their aims and aspirations. In propor-
tion as processes improve and doctrines grow established,
Science takes fresh courage to attack lofty problems with
new vigor, and boasts of bringing light and certainty to
their solution. It takes up by exact methods and with
very confident system the discussion of the most general
and comprehensive questions. Owning no longer any
limits to its investigation of the world of suns nor to its
researches in the world of atoms ; believing, too, that this
twofold quest must yield up to it all the hidden things of
matter and of spirit, no wonder that it is confident in its
power to win by such inquiry the knowledge of all that
has seemed hitherto a prize reserved to other capacities
than its own. Whether warranted or unwarranted, this
philosophic bent of modern science is in either case due to
the influence of a multitude of discoveries full of interest in
spite of their commonly abstract nature, full of rich instruc-
tion beneath the seeming barrenness of their details.

If every one carries about with him certain notions as
to the conformation of the chief viscera of animals, few per-
sons, even among the most enlightened, have a suspicion
of the absorbing interest and the scope of our knowledge

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 63

regarding the inner composition of organs, the structure
and development of their deepest and most delicate parts,
the curious properties of those infinitely tiny corpuscles
that group together to make up living beings. The prob-
lems of life stand forth in such studies in all their grandeur,
all their mystery and charm. The silent revelations of the
microscope are here associated with the eloquent language
of experiments on the animal frame. All the complexities
of chemistry here give their aid to expositions which are
but the more convincing for their extreme positiveness.
And medicine itself, if it would escape stagnation, is forced
to ask from such studies the key to riddles never answered
by any power of empiricism. These words describe fully
enough the interest that must attend a complete picture of
the present condition of general anatomy.

General anatomy has been created only of late days.
Ancient anatomists, limiting their studies to the examina-
tion of the surface of organs, neglected to explore their
depths. Besides, they were long forced to do without that
instrument, most indispensable in this kind of investigation,
the microscope. During the period beginning with Heroph-
ilus and Erasistratus, who flourished three hundred years be-
fore the Christian era, and who are the real founders of de-
scriptive anatomy of the human body, extending down to
Galen, and from Galen onward, including the time of Vesa-
lius, the main subject of anatomy was formed nearly as a
complete body. A great number of points that remained ob-
scure were afterward cleared up by Berenger de Carpi, Mas-
sa, Servet, Sylvius, who discovered the valves of the veins ;
Eustachi, who found the tube and valve named after him ;
Varolus, who examined the brain ; Botal, Bauhin, Cesalpi-
nus, Fabricius of Aquapendente, and a host of others, who,
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, produced in en-

64 NATUKE AND LIFE.

graving magnificent plates of almost as great service to the
advance of anatomical studies as the most successfully com-
pleted original researches. This acquired knowledge, al-
ready extensive, was improved in the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries by a succession of able men, whose names of
themselves recall laborious lives and brilliant achievements.
Harvey, in 1619, demonstrates the circulation of the blood;
after him Wirsung points out the pancreatic duct ; Pecquet,
the thoracic duct ; Rudbeck and Thomas Bartholin, the
lymphatic conduits ; Vieussens throws light upon the whole
of neurology. Still later Ruysch, Albinus, Haller, Boer-
haave, Winslow, Vicq-d'Azyr, unite the gains of their per-
sistent investigations with those won by their predecessors.
To sum up all, the descriptive anatomy of the human
body was in a state of remarkable completeness at the
close of the eighteenth century. The outward arrange-
ment, the shape and relations of the bones, muscles, nerves,
vessels, and viscera, were settled in a positive manner, suffi-
cient for the needs of the surgical art. Great was the
amazement of old anatomists at that day when a man of
genius arose, to tell them, and convince them, too, that
merely the first half of anatomy was known, and that the
coarser and more superficial part ; and that another half,
full of difficulties and surprises, invited investigation. This
is exactly the fact as to general anatomy and Xavier Bichat,
who is its founder. In truth, those organs known in their
contour, their disposition, and locality, were but half known.
Their texture, their inner composition, their delicate tissue,
were all unknown. The essential properties of the mem-
branes that make them up had not been analyzed. That is
the aim of the new anatomy created by Bichat. A bold
and fertile experimenter, as well as an able and clear-
sighted observer, equally skilled in knowledge of the sound
and of the unsound man, deep and lucid as a thinker, un-
tiring and wonderfully fortunate in the methodical investi-

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 65

gation of facts, deliberate and cautious in establishing prin-
ciples, joining a broad and all-embracing view of things to
a most just conviction of the dangers and difficulties of re-
searches into organized being, a spirit at once very positive
and very lofty, wanting neither boldness nor noble ambition,
this great man was destined perhaps to give new and fin-
ished form to biology, had death not cut him off at the
age of thirty-two. Yet his unfinished labors have sufficed
to raise it to remarkable completeness by leading the way
to the knowledge of living tissues. " All animals," says
Bichat, " are a collection of various organs, which, while
each performs one function, all concur, each in its own
way, in the conservation of the whole. They are so many
special machines in the general machine which makes the
individual. Now these special machines are themselves
made up by several tissues of very different kinds, and
which really form the elements of those organs." Taking
for his base the fact that these various tissues are nearly
identical whether in some one animal or in another, Bichat
had fairly the right to bestow on the science that studies
them the name of general anatomy. Not satisfied with
describing them exactly, he undertook the categorical
analysis of their inmost properties. At the same time, he
caught a glimpse of the function of the fundamental humors
in the system.

Death did not suffer Bichat either to extend his discov-
eries in general anatomy, and apply them to pathology, or
to draw out from them a new system of medicine. This
was the work of another highly-endowed man, whose ar-
dent disposition, amazing vigor of mind, and generalizing
sagacity, made him one of the most original figures of this
age. Broussais explained diseases by the alteration of
the tissues. Rejecting the " imaginary entities " and " oc-
cult causes " of ancient medicine, looking for the mechani-
cal action^of morbid disturbances in the study of the func-
4

66 NATURE AND LIFE.

tions while regular, fully understanding the value of deep,
searching study into the properties cf organized matter,
this famous physician, by his work upon fevers, inflamma-
tions, and insanity, completely changed the teachings of
his time. Reducing the essential attributes of living mat-
ter to one sole property, irritability, he endeavored to show
how disturbances of the system depend on the increase or
decrease of that. This was rather an hypothesis at a venture,
which needed modification afterward ; but he had gained
so true an insight into the spring of vital phenomena, he
had penetrated so deeply into the secret of all modes
of organic activity, that the whole of medicine was illu-
minated by that proposition. Broussais had shown, at any
rate, that disease does not occasion the appearance of new
properties in the constituent parts of organs, but results
from disorder in the intricate manifestation of usual proper-
ties. He had perceived that the laws of disease are only
particular cases of those general laws governing the exist-
ence of animal tissues.

Blainville did not go beyond Bichat as regards the
tissues, but he understood far better the action and organ-
ization of those liquid parts distinguished by the name of
humors, and he added the knowledge of these to the ac-
quisitions of general anatomy. He traced the coincident
history of the tissues and the humors, both regarded as
constituent and undivided parts of the system ; and he
threw new light upon the systems that are formed by the
grouping of similar tissues. During the time of Blain-
ville, that is, in the first third of this century, foreign sa-
vants, applying to the living tissues of animals the same
method of observation applied by Mirbel to vegetable ones,
discovered that all these tissues, far from being homogene-
ous, are made up by the interweaving of corpuscles differ-
ent in form and kind, only visible under the microscope,
and which are called anatomical elements. They brought

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 67

to sight some of the cells, pores, and excessively small
tubes, which thus group together to form the solid parts
observable by the naked eye. Gruthuisen, Heusinger,
Schleiden, Schwann, and others, thus unfolded the system
of general anatomy expounded by Xavier Bichat.

Medicine of old had believed in the strangest doctrines
as to the liquids of the system, and had connected them in
the wildest ways with its theories upon health and disease.
The Hippocratists and Galen, at a later time, supposed
there were four humors, the blood, the phlegm, yellow bile,
and black bile, whose due attempering supported health,
while their disproportion or acridity occasioned diseases.
Moderns were for a long time satisfied with these delusive
views, and it was not until the eighteenth century that a
true advance was made in the knowledge of the humors,
thanks to the labors of the younger Rouelle. After him,
Fourcroy, Vauquelin, Berzelius, Chevreul, Liebig, Dumas,
Denis, etc., using the exact method of chemical investiga-
tions in the study of these interesting parts, grew ac-
quainted with the chemical compounds, the immediate
principles out of which they are formed. They also tried
to detect and measure these principles in the organs and
tissues of the system. Unfortunately, chemistry does not
avail to solve all the problems of biology, and in our day
we have acknowledged that chemical analysis must give
precedence to anatomical analysis in researches into the
composition of the machinery of the organism. In this
way there came to be formed a more complete general anat-
omy than that of Bichat, one that embraced the study
by method of animated beings, beginning with their most
rudimentary component principles, and ending with those
complex tissues which are the web of their organs.

II.

Every one knows how geologists decompose systems
into rocks, and rocks into minerals, which are the primary

68 NATURE AND LIFE.

elements of the earth's crust. Thus they distinguish in
the igneous systems granite, syenite, gneiss, diorite, etc.
They then reduce each one of these rocks to a certain num-
ber of immediate principles. Granite, for instance, will
yield felspar, quartz, and mica. In like manner there are
many.degrees of complexity in the edifice of living beings,
which are reduced by a series of analyses of a similar kind
to a certain number of elements which are no less immedi-
ate principles, that is, fundamental chemical substances.
Robin was one of the first to understand the need of or-
ganizing, systematically, our knowledge of these ingredi-
ents, these materials for all vital elaboration and all or-
ganic construction.

Ancient chemistry admitted, without question, that the
humors and tissues of the system are made of water, oil,
earth, and salt. They sometimes added sulphur, phlegm,
and alkali. All this- was quite vague and uninstructive. It
has since been admitted that the number of immediate prin-
ciples is considerably more extended, and that their com-
position is very intricate. The analyses of modern chem-
istry have settled the exact nature and the chief proper-
ties of these bodies, but have not yet reduced our knowledge
of them to system. They have taught us that there exist
in the system coloring matters, albuminoid ones, acids,
salts, alkalies, alcohols, sugars, fats, and ethers. M. Robin,
taking up certain hints of M. Chevreul, put the immediate
principles in their true place, and classified them, while
fixing their duty in the different parts of the system.
These principles mark the passage from chemistry to
biology. Regarded singly, in their molecular composition,
their chemical function, and the transmutations they may
undergo when influenced by reagents, they belong to
chemistry. Looked at from the point of view of their
number and their distribution in the living system, of the
share they have in the growth of the animal's organs and

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 69

fluids, of the peculiarities they present according to ages,
species, and morbid conditions, they belong to general anat-
omy. Robin has pointed out how they become grouped
and transformed in the cycle of life.1

The immediate principles, gathered in a fixed order,
and with a peculiar structure, form corpuscles of different
kinds, but always extremely fine and delicate, only visible
with the aid of highly-magnifying microscopes, and which
are called anatomical elements. These elements, placed
in contact and intertangled in a thousand ways, form the
tissues of the organs, and it is essentially in them that all
the forces of the living being dwell. More complex than
some of the infusoria (monads, amoebae), they stand as tiny
organisms composing in federation the organism of the
individual. Thus the physiological simplifications of mod-
ern science have no other object than, by processes of sa-
gacious analysis, to seize upon these active monads that are
counted by myriads. These are the simple bodies of biology,
not less indispensable for the clear rendering of vital facts
than those which the genius of Lavoisier has the honor of
discovering were to the understanding of chemical facts.
Among the anatomical elements a distinction is made be-
tween cells, fibres, and tubes. Cells are spheroidal corpus-
cles, polyhedral or disk shaped, having very nearly equal
dimensions in every direction, varying from five thou-
sandths to one-tenth of the thousandth part of a metre.
They are formed of a mass as a base, seldom having a cav-
ity, but often with one or several nuclei distinguishable
within it, which are sometimes provided with secondary
nuclei. These elements are the ones most generally dis-
tributed through the system. The cellular shape belongs
indeed to the red and white globules of the blood, to the
elements of the bones and their marrow, to those of the
central nerve-substance and the ganglions, to those of the
1 See, on this subject, the introduction to my book on " The Humors."

70 NATURE AND LIFE.

epidermis, etc. The shape of the different cells varies very
much in different species. Some of them even assume
very odd forms. The multipolar cells of the central nerve-
substance resemble polypi with singular arms. Others are
star-shaped, others spindle-formed, etc. The fibres have
the shape of a narrow ribbon, lengthened out and very
thin, sometimes inclosing one or several nuclei. The fun-
damental elements of the muscles are fibres of two kinds :
those of organic life, which are smooth, and varying in
length between six - hundredths of one - thousandth of a
millimetre and five-tenths of the same dimension; and
those of the animal life, which are striated and very much
smaller. The conjunctiva tissue and the elastic tissue are
also made up from special fibres. Those elements having
the shape of tubes are the perineura, which wraps the
primal elements of the nerve-tubes in the nerves of animal
life, and in the white filaments of the great sympathetic
nerve ; the myolemma, which surrounds the primal fibres
of the muscles of animal life ; the capillary vessels, the
tubes of the glands, and the parenchyma, and last the nerve-
tubes. These latter, which make up the larger part of the
nerves, have a diameter varying from one-hundredth of a
millimetre to one ten-thousandth of that dimension. Mir-
bel wrote, in 1835, that the cells or " utricles " are so many
living individuals, each enjoying the property of growing,
of multiplying, of certain limited modifications, working
in common for the building up of the plant of which they
become themselves constituent materials. He added, as
Turpin had already expressed it in 1818, that the plant is
thus a collective being. We can now say the same thing
of the animal. It too is a collective being, made up by
the agglomeration of the fibres, tubes, and cells, which we
have just described. We are only federations of anatomi-
cal elements.

Until the time of Robin, the anatomical elements had

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 71

been more or less confounded with the tissues. Neither
their function nor their biological characteristics had been
defined. Phenomena had been explained without ascend-
ing to those corpuscles which are the seat of their begin-
ning, v This savant regarded them for the first time as
properly forming the subject of a special branch of anat-
omy. Besides, he discovered a certain number of them
which had till then escaped microscopic observation — the
perineura in the nerves, the medullocele and myeloplax in
the marrow of the bones ; he disclosed the unknown func-
tions of several others, such as the leucocytes, the nerve-
cellules of the ganglia, the different epithelia ; in a word,
he shed new light upon the history of all by describing the
peculiarities of their origin and development.

Nothing is more instructive and attractive than the
study of the anatomical elements. They are invisible to
our eyes, but they are not the less the glowing centres in
which the fire of life burns. It is in and by them that it
begins and grows ; it is in them that those fundamental
attributes one after another appear, which occasion the
highest manifestations of animal existence. Real micro-
cosms, each living with its own self-subsisting life, they
are endowed with essential properties which explain all
vital acts. Their composition from immediate principles
is quite complex. It is as inconstant as their structure is
delicate : subject to an incessant molecular renewal, assimi-
lating constantly new materials, and constantly getting rid
of a part of their substance, they are in a state of per-
manent transmutation. This perpetual renovation is ex-
actly nutrition, the positive mark of organized beings. No
life without nutrition. The lowly vibrio nourishes itself as
the most complete mammal does ; the meanest mould-spot
as the gigantic cedar. All other properties of living bod-
ies are subordinated to this one, which is their first condi-
tion, and the most specific sign of life. Another charac-

72 NATUKE AND LIFE.

teristic of the anatomical elements is evolution, quite dis-
tinct from nutrition. These little bodies, at the instant
when they make their appearance, are not like what they
are about to be at a later time. The more remotely from
the moment of their birth we consider them, the more dif-
ferent is the aspect we observe them to present from that
they formerly had. They gain a larger bulk, and compli-
cate themselves with new parts, with more perfect forms,
which will vanish in their turn, so that every element thus
describes a curve of evolution, of which the apex, repre-
senting the full-grown state, is reached more or less rapidly.

If nutrition and evolution belong to all anatomical ele-
ments, contractility is the privileged mark of a very small
number among them. It is peculiar to muscular fibres, in
which it presents two modes : In the striated muscular
fibres of animal life, it is sudden and quick ; in the smooth
fibres of organic life, it takes place slowly. It is upon this
property that all movement and locomotion depend, since it
is that which gives force to the muscles.

Innervation is the peculiarity of the nerve-elements.
Its manifestations are complex and diversified, but it is
specially marked above all by this fact, that, far from lim-
iting its play to a local action, it radiates from a distance
and carries its influence far along. The nerve-cell, in fact,
finds in the nerve-tubes issuing from it, in the congenerate
cell which is appended to it, either conducting apparatus,
designed to carry off the force which it produces, or a true
receiving apparatus, designed to store up that force, and
propel it at a distance under another form. A real electro-
dynamic pair, as M. Luys has so well expressed it, the
nerve arrangement thus reduced to its simplest expression,
itself engenders the force which it transmits afar. It con-
ducts, receives, and transforms it in the manner of those
machines for electric transmission which represent, in the
apparatus for generating electricity, the emitting cell in

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 73

the interposed wire, the nerve-tube, and in the cell placed
at the other end of the tube the receiving apparatus in-
tended to record and to translate into a new form the ori-
ginal impulse. This force, sometimes centripetal, in the
form of sensitiveness, sometimes centrifugal, in the shape
of thought, is also both at once as an impulse to movement.
But the most characteristic thing there is in these acts of
innervation is, their spontaneousness. The nerve-cells have
the property of retaining the impression of outward agents
that have affected them, and of remaining for a greater or
less length of time in that condition in which they have
been artificially placed. Thus, in the physical order, light
imparts to bodies it has touched for a moment a real activ-
ity, and makes them phosphorescent for a longer or shorter
time. This fitness to keep external impressions stored up,
which is the privilege almost exclusively of the nerve-cells,
may continue in the latent state an indefinite time, may at
length be lost, and not reveal itself promptly except under
the evoking power of the first impression, or, it may be,
under that of the surrounding cells, which are in some sort
new centres of secondary stimulations. Just as we see
bodies which had become phosphorescent by effect of ex-
posure .to the sun insensibly lose that property, and regain
it by the help of some other source of phosphorescence —
heat, for example — so the receptivity of cells may be re-
stored either under the influence of the first cause, or that
of some other source of stimulation. Let us remark once
more, and this is precisely the most important point in
cerebral innervation, that cells once agitated by contact
with outward impressions do not stop with this. The
state in which they find themselves after their impregna-
tion by the outward impression, and which M. Luys com-
pares to phosphorescence, spreads on and imparts itself}
and proceeds, by a succession of intermediate agitations, to
arouse the beginning of action in new groups of cells situ-

74 NATURE AND LIFE.

ated at other poles, and which combine with the first in ex-
citing in their turn new impulses. Such are the chief
noticeable ways in which innervation makes its appearance
and fulfills its action ; a property which, rudimentary, and
hardly to be detected in the lower animals, rises in the
higher ones, and lifts them, too, to so lofty a degree of
perfection. Whatever may be, as to the rest, the first
cause of the most striking acts of our life, of the affections
and the intellect, we feel, will, imagine, and understand,
only through the means of these nerve-corpuscles distrib-
uted through cur system, and endowed with that power,
not paralleled elsewhere, of receiving, transmitting, per-
ceiving, storing away, and modifying impressions.

This, then, is one first and fundamental lesson yielded
by the study of the anatomical elements ; the play of ani-
mal organisms is reduced to four simple essential modes of
action : nutrition, evolution, contractility, and innervation.
At once distinct and combined, sometimes intricately in-
termingled, sometimes visibly separate, consubstantial with
those anatomical elements by which their existence is made
known, capable of putting on various and manifold ap-
pearances, these properties are the springs of all living
mechanisms. In machines produced by man's industry,
one single force goes through many forms to accomplish
the most various effects. In animals, several different forces
have for their business, in the midst of a thousand entan-
glements and intricacies, to insure the perpetuation of the
species through the full working of the individual.

We are thus led to speak of the generation of the ana-
tomical elements. This question is one of twofold gravity :
In the first place, it abounds in difficulties of every kind,
so extremely subtile are the observations in the case, so
prompt the senses to be misled, so ready the mind to be.
deceived. Then it borders on the most formidable prob-
lems, not merely of general anatomy, but also of naturul

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 75

philosophy, since it is mixed with the study of the produc-
tion of organized beings generally. Robin's researches
have contributed in large measure to the advance of knowl-
edge as to these obscure phenomena.

Every organized substance, which is nourished and de-
veloped, effects the appearance of new anatomical elements
in its neighborhood. It tends to create new forms and
new activity about it. One element may engender another
like it by segmentation, that is, by breaking up into two
or several parts. In cells with nuclei, we observe first the
breaking up of the nucleus, and then the individualization
of the contents of the cell about the little secondary nuclei
thus formed. So a cell is the point of origin of three or
four new cells, each of which becomes the seat of exactly
the same phenomenon. There is, in this case, a sort of
partitioning off effected in the contents of the cell in the
course of its growth. A second mode of production of
anatomical elements is gemmation. In this case there
forms at one of the points of the parent element a bulge, or
hernia, from which results another element distinct from
the first. And this proceeding, like that of segmentation,
is much more like a reproduction than a birth.

Let us consider the third mode. In this the anatomi-
cal elements are born in full completeness within and at the
expense of a living liquid, issuing from already-existing
anatomical elements. This liquid, called blastema, is made
up of immediate principles, which proceed from a transu-
dation of the organized substance, into the interstices of
which it flows. The blastema is eminently the fertiliz-
ing liquid, the secret region in which are condensed the
creative forces of life, making themselves evident by a con-
tinuous elaboration of cells, fibres, and tubes, which are
the rudiments of tissues and organs. In it a very tiny
nucleus at first makes its appearance, which little by little
envelops itself with solidified matter, that ends by gaining

76 NATURE AND LIFE.

a fixed shape and a special structure. The elements of the
tissue of plants form in the same way within a mucilagi-
nous liquid called cambium, and in which the most improved
instruments detect nothing but shapeless matter. There
are as many different blastemas as there are tissues ; in
other words, the anatomical elements of each tissue exude
between them those generative fluids whence similar ele-
ments spring. We shall presently have occasion to notice
some interesting instances of this.

This hatching of living molecules in the mass of blaste-
ma, proved by Robin's numberless experiments, confirmed
by those of many other savants* is a true spontaneous
generation. In fact, organized corpuscles are here devel-
oped without germs or parents, in the midst of a liquid in
which, a few moments earlier, nothing would authorize us
to foretell their appearance. Only this liquid results from
a living organism, that is, one whose elementary particles
are themselves in course of ceaseless molecular renewal.
Beyond these facts we have not been able to prove abso-
lutely that beings, even microscopic ones, can be produced
simply by the concurrence of physico-chemical forces.
The numerous experiments which have occasioned within
a few years so hot and passionate controversies, prove
that a liquid or an infusion observed in the vessels of
a laboratory remains absolutely barren as long as it is
guarded from contact with germs and spores conveyed by
the atmosphere. This result, demonstrated by M. Pasteur,
demolishes all the arguments called up in support of hete-
rogenesis.

The three modes of birth that we have just examined
are the very modes of generation of living beings, since
these invariably begin by anatomical elements. To give a
clearer idea of these very curious operations of Nature, let
us see what takes place in the organized granule which is
1 See the late works of Messrs. Oniraus, Feltz, and others.

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 77

the starting-point of the formation and development of
the embryo, that is, in the ovule. We shall there point
out these three modes at work.

The ovule is a little globule, from one to two tenths of
a millimetre in diameter, that is, as large as a grain of
sand that can but just be seen. It is made up of an en-
veloping sphere, called the vitelline membrane, in which
is found a semi-liquid gelatinous matter, to which the
name of vitellus * is given. The vitellus in its turn presents
a sort of nucleus which is the germinating vesicle, or that
of PurJcinje. Thus the ovule offers to view at the outset
the marks of a true cell, but it gains, while developing, a
structure and dimensions that soon distinguish it from one,
and make of it a special organ. When it has reached the
period of maturity, the germinating vesicle disappears, and
its substance mingles with that of the vitellus. At the
same time the latter shrinks upon itself, and contracts.
There comes between it and the wall of the vitelline mem-
brane a space which fills up with a clear liquid. It is at
this moment that the phenomenon of fecundation occurs,
which is owing to the penetration of the spermatozoa,
which make their way into the newly-formed space that we
have mentioned. Then the vitellus loses shape, and for sev-
eral minutes goes through a series of very varied gyratory
motions, which Robin has studied. Simultaneously the
spermatozoa — which are, as Robin has proved, true ana-
tomical elements proceeding from male ovules, analogous
to the embryonic cells of the female ovules — dissolve,
and thus mingle the substance of one parent with that
of the other, which they impregnate. There is then re-
marked a very curious fact, also discovered and studied

1 Birds' eggs contain their ovule in the centre, the development of
which, instead of taking place by means of materials provided directly
by the mother, is made at the expense of materials contained in the egg,
that is, the white and the yelk.

78 NATURE AND LIFE.

by Robin, the production of polar globules. These glob-
ules are little prominences which rise by gemmation on
the surface of the vitellus. They mark the point at which
the depression of the latter, and then its breaking up, will
afterward begin. At the same time a new nucleus, the
vitelline nucleus, is born complete, by spontaneous gen-
eration, in the depths of the primitive mass. This nucleus
breaks up and divides into several nuclei, about which the
substance of the vitellus forms separate groups, and thore
thus arise cells which proceed, by ranging themselves close
against the wall of the vitelline membrane, to form another
membrane, called the blastoderma. This segmentation of
the vitellus, discovered in 1824 by Prevost and Dumas, is
exceedingly important, seeing that the first elements of the
embryo proceed immediately from blastodermic cells. It
must be remarked that in insects and spiders, as Robin
has discovered, the vitellus does not split up. In these
little beings the cells of the blastoderma are formed by
gemmation of the surface portion of the vitellus ; that is
to say, the polar globules, instead of being developed at
one single point of the latter, make their appearance over
its whole surface, to compose the blastodermic membrane.
In brief, the essential mechanism of generation is reduced
to the following succession of phenomena, taking place in
the depths of the ovule or of the egg within a time which
varies from twelve to twenty-four hours : 1. The disappear-
ance of the germinating vesicle; 2. Shrinking of the vi-
tellus; 3. Penetration by the spermatozoa ; 4. Loss of form
and gyration by the vitellus; 5. Production of the polar
globules by gemmation ; 6. Origin of the vitelline nucleus
by genesis; 7. Splitting up of the vitellus ; 8. Composition
of the blastoderma; 9. Formation of the embryonic dot;
10. Appearance of the first definite elements of the embryo.
As we see, the new being, formed of well-constituted ana-
tomical elements, has received none of them from its

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 79

mother. The materials that have acted together in the
gradual production of these elements have come to it only
molecule by molecule, through the enveloping membranes.

Robin's doctrine with regard to the production of
anatomical elements within blastemas is not accepted by
some German physicians, who persist in maintaining the
cellular theory , established in vegetable physiology about
1838 by Schleiden, and extended later by Schwann to ani-
mal physiology. This theory admits that all the anatomi-
cal elements of animals proceed from a succession of direct
transformations of the cell. One single primordial cell is
the source of the most dissimilar elements, nerve-elements,
muscle-elements, etc. The cell springs from the cell by
proliferation • the other elements spring from it by meta-
morphosis. The most complex organism thus results,
through a series of varied transfigurations, from one simple
rudimentary ovule. It is, as we see, the doctrine of Lamarck
and of Darwin, applied to the genesis of the embryo. The
question is important. It has lately given rise to cele-
brated discussions, and perhaps it is as well to consider
it briefly here.

Otnnis cellula e cellula, say the partisans of Schwann's
theor}'. That might be readily granted, if the system con-
tained none but similar cells ; but there is in it a great
number of elements so distinct that the mind cannot com-
prehend how some of them could be emitted by the rest.
It refuses to allow, for instance, that leucocytes, which
water attacks and acetic acid dissolves, proceed, by pro-
liferation, either from neuclei of cellular tissue or from
epithelial nuclei, which those reagents do not affect. We
can hardly believe that sons are so very unlike their fathers.
"We can form no idea how muscular fibres and nerve-tubes
can issue from globules that bear no resemblance whatever
to them, either as regards composition or as regards proper-
ties. Besides, such a relationship has never been directly

80 NATURE AND LIFE.

proved. It is very plainly seen that cells which have be-
come individualized by splitting up, are the seat of a di-
vision which gives rise to other cells ; but that only occurs
when the mother-cells have gained or exceeded their com-
plete development and their regular dimensions. Now
this fact, which has been taken as the starting-point of the
cellular theory, is a mere phenomenon of evolution, and
not a fact of production. The inventors of that theory,
for want of observing closely and continuously enough,
have quite as widely misunderstood what takes place when
we see certain anatomical elements succeed to others of a
different kind, as in the case of the liquefaction of one set
of elements, and then the formation of a blastema in which
the second set is produced. This is a real genesis by sub-
stitution, as Robin calls it, and not a direct emission, a
proliferation, as is taught in the schools across the Rhine.
In this case there are several phases which have escaped
the observation of the too systematic doctors of Berlin
and Wurzburg, but which French savants have settled in
a way not to be gainsaid, not being blinded, like the for-
mer, by a preconceived idea. What these same Germans
call endogenous generation, that is, generation within a
cell, is quite as much an exceptional mode of production of
anatomical elements, but one that in no way contradicts
those we have enumerated, and in no way avails to prop up
Schwann's theory. The cellular theory is a doctrine as de-
lusive as it is convenient and attractive. It is one of the
numerous mistakes introduced into German science by
that philosophy of Nature so highly relished by the con-
temporaries of Schelling and Oken, and of which the traces
are to be found in the works of man}- eminent savants of
Germany even at this day. Flattering as it is to that in-
clination by which we are led to the desire to confound
things the most disparate in one chimerical unity, it is not
surprising that such a philosophy should so long have im-

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 81

posed upon minds that took every thing to be real except
the reality itself.

Some biologists of the same school have been led by
a similar mistake to the notion of a supposed property
inherent in living tissues, the peculiarity of which is the
power they have of setting up action under the most vary-
ing influences. They have given this property the name
of irritability, the same peculiarity formerly regarded by
Broussais as a specific one, and used by him as the main-
stay of his theory. This irritability, neither specific nor
spontaneous, is nothing else than the manifestation of one
of the five fundamental properties of organized substance.
At least it is always reducible to that, as Robin has
shown, and could not from any point of view be regarded
as a new property. The anatomical elements are in a state
of incessant transformation, and therefore the least thing
may disturb their equilibrium, and bring about what is
called irritation. Let a single atom of their mass experi-
ence a derangement of any kind, the remainder of them
undergoes its reaction, and all the properties of the element
are differently affected. Heat, cold, electricity, chemical
substances, in a word, any causes that can affect the mo-
lecular condition of the elements, thus act on organized
substance. It is the instability in a system of such restless
and fleeting changes which makes it so quick to feel all in-
fluences, so irritable ; but, we repeat, irritants call forth in
it nothing more than the exhibition of the properties we
have mentioned.

" Cleave an atom," the Persian poet says, " and you will
find in it a sun." So the anatomical element, examined in
its deepest recesses, yields us the magnificent vision of life.
It unveils for us its secret machinery, its hidden energies,
its latent springs, its concealed forces ; teachings full of
light, which have transformed the conceptions of philoso-
phy regarding the world of life.

82 NATURE AND LIFE.

III.

Thus we are brought back again, after a rather long
circuit, to the tissues of Bichat. In fact, it is by the piling
together or the interlacing in a thousand cross-ways that
these tissues are formed, and they in turn mingle to com-
pose organs. The study of the tissues, or histology, is no
doubt that portion of anatomy which, by its amazing and
priceless revelations, has most strongly attracted contem-
porary physicians and physiologists. The number of ana-
tomical elements that come together to make up a given
portion of tissue, could no more be computed than that of
the grains of sand on the sea-shore. When we think that
these elements, having the shape of cells, tubes, and fibres,
are measured by thousandths of the thousandth part of a
metre, it is clear that a shred of skin or muscle, a bit of
brain or bone, contains immense quantities of them. How-
ever, this question is only one of secondary interest.
What it is important to know is, the arrangement of these
elements and the order in which they combine to compose
the tissue ; in a word, it is the texture of it. Apart from
the tissue-products, which result from merely bringing ana-
tomical elements of the same kind into contact, all the
other tissues present one sort of element called fundamen-
tal, because it predominates, and gives the tissue its chief
properties, while also it is associated with other sorts,
which are called accessory. Tissue-products thus present
the simplest degree of texture, and in their normal con-
dition contain no vessels. Of this number are the epider-
mis or epithelial tissue, the tissue of nails and horns, which
are formed wholly of epithelial cells, the crystalline tissue,
wThich is made up of fibres arranged in concentric layers,
etc. The other tissues, that is, by far the majority of the
whole, present a very complicated texture. Several dis-
tinct sorts of anatomical elements are in these associated
in definite grouping. The part fulfilled by the tissue is

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. £3

the sum of the properties inherent in each sort of element,
while the characteristics of the fundamental element pre-
dominate. The accessory elements in a manner restrain
the too great activity of this latter, and thus take part in
giving to the tissue properties of a secondary order indeed,
but indispensable to the discharge of its duty, which is thus
the result of manifold properties. When the texture of
these organic webs is studied under a microscope, we are
often astonished at the prodigious complexity they exhibit.
Nothing is so curious as the disposition and arrangement
of all these tiny centres of life, some round, others polyhe-
dric, others thread-like, others again tubular, and all so
small that the humblest flesh-worm is a monster beside
them. Sometimes the fibres are tangled inextricably, like
dense ivy around an aged trunk ; sometimes there is a
singular net, formed by the capillaries with fine meshes,
in which the cells crowd and crush themselves out of shape.
Sometimes we find clusters in which little bladders are
arranged along a crooked channel ; sometimes there are
layers, piled one on another, resembling geological strata.
In a word, the arrangement of the elements is exceedingly
diversified, and, if we might say that the tissues are words
in which anatomical elements stand for the letters, it must
be added that the order of the latter is much more compli-
cated than is the case with the terms of spoken language,
and very differently too.

The nerve-tissue, the real masterpiece of vital force, has
been well understood only since histology has disclosed to
us all the elements* of that fragile whitish pulp. The
structure of the ganglia, the connections they have with
the nerves, the difference between nerve-tubes and nerve-
cells, have been made out by Robin. He it was, too, who
discovered the lymphatic vessels of the brain-substance.
These lymphatics encircle the blood-vessels traversing the
central nerve-tissues in such a way that the latter are com-

84: NATURE AND LIFE.

pletely sheathed in the former. The lymph circulates with
its globules between the inner surface of the lymphatic and
the outer surface of the capillary, which occupies the cen-
tre. The texture of the marrow of the bones, the placenta,
the umbilical vesicle, the skin, the arteries, the pancreas,
has been illuminated with strong light by the investiga-
tions of the same observer. It may even be said that, of
the thirty tissues of the system, there is not one whose
nature is not better understood through his labors. And
this work performed has suggested another to him : we
mean the comparison of the same organic parts with each
other at different times in their existence ; that is to say,
the establishment of general comparative anatomy. In this
vast field of histological comparison, so little explored be-
fore his time, Robin has collected many precious truths for
the general science of biology.

We have seen that the normal tissues of the organism
consist of a fundamental anatomical element and of a cer-
tain number of accessory elements. Medical art has gained
wholly unexpected light from the discovery of this order
of facts. The works of modern micrographers, particularly
those of Hannover, Lebert, Virchow, Robin, Broca, Follin,
etc., have proved, in fact, that all morbid growths, and
especially those known under the names of tumors, cysts,
polypi, cancers, tubercles, and scirrhous growths, proceed
merely from the superabundant, excessive formation of
some one of these accessory elements. It is now demon-
strated that those new formations, so often repulsive in ap-
pearance, and concealing the seeds of death, contain nothing
which is foreign to the organization in its sound state, and
are not characterized by any peculiar substance produced
under the influence of the disease. They are due some-
times to hyper genesis, that is, to an unusual collection of
some accessory element taking part in the regular composi-
tion of the tissue in which they are developed ; sometimes

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 85

to the heterotopy of some other element, that is, to the ap-
pearance of that element where it is not usually produced.
Cancer, for instance, that terrible cancer, gnawing and
spreading, is wholly composed — who would have believed
it ? — of an excessive development of epithelial cells iden-
tical with those of our skin, or differing from them only
by slight peculiarities whose origin is easily explained.
Phthisis, that terrible scourge which decimates our race, is
caused by the development of a matter called tuberculous,
composed of epithelial embryoplastic nuclei, become gran-
ular and fatty, and mixed with spindle-shaped bodies, all of
them elements that are formed in the system in the usual
state. The lungs are thus attacked and destroyed by prod-
ucts of a cheesy appearance, made by the effect of the
same law that governs normal products, but under different
conditions. Heterotopy discloses to us other phenomena
equally extraordinary. There have been found in the
ovary cysts containing in their inner wall a true skin, fur-
nished with papillae, epidermis, hairy follicles, hairs, and
perspiratory glands. Teeth have even been found devel-
oping in the abdomen. All these organs are accidentally
produced in those regions, having by fortuitous concourse
found the circumstances favorable to their appearance all
existing there. Robin has remarked, in the neighborhood
of certain glands of the body, the formation of small masses
consisting wholly of tissue identical with that of the
breast. So, too, late experiments by Oilier and Goujon, con-
firming those of Flourens, nave taught us that bones may
be produced at any points in the system • to which perios-
teum or fresh marrow is taken, in the stomach, for instance.
This singular production of bony substance has not yet
been observed taking place spontaneously, but it is easy to
effect it by experiment on animals.

The formation of the tissue of a scar is nothing else
than a renovation of the layer-tissue of the skin ; and all

86 NATURE AND LIFE.

the tissues, excepting one only, may thus be renewed in the
system, when they have been destroyed in it by any pro-
cess, and they are reproduced in accordance with the same
rules that govern their appearance and their development
in the embryo state. Robin, who has expressed this law,
extends it to the production of morbid tissues also. Be-
sides the restoration of the tissues, the naturalist notes
also that of some organs. The famous experiments of
Spallanzani have placed beyond question the reproduction
of the limbs and tail of the salamander. The restoration
of the tails of lizards has been always known, only that no
vertebrse had been remarked in the newly -formed append-
age. Charles Legros has lately found that vertebras do
appear in it at the end of two years after amputation. He
has also effected the complete reproduction of the eyes and
of a part of the head of salamanders, from which he had cut
off the entire head with scissors, only sparing the brain.
He has also procured the new growth of a tail in dormice ;
but he did not succeed in keeping the animals long enough
to give the vertebrae time to make their appearance within
the organ.

These phenomena show us one and the same law gov-
erning the various exhibitions of the power of evolution, in
disease as in health. We find in the facts, already well
known, of animal-grafting, other remarkable proofs of that
power. Bert's experiments have shown, from a new point
of view, how certain animal organs may be removed from
place, and transferred to a part of the system which is not
their original home, and may yet continue living there.
We may even transfer and graft tissues from one kind of
animal upon another kind ; we may inject the blood-glob-
ules of one animal into the veins of an animal of another
species, and these globules in that new place discharge
their peculiar function. There are cases in which animals,
and me,n also, brought by loss of blood into a state of seem-

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 87

ing death, have been restored to life by the transfusion of
blood from a being of the same species of either sex ; we
know, moreover, that calves' blood and lambs' blood have
been injected into the veins of men who have lived after it ;
that the case has been the same in the instance of the
transfusion of human blood into a dog, of that from a sheep
and a calf into a dog, from a calf to a sheep and a chamois,
and in the case of transfusion from a dog, a rabbit, or a
Guinea-pig, to a hen and a cock. These phenomena of
physiology, added to the results of anatomical observations,
leave no doubt as to the specific identity of the elements
in the entire animal series.

This acknowledged identity in the solids extends also
to the liquids of the living system, and these liquids are
parts not less indispensable for the complete effect of vital
phenomena. Formed by the mixture of very many imme-
diate principles dissolved by each other's help in water,
and holding suspended often one, two, or three kinds of
anatomical elements, the humors are more complicated
than those elements, while they are less so than the tissues.
For a long time the exclusive property of chemists, the
study of the humors, thanks to Robin, has once more taken
its natural and proper place in the series of anatomical
studies. These moving organs are studied with the same
system, by the same processes, and in the same spirit of
subordination to physiological and pathological experiences,
as the firm and immovable organs placed in a fixed position.

Robin has thus done for the humors what he had al-
ready done for immediate principles and anatomical ele-
ments. He has put them in their true place, has classified
them and pointed out their function in the generality of
organic acts. He divides animal liquids into three classes :
the constituent humors, the secretions, and the excretions.
And there is a positive satisfaction for the mind in the
picture he gives us of the relations of these three classes

88 NATURE AND LIFE.

in the system of vital operations. The constituent humors,
the blood, chyle, and lymph, conveying throughout into
the inmost parts of the tissues and organs those materials
of nutrition designed to be assimilated, and that oxygen
fitted to aid the work of assimilation, are eminently the
vivifying fluids. They bathe the whole system, they pour
into it ceaselessly new stores of strength and warmth,
they maintain it in its harmonious and perfect working.
They are true organic media, intervening between the ex-
ternal medium surrounding the individual, and the ana-
tomical elements lodged deep within the body. They are
organized, and have the faculty of nutrition, that is, their
substance is molecularly renewed in a continuous way.
While the secretions, and the excretions particularly, are
liquids devoid of life, made by the glands and the paren-
chyma at the expense of the blood, the blood, so to speak,
creates itself with the materials it receives as well by way
of the lungs as by that of the whole digestive canal. The
blood is a laboratory in which the most varied and elusive
transformations take place, in very minute intervals of
time — so minute that it is impossible for the biologist's
vision to seize all their phases, and follow their headlong
successive course. The whole of chemistry of which we
have any knowledge unfolds itself in this laboratory ; but
another chemistry also moves there in incessant action, of
whose laws we can but gain a glimpse. In fact, those im-
mediate principles which pass into the blood in the form
of fatty substance, of sugary and of albuminoid matter,
and pass out of it under the form of cholesterine, leucine,
tyrosine, urea, creatine, etc., do not pass instantly from
one state to another. During all the course of combustion
sustained by breathing they undergo a thousand isomeric
modifications and specific changes, of which we know
nothing. We seize only the beginning and the end of the
phenomenon, but the middle course of it evades our view.

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 89

Not one organic molecule in it is identical with itself for
two successive instants. There is going on there, in those
myriads of capillaries, a work of which we have no concep-
tion. These metamorphoses are real chemical equations
in action, they are life's mathematical series, analogous to
those studied by the infinitesimal calculus. When shall
the Leibnitz come who will reveal to us the analytical
processes we may apply to that burning blood ?

However that may be, this mobility of the sanguine
fluid is precisely what makes it capable of undergoing
modifications of every kind under the influence of miasmatic
matters sometimes contained in the air. The albuminoid
substance, which is the fundamental part of the blood-com-
pound, readily comes into union with poisonous molecules
originating without, and, when one point is once affected,
the change passes on from neighbor to neighbor, molecule
to molecule, throughout the mass. The blood, and after it
the most unstable tissues, thus suffer an isomeric modifica-
tion which unfits them to discharge their normal functions,
and often induces death. In the instance of cholera, espe-
cially, the albumen of the blood undergoes a transforma-
tion which makes it unable to remain united with the
water that keeps it fluid, and brings about its coagulation
in the vessels. The fatal consequence is the stoppage of
circulation, respiration, and all other vital actions. Robin
has also developed very forcibly the idea that there is no
such thing as virus, but merely humors grown virulent,
which are to healthy humors what common and noxious
phosphorus is to red harmless phosphorus, and we know
that these two bodies have the same chemical nature. No
doubt the secret of virulent and contagious or epidemic
diseases, so numerous and so formidable, is nevertheless
still undiscovered, but at least we shall now know the
direction that it is proper to give to researches, and the
true meaning of those that may be made.
5

90 NATURE AND LIFE.

The case with morbid humors is the same as with mor-
bid tissues. They are derived from healthy humors by
similar processes, and they contain no principles foreign to
the system — only they are produced in places where they
should not be produced, and in a proportion which ac-
counts for the disorders they bring on. The fluids of the
various dropsies, for instance, proceed from hypergenesis
of normal serous products, which are extracted from the
blood by serous membranes, such as the pleura and the
peritoneum. Pus is formed by a blastema issuing from the
subcutaneous cellular tissue, and within which the white
globules originate.1 The contents of the various liquid
cysts are similarly produced at the expense of the blood-
plasma by a true hypersecretion. These morbid humors
do not rid the system of some subtile and noxious principle,
as it used to be taught ; they form under the effect of an al-
teration of the blood, of some disturbance of circulation, or
of irregularity in the acts either of secretion or of excretion.

Ancient physiology and ancient medicine have by
turns preached solidism and humorism, that is to say, the
exclusive predominance either of the solids or of the
fluids, in the effecting of vital phenomena. Neither of
these systems is sustained by facts. The tissues and the
humors play equally active and important parts in the or-
ganism, and disease has its source in the alterations which
occur in the latter, as well as in disturbances affecting the

1 Some authors who had heretofore believed that globules of pus grow
by proliferation out of the elements of the tissue called the conjunctive,
have of late found themselves obliged to give up that explanation,
which conformed too to the cellular theory, and they have adopted an-
other extremely ingenious one, which consists in assuming that these
globules come from the blood, without, however, having ever proved how
they are produced in that blood. Besides, they forget too to explain
how, in certain cases, collections of pus form in which there are five or
six times as many leucocytes as there were in the whole mass of blood
that served to form them.

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 91

former. In other words, there are diseases of humors, dis-
eases of tissues, and diseases of anatomical elements ; but
this diversity vanishes when we ascend to the common
cause of all morbid phenomena, when we descry the efficient
and inmost source of the disturbances, that is, the quanti-
tative or qualitative modification of the immediate prin-
ciples. Thus we come back to our starting-point, and find
at the end of our study the proofs of the interest con-
nected with the subject of its beginning. In fact, real and
positive experimental medicine sets out from normal im-
mediate principles, and rises by successive degrees from
the knowledge of these to the understanding of anatomi-
cal elements, tissues, humors, organs, systems. It begins
with those immediate principles that are toxic, disease-
producing, and medicinal ; and it discovers the law of vari-
ous pathogenic irregularities, as it does that of healing
effects. All the animal organs and all the liquids of the
system resolving themselves into immediate principles ; all
the metamorphoses of health and disease reducing them-
selves to transformations of immediate principles ; all the
effects of poisoning or of healing ending in the action of
foreign principles upon normal principles ; in a word, the
most complex acts of life, whether regular or disordered,
being explained, in the last analysis, by immediate prin-
ciples— we may form an idea of the great importance of
these. The instant that medical researches are ruled and
guided by that necessity of referring facts to such a start-
ing-point, the instant that experiments and observations
converge toward that light, every thing becomes orderly,
every thing finds its place, every thing gains significance.
Uncertainties vanish. Science advances with regularity,
and practice with assurance. In this manner general anat-
omy exerts an influence of a constant and wholesome kind
upon the increasingly rapid progress of medicine properly
so called.

92 NATURE AND LIFE.

IV.

What has gone before is merely an exposition of facts
and phenomena of which the discovery is due, in almost all
instances, to the use of the microscope, connected with the
suggestions of a superior intellect. The great majority of
the public knows Robin only in this way, and readily as-
sumes that all the merit of that savant consists in his labors
in micrography. It pictures him as a man inured to tedious
and minute details, not rising above them, leaving the eye-
piece of his instrument only on compulsion, with little heed
for philosophizing, and systematically indifferent , to doc-
'trines. In fact, many micrographers are persons of that
kind, and that is the most usual effect of too devoted an
intimacy with things infinitely little. By an uncommon
exception, the reverse of all this has been Robin's fate.
Persistent attention to minute and tiresome realities has
enlarged his mind, while enlightening it, to such a degree
that his works have contributed as greatly to the advance
of ideas as to the progress of facts.

Robin cherishes the thought that biology might be re-
cast and reformed by method, that is, by the introduction
of severe logic into studies upon life. Borrowing the ideas
of Blainville, Auguste Comte, and Chevreul, upon this diffi-
cult subject, adding to them the fruit of his own reflections,
he has reduced the mass of biological knowledge to sys-
tem, in a manner that is probably definite and final. He
has, in part, brought into it the same order which is em-
ployed in the simpler sciences, in chemistry, for instance,
an order which consists in beginning with the most element-
ary, and thence ascending to the most complex. Robin
puts at the foundation of biological studies the immediate
principles which are the starting-point of all organization,
being also the most simple compounds that exist in the
organism. This division of the subject bears the name of

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 93

stcechiology. Afterward comes the study of anatomical
elements, or elementology. These elements, formed by the
bringing into contact and the blending cf immediate prin-
ciples of the three classes, visible only under the micro-
scope, and showing themselves under the form of cells,
fibres, and tubes, are endowed, as we have said, with ele-
mentary vital properties : nutrition, generation, evolution,
contractility, and innervation. The science of the humcrs,
or hygrology, is placed at a higher degree. The organic
liquids, in fact, are formed by the dissolving in water of
a certain number of immediate principles, and they hold
anatomical elements suspended in them. The tissues, the
study of which constitutes histology, are more complex.
They proceed from the association and intertangling of
anatomical elements. With the exception of those that
are called products, they all contain several kinds of ana-
tomical elements. Homwomerology treats of the systems
formed by the assembling of parts identical in tissue (the
nervous system, the bony system). In the higher degrees
comes the study of organs, then that of apparatus. Such
is the methodical gradation of the parts, the totality of
which is the subject of anatomy. If we add that these
parts, which represent the different complications of organ-
ized matter, may be studied not only from the anatomical
or static point of view strictly so called, but also from
the physiological and therapeutic point of view, that is
to say, in their course of action and in their relations to
the media, we shall have indicated the complete frame of
the science.

This, for Robin and for most biologists, is the general
constitution of biology ; but this system is rather a plan and
a method than a doctrine. We do not learn by it either
what life is in itself, or what notion we must form of the
regular succession and the concordant connection of phe-
nomena, the dedication of organs to the performance of

94 NATURE AND LIFE.

defined acts, the permanence of types; in short, all the
striking and remarkable characteristics which give so dis-
tinct an expression to organized beings. These questions
have been handled by Robin with a logical exposition
as original as it is learned.

Claude Bernard has written a very admirable book,1 in
which he expounds, under the name of determinism, the
doctrine which establishes the indissoluble combination of
all the conditions necessary to production of the phenomena
of life. In it he demonstrates that these phenomena are
rigidly fore-defined, in the sense that they are produced ac-
cording to fixed and unchanging laws, as express as those
which govern the mineral world, and that no intermeddling
of caprice could disturb the order imposed by these laws.
For the illustrious physiologist there is no such thing as a
vital principle any more than there is a mineral principle,
that is, an entity distinct from the phenomena themselves.
Yet he admits that, from the moment of the appearance of
the earliest elements of the embryo, the evolution of these
phenomena does obey a law or a premeditated idea, gov-
erning by anticipation the phases of the coming existence.
In a late and very remarkable work,a Robin has unfolded
ideas quite different from these. The distinguished anato-
mist, supported by the views of modern embryogeny as it
has been established by the Pr4vosts, Dumas, Coste, Rei-
chert, and Bary, and by himself, sees in the harmony and
unity of the organism the spontaneous result of the con-
course of those energies peculiar to each anatomical ele-
ment. He finds in it the necessary consensus of the un-
conquerable tendencies of these myriads of monads, each
having by itself its part and its direction, and this view re-
veals to him in an unexpected light the solution of the diflfi-

1 "Introduction to Experimental Medicine," 8vo, 1867.

2 " On the Appropriation of the Organic Parts and the Organism to
the Accomplishment of Ordained Actions," 8vo, 1869.

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 95

cult questions that we have enumerated above. In his
view, the ordering and adjustment of the parts flow from
the very fact of the gradual formation of those parts, and
of the properties inherent in them. He shows how an ex-
planation is to be found in the simultaneous operation of
properties consubstantial with the elements, in the logical
connection of generative, evolutionary, and nutritive acts,
of all that had been heretofore attributed to the presence
of a so-called vital principle.

The hypothesis of a vital principle which coordinates
and rules the phenomena of life seems to contradict the
fact, in this sense, that it is in the first place impossible
to fix the exact moment at which this principle intervenes.
We have the ovule — that is, a mere simple anatomical ele-
ment, containing the vitellus. That ovule is already en-
dowed with life while it is still dependent on the ovary.
By an uninterrupted and inevitable chain of progress other
anatomical elements unfold in it, in an ordained sequence,
from the moment that it ceases to be part of the ovary
until the moment that the embryo is formed. This latter
comes forth in the embryonic dot in the same way as the
vitelline nucleus does in the vitellus. Each element, by
the very fact of its existence and of the performance of the
part peculiar to it, here becomes the condition of exist-
ence of other elements necessarily appearing in the me-
dium which it has engendered, and conducting themselves
as it has done. Therefore, at what instant and in what
way could a vital principle intervene in this series of en-
genderings ?

It being known that the whole function of the vitellus
is to present in succession those conditions required for the
genesis of the different elements of the embryo, and that
these are parts of one whole process, it is plain that, if one
of the acts of development be hindered or modified, it will
no longer go on in a regular manner. Experience entirely

96 NATURE AND LIFE.

confirms this. The slightest causes, the least deviations,
whether spontaneous or occasioned, in the arrangement of
the blastodermic or the embryonic cells, endanger the
regular growth of the new individual, by inducing either
the production of monstrosities or the death of the germ.
When that is checked in its evolution, its natural envelopes
continue theirs, and we find the growth of what is called
a mole. In fact, the idea must be clearly fixed that the
cells we have been speaking of have absolutely only a sin-
gle function and a single power: that of providing the
conditions required for the growth of the earliest organs
of the embryo, namely, the dorsal and ventral layers.
These layers are, in their turn, the starting-point for the
dorsal cord, which ends in the appearance of the two halves
of the central nerve-axis. Then come, after the vertebral
cartilages, the eyes and auditory vesicles, the heart, the
veins, the blood, etc. Every one of these organs becomes,
on making its appearance, the cause of the generation of
the next, so that, if any circumstance disturbs or puts an
end to the production or the development of the former,
the latter either does not show itself, or else comes out as
a monstrosity. In the case of trout, salmon, and pike,
seventy or eighty per cent, of the eggs, artificially fertilized,
die. Lereboullet, to whom we are indebted for this inves-
tigation, also points out that out of a hundred eggs hatched
the number of monsters produced varies between two and
five. The human being is subject to the same accidents.
In three thousand births, there are always at least two
hundred still-born in Paris and half as many in the rest of
France, and among a hundred still-born an average is found
of one monster not viable. Independently of the still-born,
we find in the human race a number of congenital anoma-
lies, which, though they do not threaten life, do often
shorten it and make it difficult, by interfering with the
regular exercise of its functions. Cretinism, idiocy, deaf-

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 97

and-dumbness, hydrocephale, double spine, extrophy of the
bladder, imperforate state or absence of the latter vessel,
anomalies of the heart, the genital organs, etc., are thus
irregular actions of the power of evolution as common as
they are painful.

These facts seem to prove the futility of that hypothe-
sis of a moulding principle controlling the ovule and the
embryo, and fashioning them after its will, in conformity
with a premeditated law. They prove too that the birth
of the new being consists in a series of births upon births,
instead of being effected, as some naturalists have sup-
posed, by the successive transformation of parts pree'xist-
ing in the ovule. That doctrine of the encasement of
germs, or of syngenetic preformation, by which it is con-
ceded that the germs of all coming generations were con-
tained in one primordial egg, that is to say, that the ovule
contains potentially every thing that will exist later in the
organism — that theory, maintained by Leibnitz, Kant, and
several other philosophers and naturalists, seems therefore
to be in opposition to observations on the production of
the embryo.

Very clearly the phenomena of evolution and of organ-
ization are subject to a law which is expressed by the
limits "fixed to evolution, and by the form fixed for the or-
gans. This law is not invariable, as the study of diseases
and of monstrosities shows ; and, even if it were so, noth-
ing gives authority for supposing that it has an origin an-
terior or exterior to living beings, any more than for in-
ferring it from the mechanism of atoms. Very clearly, in
the succession of anatomical growths, there is a gradual
creation, and in the series of physiological functions there
is a distinct direction; but what boldness it is to infer
thence the existence of a creating idea and of a directing
idea ! Have we any right thus to assign objective reality
to the abstractions of our mind ? Besides, in what man-

98 NATURE AND LIFE.

ner, and by what mode of comparison with known things,
could we represent the influence of such ideas upon organic
materials ? The intrinsic, sufficient, and determining cause
of vital phenomena, we are forced to confess, after the dem-
onstration Robin gives of them, lies in the properties
themselves of organized substance. These phenomena are
equations of a very high order, infinitely complicated for-
mulas, of which these properties are the first factors, which
we cannot reduce. In a word, anatomical elements have in
themselves their principles of action and direction, exactly
as the mineral molecules which form crystals have in them-
selves the principle of the harmony which they produce.
The external form, that is to say, the contour, just as the
internal form, that is, the organization, is the consequence
of spontaneous principles of energy peculiar to the ultimate
particles of life. As to the principle of these principles,
their first cause, impenetrable darkness hides it from our
sight.

No doubt, when we cast the first glance on the totality
of animated beings, it is with difficulty that we resist the
thought that a breath as intelligent- as mighty has com-
municated itself to them, impregnates, vivifies, and urges
them in a course of which it knows the end (inens agitat
molem). Seeing the most perfect and delicate organs grow
out of a coarse and shapeless-looking pulp, we are almost
irresistibly driven to look on high for the workman of that
amazing fabrication. But if the mind be ever so little pene-
trating, it must soon give up its first momentary illusion in
presence of the testimony of facts. If it takes the trouble
to go to the bottom of things, and to exhaust their details ;
if it chooses to follow step by step the development of life
in the ovule and the embryo, to study the functions of the
system, in healthy animals and in diseased animals, it will
recognize the spontaneity and the activity of the natural
forces acting in themselves and by themselves in eternal

THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 99

continuous movement. The clear perception of faint and
commencing activities rising to the condition of harmonious
systems, and unfolding into productive energies, will be a
complete revelation to it. This new mode of regarding
things, by which we set out from the small, the imperfect,
and the relative, to reach the great, the perfect, and the
absolute, will seem like a reminder of the philosophy of
Leibnitz. The especial virtues of elementary corpuscles
engendering a whole superior to them, by those very vir-
tues, will recall to the mind his monadology. It will con-
ceive of unity in combination and not in confusion. All
that is and lives on the surface of our planet will rise be-
fore it in distinct vision as the result of numberless and
complicated groupings of simple phenomena, in which the
consubstantiality of form and of force is manifest. " In
eternal despair of knowing either the beginning or the
end," as Pascal says, the mind will be content with grasp-
ing the most certain and denned appearances. By no
means dogmatic, equally impotent to understand, in either
case, in what way life and thought can proceed from an
aggregation of atoms, or from a supernatural cause, it will
hold itself wisely balanced as regards these formidable
problems. This, at least, is the last lesson and the posi-
tive command of experimental science.1

Science has, at any rate, revealed many secrets to us.
To show organic matter, shapeless and rudimentary in the
blastemas, combining, organizing, evolving, and ordering
itself in a thousand ways ; to form by successive degrees
anatomical elements, humors, tissues, and organs ; to point
out the elementary and irreducible properties, linking,
mingling, working in, to effect by their spring the accom-
plishment of thje highest operations; to display the con-
nection of all the acts taking place in the development of

1 The reader is reminded that this was written at the beginning of
1870. Since then, my mind has found its way out of these uncertainties.

100 NATURE AND LIFE.

embryos as in perfect life ; and to gain a glimpse of the
mechanism of disturbances of every kind — the effect of this
is to give ample gratification for the present, and noble
hopes for the future, in regard to the understanding of the
animal system.

LIGHT AND LIFE.

THE organized being that we observe on the surface of
the globe does not subsist solely by the nourishment ab-
sorbed, sometimes in the form of aliment, sometimes in that
of atmospheric air ; it needs, besides, heat, electricity, and
light, which are like a secret and life-giving spring for the
world. Its organs are subject to the twofold influence of
an inner medium, represented by the humors moistening its
tissues, and of an outer medium, composed of all those sub-
tile and fluid agents with which space is filled. This close
interdependence of beings and of the media in which they
are immersed, too plain to have quite escaped notice, yet
too complex for analysis by science in its infancy, has been
brought in our day under piercing and methodical investi-
gation, yielding results of remarkable interest. Light es-
pecially takes a part in this combination deserving deep
study. Whether organic existence in its simplest expres-
sion and its lowest degree be considered, or whether we re-
gard it in its highest functions, the influence of light upon
it strikes us in the most strange and unlooked-for relations.
Lovely forms and vivid colors, the hidden harmonies of life
as well as its dazzling brightness and bloom, alike claim
mysterious connection with that golden mist diffused by
the sun over the world.

From this point of view, modern science finds reason in
the simple worship paid by primitive man. It helps us to
understand the divine honors given to the star of day

102 NATURE AND LIFE.

among the earliest civilized nations, and the pathetic terror
those childlike races suffered when, at evening, they saw
the crimson globe, that was the source for them of all power
and all splendor, slowly disappear in the horizon. That
pious idolatry, far from being a mere utterance of gratitude
for the wealth of fertility scattered by the sun over earth,
was a homage, too, to the comforting source of brightness
and joy, revealing the natural affinity between man and
light. The Vedas, the Orphic hymns, and other remains of
the earliest religions, are full of this feeling, which appears
again in many poets and philosophers of antiquity, Lucre-
tius and Pliny among others. Dante, invoking so often
" the divine and piercing light," crowns his poem by a
hymn which more than anything else is a symbolic descrip-
tion of the supreme brightness. On the other hand, labor-
ers, gardeners, physicians, unite in bearing witness to the
beneficial effects of light. Naturalists and philosophers,
too, in all ages, impressed with the power of the sun, have
described its manifold effects. Alexander Humboldt, fol-
lowing Goethe and Lavoisier, often notices its various in-
fluences. Yet it was not until the middle of the eighteenth
century that so rich a subject of study began to attract se-
rious experimental research ; and such 'are the difficulties
of this grand and complex problem, that its solution is only
partly reached, in spite of a long series of attempts. Great
deficiencies remain to be supplied, and many vaguely-known
points to be cleared up ; nor has an effort even been made
as yet to systematize all the groups of results gained. The
latter task we propose to attempt here, with the purpose of
showing by a remarkable instance the manner of evolving
knowledge through the power of the experimental method,
the sequent, cumulative, and mutually-supporting character
of well-conducted experiments, and their endless wealth of
instruction ; in a word, the process adopted by eminent men
in the great art of wresting her secrets from living Nature.

LIGHT AND LIFE. 103

I.

Plants gain their nourishment by the absorption through
their roots of certain substances from the soil, and by the
decomposition through their green portions, of a particular
gas contained in the atmosphere— carbonic-acid gas. They
decompose this gas into carbon, which they assimilate, and
oxygen, which they reject. Now, this phenomenon, which
is the vegetable's mode of respiration, can only be accom-
plished with the assistance of solar light.

Charles Bonnet, of Geneva, who began his career by
experimenting on plants, and left this attractive subject, to
devote himself to philosophy, only in consequence of a seri-
ous affection of his sight, was the first to detect this joint
work, about the middle of the eighteenth century. He re-
marked that vegetables grow vertically, and tend toward
the sun, in whatever position the seed may have been
planted in the earth. He proved the generality of the fact
that, in dark places, plants always turn toward the point
whence light comes. He discovered, too, that plants im-
mersed in water release bubbles of gas under the influence
of sunlight. In 1771, Priestley, in England, tried another
experiment. He let a candle burn in a confined space till
the light went out, that is, until the contained air grew unfit
for combustion. Then he placed the green parts of a fresh
plant in the inclosure, and at the end of ten days the air
had become sufficiently purified to permit the relighting of
the candle. Thus he proved that plants replace gas made
impure by combustion with a combustible gas ; but he also
observed that at certain times the reverse phenomenon seems
to result. Ten years later, the Dutch physician, Ingen-
housz, succeeded in explaining this apparent contradiction.
" I had but just begun these experiments/' says that skill-
ful naturalist, " when a most interesting scene revealed it-
self to my eyes : I observed that not only do plants have
the power of clearing impure air in six days or longer, as

104 NATURE AND LIFE.

Priestley's experiments seem to point out, but that they dis-
charge this important duty in a few hours, and in the most
thorough way ; that this singular operation is not due at
all to vegetation, but to the effect of sunlight ; that it does
not begin until the sun has been some time above the hori-
zon ; that it ceases entirely during the darkness of night ;
that plants shaded by high buildings or by other plants do
not complete this function, that is, they do not purify the
air, but that, on the contrary, they exhale an injurious at-
mosphere, and really shed poison into the air about us;
that the production of pure air begins to diminish with the
decline of day, and ceases completely at sunset ; that all
plants corrupt the surrounding air during the night ; and
that not all portions of the plant take part in the purifica-
tion of the air, but only the leaves and green branches."

How do this transformation of impure air into pure air
under the influence of sunlight, and the reverse process
during darkness, take place ? Senebier, the countryman
and friend of Bonnet, gives us the answer. Applying to
the problem the late discoveries of Lavoisier, he showed
that the impure air absorbed and decomposed in the day-
time by plants is nothing more than the carbonic acid thrown
off by a burning candle or a breathing animal, and that the
pure air which results from this decomposition is oxygen.
He proved besides that the gas released by vegetables dur-
ing the night is also carbonic acid, and consequently that
the respiration of plants in the night-time is the reverse of
that in the daytime. He also demonstrated that heat can-
not supply the place of light in these processes. Thus the
nature of the phenomenon was explained, but it remained
to be learned what relation exists between the volume of
carbonic acid absorbed and that of the oxygen released.
Another Genevese, Theodore de Saussure, proved that the
quantity of oxygen released is less than that of carbonic
acid absorbed, and at the same time that a part of the oxy-

LIGHT AND LIFE. 105

gen retained by the plant is replaced by nitrogen thrown
off; and supposed that this nitrogen was furnished by the
substance of the plant itself. This function of the green
portions of vegetables is, moreover, performed with great
rapidity and energy. Boussingault, who has made some
remarkable experiments on this subject, filled a vessel of
water with vine-leaves, placed it in the sun, and sent a cur-
rent of carbonic acid through it ; on its passing out, he col-
lected nothing but pure oxygen. It is calculated that a
leaf of nenuphar gives out in this way during the summer
more than sixty-six gallons of oxygen.

In 1848 Cloez and Gratiolet contributed new facts.
They showed that aquatic plants follow the same course
during the day as others, but that at night they are at rest,
and give rise to no release of carbonic acid. They proved
the powerful, instantaneous action of solar light on vege-
table respiration. If a few leaves of potamogefon or of
nayas are put into a gauge full of water saturated with
carbonic acid, as soon as the apparatus is placed in the sun,
an immense number of light bubbles, of almost pure oxygen,
are seen to detach themselves from the surface of the leaves.
The shadow of a slight cloud, crossing the sky, suffices to
check their disengagement at once, followed by sudden
activity after it has passed. By intercepting the solar
beam with a screen, the alternations of quickness and slow-
ness in the production of gas-bubbles may be very plainly
seen, according as the plant receives the rays or not. Wa-
ter-plants show other interesting peculiarities. Diffused
light has no power to excite the production of carbonic
acid, unless the phenomenon has been first called forth by
direct sunlight. Still further, the solar influence having
once been applied, the evolution of carbonic acid continues
even in darkness. The vegetable keeps up at night its
mode of breathing by day. The living force of solar light,
therefore, can be fixed and stored away in living plants, as

106 NATURE AND LIFE.

Van Tieghem, the discoverer of this curious property, very
well remarks, to act afterward in complete darkness, and
exhaust itself by slow degrees, through transformation into
equivalent chemical energy. It appears to lodge itself in
phosphorescent sulphur, to reappear under the form of less
intense radiations ; it hoards itself up in paper, starch, and
porcelain, to come forth anew, after a greater or less lapse
of time, through its action on the salts of silver. The pe-
culiarity residing in these green cells of vegetables, then,
is not an isolated one : it is a special instance of the gen-
eral property, inherent in many bodies, of retaining, within
their mass, in some unknown form, a part of the vibrations
that fall upon them, and of preserving them through trans-
formation, to be afterward emitted, either in the state of
luminous radiations, or in the condition of chemical or me-
chanical energy. The great principle of the transformation
of forces thus holds good in the vegetable kingdom. And
we end with the remark that these facts of persistent ac-
tivity, called out by an initial excitement, lend support to
the idea that living forces hold a close connection with the
molecular structure of bodies, and may even be the deter-
minate expression of that structure. We cannot conceive
manifold energy in a mathematical and irreducible atom ;
but in a molecule, made up of a certain number of atoms,
we can fancy dynamic figures of a very complex order.

We have thus far regarded only the action of white light,
the effect of the totality of rays sent us by the sun ; but
this light is not simple. It is composed of a great number
of radiations, of distinct colors and properties. When white
light is decomposed by the prism, we obtain seven groups
of visible rays, of unequal refractive power, violet, indigo,
blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. The spectrum or rib-
bon of colors thus obtained widens and spreads out by in-
visible radiations. Beyond the red, there exist radiations
of dark heat, or calorific rays, and, outside of the violet, ra-

LIGHT AND LIFE. 107

diations which are called chemical or ultra-violet rays. The
first affect the thermometer, the last occasion energetic
reactions in chemical compounds. What is their influence
upon vegetation ? Does solar light act by its colored rays,
its heat-rays, or its chemical rays ?

The question has been subjected to many important ex-
periments, and is, perhaps, not yet determined. Daubeny,
in 1836, was the first to watch the respiration of plants in
colored glasses, and he found that the volume of oxygen
released is always less in the colored rays than in white
light. The orange rays appeared to him most energetic ;
the blue rays coming next. A few years later, Gardner,
in Virginia, exposed young, feeble plants, 'from two to three
inches long, to the different rays of the spectrum, and ob-
served that they regained a green color with a maximum
rapidity under the action of the yellow rays and those near-
est them. In one of his experiments, green color was pro-
duced, under the yellow rays, in three hours and a half; un-
der orange rays, in four hours and a half; and under the blue,
only after eighteen hours. Thus it is seen that the highest
force of solar action corresponds neither with the maximum
of heat, which is placed at the extremity of the red, nor
with the maximum of chemical intensity, situated in the
violet, at the other edge of the spectrum. Those radiations
which are most active, from a chemical point of view, are
the ones which have the least influence over the phenomena
of vegetable life.

Mr. Draper, at present a professor in the New York Uni-
versity, and the author of a very remarkable history of the
" Intellectual Development of Europe," undertook new and
more accurate experiments about the same time. He placed
blades of grass in tubes filled with water which was charged
with carbonic gas, and exposed these tubes, near each other,
to the different rays of the solar spectrum. Then, measur-
ing the quantity of oxygen gas disengaged in each one of

108 NATURE AND LIFE.

these little vessels, he proved that the largest production
of gas occurred in the tubes exposed to the yellow and
green light ; the next, in the orange and red rays. In 1848,
Cloez and Gratiolet discovered the singular fact that the
action of light on vegetation is more powerful when it
passes through roughened glass than when transmitted
through transparent glass. Julius Sachs, more lately, con-
ceived the idea of measuring the degree of intensity of
light-action upon aquatic plants, by counting the number
of gas-bubbles released by a cutting of a branch exposed
to the sun in water charged with carbonic acid. He thus
observed that the bubbles thrown off under the influence
of orange light are very little less numerous than under
white light, while the branch put under blue light throws
out about twenty times less. These experiments are deci-
sive. Neither the chemical nor the calorific rays of the so-
lar beam act on plants. The luminous rays only, and
chiefly the yellow and the orange, have that property. To
these clearly-settled results, Cailletet added a new fact,
that green light acts on vegetation in the same way as
darkness. He assigns this reason for the feebleness of
vegetation bathed in green light under the shade of large
trees. It is true, this > discovery of Cailletet has been
warmly questioned recently, but it has found defenders too,
Bert among others ; and we shall find soon that it harmo-
nizes with the whole system of the actions of light in the
two kingdoms of life.1

A year ago, science had gone thus far, when a very
distinguished botanist, Prillieux, published the result of a
course of experiments matle with an entirely different pur-
pose, and taking up the study of the action of light from
a new point of view. Resting on the twofold consideration
that the distinctly-colored rays are not equally luminous,

1 Bert ascertained that green light stops the motions of sensitive
plants.

LIGHT AND LIFE. 109

and that those of the greatest illuminating power are also
those which act with most energy on plants, Prillieux un-
dertook to examine what influence will be exercised on
plants by rays different in color, but known to be equal in
intensity, and whether this influence differs in the case of
different colors, or is the same, provided they do not vary
in illuminating power. The long and conscientious re-
searches of this experimenter led him to the conclusion
that rays of different colors act with equal force on the
green parts of plants, and produce an equal release of gas,
when they have the like luminous intensity. He holds
that all luminous rays effect the reduction of carbonic acid
by vegetables in proportion to their illuminating power,
whatever their refrangibility may be. If the yellow and
orange rays are more active in this respect, it is because
their luminous glare is much greater than that of the ex-
treme rays.

The luminous rays also promote the production of green
tissue, the green matter of all vegetables. Gardeners
blanch certain plants by raising them in the dark. They
thus obtain plants of a pale yellow, spindling, without
strength or crispness. They are attacked by a true chloro-
sis, and waste away, as if sprung from barren sand. The
sun also aids the transpiration of plants, and the constant
renewal of healthy moisture in their tissues. On failure
of the evaporation of moisture, the plant tends to grow
dropsical, and its leaves fall, from weakness of the stem.

This love of plants for light, which is one of the most
imperious needs of their existence, displays itself also in
other interesting phenomena, which show that solar rays
are, in very truth, the fertilizer that produces color. The
corolla of vegetable species growing at great heights on
mountains has livelier colors than that of species that spring
in low spots. The sun's rays, in fact, pass more easily
through the clear atmosphere that bathes high summits,

110 NATURE AND LIFE.

The hue of certain flowers even varies according to the
altitude. Thus the corolla of the Anthyllis vulneraria
shades down from white to pale red and vivid purple. In
general, the vegetation of open, well-lighted places is
richer in color and development than that of regions not
accessible to the sun. The nelumbium and the bougain-
villoea will not thrive in English greenhouses, though
heat is abundantly supplied them, but they unfold com-
pletely under the clear sky of Montpellier. Some flowers
originally white afterward deepen in color by the direct
action of light. Thus Cheiranthus cameleo has a flower
at first whitish, afterward yellow, and, at last, a violet-red.
The Stylidium fruticosum has petals which are pale yel-
low at first, and grow pink. The CEnothera tetraptera
passes through white, pink, and red colors successively.
The flowers of the Gobcea scandens are green the first day,
and violet the next. The Hibiscus mutabilis bears a
flower which opens at morning with a white hue, and
grows red during the day. The flower-buds of the Aga-
panthus umbettatus are white when they begin to unclose,
and afterward take on a blue tint. If, at the moment of
leaving its spathe, the flower is wrapped in black paper,
intercepting the light, it remains white, but regains its
color in the sun. Edmond Becquerel remarked that if a
slip of red flowering crassida is allowed to bloom in a
dimly-lighted room, the petals take a tint half yellow, half
pink, at the base. Exposure to sunlight for some hours
occasions a red tinge in all the corollas of these little flow-
ers. If some parts of the plant are protected by a cover-
ing of blackened paper, the flowers thus hidden keep the
faint color which they had in the dim light of the room.
The tints of fruits in the same way develop under the
healthy action of daylight, and the rule extends to those
principles of every nature which give taste and odor to the
different parts of the plant.

LIGHT AND LIFE. HI

Flowers, fruits, and leaves, then, are elaborated by the
help of luminous vibrations. Their tissue holds the sun's
rays. Those charming colors, those fragrant perfumes, and
delicious flavors, all the innocent pleasures the vegetable
kingdom yields us, owe their creation to light. The subtile
working of these wonderful operations eludes us, as does
that which guides the fleeting diffusion and thousand-fold
refractions displayed by the imposing spectacle of the
dawn ; but is it nothing to gain a glimpse of those primal
laws, and to possess even a twilight ray upon these mag-
nificent phenomena ?

II.

Light exerts a mechanical influence on vegetables. The
sleep of flowers, the bending of their steins, the nutation
of heliotropic plants, the inter-cellular movements of chlo-
rophyll, offer proofs of an extremely delicate sensitiveness
of certain plants in this respect. Pliny mentions the plant
called the sunflower, which always looks toward the sun,
and steadily follows its motion. He notices, too, that the
lupin always follows the sun in its daily movement, and
points out the hour for laborers. Tessier, at the end of
the last century, took up the study of these phenomena,
and inferred in a general way that the stems of plants al-
ways turn toward the light, and bend over, if necessary, to
receive it. He noted, too, that leaves tend to turn toward
the side whence daylight comes. Payer made more exact
experiments. He tried them with young stems of common
garden cresses grown on damp cotton in the dark. These
stems have the property of curving and turning quickly
when placed in a room lighted only from one side or in a
box receiving light on one wall only. The upper part of
the stem curves first, the lower part remaining straight.
By a second movement the top erects and the bottom bends
over, so that the plant, though leaning, becomes almost

112 NATURE AND LIFE.

rectilinear again. When put in a room receiving light
from two windows, the following results are noticed : If
the openings are on the same side admitting light equally,
the stem bends in the direction of the middle of the angle
formed by these two beams ; if one of the two windows
admits more light than the other, the stem leans toward it ;
if the windows are opposite each other, the stem stands
erect, when light comes equally from both sides, and, if it
does not, turns toward the stronger rays. Payer discovered,
moreover, that the part of the irradiating light most active
in its effects corresponds in this case to the violet and the
blue. The red, orange, yellow, and green rays do not
seem to produce any movement in plants. Gardner car-
ried the investigation still further. He sowed turnips, and
let them develop in the dark to two or three inches in
length. Then he threw the solar spectrum by a prism on
this little field. The plants inclined toward a common
axis. Those exposed to the red, orange, yellow, and green
rays, leaned toward the deep blue, while the part lighted
by violet bent in the opposite direction. Thus the crop
took the appearance of a wheat-field bowing under two
contrary winds. The turnips placed in the violet-blue
region looked toward the prism. Gardner thus determined,
as Payer had done, that the most refrangible rays are those
which effect the bending of the young stems. He proved
also that the plants grow erect again in the dark.

These experiments, repeated and varied in many ways
by Dutrochet and Guillemin, uniformly gave like results,
but the phenomenon itself still remains almost unexplained.
This remark also applies to the very singular facts of the
twisting of running plants. The stems of these plants, in
twining about their supports, usually curl from the left to
the right. Others follow the contrary course, and some
twist indifferently in either way. Charles Darwin inferred,
from his investigation, that light has an effect on this phe-

LIGHT AND LIFE. 113

nomenon. If twining plants are put in a room near a win-
dow, the tip of their stalk takes longer to complete the
half-circuit during which it turns toward the darker part of
the room than that which is described nearer the window.
Thus, one of them having gone through a whole turn in
five hours and twenty minutes, the half-circle toward the
window employed a little less than an hour, while the
other was not traversed in less than four hours and a half.
Duchartre placed some China yams in full vegetation in a
garden, and others in a completely dark cellar. The stems
of the plants uniformly lost in the dark the power of twist-
ing around their supporting sticks. Those exposed to the
sun presented one portion twisting, but, when put in the
cellar, they shot out straight stems. Yet some twining
plants are known that seem to be independent of light in
twisting.

The sleep of plants, in connection with light particular-
ly, is still less understood. The flowers and leaves of certain
vegetables droop and wither at fixed hours. The corolla
closes, and after quiet inaction the plant again expands.
In others, the corolla droops and dies without closing. In
others still, as the convolvulus, the closing of the flower
occurs only, once, and its sleep marks its death. Linnseus
noted the hours of opening and shutting in certain plants,
and thus arranged what has been called Flora's clock ;
but the relations of these closings with the intensity of
light have not yet been scientifically determined.

The green coloring of vegetable leaves and stems is
due to a special substance called chlorophyll, which forms
microscopic granulations contained in the cells which make
up these stems and leaves. These grains are more or less
numerous in every cell, and it is their number as well as
intensity of color that determines the tint of the plant's tis-
sues. Sometimes they are closely pressed together, cover-
ing the whole inner surface of the cell; sometimes the
6

114 NATURE AND LIFE.

quantity is smaller, and they are separate. Now, it has
lately been discovered that in the latter case, under the
influence of light, the green corpuscles we speak of undergo
very singular changes of position. Some twelve years ago,
Boehm noticed for the first time that in certain unctuous
plants the grains of chlorophyll gather at one point of the
wall of the cells under the action of the sun. He remarked
that the phenomenon does not take place in the dark, nor
in the red rays. The flat sheet made up of a single layer
of cells, without epidermis, which composes the leaves of
mosses, seemed to Famintzin the most suitable for this
delicate kind of observations. He followed the movements,
that take place in these sheets, by microscopic study.
During the day the green coloring-grains are scattered
about the upper and lower parts of the leaf-cells. At
night, on the contrary, they accumulate toward the lat-
eral walls. The blue rays affect them like white light ;
the yellow and the red ones keep the chlorophyll in the
position it takes at night. The order of activity in the rays
seems, then, to differ in this case from that in the phe-
nomena of respiration. The researches of Borodine, Pril-
lieux, and Roze, proved that these movements of coloring-
corpuscles within the cells occur in almost all cryptoga-
mous plants, and in a certain number of phanerogamous
ones. The lately-published experiments of Roze show
that in mosses the grains of chlorophyll are connected by
very slender threads of plasma, and may suggest the idea
that these threads are the cause of the changes of position
just described. Perhaps there is some real relation be-
tween them ; but it must not be forgotten that these
movements of the plasmatic matter inside the cell take
place by day and night, and that light has no marked effect
on them. The green particles, on the contrary, creep over
the walls of the cell, a-nd move toward the lightest part as
zoospores and some infusoria do.

LIGHT AND LIFE. 115

Biot relates that in 1807, while at Formentera, em-
ployed in the work of extending the meridional arc, he de-
voted his leisure hours to the analysis of the gas contained
in the swimming-bladder of fishes living at different depths
in the sea. The oxygen required for these analyses was fur-
nished him by the leaves of the Cactus opuntia, which he
exposed in water to sunlight, under hand-glasses, ingen-
iously applying the discovery of Tngenhousz and Senebier.
It occurred to him one day to expose these leaves, rn_ a
dark place, to the illumination thrown by lamps placed in
the focus of three large reflectors, used for night-signals in
the great triangulation. He threw the light from three of
these reflectors on the cactus-leaves. The eye, placed in
this concentration of light, must have been struck blind,
Biot says. The experiment, kept up for an hour, did not
cause the release of a single gas-bubble. The glass was
then taken into the diffused light outside the hut. The sun
was not shining, but the evolution of gas took place at once
with great rapidity. Biot is a little surprised at the result,
and concludes that artificial light is impotent to do what
solar light can. The labors of Prillieux and other contem-
porary botanists have proved that all light acts on the res-
piration of plants, provided only it is not too powerful.
In Biot's case artificial light had no effect, because it was
far too intense.

III.

Lavoisier somewhere says : " Organization, voluntary
movement, life, exist only at the surface of the earth, in
places exposed to light. One might say that the fable of
Prometheus's torch was the expression of a philosophic
truth that the ancients had not overlooked. Without light,
Nature was without life ; she was inanimate and dead. A
benevolent God, bringing light, diffused over the earth's
surface organization, feeling, and thought." These words

116 NATURE AND LIFE.

are essentially true. All organic activity was very clearly
at first borrowed from the sun, and if the earth has since
stored away and made its own a quantity of energy, that
sometimes suffices to produce of itself that which originally
proceeded from solar stimulus, it must not be forgotten
that those living forces, of startling and complex aspects,
sometimes our pitiless enemies, often our docile servants,
have descended, and are still descending, upon our planet,
from the inexhaustible sun. The study of animal life shows
us by striking instances the physiological efficacy of light,
and the immaterial chain, it may be called, which links ex-
istences with the fiery and abounding heart of the known
universe.

In plants, as we have seen, respiration at night is the
reverse of that by day. There are infusoria which behave,
under the influence of light, exactly like the green portions
of plants. These microscopic animalcula are developed in
fine weather in stagnant water, and in breathing produce
oxygen at the expense of the carbonic acid contained in the
liquid. Morren saw that the oxygenation of the water oc-
casioned by these little beings varied very perceptibly in
the course of twenty-four hours. It is at the minimum at
sunrise, and reaches its maximum toward four in the after-
noon. If the sky is overcast, or the animalcula disappear,
the phenomenon is suspended. This is only an exception.
Animals breathe at night in the same way as in the day-
time, only less energetically. Day and night they burn
carbon within their tissues, and form carbonic acid, only
the activity of the phenomenon is much greater in light
than in darkness.

Light quickens vital movements in animals, especially
the act of nutrition, and darkness checks them. This fact,
long known and applied in practical agriculture, is express-
ly noted by Columella. He recommends the process of
fattening fowls by rearing them in small, dark cages. The

LIGHT AND LIFE. 117

laborer, to fatten his cattle, shuts them up in stables lighted
by small, low windows. In the half-light of these prisons
the work of disassimilation goes on slowly, and the nutri-
tive substances, instead of being consumed in the circulat-
ing fluid, more readily accumulate in the organs. In the
same way, for the sake of developing enormous fat livers
in geese, they are put into dark cellars, kept entirely quiet,
and crammed with meal.

Animals waste away as plants do. The absence of
light sometimes makes them lose vigor, sometimes entirely
changes them, and modifies their organization in the way
least favorable to the full exercise of their vital powers.
Those that live in caverns are like plants growing in cel-
lars. In certain underground lakes of Lower Carniola we
find very singular reptiles resembling salamanders, called
proteans. They are nearly white, and have only the rudi-
ments of eyes. If exposed to light they seem to suffer,
and their skin takes a color. It is very likely that these
beings have not always lived in the darkness to which they
are now confined, and that the prolonged absence of light
has destroyed the color of their skins and their visual or-
gans. Beings thus deprived of day are exposed to all the
weaknesses and ill effects of chlorosis and impoverishment
of the blood. They grow puffy, like the colorless mush-
room, unconscious of the healthy contact of luminous radi-
ance.

William Edwards, to whom science owes so many re-
searches into the action of natural agents, studied, about
1820, the influence exercised by light on the development
of animals. He placed frogs'-eggs in two vessels filled
with water, one of which was transparent, and the other
made impermeable to light by a covering of black paper.
The eggs exposed to light developed regularly ; those in
the dark vessel yielded nothing but rudiments of embryos.
Then he put tadpoles in large vessels, some transparent,

118 NATURE AND LIFE.

others shielded from the light. The tadpoles that were
shone upon, soon underwent the change into the adult
form, while the others either continued in the tadpole con-
dition or passed into the state of perfect frogs with great
difficulty. Thirty years later, Moleschott performed some
hundreds of experiments in examining how light modifies
the quantity of carbonic acid thrown off in respiration.
Operating on frogs, he found that the volume of gas ex-
haled by daylight exceeds by one-fourth the volume thrown
off in darkness. He established, in a general way, that the
production of carbonic acid increases in proportion to the
intensity of light. Thus, with an intensity represented by
3.27, he obtained 1 of carbonic acid, and, with an intensity
of 7.38, he obtained 1.18. The same physiologist thinks
that in batrachians the intensity of light is communicated
partly by the skin, partly by the eyes.

Jules Bdclard made more thorough researches. Com-
mon flies'-eggs, taken from the same group, and placed at
the same time under differently-colored glasses, all pro-
duce worms. But if the worms, hatched under the differ-
ent glasses, are compared at the end of four or five days,
perceptible differences may be seen among them. Those
most developed correspond with the violet and blue ray ;
those hatched under the green ray are far less advanced ;
while the red, yellow, and white rays exert an intermediate
action. A long series of experiments on birds satisfied
Be"clard that the quantity of carbonic acid thrown out in
breathing, during a given time, is not sensibly modified by
the different colors of the glasses the animals are placed
under. It is the same with small mammifers, such as mice ;
but it is to be observed in this case that the skin is covered
either with hair or feathers, and the light does not strike
the surface. The same physiologist examined also the in-
fluence of the differently-colored rays of the spectrum on
frogs. Under the green ray, the same weight of frogs pro-

LIGHT AND LIFE. 119

duces in the same period of time a greater quantity of car-
bonic acid than under the red ray. The difference may be
a half greater ; it is usually a third or a fourth greater ;
but if the skin is afterward taken off the frogs, and they
are replaced under the same conditions, the result alters.
The amount of carbonic acid thrown out by the flayed frogs
is greater in red than in green light. A few experiments
tried by Be"clard on the exhalation of the vapor of water
by the skin show that in the dark, temperature and weight
being alike, frogs lose by evaporation a half or a third less
moisture than under white light. In the violet ray the
quantity of moisture lost by the animal is perceptibly the
same as in white light.

Light acts directly on the iris of almost all animals, and
thus produces contraction of the pupil, while heat pro-
duces the reverse phenomena. This stimulus is observed
in eyes that have been separated for some time from the
body, as Brown-Se"quard has shown.

Bert lately took up some very curious experiments on
the preference of animals for differently-colored rays. He
took some of those almost microscopic Crustacea, common
enough in our fresh waters, the daphne-fleas, remarkable
for their eager way of hurrying toward light. A number
of these insects were put into a glass vessel, well darkened,
and a spectrum of the ray then thrown into it. The daphnes
were dispersed about the dark vessel. As soon as the
spectrum colors appeared, they began to move, and gath-
ered in the course of the luminous track, but, when a screen
was interposed, they scattered again. At first all the
colors of the spectrum attracted them, but it was soon
noticed that they hurried much more toward the yellow
and green, and even moved away a little if these rays were
quickly replaced by the violet. In the yellow, green, and
orange parts of the spectrum there was a thronging and
remarkable attraction. A pretty large number of these

120 NATURE AND LIFE.

little beings were remarked in the red, too, a certain num-
ber in the blue, and some, fewer in proportion to the dis-
tance, in the most refrangible portions of the violet and
ultra-violet. For these insects, as for ourselves, the most
luminous part of the spectrum was also the most agreeable.
They behaved in it as a man would do who, if he wished to
read in a spectrum thrown about him, would approach the
yellow and avoid the violet. This proves, in the first place,
that these insects see all the luminous rays that we see
ourselves. Do they perceive the colorific and chemic rays,
that is to say, the ultra-red and ultra-violet ones, which do
not affect our retina? Bert's experiments enable us to
answer that they do not. That physiologist is even led to
assert that, with regard to light and the different rays, all
animals experience the same impressions that man does.

Let us now look at the influence of light upon the
color of the skin in animals, noticing first the being which
presents the strangest peculiarities in this respect, the
chameleon. This animal, indeed, experiences very fre-
quent modifications of color in the course of the same day.
From Aristotle, who attributed these changes to a swell-
ing of the skin, and Theophrastus, who assigned fear as
their cause, to Wallisni£ri, who supposes them to result
from the movement of humors toward the surface of the
animal's body, the most different opinions have been ex-
pressed on this subject. Milne-Edwards, thirty years ago,
explained them by the successive inequalities in the pro-
portions of the two substances, one yellowish and the other
violet, which color the skin of the reptile, inequalities due
to the changes in volume of the very flattened cells that
contain these substances. Bruck, renewing these researches,
proves that the chameleon's colors follow from the mani-
fold dispersion of solar light in the colored cells, that is to
say, from the production of the same phenomenon remarked
in soap-bubbles and all very thin plates. Its colors, then,

LIGHT AND LIFE. 121

come from the play of sunlight among the yellow and vio-
let substances distributed very curiously under its wrinkled
skin. It passes from orange to yellow, from green to blue,
through a series of wavering and rainbow-like shades, de-
termined by the state of the light's radiation. Darkness
blanches it, twilight gives it the most delicate marbled
tints, the sun turns it dark. A part of the skin bruised or
rubbed remains black, without growing white in the dark.
Bruck satisfied himself, moreover, that temperature does
not affect these phenomena.

» The influence of light and of the surrounding color on
the tint of fish and shell-fish was long ago observed. These
creatures change their shade with that of the bottom they
live on. Georges Pouchet, a late student of these phenom-
ena, found that in such a case light does not act on the
skin directly, but on the retina of the eye, which, through
the great sympathetic nerve, transmits the modifying in-
fluences of luminous vibrations from without to the colored
cells of the epidermis. Turbots, for instance, placed on a
white and a black bottom alternately, become dark or light.
But, if their eyes are put out, they do not change color.

All animals having fur or feathers are darker and more
highly colored on the back than on the belly, and their
colors are more intense in summer than in winter. Night-
butterflies never have the vivid tints of those that fly by
day, and among the latter those of spring have clearer,
brighter shades than the autumn ones. Night-birds, in the
same way, have dark plumage, and the downiness of their
coverings contrasts with the stiffness of that in those that
fly by day. Shells secluded under rocks wear pale shades,
compared with those that drink in the light. We have
spoken above of cave-animals. What a distinction between
those of cold regions and those of equatorial countries !
The coloring of birds, mammals, and reptiles, peopling the
vast forests or dwelling on the banks of the great rivers in

122 NATURE AND LIFE.

the torrid zone, is dazzling in its splendor. At the north
we find gray tints, dead and of little variety, usually close
upon white, by reason of the almost constant reflection
from snow.

Not only the color of organized beings, but their shape,
too, is linked with the action of light, or rather of climate.
The flora of the globe gain increasing perfection as we go
from the poles toward the equator. The nearer these beings
approach the highest degree of heat and light, the more
lavishly are richness, splendor, and beauty, bestowed on
them. The energy and glory of life, perfect forms as well
as brilliant arraying, are the distinguishing mark of the
various and manifold races in tropical regions, giving this
privileged world its characteristic aspect. Nature is here
grandly imposing in the radiance of her virginity, unsul-
lied and unsubdued by man's presence and arts. A pure
emanation from the sun, she here lives wild and splendid,
gazing unshrinkingly, like the Alpine eagle, on the eternal
and sublime source which inundate her with heat and
glow. Look, now, at the region of the pole ! A few
dwarfish shrubs, a few stunted and herbaceous plants, com-
pose all its flora. Its animals have a pale covering and
downy feathers ; its insects, sombre tints. All around them
are the utmost limits of life — ice invades every thing, the
sea alone still breeds a few acalephs, some zoophytes, and
other low rudimentary organizations. The sun comes
aslant and seldom. At the equator he darts his fires, and
gives himself without stint to the happy Eden of his predi-
lection.

IV.

It remains to note the relations of light to that being
most sensitive to its influence, and best able to express its
effects, man himself. The new-born child seeks the day by
instinct, and turns to the side whence light comes, and, if

LIGHT AND LIFE. 133

this spontaneous movement of the infant's eyes is thwarted,
strabismus may be the consequence.

Of all our organs the eye is the one that light especially
affects. Through the eyes come all direct notions of tke
outer world, and all impressions of an aesthetic kind. Now,
the excitability of the retina shows variations of every
kind. Prisoners confined in dark cells have been known to
acquire the power of seeing distinctly in them, while their
eyes also become sensitive to the slightest changes in the
intensity of light. In 1766 Lavoisier, in studying certain
questions upon the lighting of Paris, which had been given
for competition by the Academy of Sciences, found, after
several attempts, that his sight wanted the necessary sensi-
tiveness for observing the relative intensities of the differ-
ent flames he wished to compare. He had a room hung
with black, and shut himself up in it for six weeks in utter
darkness. At the end of that time his sensitiveness of
sight was such that he could distinguish the faintest differ-
ences. It is very dangerous, too, to pass suddenly from a
dark place into a strong flood of light. The tyrant Diony-
sius had a building made with bright, whitewashed walls,
and would order wretches, after long seclusion from light,
to be suddenly brought into it. The contrast struck them
blind. Xenophon relates that many Greek soldiers lost
their sight from reflections off the snow in crossing the
mountains of Armenia. All travelers who have visited
the polar regions have often seen like results produced by
the glare of the snow. When the impression of light on
the eye is sudden and overpowering, the retina suffers
most. If it is less powerful, but longer continued, the
humors of the eye are affected. The phenomenon called
sunstroke results from the action of light, and not, as is
often supposed, from excessively high temperature. It
sometimes occurs in the moderately warm season of spring ;
or a very intense artificial light, and particularly the elec-

124 NATURE AND LIFE.

trie light, may occasion it. The violet and the ultra-violet
parts of the sunbeam seem to be the cause of this action,
for screens of uranium glass, that absorb these portions,
protect the eyes of experimenters occupied in studying the
electric light. This disorder is a true inflammation.

The action of light on the human skin is manifest. It
browns and tans the teguments, by stimulating the produc-
tion of the coloring-matters they contain. The parts of
the body usually bare, as the skin of the face and hands,
are darker than others. In the same region, country-people
are more tanned than town residents. In latitudes not far
apart, the inhabitants of the same country vary in com-
plexion in a measure perceptibly related to the intensity
of solar light. In Europe three varieties of color in the
skin are distinctly marked : olive-brown, with black hair,
beard, and eyes; chestnut, with tawny beard and bluish
eyes ; blond, with fair, light beard and sky-blue ej~es.
White skins show more readily alterations occasioned by
light and heat ; but, though less striking, facts of variation
in color are observable in others. The Scytho- Arabic race
has but half its representatives in Europe and Central Asia,
while the remainder passes down to the Indian Ocean, con-
tinuing to show the gradual rising heat of climate by deep-
ening brown complexions. The Himalayan Hindoos are
almost white ; those of the Deccan, of Coromandel, Mala-
bar, and Ceylon, are darker than some negro tribes. The
Arabs, olive and almost fair in Armenia and Syria, are
deep-brown in Yemen and Muscat. The Egyptians, as we
go from the mouths of the Nile up-stream toward its source,
present an ascending chromatic scale, from white to black,
and the same is true of the Tuariks on the southern side of
Mount Atlas, who are only light-olive, while their brethren
in the interior of Africa are black. The ancient monuments
of Egypt show us a fact equally significant. The men are
always depicted of a reddish brown ; they lived in the open

LIGHT AND LIFE. 125

air, while the women, kept shut up, have a pale-yellow
complexion. Barrow asserts that the Mantchoo Tartars
have grown whiter during their abode in China. Remusat,
Pallas, and Gutzlaff, speak of the Chinese women as re-
markable for a European fairness. The Jewesses of Cairo
or Syria, always hidden under veils or in their houses, have
a pallid, dead color. In the yellow races of the Sumatra
Sound and the Maldives, the women, always covered up,
are pale like tallow. We know, too, that the Esquimaux
bleach during their long winter. These phenomena, no
doubt, are the results of several influences acting at once,
and light does not play the sole part in them. Heat and
other conditions of the medium probably have a share in
these operations of color. Still, the peculiar and powerful
effect of luminous radiation as a part of them is beyond
dispute.

The whole system of organic functions shares in the
benefits of light. Darkness seems to favor the preponder-
ance of the lymphatic system, a susceptibility to catarrh
in the mucous membranes, flaccidity of the soft parts,
swellings and distortions of the bony system, etc. Miners
and workmen employed in ill-lighted shops are exposed to
all these causes of physiological suffering. We may notice,
with regard to this, that certain rays of the solar beam
affect animals like darkness; among others, the orange
light, which, according to Bert, hurts the development of
batrachians. Now, if this light is injurious to animals, it
is not so to plants, as we have seen. In exchange, green
light, which is hurtful to vegetables, is extremely favorable
to animals. There is a kind of opposition and balance,
then, as respects luminous affinities, between the two great
kingdoms of life. White light, as Dubrunfaut says, seems
to split up under the influence of living beings into two
complementary groups, a green group and an orange
group, which exhibit in Nature antagonistic properties. It

126 NATURE AND LIFE.

is quite certain that green light is a very lively and health-
ful stimulant for our functions, and that, for that reason,
spring is the favored and enchanted season.

The correspondence between perfection of forms and
heightening of luminous intensity proves true in the hu-
man race as in others. ^Esthetics, agreeing with ethnog-
raphy, demonstrate that light tends to develop the differ-
ent parts of the body in true and harmonious proportion.
Humboldt, that nice observer, says, speaking of the Chay-
mas : " The men and women have very muscular bodies,
but plump, with rounded forms. It is needless to add that
I have never seen a single one with any natural deformity.
I will say the same of so many thousands of Caribs, Muy-
cas, Mexican and Peruvian Indians, whom we have observed
during five years. These bodily deformities and mis-
growths are extremely rare in certain races of men, es-
pecially among people who have a deep-colored skin."
No doubt there is a great difficulty in conceiving how light
can model — can exert a plastic power. Yet, reflecting on
its tonic effect on the outer tegument, and its general influ-
ence over the functions, we may assign it the part of dis.-
tributing the vital movement orderly and harmoniously
throughout the whole of the organs. Men who live naked
are in a perpetual bath of light. None of the parts of
their bodies are withdrawn from the vivifying action of
solar radiation. Thence follows an equilibrium which se-
cures regularity in function and development.

It is commonly said that an ordained causality rules the
operations of matter, and that free spontaneity is the privi-
lege of those of spirit. It might well be said on this sub-
ject that, in many cases, the causes acting in matter elude
us, and, not less often, the causes which act in spirit over-
power us ; but it is not our task to elucidate that terrible
antithesis of law, when the genius of Kant failed in it.
We would only ask it to be observed how great an influ-

LIGHT AND LIFE. 127

ence light has on the system of the intellectual functions.
The soul finds in it the least deceiving of the consolations
it seeks for the eternal sadness of our destiny — the bitter
melancholy of life. Thought, fettered and dumb in a dark
place, springs into freedom and spirit at evening, in a room
brilliant with light We cannot shun the sad moods
caused by gloomy and rainy weather, nor resist the impulse
of joy given by the spectacle of a brilliant day. Here we
must confess our slavery — yet a slavery to be welcomed,
that yields only delights. And why should we not join in
the chorus of all animate and inanimate things, which, at
the touch of light, quiver, and thrill, and betray in a
thousand languages the magical, rapturous stimulus of that
contact ? By instinct, and spontaneously, we seek it
everywhere, always happiest when it is found. In some
sort, it suffices us. And what a part it plays, what a charm
it gives, in works of poetry and art !

This is not the place to unfold that attractive and
hardly-opened chapter of aesthetics — to demonstrate the re-
lation between the atmosphere and art, by interrogating
the climates of the globe and the great masters of all ages,
not following a system of empirical analogies and far-
fetched suggestions, but led by strict physiology and rigid
optic laws. A charming picture would unfold in tracing
the countless and changeful aspects of the sky, and all the
caprices of light and air in their influence over the moral
and physical nature of painters, poets, and musicians. The
ever-varying face of the sun, the fires of dawn and sunset,
the opalescent play of air, the shimmer of twilight, the
blue, green, shifting hues and iridescent gleams of sea or
mountain — all these things find a destined answer in the
inmost and unconscious ongrowings of life, as in the soul
of one who looks understandingly at Nature's works. In
it they reveal and transform themselves by subtilest thrills,
tender and creative. He who shall detect these — shall

128 NATURE AND LIFE.

link, range, and embrace them in their wonderfully complex
unity — will render a great service to science and to art.
He will not make the artist an automaton, nor prove man
the copy of a plant, drawing all its virtues from the soil it
springs in, but he will lay his hand upon the mechanism,
as yet scarcely guessed, moving a whole system of mighty
combinations of energy.

HEAT AND LIFE.

THE full solution of the question of heat and life could
only be reached by simultaneous concurrence of physics,
chemistry, and biology. Ancient physiology treated of ani-
mal heat empirically, but was unable to explain its origin.
That result required the discoveries of Lavoisier and the
more modern researches of thermo-chemistry. After re-
vealing the source of that heat, it was important to show
how it was disposed of ; and this is taught us by thermo-
dynamics. And, in conclusion, only the most delicate
physiological experiments could settle the modifications
that take place in living beings, when subjected to the in-
fluence of a temperature either above or below that they
possess normally. Medicine and hygiene already benefit by
the indications yielded by pure science upon this subject.
It is admitted that the study of the variations of animal
heat in diseases is of the highest consequence for their
comprehension, and that both diagnosis and prognosis re-
ceive unexpected light from it.

An inquiry into calorific phenomena, undertaken from
various separate and independent points of view, for the
solution of questions that seemed at first sight to have no
mutual connection whatever, has thus obtained a body of
truths which enter into combination almost of their own
accord at the present time, and are found to contain the
eecret-of a great problem in natural philosophy. A minute

130 NATURE AND LIFE.

and extended analysis has thus resulted in an instructive
synthesis, which is one of the most signal acquisitions of the
experimental method.

All animals have a temperature above that of the gas-
eous or fluid media in which they live ; that is to say, they
all possess the faculty of producing heat. Warm-blooded
animals maintain an almost constant temperature in all
latitudes and all climates. Thus, in polar regions, man,
mammals, and birds, mark only one or two degrees less than
they do- at the tropics. The mean temperature of birds is
41° (cent.), and that of mammals 37°. Those animals called
cold-blooded produce heat also, though in a less degree ;
but their temperature follows the variations of that of the
surrounding medium, keeping, however, a temperature a
few degrees higher than it. In reptiles, this excess varies
from 5° to half a degree; in fish and insects, it is still
smaller ; and, in the wholly inferior species, it rarely reaches
half a degree. In fine, with animals that vary in tempera-
ture, the power of resistance to external causes of refrigera-
tion increases in proportion to the perfection of the organ-
ization. It is observed, too, that in these beings vital
activity and the force of respiration have a direct relation to
the thermometric state ; thus, in a medium of 7°, lizards
consume eight times less oxygen than at 23°. With ani-
mals of constant temperature, the reverse is the case ; the
colder it is, the more active is their respiration : a man, for
instance, who, in summer, consumes only a fraction over an
ounce of oxygen an hour, in winter consumes more than an
ounce and a half. Apart from the state of the surrounding
medium, many different circumstances exert a perceptible
influence on animal heat, and produce tolerably regular
variations in it. The seasons, the times of day, sleep, di-
gestion, mode of nourishment, age, etc., are thus constant

HEAT AND LIFE. 131

modifiers of intensity of combustion in breathing ; but there
are such order and harmony, such foresight, one may say, in
the organization of the system, that its temperature con-
tinues definitively nearly the same in the physiological
state.

The temperature of the human body, at the root of the
tongue or under the armpit, is about 37° (cent.) ; this figure
expresses the mean found in taking the temperatures of dif-
ferent points of the body, for there are certain slight varia-
tions in this respect in passing from one organ to another.
The skin is the coolest part, and the more so the nearer we
come to the extremities. The temperature rises, on the
contrary, with increasing depth of penetration into the or-
ganism: cavities are much warmer than surfaces. The
brain is cooler than the viscera of the trunk, and the cellular
tissue cooler than the muscles. Nor does the blood have
the same temperature in all parts of the body. The labors
of Davy and Becquerel established the fact that the blood
is warmer the nearer to the heart examinations are made.
Claude Bernard measured, by methods of equal ingenuity
and exactness, the temperature of deep vessels and the
cavities of the heart. He showed that blood, in passing
out from the kidneys, is warmer than when it enters, and
the same is true of blood passing through the liver. He
ascertained, too, that the vital fluid is chilled in going
through the lungs, and consequently the temperature of the
left cavities of the heart is lower than that of the right, by
an average of two-tenths of a degree. The last fact clearly
^proves that the lungs are not the furnace of animal heat,
and that the blood, in the act of revivification, grows cool
instead of warm.

Ancient physiologists supposed that life has the power
of producing heat ; they conceived of a kind of calorific force
in organized beings. Galen imagined that heat is innate
in the heart — the chemic-physicians attributed it to fer-

132 NATURE AND LIFE.

mentations, the mechanic-physicians to frictions. Time has
dispelled these errors of supposition, and it is proved now
that the heat of animals proceeds from chemical reactions
taking place in the interior of the system. Lavoisier must
be credited with the demonstration of this truth by experi-
ment. As early as 1777 he discovered that air, passing
through the lungs, undergoes a decomposition identical
with that which takes place in the combustion of coal.
Now, in the latter phenomenon, heat is thrown off; " there-
fore," says Lavoisier, " there must be a like release of heat
in the interior of the lungs, during the interval between in-
spiration and expiration, and it is doubtless this caloric,
diffusing itself with the blood throughout the animal
economy, which keeps up a constant heat in it. There is,
then, a constant relation between the heat of the living
being and the quantity of air introduced into the lungs, to
be there converted into carbonic acid." Such is the first
capital fact brought to light by the creator of modern chem-
istry ; but he did not rest there. He undertook to examine
whether the heat theoretically produced in a given time by
the formation of a certain amount of carbonic acid, that is
to say, by the combustion of a certain quantity of carbon in
the organism, is exactly equal to the amount of heat devel-
oped by the animal in a corresponding time. This quantity
was estimated by the weight of ice melted by the animal
placed in a calorimeter. Lavoisier ascertained in this way
that such equality does not exist, nor was he long surprised
at this, for he soon discovered that, of one hundred parts
of atmospheric oxygen absorbed, only eighty-one are thrown
off by the breath in the form of carbonic acid. He con-
cluded then, from this observation, that the phenomenon is
not a simple one, that a part of the oxygen (nine per cent.)
is consumed in burning hydrogen, to form the vapor of wa-
ter contained in the expired air. Animal heat must be ac-
counted for, then, by a double combustion — of carbon first,

HEAT AND LIFE. 133

then of hydrogen — and respiration regarded as throwing
off out of the animal carbonic acid and vapor of water.

Lavoisier's experiments have been repeated and varied,
and his conclusions discussed in many ways for nearly a
hundred years. Several experimenters have corrected or
perfected some points, but the general doctrine has not
been shaken by the recognition of its secondary and very
subtile difficulties, several of which still puzzle physiologists.
It is, indeed, undeniable that the greater part of the reac-
tions which occur in the system, with the production of
heat, do bring out, as a result, the exhalation of watery va-
por and carbonic acid from the lungs ; but these two gases
cannot arise from a direct combustion of hydrogen and car-
bon, because the system does not contain such substances
in a free state. They represent really only the close of a
succession of transformations, often distinct from combus-
tions, properly so called. On the other hand, these are not
the only residue of the chemical operations performed in
the vital furnace. Besides the water and carbonic acid
thrown off by animals in breathing, which are like the
smoke of this elaboration of nutrition, they excrete by
other channels certain principles which are, as it were, the
scorias. Now, these principles of disassimilation, among
which should be noted urea, uric acid, creatine, cholesterine,
etc., could not be results of pure combustion, and they de-
note that the circulating current is the seat of extremely
manifold reactions, the laws of which we are only begin-
ning to gain a glimpse of.

The latest advances of chemistry allow us, indeed, to
follow the linked sequence of the gradual transformations
of nutritive substances into the cycle of vital operations.
It is well, at the outset, to fix exactly the seat of these
phenomena. They take place in all the points of the sys-
tem traversed by the capillary vessels. The glands, the
muscles, the viscera, in brief, all the organs, are in a state of

134 NATURE AND LIFE.

constant burning — they are every instant receiving oxygen,
which brings about alterations of various kinds in the depth
of their substance. In a word, every organ breathes at all
its points at once, and breathes in its special way. Certain
physiologists of the present day are wrong in localizing the
phenomena of breathing in the capillary vessels. They are
merely the channels of transfer for oxygen, which, by exos-
mosis, penetrates their thin walls, and then effects, by di-
rect contact with the smallest particles of the organized
mass, the chemical action which keeps up the fire of life.
It is easy to prove this by placing any tissue, lately de-
tached from the body, in an oxygenated medium. We re-
mark in this case an escape of carbonic acid, together with
a development of heat, and this possibility of breathing
outside the system proves clearly that such act can be ac-
curately compared, as Lavoisier thought, to the combustion
of any substance. The only difference is with regard to in-
tensity. While a candle or a bit of wood burns rapidly,
with a flame, the combustible materials of organic pulp
unite with oxygen in a more slow and quiet manner, less
violently and manifestly.

The blood, which flows and reflows incessantly in the
most slender vessels of our bodies, and charges itself full
with oxygen every time the chest heaves, is composed of
very various substances. It contains mineral salts, such
as chlorures, sulphates, phosphates of potassium, soda,
lime, magnesia, coloring-matters, fatty particles, neutral
substances of the nature of starch, and nitrogenized prod-
ucts, such as albumen and fibrin. The salts undergo slight
changes in the torrent of circulation ; they are eliminated
by the chief emunctories. The neutral matters of the na-
ture of starch are converted into glycogene and fat. The
fatty particles undergo in the blood only such oxidizations
as produce certain derivatives of the same order. And,
last, the nitrogenized products are made over into fibrin,

HEAT AND LIFE. 135

musculin, ossein, pepsin, pancreatin, compounds all differ-
ing very slightly. It is the first portion of the chemical
process which is effected in the principal fluid of the body.
All these materials, elaborated at different points of the
circulating current, and designed to be assimilated, are de-
stroyed in the very organs in which they had been fixed.
The glycogene is transformed into sugar, which is burned,
yielding water and carbonic acid ; the fatty acids are partly
eliminated by the skin, and partly burned. As to the plas-
tic matters which form the web of the tissues, we know lit-
tle about the chemical relation which connects these with
their products of destruction — urea, creatine, cholesterine,
uric acid, and xanthine. Such is a rapid sketch of the prin-
cipal chemical phenomena which, taking place throughout
the entire system, kindle everywhere an evolution of more
or less intense heat. There is no central organ, then, for
feeding the vital fire — every anatomical element performs
its share; and, if a nearly uniform temperature exists
throughout the body, it is because the blood diffuses heat
regularly into the various parts it bathes.

Now, how can the amount of heat to which these reac-
tions may give rise be ascertained ? Lavoisier arrived at
it in a very simple manner. After comparing the oxygen
absorbed by the animal with the carbonic acid and watery
vapor thrown off, he deduced the weight of the carbon and
hydrogen burned, by assuming that the formation of car-
bonic acid and of water produces in the system the same
amount of heat that it would produce if taking place by
means of free carbon and hydrogen. This is very nearly
the result he obtained : A man weighing 132 pounds burns
in 24 hours, at the average temperature of Paris, very near-
ly 11 ounces of carbon, and ^-£ of an ounce of hydrogen,
and thus develops 3,297 heat-units. During the same
period he loses through his lungs and skin 2f pounds of
watery vapor, which take from him 697 heat-units. There

136 NATURE AND LIFE.

remain, then, nearly 2,600 heat-units to account for. Other
analogous estimates have been made, and physiologists
have deduced from them the conclusion that a man of aver-
age weight produces in our climate 3,250 heat-units every
day; that is to say, a sufficient amount of heat to raise
seven gallons of water to the boiling-point. These figures,
though approximations, give a sufficiently clear notion of
the power of the animal economy to generate heat.

Of late years the question has been taken up again
with more exactness, thanks to the views of a new science
called " heat-chemistry," which occupies itself with chemi-
cal phenomena in their relations to heat. Heat-chemistry,
by the aid of very delicate apparatus for measuring heat,
ascertains the number of heat-units developed or absorbed
by bodies entering into combination, beginning with the
noted experiments of Favre and Silbermann. Berthelot,
who has made profound researches into this subject, re-
duces the sources of animal heat to five varieties of trans-
formation : first, the effects resulting from the fixation of
oxygen with different organic principles ; then, the produc-
tion of carbonic acid by oxidization ; then, the production
of water ; in the fourth place, the formation of carbonic acid
by decomposition; and, last, hydrations and dehydrations.
The learned chemist attempted to show how the numbers
obtained in the study of the heat of combustion of the dif-
ferent organic acids, alcohols, etc., might be applied to the
compounds burned in the animal organism ; but, while admit-
ting the theoretic verity of the analogies he establishes, we
cannot refrain from remarking that their practical verification
is exceedingly delicate and difficult. How can we measure,
at any one point of the system, the heat produced by a
fleeting reaction occurring in the inmost depths of a tissue
that must be lacerated to be examined ?

If thermo-chemistry seems not to throw much light on
physiology on this side, it reveals to it on another sources

HEAT AND LIFE. 137

of heat that had hitherto escaped notice. Berthelot shows
that carbonic acid in the system is not always formed by
oxidization of carbon, but sometimes proceeds from de-
composition .absorbing heat. We know that alimentary
substances are reducible to three fundamental types — fats,
hydrates of carbon (sugars, fecula, starch), and the albumi-
noids. Now, the fats, in decomposing and combining with
water, as it occurs under the influence of the pancreatic
juice, evolve heat ; and so it is with the hydrates of carbon,
independent of any oxidization. And albuminous sub-
stances, too, produce very clear calorific phenomena, when
their combination with water takes place with its conse-
quent various decompositions. These facts, noted by
Berthelot, must have their place in the minute and exact
calculation of animal heat, which it is perhaps as yet too
early to undertake. At any rate, this heat originates in
the totality of those chemical transformations which are
going on unceasingly in the depths of the animal organs,
and are bringing about the continual renovation of the
whole organized substance ; in other words, nutrition ;
but why that nutrition — why that perpetual production of
heat in the living machine ?

We have now the means of answering this question,
which involves the secret of one of Nature's most beautiful
arrangements. The heat produced by animals is the source
of all their movements ; in other words, the mechanical
labor they perform is a mere simple transformation of the
activity of heat they develop. They do not create motive
force by any voluntary operation, which would be one of
the prerogatives of life ; they draw it from the calorific en-
ergy stored up in the organs traversed by the blood. Be-
sides, there is a fixed relation between the quantity of heat
that disappears and the mechanical labor that appears.
Yet it is to be remarked that, if all motion by living beings
is a transformation of animal heat, that heat is not wholly
' 7

138 NATURE AND LIFE.

transformed into motion. It is partly wasted by transpira-
tion through the skin, by touch, and especially by radiation ;
it is used in keeping up to a constant point the temperature
of the animal, subjected to many causes of refrigeration.

The mechanical labor performed by an animal is very
complex. Independently of visible muscular motions, there
are all the changes of place in the interior organs, the con-
tinual passage of the blood, the contractions and dilata-
tions of a great number of parts. Now, these actions are
only possible in so far as the phenomena of breathing are
taking place in the active region. Prevent arterial blood
from coming to the muscle, that is to say, prevent combus-
tion taking place, and consequent heat evolving in it,
and, although the structure of the organ suffers no harm,
it loses its contractile power. Mere compression of the
supplying artery of the muscle, so as to check the flow of
blood in it, causes the organ to grow cool and lose its power.
The labors of Hirn and Be"clard have clearly established
the relations between heat and muscular motion. Later ex-
periments by Onimus have fixed, with equal precision, the
efficiency of heat through the movements of circulation.

We have said that the heat-producing power of ali-
ments will be the more considerable in proportion as they
contain a greater quantity of elements that need a large
supply of oxygen for their combustion. Therefore, meat
and fats repair the losses of the system much more speedi-
ly than vegetable substances. The latter are suitable for
the inhabitants of warm countries who do not require to
produce heat, which the atmosphere supplies them with
abundantly. The inhabitants of cold regions, on the con-
trary, whose accessions of heat ought to be as continual as
energetic, are urged by instinct to use meats and fats, which
throw out great heat in their combustion. For instance,
it is a physiological necessity that the Lapps should feed
on the oil of cetacea, as it is a necessity for men of the

HEAT AND LIFE. 139

tropics to consume only very light food. The activity of
respiratory combustion and the kind of alimentation thus
vary with climate, so that there is always a certain propor-
tion maintained between the thermic state of the surround-
ing medium and that of the animal furnace. In like man-
ner, in the same climate, persons who perform great mechan-
ical labor must eat more than those who put forth but lit-
tle movement. This fact, long ago observed, has received
of late the clearest and surest demonstration. Yet, per-
haps, it is not kept sufficiently in view in the management of
public alimentation. Many examples prove the benefit
that industry would derive from increasing, in all possi-
ble ways, the amount of meat used in laborers' meals.
Quite recently, at a manufacturing establishment of the
Tarn, M. Talabot has improved the strength and sanitary
condition of his workmen by giving them meat in abun-
dance. Under the influence of a diet almost wholly vege-
table, each laborer lost on an average fifteen days' work a
year through fatigue or sickness. As soon as the use of
meat was adopted, the average loss for each man per year
was not over three days. Often enough, it must be owned,
alcohol is only the workman's means of remedying the
want of heat-producing elements in his food ; a deceitful
remedy, which buoys up the system for a time, only to sap
it afterward with alarming subtilty. One of the best pre-
ventives of the abuse of alcohol would certainly be the
lessening of the cost of meat.

From the point of view of the relation between heat
and motion, the living being may thus be compared to an
inanimate motor, as a steam-engine. In .both cases, heat
is engendered by combustion, and transformed into me-
chanical work by a system of organs more or less com-
plex. In both cases it is at first in a state of tension,
and yields motion in proportion as it is demanded for
the performance of certain work. Only, the living being

140 NATURE AND LIFE.

is the far more perfect machine. While the best-made
steam-engines only utilize -^^ of the disposable force, the
muscular system of man, according to Him, accounts for
T^jAr- On the other hand, the animated motor has this
peculiarity, that its sources of heat and its mechanical
arrangements are intimately commingled, that its heat is
produced by organs in motion with a sort of general diffu-
sion, and that the machine itself becomes in turn trans-
formed within itself into heat ; an incredible complication,
of which science has succeeded in unraveling the simple
laws only by dint of the united efforts and resources of
physics, chemistry, and biology.

As some physiologists hold, heat must not only be the
source of motion in the system, but must also undergo
transformation into nervous activity. The functional action
of the brain must be a labor, exactly like that of the biceps.
Mind itself should be regarded as engendered by heat.
Late experiments by Valentin, Lombard, Byasson, and es-
pecially Schiff, would seem to prove, it is thought, that
there is a proportional and constant relation between the
energy of nervous functions and the heat of the parts in
which they are effected. Gavarret boldly concludes, from
his researches, that heat has the same relations to the
nervous system that it has to the muscular system ; only,
in the case of the muscles, the force produced exhibits it-
self externally by visible phenomena, while in that of the
nerves it is exhausted internally in profound molecular
action, which eludes any exact measurement. A given
sum of heat developed in the system would thus be on one
side a mechanical equivalent, and on the other a psycho-
logical equivalent. Gavarret, who is a cautious savant and
true to experimental methods, doubtless does not go so far
as to maintain that thought and feeling can be estimated
in heat-units ; he even asserts that there is no common
measure between intelligence and heat; but less timid

HEAT AND LIFE. 141

physiologists are not wanting who reduce every kind of
vital manifestation to the strict laws of thermo-dynamics.
A few succinct remarks may perhaps show that such physi-
ologists err.

A comparison between the muscular and the nervous
systems from the point of view of their connection with
heat is a bold one for many reasons. Between nerve and
muscle there exists this enormous difference — that the for-
mer is endowed with a spontaneity denied to the latter.
Muscular fibre never contracts of its own accord ; it needs
a stimulus — its energy is borrowed. The nerve-cell, on the
contrary, has in itself an ever-present, never-exhausted
power of action, the energy of which is its peculiar prop-
erty. Both evidently derive the principle of the activity
that marks them from the same external and internal
media ; but, while the muscle, a mechanical organ, is lim-
ited to the obedient transformation of the force assigned to
it, under the form of heat, into a measurable amount of
work, the nerve, a vital organ, remains impenetrable and
inaccessible to our calculations, and exerts its characteristic
and sovereign powers in its own way, through a series of
operations that escape all estimates of their force and he at.
On the part of the muscular system, every thing can be
measured; on the part of the nervous system, nothing.
Impressions, sensations, affections, thoughts, desires, pleas-
ures, and pains, make up a world withdrawn from the
common conditions of determination. That superior force
which, ruling all the highest animal activities, decides, sus-
pends, checks, and governs the very transformation of heat
into movement ; which, asserting its independence within
us, call it by whatever name we may — soul, will, or freedom
— remains the most undeniable, though the most mysterious,
certainty of our consciousness — this force protests against
the degradation of cerebral life to mechanism. Such is the
conviction, moreover, of Claude Bernard and of Helmholtz.

142 NATURE AND LIFE.

II.

Independently of the slight and usual variations that
heat may present in the same species, and those it exhibits
in passing from one zoological group to another, we may
consider the changes it undergoes in the same individual,
influenced by the various disturbances of the system. Al-
though it remains almost insensible to modifications of the
surrounding temperature, it is not the same when the com-
plete equilibrium of the organs is affected. The concord
between the different parts of the organism and the func-
tions they discharge is so perfect that the least trouble is
reflected among them, and sends disorder everywhere.
The nervous system, charged with keeping up harmonious
communication between all points of the living being, first
takes note of the change befalling, and transmits its abnor-
mal impression into all quarters. It is not the generator,
but it is the regulator, of animal heat ; that is to say, it
directs and in a manner oversees its production and diffu-
sion according to the varying needs of the system. Every
lesion or affection of this system reacts on the physiologi-
cal processes, and particularly on the evolution of heat.
By cutting the filament of the great sympathetic nerve on
only one side of a rabbit's neck, Claude Bernard produced
an elevation of temperature of several degrees on that side.
The blood flows toward the point where the action of the
nervous system is suspended under any influence whatever,
bringing with it an increase of heating force. At a point
where the reverse occurs, the vessels contract, and the tem-
perature falls.

Imperfect nutrition and fasting act on the animal heat,
but not directly. The organism keeps up to its normal
degree of temperature till it has exhausted its reserved
store of combustible substances. Then it cools slowly
down to a much lower degree. Thus, a rabbit, starved by

HEAT AND LIFE. 143

Chasset, showed the first day a warmth of 38° 4' (cent.) ;
two days before its death, 38° 1' ; the evening before, 37°
5' ; and at the moment of death, 27°. By placing it in a
warm medium the moment it was about to die, the appar-
ent activity of its functions was restored for a little while ;
but the renewal is of brief duration : the anatomical ele-
ments have absolutely lost their spring.

The hand of an invalid suffering from inflammation of
the chest, or from an attack of fever, is burning; that of one
affected by serious asthma, or by emphysema, is as cold to
the touch as marble. This is because animal heat varies
greatly in different pathological states. Sometimes it rises,
sometimes it falls ; and the morbid influence is scarcely ever
compatible with the body's degree of normal temperature.
In Hippocrates's time, when examination of the pulse was
not yet practised, the increase of temperature was the only
element in the commonest of maladies, fever. Galen de-
fines it quite simply as an extraordinary heat (color prceter-
naturalis substantia febrium). The ancients did not err.
It has been admitted and proved in our days that the eleva-
tion of the animal heat is just the specific character of the
febrile condition. On the one hand, there is never any
fever when the temperature continues at the normal de-
gree ; on the other, the rapidity of the pulse may reach the
utmost limits, without any febrile movement, as is seen in
hysteria. Whenever the bodily heat exceeds 38° (cent.),
it may be affirmed that there is fever ; and, whenever it
falls below 36°, there is what is termed algidity. So that
the normal heat varies within the narrow range of scarcely
two degrees. Beyond these limits, that is, above 38° and
below 36°, the temperature points out some morbid trouble.
In common intermittent fever, it rises two or three hours
before the chill, reaches a maximum at the close of it, and
then falls. Acute and decided inflammations, such as pneu-
monia, pleurisy, bronchitis, erysipelas, etc., are marked by

144 NATURE AND LIFE.

a period of thirty-six hours, or about two days, during
which the heat rises slowly to 41°. Toward the third day,
this heat decreases, ready to reappear in exacerbations of
from half a degree to a degree, during three or seven days,
at the end of which time the disorder has run its course.
When the temperature gradually rises after the third day,
a fatal result may be expected. Persistent heat in that
case is the precursor of death. Eruptive fevers, like small-
pox, scarlatina, and measles, present very important phe-
nomena of heat. In these heat begins with the attack of
the malady, and increases till the cutaneous eruption oc-
curs. It keeps up at a maximum, which reaches 42^° (in
scarlatina), till the eruption is complete ; then it begins a
declining course, variable with the phases of the eruption,
which finishes either with scaling off as in scarlatina, or
suppuration as in small-pox. And the temperature rises
also in several surgical affections, bringing on a more or
less inflamed and feverish condition. This is observed in
wounds, and generally in every kind of traumatism, in te-
tanus, aneurisms, etc. In the case of strangulated hernia
and of burns, and in most cases of poisoning, on the other
hand, it declines in a remarkable way.

Very plainly this rising and falling of animal warmth in
diseases can only be attributed to a corresponding state
occurring in the energy of respiratory combustion. We do
not yet exactly know the cause of these variations, that is,
the mechanism by which the morbid influences stimulate or
check the active production of heat. Some physicians see
in it the effect of fermentations occasioned in the blood by
certain microscopic beings, such as bacteria and vibriones,
which may perhaps be supposed to be the fact in most
febrile maladies. Others assume that, in local inflamma-
tions, it is the inflamed organ which communicates heat to
the whole body, as a furnace does in a confined space. To
others the disturbance seems rather to have a nervous

HEAT AND LIFE. 145

origin, since the nerves, as we have seen, are the regulators
of thermic action.

The use of the thermometer is the only exact method
of measuring the temperature in disease. Swammerdam,
in the middle of the seventeenth century, seems to have
been the first to have the idea of it. De Haen and Hunter,
in the last century, used it in their medical practice, but
its employment at the sick-bed has really only come into
importance in our day, thanks to the labors of Bouilland,
Gavarret, Roger, Hirtz, and Charcot, in France; Baren-
sprung, Traube, and especially Wunderlich, in Germany.
These physicians were not content with proving that the tem-
perature in illness rises several degrees ; they followed the
variations of the thermometer day by day, hour by hour, in
the different phases of the pathologic movements. They
discovered that the curves of these oscillations furnish con-
stant types for each disease, which are modified in a reg-
ular manner, according as the disease has been left to itself
or treated by one or another medicine. By the study of
these pathologic curves of heat the course of diseases may
be followed, and valuable indications noted in diagnosis or
prognosis. In haemorrhage of the brain, for instance, the
temperature falls to 36° or even 35°, while, in the attack
that takes the form of apoplexy, it continues nearly at 38°.
These two disorders, quite distinct in their treatment and
cure, yet often give rise to a confusion, which the thermom-
eter will hereafter permit us to avoid. Granular menin-
gitis is distinguished from simple meningitis by the same
method ; in the former the temperature does not rise, not-
withstanding the extreme rapidity of the pulse, but in the
latter the thermometer marks 40° or 41°.

In every case we see what advantage practical medicine
may gain from the physical sciences, what precision and
safety it attains by the employment of its means, in pro-
portion to the morbid symptoms. We may add that the

146 NATURE AND LIFE.

future of diagnosis is to be found partly here. By the ban-
ishment from medical examination of the often-uncertain
judgment of the senses, by substituting as far as possible
for personal and arbitary conclusions, as well as for the
feeling, always more or less confused, of the physician, the
plain and impassive indications of an exact instrument, we
do away with the causes that impede the methodical inter-
pretation of the evil in question. Moreover, these instru-
ments often reveal peculiarities that elude direct observa-
tion. They repair the omissions, correct the mistakes,
guide the activity, multiply the power of our imperfect
senses. From this point of view, the study, by the ther-
mometer, of variations of animal heat in diseases, ther-
mometric clinic, as it is called, is one of the most indis-
putable onward steps in medicine.

III.

After having seen how internal heat is produced in ani-
mals, how it expends itself in them, and undergoes change
into mechanical work, in fine, what spontaneous or occa-
sional changes it passes through in them, we should study
the influence of external heat on the same animals, and the
various phenomena resulting from the rise or fall of tem-
perature in the medium they live in. Quite recent re-
searches have thrown light on these questions. Boerhaave
had made some experiments, not sufficiently exact, however,
on the subject. Berger and Delaroche, at the beginning
of this century, undertook new ones, which gained celebrity
in the schools of physiology. They placed animals in stoves
containing air heated to different degrees of temperature,
and noted the effects produced on life by thermic influences.
The conclusion from their researches was, that all animals
have the power of resisting heat for a certain length of time,
and that the duration of resistance varies with the species.
Small animals yield after a moderate time to a temperature

HEAT AND LIFE. 147

of 45° to 50° (cent.). Larger ones endure heat better.
Cold-blooded animals and the larvse of insects resist more
energetically than warm-blooded animals ; but the reverse
is the case with fully-developed insects.

Delaroche and Berger studied the human subject, too,
from the same point of view, and ascertained that the effect
produced varies with individuals. Thus from 49° to 58°
the stove grew insupportable to Delaroche himself, who be-
came ill from the experiment, while Berger was scarcely
fatigued by it. On the other hand, Berger could remain
only seven minutes in a medium heated to 87°, while Blag-
den staid twelve minutes in it. In tropical countries the
heat often rises during the day above 40° without troubling
the natives. At the Cape of Good Hope the thermometer
marks 43°. Yet sometimes such a heat is murderous. It
is related, among other cases, that in the month of June,
1738, in the streets of Charleston, several persons died un-
der the influence of 41°. In Africa our soldiers are often
known to be attacked with madness and to die in making
a long march, under the rays of a burning sun, but here
the influence of light is combined with that of heat. Du-
hamel mentions the account of several servant-girls of a
baker, who could remain without any inconvenience at all
for nearly ten minutes in an oven heated to the necessary
degree for baking bread. The experiment has since been
repeated. There is nothing contradictory in these facts.
An animal can endure for some time a temperature much
higher than its own, because the very profuse transpiration
which occurs in such a case prevents the heating of the or-
gans ; yet, as we shall see, so soon as the internal heat
really rises a few degrees above the normal figure, life is no
longer possible.

The study of these phenomena had scarcely been carried
further, when in 1842 Claude Bernard devoted to it certain
researches, which he resumed and finished Jast year, and of

148 NATURE AND LIFE.

which he has just published the results. This physiologist
used a pine box, divided into two parts by a grating, on
which the animal subjected to the experiment is placed.
The box rests on a cast-iron plate, and the whole is ar-
ranged on a furnace which warms the air of the apparatus
more or less. A window, placed in the side of the box,
allows the head of the animal to be fixed outside of it at
will. Examining animals, subjected under these conditions
to the influence of air more or less warm, Bernard verified
the first observations of Berger and Delaroche, and made
new and more important ones. Boerhaave had given as
the cause of death the application of hot air to the lun.gs,
preventing the cooling of the blood. Bernard showed by
experiments that hot air, acting on the skin, creates a rise
of temperature more rapidly fatal than when this fluid is
merely introduced into the pulmonary vessels. He proved
also that, when the hot air is damp, the phenomena take a
more rapid course, and death occurs much more quickly
and at a lower temperature, than in dry air. This difference
must result from the fact that dampness promotes a rise in
temperature.

When an animal is subjected to the poisoning effects
of heat, it presents a series of uniform and characteristic
phenomena. It is at first a little disturbed, then panting,
its movements of respiration and circulation accelerate, it
grows slowly hotter through the circulation, which, carrying
the blood continually from the surface to the centre, bears
heat also along with it, then at a given moment it falls into
convulsions, the beating of its heart ceases, and it dies
uttering a cry. By means of the thermometer it is noted
that the temperature of the animal, in every case, is higher
by four or five degrees (cent.) than the figure which repre-
sents the normal warmth. Thus at first the animal is ex-
cited, its functions seem to be performed with fresh vigor,
very much as, in the first rays of April sunshine, the pul-

HEAT AND LIFE. 149

sations of life in all beings become more rapid ; but this
stimulus is only fleeting, and soon, when it reaches a cer-
tain degree, this heat gives place to the cold of death.
Bernard carefully examined animals dying under these con-
ditions, and the first phenomenon that struck him was the
rapidity with which corpse-like rigidity came on. The
heart grew suddenly insensible to any stimulus ; effused
spots appeared at several points on the skin. The heat
fixed in coa.gulation the soft matter that composes the mus-
cular fibres. These had the look of being struck with light-
ning. On the other hand, the arterial blood of the animal
grew black, ill-supplied with oxygen, overloaded with car-
bonic acid, and assumed the look of venous blood. Yet in
this state the blood has not lost its physiological properties,
and under the influence of a new supply of oxygen can re-
gain its normal state, and grow ruddy again. The heat,
provided the degree be not too elevated, only promotes
activity in sanguine combustion, without changing the blood.
Nor does the nervous system either appear to suffer much.
The element most deeply affected is muscle ; heat is a poi-
son of the muscular system, like sulpho-cyanuret of potas-
sium, and the upas-antiar. It is the loss of the vital proper-
ties of this system which, by bringing about rigidity of the
muscles, then the stoppage of circulation, and consequently
of respiration, is a necessary cause of death. This destruc-
tion of the contractile muscular fibre occurs toward 37° or
39° in cold-blooded animals, toward 43° or 44° in mammals,
toward 46° or 48° in birds, that is, speaking generally, at
a temperature five or six degrees higher than the natural
temperature of the animal. Bernard calls attention to the
fact that in no case is it allowable to suppose that life op-
poses a kind of resistance to the excessive heating ; on the
contrary, vital movement tends to quicken it, and that may
be readily understood. The internal heat produced by the
animal unites with the acquired heat, and the renewal of

150 NATURE AND LIFE.

the blood, which is the condition of the heating, then occurs
with much greater activity. Let us add that quite lately
Demarquay applied this toxic action of heat on the muscles
in the happiest manner, and without suspecting it. He
cured patients suffering from those frightful muscular con-
tractions which characterize tetanus, by subjecting them to
the influence of caloric, and making them take very hot air-
baths. The rise of temperature in the tetanized muscles
was sufficient to modify them, and restore them to a healthy
state. Here the poison worked a cure.

Such are the effects on animals of the elevation of tem-
perature. Let us now see what becomes of them when im-
mersed in cold media. Some curious facts with respect to
the freezing of certain animals have long been known.
During his voyage to Iceland, in 1828 or 1829, Gaimard,
having exposed in the open air a box filled with earth in
which toads were put, opening it after a certain time, found
the reptiles frozen, hard and brittle ; but they could be re-
stored to life when put in warm water. Many ancient au-
thors cite similar cases, and we can almost bring ourselves
to understand how a great English physiologist might for
a moment have given them the whimsical interpretation
that he did. John Hunter fancied it might be possible to
prolong life indefinitely by placing a man in a very cold
climate, and there subjecting him to periodical freezing.
The man, he said, would perhaps live a thousand years, if,
at the end of every ten years, he were frozen for a hundred,
then thawed out at the end of the term for ten years more,
and so continuously. " Like all inventors," Hunter adds, " I
expected to make my fortune by this scheme, but an exper-
iment completely undeceived me." Putting carp into a
freezing mixture, he observed, in fact, that, after being en-
tirely frozen, they were dead, past recovery. The case is
the same with all other animals, as the late and very re-
markable experiments of F. A. Pouchet have proved.

HEAT AND LIFE. 151

The influence of cold on organized beings varies, ac-
cording as we regard superior animals or the inferior spe-
cies. In general, it may be said that it requires a very low
surrounding temperature to chill many animals, because the
vital heat they develop resists the process with energy.
Yet the mammals of arctic regions, in spite of their thick
coat of fur, can only brave the temperature of the pole
— sometimes equal to 40° (cent.) below zero, the freezing-
point of mercury — by living under the snow where they
make their lair. The Esquimaux, too, dig huts in it, where
they pass their wretched days. When the organism can
neither react nor protect itself against temperatures so low,
death by freezing quickly overtakes it. The body is stiff-
ened, and retains afterward a state of remarkable incorrupti-
bility. Every one knows the story of the antediluvian mam-
moths discovered in the polar ice, where they had been bur-
ied, as fresh as animals just dead. While heat destroys the
tissues, cold preserves them.

Through what mechanical means does cold become mor-
tal ? It seems to act on the nervous system. Travelers
relate that in polar regions an unconquerable disposition to
sleep overcomes men attacked by very low temperatures.
On the icy shores of Terra del Fuego, Solander said to his
companions, " Whoever sits down falls asleep, and who-
ever falls asleep never wakes again." This inclination is
so overpowering that many of his attendants gave up to it,
and he himself sank down for a moment on the snow. It is
said that, during the winter of 1700, two thousand soldiers
of Charles XII. 's army perished in the sleep to which they
surrendered, under the influence of cold. Its action on the
nervous centres, however, is only secondary and consequent
on another phenomenon, studied by Pouchet, which reveals
this as the secret of death. When the temperature of the
interior of the body sinks to 10° dfrlS0 below zero (cent.),
the cold freezes the blood more or less, thoroughly disor-

152 NATURE AND LIFE.

ganizing its globules, and it is this alteration which, either
at once or when the blood beomes fluid again, destroys all
the vital functions. Larrey relates the case of Bureau,
chief apothecary of the French army in Russia, who, when
chilled to freezing by a painful march in the snow, did not
die until the moment they began to restore warmth. Ex-
periments on animals show that they keep themselves alive
as long as they are maintained in a state of half congelation,
and die whenever their temperature and circulation are so
far restored as to permit the blood-globules, disorganized
by cold, to be diffused throughout the vessels. Death oc-
curs, therefore, whenever the quantity of these globules is
sufficient to produce a considerable disturbance in the sys-
tem, that is, whenever the frozen part is at all extensive.
An animal entirely frozen, and consequently containing in
its congealed blood no globules but those unfit for life, is
dead, without possibility of resurrection. Thawing it only
restores a soft, flaccid, discolored body, with opaque eyes.
If freezing only attacks a limb, it becomes gangrenous, and
is destroyed. Pouchet deduced from these examinations a
judicious, practical conclusion. If it is true that, in cases
of partial freezing, the death of the individual is due to
the disorganized globules reentering the circulation and
corrupting the blood, it is plain that, the more sudden
the invasion of these globules is, the more rapidly death
will supervene. It follows, that, by resisting this inva-
sion, by means of ligatures, or extremely slow thawing,
we might succeed in preventing the poisoning. The dis-
eased globules which, pouring in a flood into the heart
and lungs, would imperil life by the sudden alteration
of the blood, will apparently disturb it merely in an un-
important way, if they are dropped into the blood by slow
degrees.

Thus the late researches of experimental physiology ex-
plain for us the effects of heat and cold, regarded as toxic

HEAT AND LIFE. 153

agents. The former is a poison of the muscular fibre, the lat-
ter a poison of the blood-globules. The case is the same with
heat as with the other elements of the cosmic medium, in
which the animated being lives. It infolds the most contradic-
tory powers, like the tender flower, spoken of by Friar Law.
rence, in " Romeo and Juliet," from which may be distilled
both safety and danger. It can by turns support health,
heal disease, or inflict death.

Man is, then, the weak plaything of all those silent
forces that surround and press upon him. In vain he en-
slaves them ; he cannot escape the inflexible laws that sub-
ject the equilibrium of life to that of the lowest physico-
chemical conditions. He has at least the consolation of
knowing these laws, and guiding his existence so as to
soften their severity as far as possible. When Nature
crushes him, she is unconscious of it, unconscious of her-
self: man, so small, is greater than these blind greatnesses,
because his peculiar greatness is consciousness. The sub-
ject we have been studying is a grand proof of this ; but
its full, imposing interest would not be understood, were
we to end without giving the answer to the last question
it suggests. Whence comes this heat developed by chemi-
cal phenomena in the living system ? It comes from ali-
ments, which, in the last resort, are all drawn from plants,
and they have borrowed it from the sun. When the vegeta-
bles, whose combustion takes place within the animal, there
throw off a certain amount of potential energy, as heat,
they do but transmit it to the force which the sun has sup-
plied them with. It is, then, a portion of solar radiation,
stored up at first by the plant, which the animal makes
disposable and converts to use, whether for resisting cold
or for securing the regular play of his motive functions.
Thus we may say, with exact truth, the sun is the inex-
haustible source, as it is the perpetual spring, of life. From
this point of view, science confirms the intuitions of oldest

154 NATURE AND LITE.

date, and man's poetic dreams in the childhood of the race.
Reason completes the instructions of its long experience
by harmonious agreement with the simple and natural sen-
timent felt by the first of men, when for the first time they
looked on the splendor of day.

ELECTRICITY AND LIFE.

GALVANI discovered, in 1794, that the muscles of ani-
mals experience contractions in contact with certain metals.
In his view, this contact merely calls out the discharge of
a fluid inherent in the animals themselves. The fact was
not to be contested, but its explanation was. Lively dis-
cussions in the schools of physiology followed — fortunately,
with a clear understanding that the difficulty could only be
determined by experiments. A vast number were made,
the name of Volta being connected with the most remark-
able of them. Alexander Volta maintained, in opposition
to Galvani, that the electricity which produces contractions
in the muscles, far from originating in those organs, is in-
troduced by the metals used in the process. In proof of
this he constructed, in 1800, the pile that bears his name,
and which is an arrangement in which the connection of
two different metals becomes an abundant source of the
electric fluid. Galvani and Volta were two men of dis-
tinguished genius, who thoroughly understood physics and
physiology, and advanced nothing heedlessly. Their dis-
coveries were the point of departure for one of the most
admirable movements in all the history of science, a move-
ment which is still most active, and is the more remarkable
because it resulted but yesterday, as it were, in the com-
plete demonstration that Galvani and Volta were both in
the right. Science to-day proves that there is an electricity

156 NATURE AND LIFE.

peculiar to animals, as Galvani declared. It decides also
that electricity produced by external causes has an influ-
ence over animals, as Volta taught. From profound study
of the two orders of phenomena, it deduces a system of
procedure for the cure of very many maladies by electricity.
Consequently, an exposition of the relations between elec-
tricity and life must begin with examining the electricity
that exists naturally, in the same way that heat does, in
animals, and then go on to explain the action of the fluid
on the organism, whether in a healthy or morbid state.
Such a description will complete what has been written in
the Revue respecting the relations of life with light and
heat — relations that we may to-day consider as forming the
features of a new science.

The most authentic witnesses to the existence of animal
electricity are fish. The torpedo, the silurus, the gymno-
tus, the ray, and other fishes, develop spontaneously a
more or less considerable quantity of electricity. This
fluid, the production of which depends upon the animal's
will, is identical with that of common electrical machines ;
it gives the like shocks and sparks at a certain tension.
The apparatus for its formation consists of a series of
small disks of a peculiar substance, kept apart by cells of
laminated tissue. Fine nerve-end fibres are scattered over
the surface of these disks, and the whole represents a sort
of membranous pile, usually placed in the region of the
head, sometimes toward the tail.

These fishes are the only animals provided with an ap-
paratus specially devoted to the production of electricity ;
but all animals are electric, in this sense, that a certain
quantity of that fluid is constantly forming within their
organs. The existence of electricity peculiar to the nerves
and muscles, and independent of their special modes of

ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 157

action, has been settled by numerous experiments, particu-
larly by those of Nobili, Matteucci, and Du Bois-Reymond.
To prove the currents of nervous electricity, it is sufficient
to prepare a frog's muscle, and touch it at two different
points with the two ends of a nerve-filament of the same
animal. The muscle then undergoes contraction under the
influence of the nervous current. Another experiment, as
simple, proves the existence of the muscular current. In
an animal living or just killed, a muscle is exposed and
cuts made in it perpendicularly to the course of the fleshy
fibres, and communication effected by the two wires of a
very sensitive galvanoscope between the natural surface of
the muscle and the surface made by incision. The needle
of the instrument then betrays the passage of a current.
This muscular electricity may be obtained in tolerable
quantity by placing a number of slices of muscle together
in the form of a pile. The positive pole of the system
will be the natural surface of one of the terminal slices,
and the negative pole the cut surface of the other. Such
a battery acts upon galvanic instruments, and can even ex-
cite contractions in other muscles.

Independent of these nervous and muscular electric cur-
rents, other sources of this fluid exist in the animal econ-
omy. Currents ,are produced between the outer and inner
surfaces of the skin, in the blood, in the secreting vessels,
in fine, almost throughout the whole organism. The ex-
periments, as delicate as original, to which Becquerel has
for several years devoted all the activity of his green old
age, authorize him now to assert the preponderance of
electro-capillary phenomena in animal life. According to
this accomplished physicist, two solutions of different na-
ture, both conductors of electricity, separated by a mem-
brane or a capillary space, compose an electro-chemic cir-
cuit ; and, if we reflect on the anatomical elements of the
various tissues, cells, tubes, globules, etc., in their connec-

158 NATURE AND LIFE.

tions with the fluids that moisten them, we find that they
give rise to an infinite number of pairs constantly evolving
electricity. The blood of the arteries with that of the
veins forms a pair, having an electro-motive power of 0.57,
that of a pair with nitric acid being 100. Becquerel ex-
plains, by the intervention of these currents, many physio-
logical phenomena hitherto imperfectly understood. Grant-
ing the reality of such actions, yet it must be acknowledged
that the general doctrine which combines them each with
the other, and links the whole together with the various
modes of action of the organism, is far from being clear
and precise. We need to know how these currents are
distributed and circulate, what lines and courses they fol-
low. It is now time for experimental physiology to at-
tack these difficult problems, the solution of which is abso-
lutely necessary for accurate knowledge of vital determi-
nations, that is, for the computation and the estimate of
those various factors which are terms in all the equations
of organic movement.

Vegetables, too, develop electricity. Pouillet has
clearly demonstrated that vegetation throws it off. Other
physicists, particularly Becquerel, have proved the exist-
ence of currents in the fruits, stems, roots, and leaves of
plants. Becquerel took a branch of young poplar full of
sap, introduced a platinum wire into the wood and another
into the bark, and brought the two ends of the conductors
together in a galvanoscope — the needle at once showed the
passage of a current. Buff has lately made experiments,
taking care not to injure the organs. Two vessels contain-
ing mercury received platinum wires; over the mercury
stood water containing the vegetables to be examined as to
their electric condition. Taking the leaves and roots, Buff
proved a current passing through the plant from the roots
to the leaves ; in a branch severed from the stem the cur-
rent passed toward the leaves, too. To sum up, the exist-

ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 159

ence of vital electricity is incontestable, though we do not
yet precisely understand the conditions of this internal ex-
citement, and know nothing of its true relations with the
unity of physico-chemical operations in the living organism.

The latter are, at all events, exceedingly complex.
There is in us, and in every organized being, an infinite
world of the most various actions going on. The forces
penetrating us are as manifold as the materials we are
moulded from. In every point of our bodies, and at ever}T
moment of our existence, all the energies of Nature meet
and unite. Yet, such order rules in the course of these
wonderful workings, that harmonious blended action, in-
stead of bewildering confusion, characterizes beings en-
dowed with life. Every thing in them commands and
answers, with balance and counterpoise. Buffon long ago
felt and expressed this. " The animal," he said, " com-
bines all the forces of Nature : his individuality is a centre
to which every thing is referred, a point reflecting the
whole universe, a world in little." A deep saying, coming
from the great naturalist as the flash of an intuition of
genius rather than the result of rigid investigation — words
which the movement of science confirms with ever stronger
proofs, while borrowing from them light for its path.

Having determined that living bodies are in themselves
sources of the electric fluid, we next inquire into the nature
of the effects produced in the animal organism by electricity
under different forms. The atmosphere contains a variable
quantity of positive electricity ; the earth itself is always
charged with negative electricity. It is not yet precisely
known how this diffused and silent force originates. Phys-
icists suppose that it proceeds from vegetation and the
evaporation of water. Becquerel has quite lately set forth
a number of reasons, more or less plausible, for the belief
that the chief part of atmospheric electricity is derived
from the sun, and diffused by it into space together with

160 NATURE AND LIFE.

light. Whether this be true or not, while the sky is clear
this fluid has no visible effect on human beings ; but, when-
ever it accumulates in the clouds, and gives rise to storms,
it produces effects that are the most manifest proofs of the
influence exerted over life by electricity. Persons killed by
lightning present a great variety of appearances. Some-
times one struck by lightning is killed outright on the spot,
the body remaining standing or sitting ; sometimes, on the
contrary, it is thrown to a great distance. Sometimes the
flash tears off and destroys the victim's dress, leaving the
body untouched, and sometimes the reverse is the case.
In some instances the destruction is frightful, the heart is
torn apart and the bones crushed; in others the organs are
observed entirely uninjured. In certain cases flaccidity of
the limbs occurs, softening of the bones, collapse of the
lungs ; in others, contractions and rigidity are remarked.
Sometimes the body of the person struck decomposes
rapidly, but at times it resists decay. Lightning, which
shatters trees, and overturns walls, seems not to produce
mutilations in animals at all readily. When the stroke
does not produce death, it creates at least serious disturb-
ances— sometimes temporary, but oftener beyond remedy.
Besides the burns and various eruptions noticed on the
skin of those struck by lightning, they often suffer, very
curiously, a complete loss of hair ; they are affected with
paralysis, dumbness, deafness, amaurosis, or imbecility.
In brief, the destructive, attacks of atmospheric electricity
touch all the functions of the nervous system.

The action of electric fishes may be likened to that of
lightning, in being independent of our intention. The
shocks of the gymnotus are particularly formidable. Alex-
ander Humboldt relates that, having put both his feet on
one of these fish, just taken from the water, he experienced
so violent a shock that he felt pains in all his joints the
rest of the day. These shocks throw the strongest ani-

ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 161

mals down, and it is necessary to avoid rivers frequented
by the gymnotus, because, in attempting to ford them,
horses or mules might be killed by the discharges. To
capture these fish the Indians drive wild-horses into the
water, stirring the eels up out of the mud by their tram-
pling. The yellowish livid creatures press against the
horses under their bellies, throw down the greater part, and
kill some of them, but, exhausted in their turn, they are
then easily taken with the aid of small harpoons. The sav-
ages employ them to cure paralysis. Faraday compares
the shock of a g}7mnotus, which he had the opportunity to
study, to that of a strong battery of fifteen jars. A live
eel out of water, when touched by the hand, communicates
a shock strong in proportion to the extent of surface in
contact, and the stroke is felt up to the shoulder, and fol-
lowed by a very unpleasant numbness. It may be trans-
mitted through twenty persons in a chain, the first one
touching the back, and the last the belly of the eel. The
fishermen discover the presence of an eel in their nets by
experiencing a shock in throwing pailfuls of water on, to
wash them. Water is a good conductor, and this fish kills
or benumbs the animals it feeds on by delivering a dis-
charge through the water.

Other sources of electricity are known to exist, besides
thunder-storms and fishes. Friction-machines, batteries,
and induction instruments, yield three kinds of currents
that act on vital functions, sometimes in a similar way,
but oftener with marked differences, which have only re-
cently been clearly distinguished. The action of static
electricity, and that of electricity of induction, more sudden
and violent, is particularly marked by mechanical effects so
striking that they have long distracted experimenters from
examining with due attention those effects of another sort,
produced by the galvanic current. Yet the latter in reali-
ty affects the animal tissues in a deeper way, and its. re-
8 •

162 NATURE AND LIFE.

suiting phenomena deserve the liveliest interest from a
theoretical point of view, as well as from their applied
uses.

Dutrochet proved, by remarkable experiments, that,
when a tube closed below by a membrane, and containing
gum-water, is placed in a vessel containing pure water, the
level of the gum-water rises little by little through the grad-
ual introduction of pure water into the tube, while a certain
quantity of the gum-water inside mingles with the pure
water outside. In a word, a mutual exchange takes place
between these two fluids, communicating by the membrane,
and the current, passing from the thinner liquid toward the
denser one, is ascertained to be more rapid than that
moving in the opposite direction.

This experiment reveals one of the most important phe-
nomena of life in plants and animals, noted by the word
endosrnosis. Now, Dutrochet had before observed that if
the positive pole of a battery be inserted in the pure water,
and the negative pole in the gum-water, the acts of endos-
mosis are effected more energetically. Qnimus and Legros
discovered, further, that, if the contrary arrangement be
adopted, that is, if the positive pole be placed in the gum-
water, and the negative pole in the pure, the level of the
liquid in the tube descends noticeably, instead of rising.
Electricity, therefore, can reverse the usual laws of endos-
mosis. It exerts an influence not less distinct on all the
other physico-chemical movements, taking place deep in
the organs. In them it decomposes the salts, coagulates
the albuminoid elements of the blood and the tissues, just
as it does in the vessels of the laboratory. Take a very
curious instance : In chemistry, on decomposing the iodide
of potassium, iodine is freed, and betrays itself by the
tinge of intense blue which it develops on contact with
starch. Now, if an animal be injected with a solution of
iodide of potassium, and then electrified, it is noticed, after

ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 163

a few minutes, that all the parts near the positive pole of
the battery turn blue in presence of the starch, proving
that they are impregnated with iodine. The iodide has
been almost instantly decomposed, and the iodine carried
by the current toward the positive pole.

It is not surprising, then, that the action of electricity
influences the whole system of the nutritive operations.
Onimus and Legros found that ascending continuous cur-
rents quicken the twofold movement of assimilation and dis-
assimilation.1 Animals electrified under certain conditions
throw off a greater proportion of urea and carbonic acid,
proving a higher energy of the vital fire. On the other
hand, if young individuals, in course of development, are
subjected to the action of the current, they grow tall and
large more quickly than in ordinary circumstances, furnish-
ing the proof of an increase in the quantity of substances
assimilated. To show how far vital phenomena are stimu-
lated by electricity, we will cite another experiment made
by Robin and Legros on noctilucae. These are microscopic
animals, which, when existing in great numbers in sea-wa-
ter, render it almost as white as milk, and at certain times
phosphorescent. Now, a current directed into a vessel filled
with such water suffices to bring out a trace of light mark-
ing all its course. Electricity stimulates the phosphores-
cence of all the noctiluca3 met on its passage between the
two poles.

Interrupted currents, or currents of induction, con-
tract the blood-vessels and slacken the circulation in almost
every case : if they are intense, they even effect its com-
plete check by a strong contraction of the little arterial

1 Electricity passes in a machine between two poles. It is ascertained
that the current circulates from the positive pole toward the negative
one. The current is called ascending when the positive pole is applied
to the lower part and the negative to the upper part of the spine ; it is
called descending in the reverse case.

164 NATURE AND LIFE.

branches. Continuous currents do not act in this way ;
usually they quicken the circulation, while occasioning an
enlargement of the vessels ; at least, this has been estab-
lished by Robin and Hiffelsheim, in the microscopic exami-
nation of the flow of blood under electric stimulus. Onimus
and Legros afterward proved that these movements are
governed by the following law : The descending current
dilates the vessels; and the ascending current contracts
them. A striking experiment proves the value of this law :
A part of the skull of a vigorous dog is removed, so as to
expose the brain. The positive pole of a pretty strong
battery is then placed on the exposed brain, and the nega-
tive pole on the neck. The slender and superficial vessels
of the brain contract visibly, and the organ itself seems to
collapse. Arranging the poles in the contrary order, the
reverse is remarked ; the capillary vessels swell and distend,
while the substance of the brain protrudes through the
opening made in the walls of the skull. This experiment
proves the possibility of increasing or lessening at will the
intensity of circulation in the brain, as indeed in any other
organ, by means of electric currents. Onimus lately made
an equally interesting experiment. Many persons know
that the famous physiologist Helmholtz introduced into
medicine the use of a simple and convenient instrument
called the ophthalmoscope, by means of which the bottom
of the eye may be quite distinctly seen, that is to say, the
net formed by the nerve-fibres, and the delicate vessels of
the retina. Now, on examining this net, while the head is
put under electric influence, the little blood-tubes are plainly
seen to dilate and grow of a more lively crimson.

Let us now study the effect of the electric current on
the functions of the motor system, and on sensibility. Al-
dini, a nephew of Galvani, undertook the first investigations
of this kind upon human beings. Convinced that the
proper study of the effects of electricity on the organs re-

ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 165

quired the human body to be taken at the immediate in-
stant after the extinction of life, he believed he would do
well, as he relates himself, to take his place beside the
scaffold, and under the axe of the law, to receive from the
executioner's hand the blood-stained bodies which were the
only really suitable subjects for his experiments. In Jan-
uary and February, 1802, he availed himself of*the occasion
of the beheading at Boulogne of two criminals, whom the
government willingly gave up to his scientific inquiry.
Subjected to electric action, these bodies presented so
strange a sight as to terrify some of the assistants. The
muscles of the face contracted in frightful grimaces. All
the limbs were seized with violent convulsions. The bodies
seemed to feel the first stir of resurrection, and an impulse
to spring up. For several hours after decapitation, the
vital centres of movement retained the power of answering
to the electric excitement. At Glasgow, Ure made some
equally noted experiments on the body of a criminal, which
had remained on the gallows nearly an hour. One of the
poles of a battery of 270 pairs having been connected with
the spinal marrow, below the nape of the neck, and the
other pole touching the heel, the leg, until then bent back,
was forcibly thrown forward, almost oversetting one of the
assistants, who had a strong hold on it. Placing one of
the poles on the seventh rib, and the other on one of
the nerves of the neck, the chest rose and fell, and the ab-
domen underwent the like motion, as in the act of breath-
ing. On touching a nerve of the eyelid at the same time
with the heel, the muscles of the face contracted, " rage,
horror, despair, anguish, and fearful grins, combined in hid-
eous expressions on the dead man's face." At the terrible
sight one person fainted, and several were obliged to leave
the room. Afterward, by exciting convulsive movements
of the arms and fingers, the corpse was made to seem to
point to one or another of the spectators.

166 NATURE AND LIFE.

Later researches have precisely fixed the conditions of
this influence of electricity upon the muscles. Continuous
currents, led directly to these organs, produce contractions
at the moments of opening and of closing the circuits ; but
the shock produced on closing is always the strongest.
While the continuous current is passing, the muscle re-
mains persistently in a half-contracted state, as to the na-
ture of which physiologists disagree. Influenced by ex-
citements rapidly repeated and prolonged for a short time,
the muscles assume a state of contraction and shortening,
like that seen in tetanus. In this state, as Helmholtz and
Marey have shown, the muscle suffers a repetition of very
slight shocks. Contraction is the result of the fusion of
these elementary vibrations, indistinguishable by the eye,
but capable of recognition and measurement by certain
contrivances. Currents of induction produce more power-
ful contractions, but not lasting ones, which are succeeded,
if electrization is prolonged, by corpse-like rigidity. Mus-
cular contraction effected in such a case is attended by a
local rise in temperature, proportioned to the force and
length of the electric action. This increase of heat reaches
its maximum, which may in some cases be four degrees,
during the four or five minutes following the cessation of
the electric impulse, and is due to the muscular contrac-
tion, which always gives rise to disengagement of heat.

The effect upon the nerves is very complex, and be-
trayed by movements and sensations very variable in in-
tensity. Onimus and Legros state in general its funda-
mental laws thus : In acting on the nerves of motion, we
see that the direct or descending current works more en-
ergetically than the other, with the reverse result on the
nerves of sensation. The excitability of those nerves of a
mixed kind is lessened by the direct and increased by the
inverse current. This is true as to battery-currents, but
currents of induction behave differently. While the sen-

ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 167

sation called out by the first is almost insignificant, the
others, besides the permanent muscular contraction, pro-
duce a pain lasting as long as the nerve retains its excita-
bility. The spinal marrow is one of the most active parts
of the system. In the form of a thick, whitish cord, lodged
inside the vertebral column, it constitutes a real prolonga-
tion of the brain, of which, under some circumstances, it
takes the place. The unconscious depository of a part of
the force animating the limbs, by means of the nerves sent
out from it, it transmits to them their direction and power
to move, while the brain is unaware of its action. This
takes place in what are called reflex motions, and these
occur in beheaded animals, through the simple excitement,
direct or indirect, of the spinal marrow. Experiments may
be cited, showing the action of electricity on those phe-
nomena which have their seat in the spinal marrow. If a
frog is plunged into lukewarm water, at a temperature of
40°, it loses respiration, feeling, and motion, and would die
if kept in it a long time. When taken out of the water,
and placed in this state under the action of the current, it
contracts strongly when its vertebral column is electrified
by an ascending charge ; but no motion follows if the de-
scending current is applied. On the other hand, if the
latter is sent into a beheaded animal, stimulated to reflex
motions, by the excitement of the spine, it tends, as ex-
periment shows, to paralyze these motions. In general,
this is the law discovered by Onimus and Legros — the as-
cending battery-current, directed on the spine, increases the
excitability of that organ, and consequently its power of
producing reflex phenomena ; the descending current, on
the contrary, acts in the reverse way.

When the brain of animals is directly electrified, the
modifications in circulation already spoken of result, but
no special phenomena are observed. The animal shows no
pain, and makes no movement, experiencing a tendency

168 NATURE AND LIFE.

toward sleep, a sort of calm and stupor. Some physicians
have gone so far as to propose electrization of the brain as
a means of developing and perfecting the mental powers.
Nothing hitherto justifies the belief that such a course
could have the slightest influence for good over the func-
tions of thought. On the contrary, it is very certain that
the electric agent must be applied only with extreme cau-
tion to the regions of the head, and that it very easily oc-
casions mischief in them. A strong current might readily
cause rupture of the vessels, and dangerous haemorrhage in
consequence.

Again, electricity stimulates all the organs of sense.
Directed upon the retina, it excites it, producing sensations
of glare and dazzling. When sent through the organ of
hearing, it produces there a peculiar buzzing noise, and, if
brought in contact with the tongue, it calls forth a very
characteristic metallic and styptic sensation. And in the
olfactory mucous membrane it creates a sneezing irritation,
and also, it seems, an odor of ammonia.

The currents not only act on the cerebro-spinal nerves,
and the muscles concerned in life, as related outwardly, but
affect also the parts of the nervous and muscular systems
devoted to the functions of nutritive life. Electricity by
induction, applied to these muscles, causes contraction in
them at the point of contact with the poles, while the part
situated between the poles remains without motion. Con-
tinuous currents produce, at the instant of closing the cir-
cuit, a local contraction at the junction with the poles, and
then the organ becomes quiet; if it is previously in action,
motion ceases. In the case of the intestine, for instance,
peristaltic movement is checked ; and by means of elec-
tricity contractions of the uterus may be suspended in an
animal, during parturition. In general, the fluid suppresses
spasms of all the involuntary muscles.

All these facts relating to electric action upon the

ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 169

muscles and nerves have been the occasion, particularly in
Germany, of laborious investigations, with which are con-
nected the names of Du Bois-Reymond, Pfliiger, and Remak.
The doctrines of these learned physiologists, regarding the
molecular condition of the nerves in their various modes of
electrization, are still very much disputed. It must be
said that they are not supported by any experimental cer-
tainty, and perhaps the ideas developed by Matteucci sup-
ply better means for the general solution of these difficul-
ties. This eminent experimenter opposed to the German
theories about the electrotonic faculties of the nerves cer-
tain evident phenomena of electrolysis, that is, of chemical
decompositions effected by the currents. He supposed
that the modifications of excitement in the nerves, brought
about by the passage of electricity, depended on the acids
and the alkalies resulting from th'e separation of the salts
contained in animal tissues. To this first class of phenom-
ena may be added those electro-capillary currents lately
observed by Becquerel. Here must be sought the deeper
causes of that complicated and as yet obscure mechanism
of the strife between electricity and life.

The effects of electricity on plants have been much less
studied, experiments made on this subject being neither
accurate nor numerous enough. We know that electricity
causes contractions in the various species of mimosa, par-
ticularly in the sensitive-plant, etc. Becquerel has stud-
ied its action on the germination and development of vege-
tables. Electricity decomposes the salts contained in the
seed, conveying the acid elements to the positive pole,
and the alkaline ones to the negative. Now, the former
injure vegetation, while the latter benefit it. Quite lately
the same experimenter has made a series of researches
upon the influence of electricity on vegetable colors. Em-
ploying strong discharges obtained from friction-machines,
he has noticed very remarkable alterations of color, usuallv

170 NATURE AND LIFE.

due to the rupture of the cells containing the coloring-
matter of the petals. This matter, freed from its cellular
covering, disappears on simply washing with water, and
the flower becomes almost white. In leaves showing two
surfaces of different shades, as the Begonia discolor, a kind
of mutual exchange of colors between the two surfaces
has been noticed.

II.

The physiological phenomena just spoken of are usually
confounded in books with the facts of electric medical
treatment, and it seems better to distinguish the two class-
es. The true method consists in first explaining the phe-
nomena displayed in the healthy organism, as the only way
of understanding afterward those that are peculiar to dis-
orders. Electric treatment forms a group of methods to
be classed among the most efficacious in medicine, pro-
vided they are applied by a practitioner well trained in the
theory of his art. Indeed, the most thorough physiologi-
cal knowledge is essential for the physician who would
make the electric currents erviceable. Mere experimenting,
even the most sagacious, must here be barren of good re-
sults— a fact of which it is well to remind those who im-
pute to the method itself the failures it meets with in un-
skillful hands. It is true that, since the days of Galvani
and Volta, physicians have used galvanism in the treat-
ment of many diseases. Early in the century, galvanic
medicine was much talked of, and supposed to be the uni-
versal panacea. Galvanic societies, journals, and treatises,
undertook to spread its usefulness. The fashion lasted a
certain time, and would perhaps have growm indifferent,
when the discovery of induced electricity, due to Faraday,
in 1832, called professional attention once more to the vir-
tues of the electric fluid, and led to a new and interesting
range of experiments. Yet it is likely that the true sys-

ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 171

terns of electric medical treatment, after the extraordinary
illusions of their earlier days had vanished, would at length
have sunk into disuse, had they not escaped from the ruts
of empiricism. With its usual boldness, it had at first
gained them a high rank, which it had no power to main-
tain. It was experimental physiology, with its exact analy-
sis of the mechanical effects of this fluid upon the springs
of the organism, which made its application in the healing
art sure, true, and solid, as it now is. In this, as in all
things, blind art has been the impulse to scientific research,
which in turn steadily enlightens and perfects art.

It is singular that induction currents have met with much
better fortune than galvanic ones. The latter, the use of
which introduced electric treatment, have gained real im-
portance in physiology and medicine only within a few
years, and after the reputation of induction currents was
well established, thanks chiefly to the efforts of Duchenne.
A German physiologist and anatomist, Remak, who died
six years ago, was the first to urge the singular remedial
virtues of the voltaic current. Remak, after devoting
twenty years to the study of the most difficult ques-
tions in embryology and histology, undertook, in 1854, the
systematic examination and ascertainment of the action of
continuous currents on the vital economy. He soon gained
remarkable dexterity in dealing with the electric agent,
and detecting with the readiest insight the proper points
for applying the battery-poles in each malady. Those who,
with us, witnessed in 1864 his practice at the hospital, will
remember it clearly. The methods of Duchenne were al-
most the only ones accepted in practice in France, till
Remak came to prove to Paris physicians the powers of
electrization by constant currents, in cases where Faraday's
currents had been without effect. The teaching of the
Berlin practitioner bore its fruits. A rising young physi-
cian, Hiffelsheim, was beginning to spread throughout Paris

172 NATURE AND LIFE.

the use of the constant current as a healing agent, when
death removed him in 1866, in the flower of his age. An-
other physician, who benefited by the lessons of Remak, Oni-
mus, resumed the interrupted labors of Hiffelsheim, and is
now busy in completing the system of the methods of elec-
tric medical practice, by subjecting them to an exact knowl-
edge of electro-physiological laws. A few instances, from
the mass of facts published on the subject, will serve to
show how far the efficiency of these methods has actually
been carried.

Experiment proves that, under certain conditions, the
electric current contracts the vessels, and thus checks the
flow of blood into the organs. Now, a great number of
disorders are marked by too rapid a flow of blood, by what
are known as congestions. Some forms of delirium and
brain-excitement, as also many hallucinations of the differ-
ent senses, are thus marked, and these are entirely cured
by the application of the electric current to the head. No
organ possesses a vascular system so delicate and complex
as the brain's, nor is there any so sensitive to the action
of causes that modify the circulation. For this reason,
disorders seated in the brain are peculiarly amenable to
electric treatment, and, when carefully applied, it is reme-
dial in brain-fevers, mental delirium, headaches, and sleep-
lessness. Physicians who first employed the current were
quite aware of this benign influence of the galvanic fluid
over brain-disorders, and even had the idea of utilizing it
in the treatment of insanity. Experiments in that direc-
tion have not been continued, but the facts published by
Hiffelsheim justify the belief that they would not be bar-
ren. These facts testify to the benefits that electric cur-
rents (we mean only continuous ones) may some day yield
in brain-diseases — -a point worth the attention of physicians
for the insane. Till lately it was thought that electricity
was a powerful stimulant only, but what is true of interrupt-

ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 173

ed currents is not true as to currents from the battery.
Far from being always a stimulant, the latter may become
in certain cases, as Hiffelsheim maintained, a sedative and
calming agent. This control over circulation, joined with
the electrolytic power of the galvanic current, allows its
employment in the treatment of various kinds of conges-
tions. A congested state of the lymphatic ganglia, the
parotid glands, etc., may be relieved by this means, the
current acting in such cases both on the contractility of
the vessels and the composition of the humors.

In cases of paralysis, more than any others, electricity
displays all its healing power. Paralysis occurs whenever
the motor nerves are separated from the nervous centres by
any injuring cause, or by any modification of texture im-
pairing their sensitiveness. With a destroyed nerve, pa-
ralysis is incurable, but, in case of its disease only, its func-
tions can almost always be restored by electric treatment.
As there is always some degree of muscular atrophy in the
case, electricity is directed upon the nerves and the muscles
at once, and the battery and the induction current are usually
employed together. As a rule, the first modifies the gen-
eral nutrition, and restores nervous excitability, while the
last stimulates the contractile power of the muscular fibres.
The difference of action between the two kinds of currents
is clear in certain paralyses in which the muscles show no
contraction under induction currents, while under the influ-
ence of constant currents they contract better than the un-
injured muscles. Experiments made some years ago in
Robin's laboratory, on the bodies of criminals executed,
proved that, after death, muscular contraction can still be
produced by Volta's currents, though Faraday's current
has no such effect.

When the motor nerves are in a state of morbid excite-
ment, they compel either muscular contractions that are
lasting, as tonic spasms, or intermittent ones. The differ-

174 NATURE AND LIFE.

ent motor nerves most commonly excited are the facial
nerves, the nervous branches of the forearm or the fingers,
which are affected in " writer's cramp," 1 and the branches
of the spinal nerve, whose irritation occasions tic-doulou-
reux, chronic wryneck, etc. Now, electricity cures, or at
least noticeably benefits, these different morbid states, and
exerts the like influence over neuralgic and neuritic affec-
tions, wherever these disorders are not the symptoms of
other deeper maladies. Currents restore the normal ac-
tivity of nutrition in the diseased nerves, and the corre-
sponding muscles ; they act on rheumatism, too, in the most
beneficial way, modifying the local circulation, quieting the
pain, and stimulating reflex phenomena, which are followed
by muscular contractions. Erb, Remak, Hiffelsheim, and
Onimus, have proved beyond question this salutary action
on swellings of the joints, either in acute or chronic cases.
The discoveries respecting the influence of electricity
over the spinal marrow have been used with advantage in
the treatment of such disorders as arise from unduly-ex-
cited activity in this organ, such as chorea, St. Vitus's dance,
hysteria, and other nervous convulsions, more or less simi-
lar. We cite two instances of this sort published by Dr.
Onimus, giving an idea of the mode of applying the cur-
rent in such cases. A child, twelve years old, was seized
with a frightful attack. Every five or six minutes it lost
consciousness, rolled on the ground ; its eyes turned upward,
then grew so rigid that none of its limbs could be bent.
The attack over, it regained its senses, but the least im-
pression, at all vivid, sufficed to bring on a new attack.
Ascending currents were first applied to the spinal mar-
row. The child was at once seized with a violent crisis.

1 Writer's cramp consists of a kind of spasm of the finger-muscles,
preventing their regular contraction in holding or guiding a pen or play-
ing the piano, while the muscles of the hand and forearm preserve all
their normal strength.

ELECTKICITY AND LIFE. 175

Descending currents were then used for fifteen days in
succession, after which the little patient regained health.
A young girl aged seventeen, in hysteric condition, pre-
sented very strange symptoms in the larynx, the velum of
the palate, and the facial muscles, among others a sort of
barking, followed by vehement sniffing and horrible grim-
aces. By placing the positive pole in the patient's mouth
against the arch of the palate, and the negative pole on
the nape of the neck, all these morbid affections were com-
pletely subdued. The disposition of the poles in the re-
verse order, on the other hand, aggravated them. After
sixteen repetitions of electric treatment, the young girl
was almost completely cured, retaining only a muscular
twitch of little importance, compared with her former ail-
ments. Several cases of tetanus also were treated with
complete success by similar methods. This terrible dis-
ease, the most fearful of all surgical complications, is due to
an acute inflammation of the spinal marrow. It is followed
by such an alteration of the motor nerves, that all the
muscles of the body experience general contraction, and a
painful rigidity that by degrees attacks the vitally essential
organs. When an attack of this kind reaches the muscles
of the chest and heart, death occurs, through asphyxia.
In such a case the continuous current restores the motor
nerves to their normal state. Two other chronic diseases
of the spine, the first being particularly serious — progres-
sive muscular atrophy and locomotive ataxy — often yield
to the rational use of electricity, or at least are checked in
their progress, the natural issue of which is death. It is
worth remarking that these two disorders were discovered
and described by Duchenne, in the course of his researches
into this method of treatment. Electricity served his pur-
poses of diagnosis, as it serves in physiology as a means of
study, taking in that science the place of a kind of reac-
tive agent, and revealing functional differences that no

176 NATURE AND LIFE.

other process could have detected. To it alone, according
to the way in which it affects a nerve or a muscle, belongs
the power, under certain circumstances, of determining the
nature and even the degree of alteration in nervous or
muscular elements.

Aldini said that galvanism afforded a powerful means
of restoring vitality when suspended by any cause. Several
physicians, at the beginning of this century, restored life
by this means to dogs, after they had undergone all the
processes of drowning, and seemed dead. Halle' and Sue
proposed at that period to place galvanic machines in the
different quarters of Paris, particularly near the Seine. This
wise and useful plan has not yet been put into execution,
though all experiments made since that time confirm the
proof of the efficiency of electricity in cases of asphyxia and
syncope, produced either by water or by poisonous gases.
The galvanic current also restores respiration in cases of
poisoning by ether or chloroform, even when recovery seems
hopeless. Surgeons who understand this effect, remember
it whenever chloroform seems dangerous to the patient
under its influence.

Electricity is transformed into heat with great ease.
If an intense current is passed through a very short metallic
wire, it heats, reddens, and sometimes vaporizes it. This
property has been taken advantage of by surgeons for
the removal of various morbid excrescences. They intro-
duce a metallic blade at the base of the tumors or polypi
to be extirpated, and when this kind of electric knife be-
comes incandescent, under the influence of the galvanic cur-
rent, they give it such a movement that the diseased part
is separated by cauterization, as neatly as with a cutting
instrument. This method, which avoids effusion of blood,
and is attended by only slight pain, has yielded excellent
results in the hands of Marshall, Middeldorpf, Sedillot,
and Amussat. Besides this application, in which heat plays

ELECTKICITY AND LIFE. 177

the chief part, electricity has been used to destroy tumors,
by a kind of chemical disorganization of their tissue.
Crusell, Ciniselli, and Nelaton, have made decisive experi-
ments of this nature. Pe"trequin, Broca, and others, sug-
gest the same method to coagulate the blood contained in
sacs, in aneurisms. If this novel surgery is not so widely
known and used as it deserves to be, the reason is that the
manipulation of electric instruments requires much practice
and dexterity, and surgeons find the classic use of the scal-
pel more convenient.

This rapid historical view shows that the method of
treatment by electricity is useful in very many diseases.
Whether resorted to to modify the nutritive condition, to
quicken or check circulation in the small vessels, to calm or
excite the nerves, to relax or stimulate the muscles, to burn
or detach tumors, electricity, if managed rationally, is des-
tined to do distinguished service in the healing art. The
range of treatment by heat is less considerable, yefc of some
extent. The examination of the medical value of treatment
by light has scarcely begun, nor has much been done
toward the study of weight or pressure, in their relations to
medical science. At all events, there is now forming and
gaining increased development, alongside of the medicinal
use of bodies, a medicinal use of forces — besides the physic
of drugs, a physic of powers. It is impossible to say at
present which of the two will definitely prevail — more prob-
ably both will be called on to render valuable services tc
art.

The first savants who studied the action of galvanic elec-
tricity on dead bodies, and saw them recover motion, and
even an appearance of sensation, supposed they had touched
the secret of life, likening to the vital principle that other
force which seems to warm again the frozen organs, and re-
store their springs. Slight reflection on the facts collected
in the foregoing pages reveals the thorough illusiveness of

178 NATURE AND LIFE.

such a hope. Not only is electricity far from being the whole
of life, but it cannot even be regarded as one of the elements
of life, or be compared, for instance, with nerve-force. In
fact, the experiments of Helmholtz have proved conclusively
that such a comparison contradicts the truth. What is the
peculiar sign of the vital forces and of vital unity, or the
definite expression of their simultaneous action in one
organism, is, precisely, organization. But electricity has
no causal relation with organization proper. That is the
work of some higher activity. That power in action, what-
ever it be, takes to itself all the forces of Nature, but it
links them, coordinates them, and, fixing them into special
conditions, compels their service to the purposes of life.
Gravitation, heat, light, electricity, all these forces are
maintained within living beings — only they are there dis-
guised under a new phenomenal unity, just as the oxygen,
hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, that make up
a nerve-cell, vanish in it into a new unity of substance, with-
out ceasing to exist in it as distinct chemical elements. The
inorganic powers of Nature are as essential to life as lines
and colors are in the composition of the painter's picture.
What would the picture be without the painter's soul and
labor ? The picture is his peculiar work : the physico-chem-
ical forces are the lines and colors of that homogeneous and
harmonious composition, which is life. In it they would
want meaning or power, if they did not in it, by the opera-
tion of a mysterious artist, undergo a transformation which
raises them to a dignity not theirs before, and assigns their
place in the supreme harmony. Thus, in the infinite soli-
darity of things, there is, as Leibnitz dreamed, a constant
uprising of the lower toward the higher, a steady progress
toward the best, a ceaseless aspiration toward a fuller and
more conscious existence, an immortal growth toward per-
fection.

ODORS AND LIFE.

DESCAETES, Leibnitz, and all the great minds of the
seventeenth century, believed that phenomena are such
interdependent parts of one whole, that they require to
be explained by each other, and consequently that a very
close mutual connection should be maintained among the
sciences. In their view, this was the condition of rapid
advance and intelligent development. The experimental
method, constant to systematic obstinacy in erecting so
many barriers between the different sections of natural
philosophy, has greatly hindered the completeness of what-
ever knowledge we possess as the result of mutual interac-
tion among all truths. At this day, such barriers are tend-
ing to vanish of their own accord, and the science of man
in his relations to external media begins to show the out-
lines of its plan and harmony. We have before this
sketched several of its chapters, and we will endeavor now
to write another, on the subject of odors.

I.

The seat of smell, or the olfactory sense, is the pituita-
ry membrane lining the inner wall of the nostrils. It is a
mucous surface, laid in irregular wrinkles, and receiving
the spreading, slender, terminal filaments of a certain
number of nerves. This membrane, like all other mucous
ones, constantly secretes a fluid designed to lubricate it.

180 NATUKE AND LIFE.

By the aid of the muscles covering the lower part of the
nostrils, the apparatus of smelling can be dilated or con-
tracted, precisely like that of sight. This understood, the
mechanism of olfaction is quite simple. It consists in the
contact of odorous particles with the olfactory nerve.
These particles are conveyed by the air to the inside of
the nasal cavities, and there strike upon the sensitive
fibres. If the access of air is prevented, or if the nerve is
altered, no sensation is produced. Experiments in physi-
ology, in fact, have settled that the olfactory nerves (or
those of the first pair) are assigned exclusively to the per-
ception of odors. Loss of the sense of smell occurs when-
ever the nerves are destroyed or injured by any process,
or even whenever they are merely compressed. On the
other hand, it is a matter of common observation that im-
peding the passage of air into the nostrils is quite as
effectual a way of making any sort of olfactory sensation
impossible. Let us add that the region most sensitive to
odors is that of the upper part of the nasal cavities. There
are, as we shall notice in proceeding, considerable differ-
ences as regards the degree of sensitiveness in this sense
of smell, comparing one man with another. But it is a
still more singular fact that sometimes, without apparent
cause, the sense is utterly wanting. In other cases it is
unaffected by the action of certain odors only, an analo-
gous infirmity to that which students of the eye call dalton-
ism, and which consists in the perception of certain colors
only. We find in scientific annals the case of a priest who
was insensible to all odors except that of a manure-heap,
or that of decayed cabbage ; and another, of a person to
whom vanilla was entirely without scent. Blumenbach
speaks too of an Englishman, with all his senses very acute,
who perceived no perfume in mignonette.

Olfaction is sometimes voluntary, sometimes involun-
tary. In the former case, by an act which is called scent-

ODORS AND LIFE. 181

ing something, and is resorted to for the sake of a keener
sensation, we first close the mouth, and then sometimes
draw in a full breath, sometimes a succession of short,
quick inspirations. Then the muscular apparatus edging
the opening of the nostrils comes into play, to contract
that orifice, and point it downward, so as to increase the
intensity of the current of inhaled air. When, on the con-
trary, we wish to smell as little as possible, the organ be-
comes passive. We effect strong expirations by the nose
to drive out the air that produces scent, and inhalation,
instead of being performed by the nostrils, instinctively
takes place through the mouth.

Scents and the sense of smell have an important share
in the phenomena of gustation, that is, there is a close con-
nection between the perception of odors and that of tastes.
Physiological analysis has clearly brought out the fact that
most of the tastes we perceive proceed from the combina-
tion of olfactory sensations with a small number of gusta-
tory sensations. In reality, there are but four primitive
and radical tastes — sweet, sour, salt, and bitter. A very
simple experiment will convince us of this fact. If we
keep the nostrils closed when tasting a certain number of
sapid substances, so as to neutralize the sense of smell, the
taste perceived is invariably reduced to one of the four
simple savors we have just named. Then, whenever the
pituitary membrane is out of order, the taste of food is no
longer the same; the tongue distinguishes nothing but
sweet, sour, salt, or bitter.

It is time now to begin the study of the physiological
and chemical conditions of smell, and for this we must first
inquire how odorous substances behave with regard to the
medium which separates them from our organs. Provost,
in an essay published in 1799 on the means of making
emanations from odorous bodies perceptible to sight, was
the first to bring to view the fact that certain odorous sub-

182 NATURE AND LIFE.

stances, solid or fluid, placed on moistened glass, or in a
saucerful of water, instantly act on those molecules of the
liquid which they touch, and repel them more or less, pro-
ducing a vacuum. He judged that this method might
serve to make odors sensible to sight, and enable us to dis-
tinguish odorous from inodorous bodies. These move-
ments of odorous bodies on the surfaces of liquids, of
which camphor particularly gives so curious an instance,
have lately been studied with the greatest care by a French
physiologist, with a view to establishing a theory of odors.
With this purpose Liegeois has examined most of the
odoriferous substances, and has ascertained that almost
all of them perform various motions of circulation and dis-
placement on the surface of water, resembling those noted
with camphor. Some act precisely as camphor does.
Among these are benzoic acid, succinic acid, the rind of
bitter oranges, etc. With others, motion soon stops, for
they are quickly surrounded by an oily film which keeps
them confined. Some must be reduced to powder before
the phenomenon takes place. As regards odorous liquids,
it occurred to Lie*geois to saturate very light and spongy
seeds, themselves odorless, with them, and he then found,
on throwing the seeds on water, that circulatory and dis-
placing movements took place, as with other substances.
He concluded, from a series of experiments methodically
tried, that the motions in question must be attributed, not
to a release of gas, acting in the manner of a recoil, but sim-
ply to the separation and rapid diffusion, within the water,
of the odorous particles. The volatility of substances can-
not be admitted to have any part in explaining the phe-
nomenon. It depends wholly on the affinity of fluids for
the odorous particles, and also for those of fatty matter.
Liegeois found, for instance, that a drop of oil put on the
surface of water, without sensibly lessening in size, emits
an enormous quantity of microscopic droplets, which are

ODORS AND LIFE. 183

diffused through the mass of the water. Aromatic essences
produce a like effect. Though insoluble in water, they have
a powerful tendency to disperse themselves throughout it?
and water that receives a very small quantity of the odor-
iferous principle, in the shape of extremely fine powder,
has enough to gain their perfume completely. Lie"geois's
experiments give proof of the most diligent labors and of
praiseworthy sagacity. Science has accepted them with
satisfaction, and, after employing them usefully, will pre-
serve the memory of their author, taken away in the flower
of his age, at the outset of a noble career as a physiologist
and surgeon.

It seemed, to quote his words, as though in these ex-
periments we were assisting at the formation of the odor-
ous molecules. Those delicate atoms emitted from odorous
substances and diffused through the atmosphere, are in
fact the very same that impinge on our pituitary mem-
brane, and give us the sensation of odors. Moreover, facts
long ago observed display this revealing action, so to call
it, of water upon odors. At morning, when the verdure is
moist and the flowers covered with sparkling pearls of
dew, a fresher and balmier fragrance exhales from every
plant. It is the same after a light shower. Vegetation
gains heightened tints, at the same time that it diffuses
more fragrant waves of perfume. We remark an effect of
the same kind in the physiological phenomenon of taste.
The saliva serves as an excellent vehicle for diffusing the
odorous principles ; then the movements of the tongue,
spreading that fluid over the whole extent of the cavity of
the mouth, and thus enlarging the evaporating surface, are
clearly of a kind to aid the dispersion of the odorous prin-
ciples, which, as we have seen, take a considerable part in
the perception of tastes.

Now, in the phenomena of smell, air acts in the plaoe
of water. It seizes the odorous particles and brings them

184 NATURE AND LIFE.

into contact with the pituitary membrane. It is the vehi-
cle, the solvent, of those extremely subtile atoms which,
acting on the delicate fibres of the nerve, produce in it a
special movement, which translates itself into the most
varied sensations. Oxygen, and the existence in that gas
of a certain proportion of odorous molecules, are the two
essential conditions of this phenomenon.

Such is, at least, the result of earlier experiments, and
of those performed of late years by Nickles. A curious
fact, well worthy of attention, is the remarkable diffusibility
and degree of subdivision exhibited by some odorous sub-
stances. Ambergris just thrown up on the shore spreads a
fragrance to a great distance, which guides the seekers
after that precious substance. Springs of petroleum-oil are
scented at a very considerable distance. Bartholin affirms
that the odor of rosemary at sea renders the shores of
Spain distinguishable long before they are in sight. So,
too, every one knows that a single grain of musk perfumes
a room for a whole year, without sensibly losing weight.
Haller relates that he has kept papers for forty years per-
fumed by a grain of amber, and that they still retained
the fragrance at the end of that time. He remarks that
every inch of their surface had been impregnated by
seal 0*6 4000 °^ one gram °f amber, and that they had per-
fumed for 11,600 days a film of air at least a foot in thick-
ness. Evidently the material quantity of the odorous prin-
ciple contained in a given volume of such air is so minute
as to elude imagination. We can readily conceive how
philosophers cite such instances to give a notion of the
divisibility of matter.

In fact, we are now considering matter emitted by
odorous bodies. This shows that they do not act as cen-
tres of agitation, occasioning vibrations which pass in
waves to our organs, to exert on them a purely dynamic
influence. This giving off of odorous matter, with the ne-

ODORS AND LIFE. 185

cessary aid of oxygen in the atmosphere, proves, too, that
odors are in no respect comparable to light or heat, which
one may regard in an abstract way, in the immaterial and
ethereal space which is the region of their motion, as
proper forces, and acting from a distance. Odors, to be
perceived, must be taken up by oxygen, and borne by it to
the organ of smell. In a word, odor is the odoriferous
particle itself, while light is not the light-giving body.

Does oxygen exert a chemical influence on those atoms
of which it robs odorous substances ? We do not know,
neither do we know of what kind is the action which oc-
curs on the contact of odor with the olfactory nerve,
whether the phenomenon is a mere mechanical agitation,
or whether some chemical decomposition takes place in the
case. At any rate, it is allowable to reason from the ob-
served facts that smell and taste are two senses peculiarly
distinct from the others, as well with respect to the ob-
ject of sensation as to the ideas which the mind derives
from the sensation itself. Sight, touch, and hearing, in a
manner physical senses, furnish us the ideas of external
forms, harmonies, and motions. They introduce us to the
conception of the beautiful, and are true fellow-laborers
with the intellect. Taste and smell are rather chemic
senses, as Nickles calls them. They come into action only
upon contact, and awake in us only such sensations as life
and mind gain no profit from. While the former are the
spring of the highest functions, the latter are of use only
for the performance of acts of nutrition.

The learned and capable author 1 of a book on odors,
published within a few years, fancies, however, that he can
establish a kind of aesthetics of odors, more or less resem-
bling that of tones. He has investigated olfactory harmo-
nies, hoping to find in them the elements of a sort of music.
" Odors," he says, " seem to affect the olfactory nerves in

1 Piesse, on " Odors, Perfumes, and Cosmetics."
9

186 NATURE AND LIFE.

certain definite degrees, as sounds act on the auditory
nerves. There is, so to speak, an octave of smells, as there
is an octave of tones ; some perfumes accord, like the
notes of an instrument. Thus almond, vanilla, heliotrope,
and clematis, harmonize perfectly, each of them producing
almost the same impression in a different degree. On the
other hand, we have citron, lemon, orange-peel, and ver-
bena, forming a similarly associated octave of odors, in a
higher key. The analogy is completed by those odors
which we call half-scents, such as the rose, with rose-gera-
nium for its semitone ; ' petit-grain' and neroli, followed by
orange-flower. With the aid of flowers already known, by
mixing them in fixed proportions, we can obtain the per-
fume of almost all flowers." In accordance with these fan-
cies, Piesse has formed gamuts of odors, parallel with musi-
cal gamuts, and exhibiting concords of scents at the same
time with those that produce discords. As a painter blends
his tints, the perfumer should blend his fragrances ; and
Piesse maintains he can only gain that object by following
the laws of harmony and contrast in odors. This theory is
certainly quite ingenious, and deserves attention, but it is
open to serious objections. If the harmony of colors and
of sounds exists, it is because optics and acoustics are ex-
act sciences, and harmony in this case is reduced to nu-
merical relations, determined in a positive way. These re-
lations, as concerns odors, can have no other basis than a
capricious and relative sensibility. They are thus incapa-
ble of being reduced to form, a fortiori of being translated
into fixed precepts.

To complete these details, it remains to say something
of the delusions of the sense of smell; for this sense, like
the others, has its aberrations and hallucinations. The de-
lusions of smell are hardly ever isolated ; they accompany
those of hearing, sight, taste, and touch, and are also less
frequent than the latter. Insane people, who are affected

ODORS AND LIFE. 187

by them, complain of being haunted by fetid emanations,
or congratulate themselves on inhaling the most delicious
perfumes. Lelut mentions the case of a woman, an inmate
of la Salpetriere, who fancied that she constantly perceived
a frightful stench proceeding from the decay of bodies she
imagined buried in the courts of that institution. Impres-
sions of the kind are usually very annoying. Brierre de
Boismont relates the account of a woman affected by dis-
order of all her senses. Whenever she saw a well-dressed
lady passing, she smelt the odor of musk; which was in-
tolerable to her. If it were a man, she was distressingly
affected by the smell of tobacco, though she was quite
aware that those scents existed only in her imagination.
Capellini mentions that a woman, who declared that she
could not bear the smell of a rose, was quite ill when one
of her friends came in wearing one, though the unlucky
flower was only artificial.

Such facts might be multiplied ; but, as they are all
alike, it is not worth while to mention more of them. The
latest observations made in insane-asylums, among others,
those of M. PreVost, at la Salpetriere, have shown also that
these delusions and perversions of the sense of smell are
more common than had hitherto been supposed among such
invalids, and that if they usually pass unnoticed, it arises
from the fact that nothing spontaneously denotes their ex-
istence.

The intensity and delicacy of the sense of smell vary
in mankind among different individuals, and particularly
among different races of men. While some persons are al-
most devoid of the sense of smell, others, whose history is
related in the annals of science, have displayed a refine-
ment and range in the distinction of odors truly wonderful.
Woodward, for instance, mentions a woman who foretold
storms several hours before their coming, by the help of
the sulphurous odor, due probably to ozone, which she per-

188 NATURE AND LIFE.

ceived in the atmosphere. The scientific journals of the
day relate the account of a young American girl, a deaf-
mute, who recognized, by their odor alone, i;he plants of
the fields which she collected. Numerous instances, more-
over, prove that in savage races this sense is very greatly
more developed than among civilized men. It is a travel-
er's story, that some tribes of Indians can pursue their ene-
mies and animals of the chase by mere scent.

But it is among the other mammals that we find the
sense of smell displayed in its highest degree of power and
perfection. Among ruminants, some pachyderms, and par-
ticularly among carnivorous mammals, the olfactory mem-
brane attains the keenest sensitiveness. Buffon has de-
scribed these animals with extreme exactness, in saying that
they smell farther than they see, and that they possess in
their scent an eye which sees objects not only where they
are, but even where they have been. The peculiarity of
of scent in the dog is too well known to need more than an
allusion.

If we can hardly give faith to those ancient historians
who relate that vultures were attracted from Asia to the
fields of Pharsalia by the smell of the corpses heaped to-
gether there after a famous battle, yet we must accept the
assertions of naturalists so well qualified to observe as, for
instance, Alexander von Humboldt. The latter relates that
in Peru, and other countries of South America, when it is
intended to take condors, a horse or cow is killed, and that
in a short time the smell of the dead animal attracts a great
number of these birds, though none had before that been
seen in the country. Other more extraordinary facts are
told by travelers. These must usually be received only
with the greatest caution, because in most cases the sense of
smell gains credit for what is due to the sense of sight,
which, with these birds, is very keen and far-reaching.
Yet, making allowance for exaggeration, it must be admit-

ODORS AND LIFE. 189

ted that these animals have a very highly-developed sense
of smell. Scarpa, who has made admirable researches on
this subject, found that they refuse food which is saturated
with odorous substances, and, as an odd instance, that a
duck would not swallow perfumed bread till after it had
washed it in a poad. The waders, which have the largest
olfactory nerves, are also those birds that display the great-
est keenness of scent. Reptiles have very large olfactory
lobes, leading us to believe that they discern odors readily,
but at present we know little of the impressions they are
sensitive to in this respect. Fish also have an olfactory
membrane. Fishermen have always remarked that they
may be attracted or driven off by throwing certain odorous
substances into the water. Sharks, and other voracious fish,
collect in crowds and follow from very far about a body
thrown into the sea. It is even said that, when blacks and
whites are bathing together in latitudes where these fish
abound, they particularly single out and pursue the more
strongly odorous blacks. Nor are the Crustacea indifferent
to emanations which act on the olfactory nerve. The
method used for attracting and taking crabs is familiar.

Regarding the lower animals, we have only still more
uncertain information, except as to insects. Entomologists
maintain that scent is very delicate in most insects, and rely
on plausible conjectures on this subject, but they do not as
yet know what the seat of the sense of smell in insects is.
When meat is exposed to the air, in a few moments flies
make their appearance in a place where none had before
been seen. If refuse matter or bodies of animals are left
on the ground, insects flock to them at once, feeding on
such substances, and depositing their eggs in them. Scent
alone seems to guide them, exclusively of sight even, for,
if the object of their desire is hidden, they easily manage
to find it. A curious fact as to the scent of insects is fur-
nished by those kinds that prefer decaying substances. A

190 NATURE AND LIFE.

beautiful arum is found in our woods, the cuckoo-pintle,
whose white flower diffuses a disgusting odor. Now, the
inside of this flower is often filled with flies, snails, and
plant-lice, seeking the putrid source of this fetid smell. We
may see the little creatures, in quest of their food or of a fit
place to lay their eggs, move about in all directions, and quit
most unwillingly the flower whose scent has misled them.

II.

Having thus learned what physiologists think of the
sense of smell and the conditions of the perception of odors,
let us see what naturalists and chemists have ascertained
respecting the latter as viewed in themselves, what place
they give to odorous bodies, and what character they at-
tribute to them all. The three kingdoms possess odors.
Among mineral substances, few solids, but quite a number
of liquids and gases, are endowed with more or less power-
ful scents, in most cases not very pleasant ones, and usually
characteristic. Those odors belong to simple substances,
such as chlorine, bromine, and iodine ; to acids, as hydro-
chloric and hydrocyanic acid ; to carburets of hydrogen, as
those of petroleum ; to alkaline substances, ammonia, for
instance, etc. The odors observable among minerals may
almost all be referred either to hydrocarbonic or hydrosul-
phuric gases, or to various solid and liquid acids produced
by the decomposition of fats, or to peculiar principles se-
creted by glands, such as musk, ambergris, civet, and the
like. Vegetables present quite another variety of odors,
from the faintest to the rankest, from the most delicious to
the most disgusting. Absolutely scentless plants are very
rare, and many, that seem to be so while they are fresh,
gain, on drying, a very decided perfume.

The odor of plants is due to principles very unequally
distributed throughout their different organs ; some solid,
as resins and balsams ; others which are liquid, and known

ODORS AND LIFE. 191

by the name of essences or essential oils. In most cases
the essence is concentrated in the flower, as occurs with the
rose and the violet. In other plants, as in bent-grass and
Florence iris, only the root is fragrant. In cedar and san-
dal-wood, it is the wood that is so ; in mint and patchouli,
the leaves ; in the Tonquin bean, the seed ; in cinnamon,
the bark, which is the seat of the odorous principle. Some
plants have several quite distinct fragrances. Thus the
orange has three : that of the leaves and fruit, which gives
the essence known by the name of " petit-grain ; " that of
the flowers, which furnishes neroli ; and, again, the rind of
the fruit, from which essence of Portugal is extracted. A
great number of vegetable odors belong exclusively to
tropical plants, but the flora of Europe furnishes a large
proportion of them, and almost all the essences used in per-
fumery are of European origin. England cultivates laven-
der and peppermint largely. At Nimes, gardeners are par-
ticularly attentive to rosemary, thyme, petit-grain, and lav-
ender. Nice has the violet for its specialty. Cannes ex-
tracts all the essences of the rose, the tuberose, cassia (the
yellow acacia), jasmine, and neroli. Sicily produces lemon
and orange ; Italy, bergamot and the iris.

What, now, is the chemical nature of the odorous prin-
ciples in plants ? The chemistry of to-day reduces almost
all of them to three categories of well-ascertained sub-
stances : hydrocarburets, aldehydes, and ethers. We will
endeavor to give a clear account of the constitution of
these three kinds of substances, and to mark their place in
the register of science. The hydrocarburets are simple
combinations of carbon and hydrogen, as, for instance, the
petroleum-oils. They represent the simple compounds of
organic chemistry. As to aldehydes and ethers, their com-
position is rather more complex ; besides carbon and
hydrogen, they contain oxygen. Every one knows what
chemists mean by an alcohol ; it is a definite combination

192 NATURE AND LIFE.

of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen, neither acid nor alkaline,
which may be regarded as the result of the union of a
hydrocarburet with the elements of water. Common alco-
hol, or spirits of wine, is the type of the most impor-
tant series of alcohols, that of the mono-atomic alcohols.
Chemists represent it by the formula C2H6O, to indicate
that a molecule of it arises from the union of two atoms of
carbon with six atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen.
Independently of the alcohols, which are of great number
and varying complexity, organic chemistry recognizes an-
other class of bodies, of which vinegar is the type, and
which receive the name of organic acids, to mark their
resemblance to mineral acids, such as oil of vitriol or aqua-
fortis. Now, every alcohol, on losing a certain amount of
hydrogen, gives rise to a new body, which is called an
aldehyde ; and every alcohol, on combining with an acid,
produces what is called an ether. These rapid details allow
us to understand precisely the chemical character of the
essences or essential oils which plants elaborate within their
delicate tissue. Except a small number among them which
contain sulphur, as the essences of the family of crucifers,
they all present the same qualitative composition — carbon
and hydrogen, with or without oxygen. Between one and
another of them merely the proportion of these three com-
posing elements varies, by regular gradations, but so as
always to correspond either to a hydrocarburet, or to an
aldehyde, or to an ether. In this case, as in almost the
whole of organic chemistry, every thing is in the quantity of
the composing elements. The quality is of so little im-
portance to Nature, that, while following always the same
laws, and constantly using the same materials, she can,
by merely changing the ponderable relations of the latter,
produce, by ni}Triads of various combinations, myriads of
substances which have no resemblance to each other. The
strange powers of the elements and the mysterious forces

ODORS AND LIFE. 193

concealed in matter make themselves known to us in a still
more remarkable phenomenon, to which the name of isom-
ery is given. Two bodies, thoroughly unlike as regards their
properties, may present absolutely the same chemical com-
position with respect to quality and quantity of elements.
" But in what do they differ ? " it may be asked. They differ
in the arrangement of their molecules. Coal and the dia-
mond are identical in substance. Common phosphorus and
amorphous phosphorus are one and the same in substance.
Now, the odorous principles of plants offer some exceedingly
curious cases of isomery. Thus the essence of turpentine,
the essence of lemon, that of bergamot, of neroli, of juniper,
of savin, of lavender, of cubebs, of pepper, and of gilly-
flower, are isomeric bodies, that is, they all have the same
chemical composition. Subjected to analysis, all these
products yield identical substances in identical proportions,
that is, for each molecule of essence, ten atoms of carbon,
and sixteen atoms of oxygen, as denoted by their common
formula, C10H18. We see how these facts as to isomery
prove that the qualities of bodies depend far more on
the arrangement and the inner movements of their minute
particles, never to be reached by our search, than on the
nature of their matter itself; and they show, too, how far
we still are from having penetrated to the first conditions
of the action and forces of substances. Among odoriferous
essences placed by chemists in the class of aldehydes may
be named those of mint, rue, bitter-almonds, anise, cummin,
fennel, cinnamon, etc. The rest are ranged in the great
series of ethers, which vary widely in complexity, notwith-
standing the simple uniformity of their primary elements.

Such is the chemical nature of most of the odorous
principles of vegetable origin. But chemistry has not
stopped short with ascertaining the inmost composition of
these substances ; it has succeeded in reproducing quite a
number of them artificially, and the compounds thus manu-

194 NATURE AND LIFE.

factured, wholly from elements, in laboratories, are abso-
lutely identical with the products extracted from plants.
The speculations of theory on the arrangements of atoms,
sometimes condemned as useless, do not merely aid in giv-
ing us a clearer comprehension of natural laws, which is
something of itself, but they do more, as real instances
prove : they often give us the key to brilliant and valuable
inventions. Piria, an Italian chemist, who was employed
in Paris in 1838, was the first who imitated by art a
natural aromatic principle. By means of reactions sug-
gested by theory, he prepared a salicilic aldehyde, which
turned out to be the essence of meadow-sweet, so delicate
and subtile in its odor. A few years later, in 1843, Ca-
hours discovered methylsalicilic ether, and showed that it
is identical with the essence of wintergreen. A year after,
Wertheim composed essence of mustard, while believing
himself to be making only allylsulphocyanic ether. These
discoveries produced a sensation. Nowadays the chemist
possesses the means of creating many other natural es-
sences. Common camphor, essence of bitter-almonds, that of
cummin and of cinnamon, which are aldehydes, as we have
seen, may be prepared without camphor-leaves or almonds,
without cummin or cinnamon. Besides these ethers and al-
dehydes whose identity with essences of vegetable origin
has been proved,, there exist, among the new bodies known
to organic chemistry, a certain number of products formed
by the union of common alcohol or amylic alcohol with
different acids, that is to say, of ethers, which have aromatic
odors more or less resembling those of some fruits, but as
to which it cannot yet be affirmed that the odors are due to
the same principles in both cases. However this may be,
perfumers and confectioners, more industrious and wide-
awake than chemists, immediately made good use of
these properties. Artificial aromatic oils made their first
appearance at the World's Fair of London in 1851. There

ODORS AND LIFE. 195

was there exhibited a pear-oil, diffusing a pleasant smell
like that of a jargonel, and employed to give an aroma to
bonbons. This product is nothing else than a solution of
amylacetic ether in alcohol. Apple-oil was exhibited be-
side the pear-oil, having the fragrance of the best rennets,
and produced by dissolving amylvaleric ether in alcohol.
The commonest essence was that of pineapple, which is
nothing else than ordinary butyric ether. There was ob-
served, too, an essence of cognac, or grape-oil, used to im-
part to poor brandies the highly-prized aroma of cognac.
The product which was then, and still is, the most impor-
tant article of manufacture, is the essence of " mirbane,"
which very closely resembles in its odor that of bitter-al-
monds, and which commerce very often substitutes for the
latter. Essence of mirbane is nothing else than nitroben-
zine, which results from the action of nitric acid on ben-
zine. Benzine, in turn, is met with among the products of
distillation of tar, which also yield the substances used in
preparing those beautiful colors called aniline. Besides
the essences we have just mentioned, which are gaining an
increasing importance in the manufacturing arts, artificial
essences of. quinces are also prepared, and essences of
strawberries, of rum, etc. All these preparations serve, it
must be admitted, to give an aroma to the cordials, confec-
tioneries, and sweetmeats, which are so largely sold now-
adays. In other words, the products of industry are con-
stantly and in a greater degree taking the place of those" of
Nature. In all these cases, these instances of composition
of odorous principles are among the finest triumphs of or-
ganic chemistry. The creative power of the chemist is ever
widening its range. After the labors of Piria, Wertheim,
and Cahours, came those of Berthelot, who has imitated
the fatty matters of the animal economy. We are at this
moment in progress toward the artificial manufacture of
sugar. If we succeed in that, nothing more will remain

196 NATURE AND LIFE.

but to effect the composition of albuminous substances, in
order to give us the complete mastery of the processes which
Nature follows in her elaboration of immediate principles.
That gift of making its object a reality, which is the peculiar
privilege of chemistry, is also one of the strongest argu-
ments to bring in proof of the absoluteness of those laws
which we ascertain respecting the system of forces external
to us.

Linnaeus, whose mind was remarkably analytical and
classifying, not only arranged vegetables and animals in
order, but also classified diseases, and even odors. He
refers the latter to seven classes : aromatic odors, such
as that of laurel-leaves ; fragrant, like those of lilies and
jasmine ; ambrosial, such as amber, musk, etc. ; garlicky,
like that of garlic ; fetid odors, like those of the goat, the
orage, and others; disgusting odors, as those of many
plants of the solaneae order; and, last of all, nauseous
odors. The terms of Linnseus have generally become cur-
rent in language, but we understand, of course, that their
value is merely conventional. As we have said before,
there is no standard for the comparison of odors. We can
only describe them by making comparisons between them,
according to the degrees of resemblance existing between
the impressions with which they affect our olfactory mem-
brane. They have no qualities capable of being rigorous-
ly defined. This is the reason why it is impossible to give
them any natural classification.

III.

The sensations produced by smells are perceived and
judged of in a great variety of ways, though with less dif-
ference than prevails as to tastes. " I have seen a man,"
says Montaigne, " fly from the smell of apples quicker than
from a cannonade." The instance he alludes to in this
passage is that of Quercet, Francis I.'s secretary, who rose

ODORS AND LIFE. 197

from table and took flight whenever he saw apples upon
it. History tells us that Louis XIV. could not bear per-
fumes. Gre"try was greatly annoyed by the odor of roses ;
that of .a hare caused Mdlle, Contat to faint. Odors which
disgust us, like that*of asafcetida and of the valerian-root,
are on the contrary highly enjoyed by the Orientals, who
use these substances for condiments. Among other singu-
lar instances related by Cloquet on this subject, we will
mention that of a young girl who took the greatest delight
in inhaling the scent of old books, and that of a lawyer to
whom the exhalations of a dunghill yielded the most
agreeable sensations. So that it is out of our power to fix
general rules with respect to the influence of odors on our
organs, and the character of the sensations which they ef-
fect in us ; still, from a purely physiological point of view,
it is certain that some of them exercise a uniform influence.
Chardin and other travelers mention that, when musk-hunt-
ers take from the animal the pouch containing musk, they
must have the nose and mouth covered by a cloth doubled
in several folds, if they would escape violent haemorr-
hage.

The smell of the lily, the narcissus, the tuberose, the
violet, the rose, the elder, etc.-, when it reaches a certain
point of concentration, usually exerts an injurious influence
on the system. It occasions more or less severe headaches,
fainting-fits, and sometimes even more serious disorders.
Some odors which have an agreeable perfume in a state of
considerable diffusion, gain when concentrated a noxious
and sometimes dangerous smell. This is particularly true
of civet, patchouli, and the essences of neroli and thyme.
Scientific records mention several cases of death occasioned
by the poisonous action of some odorous emanations. It
has been remarked that plants of the family of labiates,
such as sage, rosemary, etc., offer in this respect no sort of
risk, and seem rather to possess wholesome properties. Yet

198 NATURE AND LIFE.

it is of consequence at this point to distinguish between
the action of the odor which is in a manner purely dynamic^
the intoxication from the essence, and the effect of carbonic
acid thrown Off by plants. These three influences have
often been confounded by authors who have recorded ac-
cidents occurring after the more or less prolonged inhala-
tion of odoriferous air.

This variable action of odors on the nervous system,
sometimes wholesome, sometimes noxious, explains the
part they have always played in the various circumstances
of life among mankind. It would need a volume to relate
the religious, political, economic, and gallant history of
odors and perfumes. We must be content here with notic-
ing its chief lessons, as far as they are connected with the
physiological theory which is the basis of this study. For
there is unquestionably something instinctive at the bot-
tom of these general and uniform customs, which exhibit
the affinity of man for odors. Doubtless we must recognize
in this rather a refinement of sensuality than a natural crav-
ing ; but the same result has occurred in this case as in the
instance of beverages, of music, etc. Habit has become in
some sort a second nature ; the senses have acquired a
taste for that especial intoxication which beguiles them,
and disguises painful realities for them.

It is in religion, in the first place, that we observe the
use of perfumes. Nothing holy or lofty was conceived of
in which their influence was not present. Perfumes won
the gods to give ear to the vows addressed to them in
temples, where burning incense diffused its fragrant clouds.
From the highest antiquity we find that the priests of dif-
ferent religions availed themselves of the use of odoriferous
substances. Five times a day the disciples of Zoroaster
laid perfumes upon the altar where the sacred flame glowed.
Moses, in Exodus, recorded the composition of two per-
fumes used in rituals. The Greeks assigned a leading place

ODORS AND LIFE. 199

to odors in their ingenious fictions of theology. They be-
lieved that the gods always declare their presence by
an ambrosial fragrance, as Virgil tells us, in speaking of
Venus ; 1 and Moschus, describing Jupiter transformed to a
bull. The use of perfumes in religious ceremonies had for
its purpose the excitement of a sort of intoxication in the
priests and priestesses, and also to disguise the smell of
blood and of decaying matters, the offal of the sacrifices.
The Christian religion borrowed from paganism the use of
perfumes in the rites of worship. There was even a period
at which the Church of Rome owned estates in the East
devoted exclusively to plantations of trees yielding balsamic
resins.

Besides these uses, odors were, in old times, still oftener
employed in private life. Nothing surprises us more, in read-
ing the ancient authors, than their relations on this subject.
Among the Jews, the use of perfumes was restrained
within proper limits, by the regulations of the Mosaic
laws, which consecrated them to worship. But, with the
Greeks, it reached an extraordinary height and refinement.
They kept their robes in perfumed chests. They burned
aromatic substances during their banquets; they scented
their wines ; they covered their heads with fragrant es-
sences at their festivals. At Athens, the perfumers had
shops which were places for public resort. Apollonius, a
scholar of Theophilus, left a treatise on perfumes which
proves that, even as regards the extraction of essences,
the Greeks had attained astonishing perfection. Neither
Solon's laws nor Socrates's rebukes could check the prog-
ress of that passion. The Romans inherited it from
Greece, and enlarged the stock of Eastern perfumes by
those of Italy and Gaul. They used them profusely to give

1 " Then, as the goddess turned, a rosy glow

Flushed all her neck, and from her head the locks
Ambrosial breathed celestial fragrance round."

200 NATURE AND LIFE.

fragrance to their baths, their rooms, their beds, and their
drinks. They poured them on the heads of guests. The
awning shielding the amphitheatre was saturated with
scented water which dripped, like a fragrant rain, on the
spectators' heads. The very Roman eagles were anointed
with the richest perfumes before battle. At the funeral of
his wife Poppaea, Nero burned on the pyre more incense
than Arabia yielded in a whole year. It is related, too,
that Plancius Plancus, proscribed by the triumvirs, was
betrayed by the perfumes he had used, and thus discovered
to the soldiers sent to pursue him. Besides the odors ex-
tracted from mint, marjoram, and the violet, which were
the most common, the ancients made much use of the roses
of Psestum, and various aromatic substances, such as spike-
nard, megalium, cinnamon, opobalsamum, etc.

It is singular to notice that the use of perfumes, brought
from Rome with Grecian manners, was in its turn conveyed
to France and Northern Europe with Latin manners,
and chiefly by the Romish religion. It is from religious
rites, indeed, that it passed into ceremonies of state, and
thence into private life. Among the presents sent by Ha-
roun-al-Raschid to Charlemagne were many perfumes. In
the middle ages, among princes and men of highest rank,
they washed their hands with rose-water, before and after
eating; some even had fountains from which aromatized
waters flowed. At this period, too, it was the custom to
carry the dead to their burial-place with uncovered face,
and to place little pots full of perfumes in the coffin. The
French monarchy always showed an unrestrained passion
for enjoyments of this nature, which seemed created as
a necessary attendant upon all others. Marshal Riche-
lieu so extravagantly indulged his passion for perfumes
under every form, that he lost the perception of them, and
lived habitually in an atmosphere so loaded with scents,
that it made his visitors ill. Madame Tallien, coming from

ODORS AND LIFE. 201

a bath of juice of strawberries and raspberries, used to be
gently rubbed with sponges saturated with perfumed milk.
Napoleon I. every morning poured eau-de-Cologne, with
his own hands, over his head and shoulders.

IV.

Above all these questions which we have just skimmed,
there rises another, of a graver and more mysterious kind,
one which occurs at the end of all studies that treat of
sensation, and with regard to which some reflections will
not be out of place here. To what, outside of us, do those
sensations which we experience within us correspond?
What relation is there between the real world and that im-
age of the world shadowed in our soul ? In the special case
we are concerned with, what is it in these substances which
is the cause why they affect our sense of smell ? It seems
certain, in the first place, that odor in itself, so far as it is
odor, is a mere figment of our mind. Contemporaneous
physiology proves that excitement of the nerves of sensa-
tion is followed, in each one, by the sensation that corre-
sponds with each. When we electrify the eye, we call up
in it an appearance of light ; when we electrify the tongue,
we produce in it a sensation of taste ; when we electrify
the inside of the ear, we provoke in it the effect of a sound.
So, too, a similar excitement, electric or otherwise, of the
olfactory nerves, creates in our mind the sensation of smell,
even though no odorous molecule takes part in the phenom-
enon. Sensation, therefore, seems to depend chiefly on
the nature of the sensitive nerve. The external world
seems to contribute to it only by setting in motion the
nerve-fibres. Even this condition of an impulse infringing
from without is not indispensable, since in sleep, and in
madness, we experience sensations of smell which, by the
testimony of our other senses, answer to no external agent.
Still, we believe that we can distinguish cases of hallucina-

202 NATURE AND LIFE.

tion from cases of true perception ; still, we maintain that
there are, outside of ourselves, distinct causes of our dis-
tinct sensations. No skepticism has prevailed, nor will
prevail, against this testimony of the most powerful evi-
dence which exists in our inmost being. How can we ac-
count for this apparent contradiction ? In reality, there is
no contradiction. Observe, indeed, that even if the most
-indifferent causes can effect in us one and the same sensa-
tion, and thus delude us as to the outer world, our soul is
never cheated. It knows perfectly well how to refer this
one sensation to the dissimilar objective causes which have
effected it ; in other words, the causes which are alike, and
are confused in one in the purely physiological act of sen-
sation, divide and grow distinct in the psychological act by
which the soul recognizes them, and conceives them as dif-
ferent. If we had, to give us knowledge, only the dull and
ignorant passivity of our senses, there would be no separate
reality for us ; but the wise activity of the soul cannot
merely assert the reality of outward objects, for a reason
similar to that which makes it assert its own existence —
it can, still further, argue from its various modes of affection
to a corresponding variety of external forces. It moves
in harmony with the world, rather than in harmony with
the senses. In presence of the latter, it is like a good
prince, who would be nothing without his subjects, but
who regulates and civilizes them, by giving them laws,
and ruling their morals. Thus, and this is the conclusion
at which we aim, it is in the soul, regarded as the focus of
all those rays refracted through the senses, as the central
light outshining all others, that we must set the power and
the right to discern what the senses do not discern, and to
pierce to a depth forever beyond their reach. We shall
never know what relation there is between the outward
world and those images of it which we perceive, but
the soul can hold the unshaken belief that the various

ODORS AND LIFE. 203

points of those images correspond to points in the outward
world situated in a like order, and that the forces which
affect it are, in their essence, of the same nature as those
forces of which, in its inmost depths, it feels itself the
lord.

MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE.

To indulge doubts as to the healing art, is not to incur
the reproach of ignorance. That sort of skepticism is the
more warranted because many physicians freely admit that
they have no very confident faith in the certainty of their
art, and assert its illusions and its inefficiency complacently
enough, even when they do not go so far as to deny the
possibility of ever constructing a completely scientific sys-
tem of remedial methods. The truth is, that medicine may
be summed up as the application of certain sciences. When-
ever these sciences make advances, that art should do so
also, and in as clearly unquestionable a manner. The fu-
ture development of the healing art will consist in preserv-
ing the balance between the progress of anatomy, physi-
ology, pathology, and therapeutics, on the one hand, and
that of practical medicine on the other, and in keeping the
latter steadily subordinate to the former. Anatomy teaches
how the organs are made ; physiology, how they perform
their functions in a healthy state ; pathology, how they
discharge them in a diseased state ; therapeutics, how they
behave in regard to media, that is to say, the modifying
agencies of every kind with which they may be brought in
contact. These four sciences, as definite and systematic as
are all the other branches of natural philosophy, are the
arsenals whence the physician takes his weapons for the
contest he wagea with disease. It is his part to make ad-
vantageous use of them, and to gain benefit, by quick per-

MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE. 205

ception, practised skill, and watchful diligence, from the
inexhaustible resources of science. It is his to seize upon
slight hints, and, with intuitive judgment, to refer the con-
fused and irregular group of symptoms to the well-ascer-
tained mechanism which only can explain them. He will
perform this task the more easily and the more successfully,
the more complete his knowledge is of the scientific truths
which are its sole basis. Now these truths, at the present
day, are in a condition of more rapid advance and enlarge-
ment than they have ever known hitherto.

At the outset, the practice of physicians was confounded
with that of the priesthood. Temples were also hospitals ;
but we know nothing certain as to the methods used in
them to relieve or heal the sick, any more than as to the
circumstances under which the discovery of the earliest
remedies was made. The only certain point is that the
latter were plants. Hippocrates used hellebore, bastard-
saffron seeds, poison-carrot root, as purgatives. He pre-
scribed oxymel and hydromel, and practised friction and
bleeding. In reality, he used few drugs ; his modes of
cure were borrowed from dietetics and hygiene, of which
he established the wholesome rules. The immortal prac-
titioner of Cos believed that diseases tend toward a cure
of their own accord. He admitted that there is such a
thing as healing Nature, the effort of which the physician
should aid by a suitable regimen. Asclepiades, of Bithy-
nia, a scholar of Hippocrates, seems to be the first who
understood the narcotic virtues of the poppy. In brief,
the doctors of the schools of Cos and Cnidos had very few
remedies at their disposal ; but the tolerably rapid advance
of natural history soon disclosed medicinal qualities in many
substances derived from the organic kingdoms. Those works
in which Aristotle and Theophrastus have summed up the

206 NATURE AND LIFE.

condition of the botanical and zoological knowledge of their
day, became the guide of experiments in healing, under the
influence of which the first books relating to substances
having medicinal qualities were written, among others the
treatises of Scribonius, Largus, and of Dioscorides. That
of Scribonius bears the title, " On the Composition of Medi-
cines." It is dedicated to a freedman of the Emperor
Claudius. The author had collected its materials in the
different campaigns in which he had been attached as army
physician to the Roman legions. Dioscorides also, who
lived under Nero, was connected with the army in the
capacity of a doctor, and collected in the countries he
traversed a great number of substances taken from the
three natural kingdoms. Returning to Rome, he made a
selection of those which seemed to him to possess some
efficacy in medicine, and described them in the Greek
language in an important book, which gives us the most
exact idea of the materia medica of the ancients, and which
continued to be a classic until the sixteenth century. This
book had the same vogue as those of Aristotle had ; but
we shall find that this kind of submissiveness to an ancient
master has not stood in the way of progress.

Galen, the most learned and systematic among ancient
physicians, gives a new form and impulse to therapeutics.
Coming a little later than Dioscorides, he aimed to point
out the best use that could be made of the weapons col-
lected in the arsenal of pharmacy by the latter. The doc-
tor of Pergamus had faith in the need of prescribing many
remedies as firm as the conviction of Hippocrates that Na-
ture should be permitted to act almost by herself in dis-
eases. He substituted for the expectant methods the use
of an abundance of drugs, and suggested the invention of
those complicated mixtures known under the name of elec-
tuaries. Galenism is the origin of polypharmacy. It was
supposed, under the control of those notions to which this

MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE. 207

doctor gave system and.definiteness, that, while each sub
stance retained its peculiar virtue in the general mixture,
the compound enjoyed the properties of all the ingredients
used in its preparation, and thus formed a sovereign pan-
acea against an infinite number of ills. The most renowned
of these compounds is the theriacum, which Borden calls
the masterpiece of quackery, devoting to it a page full of
wit. At first made up by Mithridates, it gained its perfect
finish from the hands of Andromachus, Nero's physician.
This theriacum comprised a hundred various elements, ani-
mal, vegetable, and mineral, some of them very odd, such
as earth from Lemnos, and vipers' flesh. This opiated elec-
tuary was destined to occupy for a long time an important
place in pharmacopoeias. It was compounded with great
ceremony, and its qualities were so prized that rich men
always kept a supply of it by them.

From Galen's time on, medicine is closely connected
with scholastic philosophy. The later we come down, the
more completely is it mixed up with theosophy and sorcery.
The microcosm was held to be nothing but a copy of the
macrocosm ; men firmly believed that there is a close bond
between the human body and the stars, and the doctor was
bid to consult the latter before prescribing a remedy. A
practitioner of the day, when asked if barley-gruel is fit for
persons attacked by fever, answered that the draught could
not do them any good, because it is a substance, while fever
is an accident. This is the kind of advantage that medi-
cine seems to have gained from that connection. While
wrapped in the swaddling-clothes of this mysticism for
nearly a thousand years, a travail was going on of the .most
amazing kind — some would say of the most injurious, but
they are wrong. That subtile dialectic of the schools is
the tie which binds Plato and Aristotle to modern philoso-
phy, and gives continuous life to the tradition of specula-
tive thought. That passionate pursuit of the philosophers'

208 NATURE AND LIFE.

stone is the region in which the seeds of the future are
slowly germinating. That phantom of the elixir of life is
the step to a vast number of experimental attempts, from
which the healing art gains profit in spite of them. In
the general belief that every thing remains unmoving and
wrapped in darkness, it will be found that, as early as the
fifteenth century, the schools of Arabia and Salerno on the
one hand, and the alchemists on the other, added a mul-
titude of precious substances to the stores of the materia
medica, such as several salts of antimony, sal-saturni, liver
of sulphur, ether, ammonia, red precipitate, nitric, sul-
phuric, and muriatic acid, alcohol, etc.

Thus, when Paracelsus drew the attention of Europe to
himself at the opening of the sixteenth century, the time
was favorable to the design of that renowned physician.
Paracelsus is the chief promoter of chemical therapeutics,
and has thus exerted very great influence upon the destiny
of medicine. He first put forward chemistry as the true
method of preparing medicines, attacked the abuse of the
complicated and often inert mixtures of Galen's polyphar-
macy, and brought to view the need of isolating the quin-
tessences, the active principles of simples. He restored
the almost forgotten opium to credit. He preached the
use of powerful substances taken from the mineral king-
dom, and showed the efficacy in medicine of the salts of
mercury, of iron, arsenic, antimony, tin, gold, etc. His
fortunate cures were as famous as his irregular life was.
Paracelsus retained the forms of diction in use among his
contemporaries, and even carried them to excess. His
works abound in the mystical phrases of theosophy and
the cabala, but he was at bottom a man of thoroughly
emancipated mind, whose boasting may be pardoned in
recollection of the opposition he met, and whose seeming
madness we excuse when we remember the correctness of
his fundamental ideas.

MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE. 209

The seventeenth century, which was the grandest age
of progress in the sciences and of literary greatness, saw
therapeutics made richer by heroic remedies ; emetics, qui-
nine, and ipecacuanha. The use of these drugs was intro-
duced under peculiar circumstances, which are connected
with the most curious episodes in the history of medicine.
Several compounds of antimony had been in use before the
seventeenth century, as we have seen, but the most valua-
ble of all, emetic or stibiated tartar, was prepared for the
first time about 1630. The discovery and use of this new
antimonial compound revived old discussions ; among phy-
sicians and in the faculty it occasioned long-continued de-
bates, very passionate and sometimes extremely comic.
While Eusebius Renaudot published, in 1653, his "An-
timony Vindicated, and Antimony Triumphant," James
Perreau retorted, in 1654, by his "Kill- Joy for the Tri-
umphant Antimony of Eusebius Renaudot." Perreau as-
serted that a monk, intending to purge the brothers of his
convent, only made out to poison the whole of them, whence
the name of antimony (antimoine). The quarrel grew far
angrier^ when one of the most bitter, but also one of the
most reactionary, spirits of the time, the famous Gui Patin,
contributed his sarcasms to those of the abusers of emetics.
He would speak of stibiated tartar only by the name of
stygian tartar, declaring it as deadly as the waters of the
Styx, from which it seemed to him to issue. Yet Louis
XIV. benefited by it, his doctors having ventured to pre-
scribe a pretty strong dose of it for him in an illness he
had at Calais. This was a severe blow to the enemies of
antimony.

The name of the great king is also connected with the
introduction of two other important remedies in therapeu-
tics, quinine and ipecac. Quinine is produced naturally and
abundantly in the forests of the Cordilleras. Probably its

virtues as a febrifuge had been put to service for a long time

10

210 NATUKE AND LIFE

by the natives of those countries when the corregidor of
Loxa, in 1638, administered it for the first time to the
Countess del Cinchon, the Spanish vice -queen in Peru.
This lady was attacked by a very obstinate tertian ague,
which the medicine easily conquered. As soon as this
wonderful cure was known in the city, the townspeople
of Lima sent a deputation to the viceroy, entreating him
to give the new drug to the public. A large quantity of
quinine was brought from Loxa and Cuenca, which the vice-
queen personally distributed among the inhabitants, and
which was thenceforth called the countess's powder. A
century later, in 1738, La Condamine gave the first com-
plete description of the tree which furnishes quinine. His
work served Linnaeus as a basis for determining the char-
acteristics of the genus, which he called cinchona, in mem-
ory of the Countess del Cinchon. In 1640, Del Cinchon
went back to Spain, and his physician, Juan del Vego,
brought with him a large cargo of the febrifuge bark, which
he sold for a high price. The Spanish Jesuits soon made
it the subject of profitable commerce, and in that way it
entered into the European pharmacopoeia. Yet its emploj -
ment was not at first very general. In 1679 an English
doctor, named Talbot, prescribed a secret remedy for the
son of Louis XIV., who suffered from stubborn attacks of
intermittent fever. The dauphin rapidly recovered his
health, bought Talbot's secret for forty -eight thousand
livres, and granted that physician a life annuity. More-
over, the remedy, which was merely a tincture of wine of
quinine, was made public by the monarch's direction. As
was the case with tartar-emetic, Peruvian bark gave rise in
the schools to long discussions, in which, a singular fact,
political and religious passions interfered ; but quinine
triumphed over all opposition, and, thanks to the efforts
of Sydenham, Morton, and Torti, all practitioners were
soon agreed in acknowledging its beneficial qualities.

MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE. 211

Ipecacuanha was brought to France, and there used for
the first time, in 1672, by a doctor named Legras, on his
return from Brazil. He did not succeed in bringing into
repute the powerful purgative and vomitive properties of
that root. A few years later, another physician, of much
greater enterprise, Adrian Helvetius, resolved to build his
fortune on this drug. He posted placards in the streets
of Paris, announcing an unfailing specific for the dysentery.
By a lucky coincidence for him, several gentlemen of the
court, and the dauphin himself, Louis XIV. 's son, were at
the time suffering from that disease. The king, told by
Colbert of Helvetius's secret, directed one of his physicians
to enter into arrangements with the owner of the specific.
The drug was first tried in the wards of PH6tel-Dieu. As
soon as its efficacy was well established, they paid Helve-
tius one thousand louis d'or, with the added advantage of
those medical honors to which they proposed later to raise
him. Ipecac was spread very rapidly throughout France
and the rest of Europe. Leibnitz himself thought it not
beneath him to speak warmly in its praise. It must be
observed, too, that all the great metaphysicians busied
themselves with medicine. Descartes, Malebranche, and
Berkeley, were not only practised in that science, but also
devoted to it a part of their progressive meditations, and
even their experiments. Under their influence, studies in
medicine attained new exactness and activity. The meth-
ods and systems of physics and chemistry were introduced
into biology ; the composition of the forces, and the struct-
ure of the organs of the system, were studied. Philosophy,
entering into medicine, imparted to it ardor in research
and the passion for light. Let us not forget that the spec-
ulations of the seventeenth century are the real starting-
point of that magnificent labor of expansion in the sciences
of which this era and the following one present the spec-
tacle. ,' ••-'•••-,

212 NATURE AND LIFE.

The eighteenth century obediently followed in the sci-
ences the impulse given by the preceding age. At that
period Borden, with his Bearnese fire and his sparkling
genius for medicine, made the use of mineral waters popu-
lar, particularly that of the sulphur and thermal springs
of the Pyrenees, perhaps the most powerful of all.- He
recommended them for drinking, and made them famous
by the talent with which he cleverly displayed their effects.
Great Italian physicians studied the action of quinine
very closely. Dating from the seventeenth century, opium
gained an extraordinary popularity. The famous Sy den-
ham, describing the epidemic dysentery of the years from
1669 to 1672, exclaims, after describing the preparation
of the laudanum which has kept his name : " I cannot re-
frain from congratulating the human race that the Omnipo-
tent has made it the gift of this remedy, which is apt for a
greater number of cases than any other is, and excels all
others in efficacy. Without it, the healing art would cease
to be." Yet the effects of this remedy called forth long
and passionate disputes, with which the name of Brown is
connected. This doctor, who lectured at Edinburgh in the
middle of the eighteenth century, there taught a theory
of the effects of opium, which so carried his scholars away
that they set up a statue to him, with these words carved
on the pedestal : " Opium, assured^, does not soothe."
Brown indeed vehemently denied the sedative virtues of
poppy-juice. He classed it among the stimulants, and, to
prove himself in the right, swallowed enormous doses of it
at his lectures whenever kis fluency flagged. In that same
school at Edinburgh, Cullen too was a professor, one of
the great physicians of the eighteenth century. To him
we owe the discovery of the chief property of digitalis,
which is to check the movements of the heart, and conse-
quently lessen the rapidity of the pulse. Before this,
Withering and Charles Darwin had recognized its diuretic

MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE. 213

properties and its efficacy in dropsy, but Cullen justly
claims* the honor of having clearly proved the important
fact that digitalis is " the opium of the heart."

The rapid advance of chemistry at this period could not
fail to have an effect on that of therapeutics. For one
thing, it had given origin to new systems as to diseases,
and gained admirable drugs for practitioners. It is in the
eighteenth century that the use of the purgative salts of
magnesia began ; that the discovery was made, by Goulard,
of the acetate of lead, and the powerful astringent proper-
ties by which it is marked ; and that the use of the salts
of bismuth was recommended by Odier. At the same
period Van Swieten made the solution of corrosive sub-
limate famous which has kept his name, and by which he
replaced the inconvenient mercurial preparations in use
before his time. These useful acquisitions, doubtless, en-
couraged the development of the art, but they did not much
enlighten science in especial, and the time was drawing
near when the question must necessarily be asked, how
and why these drugs act. Hardly a thought had been
given to that point before Bichat appeared.

Bichat, after having reconstructed anatomy and physi-
ology, and then pathology, was ambitious to reform thera-
peutics also. Struck by the disorder and want of exact-
ness of that science, he believed that it might be brought
nearer perfection by the methodical study of the action of
medicinal substances, not upon diseases, which are compli-
cated phenomena, but upon the tissues. With this pur-
pose he undertook at l'H6tel-Dieu, at which he had just
been appointed physician — he was then thirty years old —
a series of exact experiments with regard to the effect of
remedies. More than forty pupils began to assist him in
this undertaking, and in each one of the course of lectures
he was making on these substances he gave an account
of the results obtained ; but Fate did not allow him to go

214 NATURE AND LIFE.

far in this untried path, for he died on the 3d of Ther-
midor, of the year X., aged hardly thirty-two. Thus the
labors that might have impressed a new tendency upon
therapeutics at the very beginning of the century, were
checked by the death of the great man who had conceived
the idea of them, and who would surely have successfully
pursued their difficult execution. In truth, this surprising
genius was too much in advance of his time. Among the
physicians who came immediately after him, either no one
saw the importance or else no one felt himself strong
enough to attempt the realization of Bichat's design.
Science had yet to await for more than fifty years those
investigations which destroyed empiricism, and established
therapeutics firmly and definitely. It is to Claude Bernard,
in great part, that we owe this reform.

II.

Empiricism is so tenacious of life, tradition so mighty,
that when Bernard undertook his first labors in scientific
therapeutics, and explained its principles, twenty years
ago, he had to struggle against the opposition of the most
distinguished doctors. These physicians — among whom
we may name Trousseau, with a mind of marvelous sup-
pleness and brilliancy, gifted with the brightest artist-fac-
ulties, which for him took the place of those of the sage —
persistently maintained that the action of remedies can-
not be reduced to fixed laws, and that vital operations
elude any exact ascertainment. Claude Bernard has dis-
proved these unphilosophic assertions. He has unfolded,
in many essays, the methods which permit a rigorous so-
lution of the problems of therapeutics, and he has joined
example with precept in his investigations as to curare,
oxide of carbon, ether, nicotine, the alkaloids of opium,
etc. His methods are the application of the rules of Car-
tesianism itself. " We must analyze," in his own words,

MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE. 215

" complicated actions, and reduce them to simpler actions,
more easily determined. . . . Only experiments on animals
enable us sufficiently to make those physiological analyses
which will throw light and clearness upon the effects of
medicinal substances as they are noted in man. In fact,
we find that every thing we observe in man is repeated in
animals, and vice versa, only with such peculiarities as the
difference in their organisms accounts for ; but the nature
of physiological actions is fundamentally the same. It
could not be otherwise, for, unless this were so, there
could never be either any science of physiology or any sci-
ence of medicine." The most famous of modern surgeons,
Sedillot, has demonstrated, for his part, that surgical thera-
peutics can have no other basis than the unchangeableness
of vital phenomena in their relation of cause and effect.
He has made it plain that the art must be founded on the
unity and generality of science, instead of leaving it at the
mercy of individual fancy.1 We now see in the clearest
manner, thanks to the efforts of these two savants, how
the study of those manifold resources which the physician
has recourse to for the treatment of diseases may be advan-
tageously pursued.

1 " The unchangeableness of phenomena in their relation of cause and
effect," says Sedillot, " is a law without which no science, no observa-
tion, no order, could be possible. Man, notwithstanding the very great
complexity of the causes of his physiological manifestations, is no excep-
tion to it. What has occurred once, in given circumstances, will be con-
stantly represented under like circumstances, and a change in etiological
conditions is the only reason for modifications in function. This fun-
damental starting-point is indispensable for the physician, whose mind
doubts and whose judgment is uncertain if he is not convinced of the
constancy of facts submitted to his researches. No doubt the analysis
he engages in is difficult ; but, whatever its complexity, the most clear-
sighted, attentive, and persevering observer will make discoveries in it
every day, with the hope of still adding to their number, and of intro-
ducing light and certainty where all was only darkness and confusion." —
Contributions to Surgery (Preface).

216 NATURE AND LIFE.

Governed by these ideas, Bernard has studied the
various active principles contained in opium, as regards
their comparative influence over the animal functions, and
has ascertained that they exhibit properties not merely
differing from, but opposed to, each other. He has made
more than two hundred experiments with morphine, nar-
ceine, codeine, narcotine, papaverine, and thebaine. These
examinations have proved that, among these six principles,
only three produce sleep ; these are, morphine, narceine,
and codeine. The three others have no soporific effect ;
they possess a power, either stimulating or toxic, which
rather tends to thwart or to modify the narcotic effect of
the former three. In the scale of their power to produce
sleep, narceine holds the first grade, morphine the second,
and codeine the third. As stimulants, thebaine has more
power than narcotine, and the latter more than codeine.
And last, as to their toxic quality, Bernard arranges them
in the following order, begining with the most poisonous :
thebaine, codeine, papaverine, narceine, morphine, narco-
tine. We see that the author of these investigations has
not been content with merely describing the differences in
their action which mark the alkaloids of opium, but that
he has also measured the degree of intensity with which
each one of them displays the kind of physiological or the-
rapeutic activity peculiar to it.

These studies have been taken up again quite lately,
by Rabuteau. This experimenter has examined the ac-
tion of the alkaloids of opium on sensibility and on the in-
testine, and has made trial of them in a methodical way on
the human subject, at the hospitals of la Charite" and la
Pitie". The order in which the various principles of opium
may be classed, with regard to their activity, is not the
same in the case of man as it is with animals. Thus
Rabuteau found that morphine, which has relatively but
little toxic power over the latter, is in the highest degree

MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE.

effective upon man in that manner. Narceine puts animals
to sleep more readily than morphine, while the reverse is
the case with us; yet the former, though less powerful
than the latter as to the soothing of pain and the produc-
tion of sleep, seems to be preferred with good reason in
therapeutics. Narceine, in a dose of twenty- five centi-
grammes, induces a calm and refreshing sleep, followed by
an awakening after which none of the troubles are experi-
enced which follow the administration of morphine, such as
weariness and nausea. It should be preferred also as a
remedy for pain, since, in neutralizing pain in patients, it
produces in them a most desirable condition of comfort;
nothing is better for neuralgia, for instance. Narceine and
morphine have, moreover, a property which explains the
well-known effects of opium in intestinal discharges.

These labors present another proof of the benefit thera-
peutics gains from chemistry, and of the fixed connection
there is between the improvement of one and the advance
of the other. So long as opium was a mystery for chem-
ists, it was one for doctors too. The moment the substance
of that complex drug was decomposed into a certain num-
ber of well-defined principles, and the nature of their
blending was ascertained exactly, that moment it became
possible to decompose not merely the substance, but the
physiological force of opium, and to reduce it to a small
number of distinct potencies. Now, thanks to the labors
of Bernard and Rabuteau, physicians can arrive at an un-
derstanding of the mode in which ancient therapeutics
felt its way as to the use of opiates, and they are able for
the future to act with precision on this or that function, by
prescribing this or that pure alkaloid whose properties are
known.

By uniting with the influence of narceine or morphine
that of chloroform, we produce new and very curious
phenomena. Bernard had already observed that insensi-

218 NATURE AND LIFE.

bility produced by chloroform is prolonged in animals
when they have taken opium. Nussbaum, having made a
subcutaneous injection of acetate of morphine with a pa-
tient under operation, and who was put under the action of
chloroform, noticed that the subject did not wake as usual,
but slept on quietly for twelve hours. During this sleep
he was insensible to pain. Goujin and Labbe" have con-
firmed this fact, and made use of it in their practice, and
have found that, by uniting weak doses of chloroform and
of a salt of morphine, we may effect complete insensibil-
ity for several hours, without sleep necessarily attending
it. Rabuteau also performed the following experiment :
A dog to which five centigrammes of narceine had been ad-
ministered, and which was then put to sleep by chloroform,
had no feeling on awaking. It walked about in the labo-
ratory, recognized a voice calling it, but had wholly lost the
use of its sensitive nervous system. It could be pinched,
or pricked, or its toes stepped on, without the least show
of suffering. This singular condition, in an animal com-
pletely awake, lasted some hours ; the next day sensibility
had returned.

From chloroform to chloral the transition is natural.
Chloral, which was discovered in 1832 by Dumas and
Liebig, differs from common alcohol in having an ex-
cess of chloride, and less of hydrogen.1 For nearly forty
years this substance remained unused ; its physiological
qualities were not suspected. At length, in 1868, a Ger-
man chemist, Liebreich, remembering that chloral may be
reduced by alkalies into chloroform and formic acid, asked
himself whether such a decomposition might not occur in
the living organism as well as in a laboratory crucible.
He tries the experiment, and Nature replies by an em-
phatic yes. Chloral is decomposed in the system on con-

1 This substance may be regarded as tri-chlorated aldehyde. Chemists
represent it under the formula C2HC130.

MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE. 219

tact with the alkalies of the blood ; it produces chloroform
in it, but so very slowly that the sleep induced may last
for some hours. This sleep, less deep arid more quiet than
that obtained by chloroform, has the additional advantage
that it may be prolonged without any inconvenience by
new doses of the anaesthetic compound. The success of
chloral has been rapid. From 1832 to 1868, a few kilo-
grammes of it had been prepared for the demands of sci-
ence ; at present the Berlin manufactories, of themselves,
furnish to commerce a hundred kilogrammes daily. This
popularity is well founded, and will last, and the more so
because chloral is not merely the same thing for medicine
that chloroform is for surgery. It singularly lessens the
excito-motor power of the spinal marrow, and may thus
claim to be of remarkable utility in the treatment of several
complaints ; but is especially applied every day in calming
violent and stubborn pain, like that of inflammatory rheu-
matisms.

The poppy contains several alkaloids which differ in
their effects respectively. Various plants present the like
complexity as regards therapeutics; others, on the con-
trary, like hemlock and belladonna, contain only a single
alkaloid. Cicutine, the extract of hemlock, and atropine,
obtained from belladonna, have very lately been the sub-
ject of interesting examinations. Martin, Damouret, and
Pel vet, who have studied hemlock, have confirmed by ex-
periment the precision of those historic details which have
come down to us as to the symptoms experienced by Soc-
rates, after he had swallowed the deadly draught.1 Atro-
pine has opened a new path in the treatment of disorders
of the eye, thanks to the singular property it has of dilat-

1 " When they brought him the poison, Socrates asked what he had to
do. ' Nothing,' answered the jailer, ' but to walk about after swallow-
ing it, till you feel a heaviness in the legs.' He drank, and walked about,
and, as soon as he felt his legs weaken, he lay down on his back. At the

220 NATURE AND LIFE.

ing the pupil of the eye when dropped into that organ, or
introduced through the usual passages. An extremely mi-
nute quantity of this active principle is enough to produce
this phenomenon almost instantly, the importance of which
Harley was the first to indicate. The exact knowledge
of the effects of atropine, which, moreover, acts upon the
whole nervous system, furnishes an explanation of the
strange circumstances, among others the remarkable mad-
ness, of which ancient authors speak when describing some
cases of poisoning by belladonna.

There exists a substance which exerts over the appara-
tus of sight an influence directly opposed to that of atro-
pine ; this is the Calabar bean, the properties of which were
discovered in 1863 by a skillful physician of Edinburgh,
Mr. Fraser. This seed, or rather the alkaloid contained in
it, and which was isolated in 1865 by a French chemist,
Vee, occasions so powerful a contraction and narrowing
of the pupil of the eye, that the orifice almost completely
vanishes. This constriction of the pupil reaches its highest
point about an hour after the active principle has been ad-
ministered, and persists for about three hours, and then
slowly disappears. This action upon the muscles govern-
ing the movements of the pupil depends on the excitement
of a particular nerve. Atropine paralyzes this nerve, thus
occasioning dilatation of the pupil. There is thus an op-
position between the active principle of the Calabar bean
and that of atropine, and experience shows that the effects

same time, the man who had brought him the poison touched him, and
after a little while examined his feet and legs ; then, pressing one of his
feet strongly, he asked him if he felt it ; Socrates answered, ' No.' After-
ward he again pressed the lower part of his legs, and, thus advancing up-
ward, he showed us that the body was growing cold, and becoming rigid.
He still continued feeling, and said, ' Whenever it reaches the heart he
will die.' Already almost all the parts near the lower abdomen were
chilled. Socrates then uttered a few words, then went into a convulsion,
and died." — PLATO.

MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE.

of one neutralize those of the other. Physicians profess-
ing the treatment of the eve are beginning to take advan-
tage of these properties.

We find that every alkaloid, apart from a general action
on the system, has also a more special one upon a certain
part of the system, or a certain organ. Now, digitalis is
a poison, or a remedy in heart-disease. Since Cullen's
time, although he had so clearly indicated the true uses
of that medicine, it was - but little employed, except as a
diuretic. Only of late years Traube, professor at Berlin,
and Hirtz, professor at Strasbourg, have again taken up
the study of this vegetable product, and again brought
into view, by clinical experiments and results, the impor-
tance of the effect it produces upon the circulation and
heat of the system. Thanks to the power it possesses of
making the heart's pulsations slower, and consequently
checking the movements of the blood, this agent is of ser-
vice in all diseases, particularly those of a febrile kind, in
which the activity of internal heat needs to be lessened.
Digitalis owes these properties to a substance which till
very lately there had been no means of isolating entirely.
We were able only to obtain from it a formless substance,
yellowish and complex, and varying in force of action.
Within a few months a skillful chemist, Nativelle, has
succeeded in extracting from it a principle quite definite
in composition, in fine needles of crystals, white and ex-
tremely bitter, and which is true digitalis. The Academy
of Medicine awarded an extraordinary prize to the author
of this discovery. Digitaline, prepared by the new method,
is so powerful that, in a dose of a quarter of a thousandth
of a gramme only, with the human subject, it affects the
movements of the heart, and in one of five thousandths of
a gramme would produce death ! On the other hand, its
effect is so certain and so characteristic that, when digitaline
exists in a mixture in quantity so minute that it can be dis-

222 NATURE AND LIFE.

covered in it only by chemical reactions, there is an unfail-
ing way of distinguishing it by observing the action of the
mixture on the heart of a frog. This device was resorted
to a few years ago, in a celebrated case of poisoning by
digitaline. Physicians have also lately been using another
alkaloid, veratrine, which, like the former, exerts a powerful
action upon the muscular fibres, especially on those of the
heart, and is serviceable in inflammations of the internal
organs, particularly in inflammation of the chest.

Something may properly be said here of the Eucalyptus
globulus, which has been so much talked of for several
years. The eucalyptus, lately brought b3^ Ramel from Aus-
tralia to Southern Europe, where it is readily acclimated,
is a gigantic tree of the family of Myrtacece. It contains
a volatile oil, imparting peculiar properties to the leaves
and bark, which have been employed with advantage of
late in therapeutics — thanks to the efforts of several French
doctors, particularly those of Grinbert. The essence of
eucalyptus impairs the reflex sensibility of the spinal cord,
and thus quiets cough and relieves oppression in very
many pulmonary complaints. By the effect it produces on
the mucosities it deserves a place in the first rank of reme-
dies used in the treatment of catarrh. Prosper Me>ime"e,
who spent the last years of his life at Cannes, constantly
smoked eucalyptus cigarettes there, and seemed to derive
great relief from them. Besides this essence, this Austra-
lian tree contains a bitter principle very efficient in inter-
mittent morbid conditions, particularly malarial fevers. In-
deed, in South America, Spain, Corsica, Algeria, and Rou-
mania, the infusion of eucalyptus begins to enjoy a certain
fashion as a febrifuge, and it is the more eagerly resorted
to in those regions because it often subdues cases that
have resisted the action of quinine. A fortunate whole-
someness, too, is the privilege of countries in which this
tree is very common. The balsamic exhalations which it

MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE. 223

throws off constantly sweeten and cleanse the air. Trav-
elers and physicians who have closely studied its physio-
logical properties are persuaded that it might be introduced
with advantage for giving salubrity to marshy countries
where fever is endemic, by not merely altering the air,
but also drying up the soil, and preventing the develop-
ment in it of the aquatic vegetation from which miasma
proceeds.

These new medicaments of which we have spoken are
all of them organic compounds, that is to say, they are
obtained more or less directly from vegetable or animal
substances. Therapeutics also makes use of quite a num-
ber of mineral medical preparations. There are few among
the latter whose introduction into practice is of recent date.
Yet one of them that has come into use only within a few
years has lately taken a very important place in the treat-
ment of nervous disorders — we mean bromide of potassium.
This salt, as to which physiologists had remarked its calm-
ing action on the nerves and vessels, has lately been adopted
by practitioners as a remedy for nervous affections, and
particularly for epilepsy. Given in a dose of/ several
grammes a day, it exerts the most striking sedative action
upon that fearful nervous malady ; if it does not cure it
completely, it at least effects a long intermission between
the attacks, and always quiets the shocks, the convulsions,
and irritability of patients. Observations made on a great
scale seven or eight years ago, in England and France,
leave no doubt as to the reality of this result. Another
mineral preparation in medicine, employed for a long time,
arsenical acid, has become, through recent labors of Magi-
tot, one of the most certain agents used in dental treat-
ment ; it possesses the singular property of inducing re-
production of the ivory in teeth.

The facts we have here cited prove productive activity
in the study of scientific therapeutics of late years, and

224: NATUKE AND LIFE.

form the best answer that can be given to doubts on the
subject of medicine. We may believe, without indulging
illusions, that this advance will not pause. We desire no
better proof of it than the genuine ardor with which these
researches are now followed in all countries. To use Ra-
buteau's words, we are no longer satisfied to know that a
medicine cures, we wish to know also how it works a cure.1
This sort of curiosity has seized upon almost all physicians ;
and even those who appear not to think that therapeutics
deserves the name of a science, willingly make efforts to
gain a better knowledge of the mechanism of action by
medicinal substances.

Is there a relation between the chemical nature of
bodies and the degree of their poisoning and curative
power ? We can now answer this question affirmatively.
Certain observations, by way of experiment and conjecture,
had long ago been made upon this point. Thus, we knew
that the salts of heavy metals are more active than those
of light ones ; that the salts of lead and of mercury have
poisonous properties, while the salts of soda and of mag-
nesia are relatively harmless ; but this was a mere com-
parison, without exactitude. Rabuteau has stated with
precision the general relation between the physiological
potency of mineral compounds and their chemical char-
acter. The power of the soluble metallic salts is in direct
ratio to the atomic weight of the metal contained in the
salt. The atomic weights of metals being in inverse ratio
to their specific heats, Rabuteau's law may be otherwise
expressed under this form : The metals are more active
in proportion as their specific heat is weaker. The law
is the same as to metalloids of the oxygen family ; it

1 " Elements of Therapeutics and Pharmacology," 1873 (preface).
This remarkable work is the first treatise published on scientific thera-
peutics. It groups together with uncommon merit the latest labors
respecting the action and usefulness of medicinal substances.

MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE.

is inverse for those which are related to chlorine, and for
those of the arsenical class. This untiring investigator, in
order to establish these laws, undertook experiments six
years ago, which have been steadily followed up till very
lately ; and the Academy of Sciences has recognized their
discovery by a brilliant reward. Their practical interest
may easily be estimated. When a physician, in future,
has need to choose between different salts, all that will be
required will be to consult a table of atomic weights in
order to learn at once their respective activities, and con-
sequently to fix upon the proper dose of them. When a
physiologist wishes to test the action of a metallic com-
pound, he will be able to foretell its relative intensity, and
thus to guide his use of it in experiment. When the effect
of salts of thallium was tried upon animals some years ago,
this being one of the metals just revealed by spectrum
analysis, it was noted with much surprise that these salts,
so extremely similar in other respects to those of soda and
of potassa, were yet powerfully poisonous. This is because
the atomic weight of thallium is very high ; its poison-
ing potency is thus in exact agreement with Rabuteau's
law.

The improvement of the healing art is thus allied in
the closest way with the advance of our knowledge as to
the true action of toxic and medicinal substances. To
enlarge this knowledge, we must follow Bernard's ex-
ample and methods in the examination of effects pro-
duced upon animal tissues. It is of moment, too, as Du-
mas recommends, to test the action of all those new sub-
stances which organic chemistry has been for some time
producing, several of which undoubtedly carry in them
medicinal qualities. The study of these effects is very- re-
fined, and those savants who undertake it will need to
handle with equal skill the instruments of physics, of physi-
ology, and of chemistry. The point is not simply to analyze

226 NATURE AND LIFE.

the manifest symptoms arising from disorder of the organs,
to distinguish the parts affected, and to decide on the kind
of change they have undergone ; it is indispensable, besides,
to investigate the alterations occurring in the direct com-
position of the secretions and excretions, as well as the
passages and modes by which the active substances are
eliminated ; and, moreover, to measure the variations of
temperature, pressure, muscular energy, etc., by which the
therapeutic action becomes evident. To carry out success-
fully so complicated an examination, we use the common
implements of vivisection, recording contrivances, most of
which were devised by Marey, chemical reacting agents,
microscopes, spectroscopes, and polarizers. In a word, all
the sciences yield their tribute to the physiologist who
seeks in his turn to furnish the physician with therapeutic
precepts that may be confidently applied.

Such are, in respect to physiology, the just hopes of
therapeutics. It may fairly indulge no less promising ones
with regard to chemistry. The latter, which has already
rendered so many and so great services to the healing art,
will render it the last and the most desirable of all, by the
artificial creation of those active principles which we are
as yet still compelled to extract from vegetables. The
preparation of the alkaloids by the aid of plants is so te-
dious and costly, and may be impeded in certain contin-
gencies in a way so injurious to the" interests of public
health, that chemists should exert themselves to make
those operations of a rude art unnecessary for the future.
The knowledge of the inner structure of molecules is com-
plete enough, the power of methods of synthesis is perfect
enough, to allow such an attempt to be undertaken without
rashness. In the vessels of a laboratory, vegetable acids,
essences, and fats, are reproduced complete ; pungent per-
fumes and brilliant colors are prepared from them by deli-
cate chemical reactions ; why might not chemists discover

MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE.

the secret of the formation of those subtile principles, be-
neficent or terrible according to their various natures, which
sometimes restore endangered health, and sometimes quench
the flame of life ? It is true that attempts hitherto made
in that direction have not been crowned with success ; at
least medicine has gained no advantage from them. It
was while following out experiments on the means of ob-
taining quinine artificially, and while studying toluidine
with this view, that Perkin, in 1856, discovered, instead
of the precious medicine he was in search of, a red com-
pound which became the source of aniline colors. This
check, of so singular a kind, should not discourage inves-
tigators ; permanent fame is reserved for him who shall
succeed where Perkin failed.

We may be allowed to suppose, too, as A. W. Hoff-
mann lately took occasion to say, that the same thing will
take place in future in therapeutics that has occurred in
the art of dyeing. At this day no one endeavors, as used
to be done, to obtain different shades by the mechanical
mixture of several coloring-matters. One principle is
taken, and, according to the color desired, is subjected to
a determinate chemical transformation ; one and the same
molecule, modified in its inner structure by suitable re-
agents, becomes in succession red, blue, green, violet.
One who watches attentively the influence of chemistry
upon all manufactures, cannot doubt the realization of simi-
lar progress in other directions ; he will trust that thera-
peutics will some day succeed in modifying, as it may
choose, the properties of medicinal principles, not, as now,
by means of mixtures in the druggist's glass, but with the
help of fixed and regulated metamorphoses, effected in the
very inmost structure of the molecule of the active prin-
ciple. Late experiments by Messrs. Crum-Brown and
Fraser have made a brilliant beginning in researches of
this kind.

228 NATURE AND LIFE.

Therapeutics has been aided, and may be more and
more benefited, by the labors of physicists. The employ-
ment of electricity, heat, cold, magnetism, and light, in the
treatment of diseases, is yet in its earliest stages, though
momentous results have even now been gained. We shall
need to study with careful exactness the action of these
various forces on the human system. Are not these very
forces closelj7 linked to the cosmic medium in which we
live, a medium swayed by the general conditions of celes-
tial mechanism ? This is saying that the advance of medi-
cal art is not independent of progress in investigations
upon the relations of the organism with agents which seem
to touch it but slightly, and from afar.

Thus, history displays to our view all the sciences in
constant mutual reaction, and completing their improve-
ment by the reciprocation of profound influences. It is
thus that they sustain each other inseparably in commun-
ion, and that the blended power of the whole gives at
length, to the healing art as well as to industries of every
other kind, increasing vigor and certainty. Such is the
virtue of meditations and systematic experiments under-
taken without any concern for the useful; but precisely
because this manifold and painstaking evolution is per-
formed unconsciously, to those who are its workmen, under
the influence of a small number of general ideas of which
philosophy is the perpetual source, it results that the
sciences, enriched by philosophy, minister in their turn
to its advance and perfection.1

1 This essay may properly be completed by noting the labors which
have lately led Rabuteau to suggest and recommend the protochloride
of iron as that salt of iron which is most readily absorbed, and best
adapted to the treatment of the many diseases in which preparations of
iron are required.

ANIMAL GRAFTS AND REGENERATIONS.

SCIENTIFIC examinations followed out by the method
of experiment are usually of a" kind which either aids in
completing theoretical conceptions as to the world, or else
serves to stimulate useful applications in the region of in-
dustry and the arts. They sometimes join both these ad-
vantageous objects. The subject — an entirely new one —
of animal grafting and regeneration presents this twofold
interest in a very high degree. It sheds light on physio-
logical theories, and supplies medical practice with novel
resources ; but it possesses another character of marked
singularity in this respect, that the positive results it yields
contribute at once to confirm the boldest conjectures of
philosophic genius in past times, and to authorize the most
daring hopes indulged by naturalists who have faith in
man's omnipotence in times to come. It is our design to
give a succinct demonstration of this truth.

At the opening of the eighteenth century, hardly any
other instance was known of the case of reproduction of
organs in animals except that of the lizard's tail, which
grows again after having been cut off. At least, savants
knew no others, or rather they denied and classed with
fables the declarations of fishermen regarding the regenera-
tion of the limbs of crawfish, lobsters, etc. Reaumur de-
termined, in 1712, to get at the truth as to these stories,

230 NATURE AND LIFE.

and undertook experiments. " Having an opportunity,"
he says, " to examine the shores of the ocean, which are
crowded with a vast number of crabs, a creature something
of the nature of crawfish, I could not escape the suspicion
that philosophers were wrong in this matter, and common
people right." Reaumur took lobsters and crabs, removed
one or several of their limbs, and shut up the creatures so
mutilated in reservoirs communicating with sea-water. At
the end of a few months he was astonished to find that
new legs had taken the place of those that had been re-
moved. He repeated his experiments with crawfish also,
and described, with the precision which has given him re-
nown, the mechanical method of these new growths.

Thirty years later, Abraham Trembley, while walking
near a lake at the Hague, remarked in it certain fine green
filaments, provided with appendages, and looking like vege-
tables. To learn whether he was really dealing with plants,
he cut one of them into several bits. The separated parts
soon reproduced each a complete whole, and these individ-
ual wholes moved, changed their place, and seized insects
with their arms to carry them into their digestive cavities.
They were fresh-water polyps, true animals. Trembley
learned that, when one of these polyps was cut in two, the
head reproduced the tail, and the tail the head. He cut
two of them lengthwise, and joined them in a graft ; in-
stead of a polyp with eight arms, he had one with sixteen.
A short time afterward Charles Bonnet repeated Trembley 's
experiments on the reproduction of the polyp, and tried
others on a fresh-water worm called the naiad. He re-
marked that this worm, like the polyp, grows again those
of its parts that are removed. He made like trials with
the earthworm, and proved to his great astonishment that
this highly-complex animal, which has so many rings, with
delicate locomotive organs attached to each ring, which
has, too, digestive and generative systems, etc., possessed

ANIMAL GRAFTS AND REGENERATIONS. £31

a like power of reproduction. If considerable parts of its
body, either in the region of the head or that of the tail,
are removed, these fragments grow again in a very short
time. Bonnet saw a worm shoot out twelve heads in suc-
cession in this manner. At almost the same period, Spal-
lanzani went even further than the famous Geneva natural-
ist. He cut off the horns and even part of the head of the
shell-snail, and saw them grow out again. He cut off the
feet and tail of the water-salamander, and remarked their
restoration in the same way. This last fact, more extraor-
dinary than all the former ones, occasioned general sur-
prise. In fact, the feet and the tail of the salamander
contain bones, nerves, muscles, the reproduction of which
seemed impossible. Certainly, the tail removed from the
land-lizard had been observed to grow again, but without
bony vertebrae. On the contrary, the salamander's tail
grew anew with its complete bony frame, and of its original
size. The untiring Italian experimenter also showed that
the legs and tails of salamanders may be amputated several
times, and the same organ reproduced many times over,
with the same vitality.

These memorable experiments of Reaumur, Trembley,
Bonnet, and Spallanzani, on the regeneration of animals,
of which Leibnitz had long before conjectured the results,
made a deep impression on Buffon's mind. He not only
perceived in them very curious facts of natural history, but
he also believed, as Bonnet did, that they gave force to
certain ideas of a very high order. He discovered in them
a wonderful demonstration of that conception of Leibnitz,
that animated beings are made up of an infinite number of
small parts, more or less resembling each other, that is,
that life does not dwell in the whole, but in each single
one of its unseen elements ; or, in other words, to use a
phrase of Bordeu's, that the general life is nothing else
than the sum jof a great number of special lives. That

232 NATURE AND LIFE.

was a splendid period in the history of the sciences, at
which observation, proving the intuitions of genius true,
exhibited by instances so astonishing the composition of
the organized individual to be such that every one of the
living molecules that make it up has in itself a principle
of activity and of individual development. Whatever cor-
rections need to be applied to the way in which Buffon and
Bonnet, after Leibnitz, have unfolded that doctrine, it re-
mains, in its essential tenor, the starting-point of a rich
evolution for biology, and the true expression of what is
real.

The experiments just mentioned have been often re-
peated and ingeniously varied by naturalists. Little fresh-
water worms, to which the name of planar ii has been given,
have been a subject of study to several savants, among
others to Draparnaud, Moquin-Tandon, and De Bilge's.
The latter cut in two a number of single specimens of
the largest kind, either across or lengthwise, and he ob-
served each fragment build itself anew, in twelve or fifteen
days in winter, and four or five in summer, the head pro-
ducing a sucker and a tail, and the tail a head and a sucker,
and the piece in the middle sometimes keeping its sucker,
sometimes losing it and again forming it, together with a
head and a tail. Immediately upon the cutting, the outside
bulges up like a cushion, while the centre shows the pulp
exposed, and on this centre part the first outlines of the
renewed portions make their appearance. A single one
divided thus gives birth to several new ones, the size of
( which, at first proportional to the dimensions of the frag-
ment, very quickly grows up to that of the original whole.
More lately, Vulpian cut off the tail of a young frog, still
inclosed in the egg, and put it in water. This rudiment
of a tail maintained its life there, and developed regularly,
passing through all the phases of its embryonic existence.
Having reached the condition of perfect organization, its

ANIMAL GRAFTS AND REGENERATIONS. 233

life ceased. Not long ago, Philippeaux noted the entire
restoration of the spleen in animals from which that organ
had been removed.

Charles Legros, who has undertaken of late years many
interesting experiments upon regenerations, has discovered
that time takes an important part in these phenomena.
The tail of a lizard grows out again rapidly as to its out-
ward shape ; in two or three months the severed organ re-
appears with its usual length and thickness ; but the inte-
rior is unlike that of regular tails, containing, as it does,
nerves, muscles, and vessels, but no vertebra?. This text-
ure remains unaltered for a long time, and naturalists had
inferred from this that the bones of the lizard's tail are not
reproduced. Legros has watched the advance of develop-
ment in this organ for several years continuously, and has
noted the appearance of vertebrae at the end of two years.
This savant experimented with green lizards. The re-
stored tail continued gray for a long time, and did not as-
sume the color of the rest of the body before the beginning
of the third year. In another case Legros cut off the tail
of a dormouse at the beginning of winter. The wound
shaped itself into a sort of pad, which lengthened, became
covered with hair, and attained nearly the same length as
the original tail, which it surpassed in thickness. Un-
luckily, the animal's hibernation was not perfect ; it fre-
quently awoke, and at the end of three months it died.
There had been no opportunity for a complete restoration
of the inner parts of the organ.

To these recent observations must be added those made
quite lately on the crawfish by Chantran. This skillful and
patient observer remarked that in the case of the crawfish the
antennas grow out during the time that intervenes between
one shedding of the shell and the next, that is, in an inter-
val varying, according to the creature's age, from six weeks

to six months. The claws and the tail-plates are also re-
11

234 NATURE AND LIFE.

produced, but much more slowly. The restoration is longer
in proportion as the animal is older. With crawfish under
a year old, all the severed limbs grow again in about sev-
enty days. In the case of full-grown males, their complete
restoration requires from eighteen months to two years,
and with females from three to four years. Chantran dis-
covered, moreover, last year, a strange phenomenon of quite
another kind. He proved by experiment that crawfishes'
eyes are reproduced after removal, and that sometimes, in
place of an eye taken out, two grow again.

This is what experiment has confirmed regarding the
reproduction of limbs and organs in animals. We must
now examine in what way the tissues are restored. All
the tissues that have been destroyed in the full-grown sub-
ject— the skin, nerves, muscles, bones — are capable of being
regenerated, and they are regenerated, by going through a
series of phases identical with those of their embryonic de-
velopment, of their generation properly so called. The force
which has brought them to birth is the same force which
effects their new birth. In every case, the elements of the
new tissue are produced exactly like those of the old, and
these phenomena, in no wise unusual or exceptional, bear
witness once again to the unity and simplicity of physio-
logical mechanical action.

The epidermis is reproduced with the greatest ease.
It grows again as the hair and the nails do. It is the same
tissue with them. The crystalline humor of the eye, which
may be considered like the substance of the epidermis, also
grows again after it has been removed. At least this is the
result of the very numerous experiments performed by Mil-
liot on dogs and rabbits. That physiologist constantly
observed that, after effecting with one of these animals the
removal of that biconvex lens which is one of the chief or-
gans of the system of sight, it was restored after a few
months. The disease known by the name of cataract con-

ANIMAL GRAFTS AND REGENERATIONS. 235

sists in the loss of its transparency by the crystalline humor,
and in its becoming opaque, so that the rays of light no
longer pass through it. The only remedy for this disorder
in the eye is the operation called that for cataract, which
consists in removing the crystalline lens. The eye thus
operated on does not regain its original clearness of sight,
but it can perceive light and outward objects much better
than with its crystalline lens impenetrable to rays of light.
The crystalline humor removed in such a case from the hu-
man subject is not renovated ; but, by pursuing investiga-
tions of the kind which Milliot has begun, we may hope to
discover the conditions of such a reproduction, which would
be priceless to surgery. Restoration of the skin is noticed
in all ordinary scars. The tissue of scars is made up of
the usual anatomical elements composing the derma, that
is, chiefly of laminated or elastic fibres. The vessels that
are torn or broken, the severed tendons, in like manner, re-
pair with the greatest ease those losses of substance they
have suffered. In a word, in all these organs there is a
tendency, observed by surgeons of every age, toward re-
generation, a plastic and radiant force which makes itself
known by an unceasing elaboration of blastema, within
which new anatomical elements grow forth to supply the
void of those removed.

Regeneration of nerves was remarked for the first time
by Michaelis, Cruikshank, Monro, and Haighton, in the lat-
ter part of the last century. In 1801, Bichat expressed a
perfect theory of it, with admirable clearness. Upon in-
terruption of the continuity of a nerve, the severed part
can reproduce itself after a certain time. When, for in-
stance, a segment a centimetre long is cut out from the
sciatic nerve, there is at first remarked a change in the
nerve-substance of the ends produced by cutting ; then, six
weeks or two months after the operation, we see a grayish
bunch proceeding from the point of one of the ends,

236 NATURE AND LIFE.

which directs itself toward and soon rejoins the opposite
end. This bunch is made up of laminated tissue and
nerve-tubes more slender than the original tubes ; but by
slow degrees it enlarges, grows whiter, its fibres become
complete, and, after a lapse of from four to six months, we
have a nerve-cord of new formation. Such a cord is repro-
duced even when a part of the nerve six centimetres in
length has been removed. During the time of restoration
of the nerve-substance we remark the gradual reestablish-
ment of its sensor, or motor, or mixed functions. Vulpian
and Philippeaux, who have studied this subject particu-
larly, have ascertained that nerves absolutely severed from
the nerve-centres can, after a period of change, thus regain
their normal structure and properties. But the most in-
structive experiment made by these physiologists consists
in joining together the ends of two nerves having quite
different functions, as for instance the motor nerve of the
tongue and the pneumogastric nerve, and in establishing
anatomical connection and physiological communion be-
tween two nerve-cords which, in their usual state, have no
mutual relation.

In 1867, Legros discovered the reproduction of carti-
lage, which till then had been regarded as impossible. He
made his investigation upon dogs and rabbits, in whose
cartilaginous tissues he had made free incisions, and at the
end of about two months he noted a thorough renovation
of that tissue. This is the same physiologist who first
proved the reproduction of smooth muscular tissue, that is,
tissue which is the organ of involuntary movement, such
as that of the intestine. To exhaust the list of the organic
tissues, it remained to be seen whether the muscular fibres
in the living animal can restore, by means of like fibres,
the losses of substance they have undergone. The following
year Dubreuil was able to answer that question in the af-
firmative. He cut certain muscles of Guinea-pigs through

ANIMAL GRAFTS AND REGENERATIONS. 237

the middle, and, on examining the organ some months after-
ward, he observed complete reunion between the separated
parts, and ascertained that the solution of continuity was
filled up by a fresh growth of muscular tissue. Thus all
the tissues of the animal system can be reproduced in the
grown-up subject, and these regenerations are uniformly
identical operations with those which have as their result
the first formation and the development of the very same
tissues in the embryo or in the young animal.

In the practice of the surgical art the knowledge of
these facts of reproduction has been the occasion of more
or less remarkable inventions and operative methods, some
of which are as yet under investigation. Those which re-
late to the renovation of bony tissue have interested the
public peculiarly of late years. It has always been known
that, when a bone is broken, the solution of continuity in
it is filled up, after a certain time, by a portion of bone of
fresh formation, a true bony scar, a callus. It was not be-
fore the middle of the last century that a French physiolo-
gist, Duhamel, and after him a Neapolitan physician settled
at Paris, Troja, investigating the phenomenon of callus
closely, discovered its physiological mechanism. They
believed they could observe that the chief agent in the
elaboration of bone is a thin fibrous sheath applied and
adhering closely all around the bones, the membrane called
the periosteum.1 Their experiments were neither numerous
nor striking enough to disclose to surgeons the advantage
that might be gained from the knowledge of the bone-
making property peculiar to the periosteum. The atten-
tion of practitioners did not begin to be drawn to this point
until later, toward 1830, by the labors of a professor at

1 The bones may be regarded as formed of three concentric layers,
each inner one sheathed in another — the inmost one the marrow, next
the bony substance properly so called, which is covered by the perios-
teum.

238 NATURE AND LIFE.

Wurzburg, Bernhard Heine. He removed more or less
extensive portions of bone from living animals. In some
cases he effected the removal of half of the bones he oper-
ated on. The parts destroyed were reproduced after a few
months, and the limbs were restored to their original con-
dition.

Still more famous than Heine's are the patient and
skillful labors of Flourens. The varied experiments of
this learned physiologist clearly established the truth of
the first observation of Duhamel. In the words of Flourens,
" Since it is the periosteum which produces the bone, I
must of course be able to get bone wherever I can have
periosteum, that is to say, wherever I can succeed in car-
rying or introducing periosteum, I shall be able to increase
the number of an animal's bones ; if I choose, I shall suc-
ceed in giving it bones which naturally it did not have."
Among other experiments made to prove the truth of this
proposition, Flourens conceived the idea of piercing a bone
and inserting in it a little silver tube. The periosteum
engaged in this tube became thicker there, swelled, and
produced a cartilage which soon became bone. A skillful
surgeon of Lyons, Oilier, cut out long ribbons of periosteum
in an animal, leaving them still adhering to the bone by a
little strip, and then twisted them round the neighboring
muscles. After a certain time, this ossified periosteum
had produced bones of circular shape, in spirals, in figures
of eight, etc., according to the manner of twisting the peri-
osteal strips about the parts near them.

In all these experiments, periosteum was used provided
with the very delicate layer which adheres to it, and sepa-
rates it from the bone. Now, Robin has proved that in the
adult this layer is formed of bony cells, and of cartilagi-
nous substance when a bone in course of development is
operated on. It is in this that the bone-making power
dwells, and, when the periosteum is stripped of this, it be-

ANIMAL GRAFTS AND REGENERATIONS. 239

comes unfit for ossification. Robin and Dubreuil have also
proved that bony tissue may be formed without any carti-
lage existing beforehand, without any intervention of mem-
brane, and may proceed directly from a bone deprived of
membrane. These discoveries, without taking from the peri-
osteum the evident share which it has in producing renova-
tions of bone, give a conception of its mechanical action
which differs from that which physiologists had admitted.
They prove that really, in experiments of the kind tried by
Duhamel, Heine, Flourens, it is bone which produces bone,
as the severed nerve produces nerve. The cartilaginous
or bony layer adhering to the periosteum is in fact noth-
ing else than bone in process of formation ; and whenever,
whether by means of the periosteum or by means of an
irritation, the reproduction of a certain quantity of bone
is procured, it is because, in the first place, conditions fit
for the production of cartilage have been brought about.
These remarks will allow us to understand and to give a
rapid estimate of the value of surgical methods founded on
the knowledge of these facts.

Diseases of the bones are numerous. Independently
of those cases in which they are directly injured by pro-
jectiles, they are liable to inflammations, tumors, and decay
of every kind. These diseases are slow, in proportion to
the slowness of vital elaborations in those organs, but they
are not the less destructive, and they always end by bring-
ing about a more or less considerable corruption of the
substance of the bones. It is then necessary that the mat-
ters given off by the diseased bone should be cleared away :
the mortified portions must be got rid of. The limb very
soon swells, and becomes painful. Pieces make their way
through the skin, suppurations are set up, and, if art does
not interfere, the patient is led by exhaustion to a miser-
able death. To this concourse of evils surgery opposes
difficult operations. It cuts deep openings, it loosens the

240 NATURE AND LIFE.

tissues, it gives an outlet to whatever must pass away, it
modifies the diseased surfaces; but there are cases in
which neither Nature nor art can avail further, and in which
the bone is so far gone that amputation becomes the only
chance of safety for the patient. In these desperate situa-
tions surgeons have recourse to methods which allow them
to effect a regeneration of the bone destroyed by the work-
ing of disease. The most useful of these methods, due to
Se"dillot, is that of scooping out.

The operation of scooping, as it is practised since the
beautiful experiments of Sedillot, is very simple in itself.
The skin, flesh, and periosteum, are cut through, down to
the injured or diseased bone, and, when that is once laid
bare, it is attacked with the gouge, chisel, and mallet. It
is cut out and shaved away so as to remove the entire dis-
eased portion, and to spare all that has suffered no altera-
tion. Thus reduced to its sound parts and layers, the ex-
cavated bone by slow degrees repairs its losses. The de-
stroyed substance is renewed, a new bony tissue fills the
vacancies shaped by the operator's gouge, and after a few
months the organ, which has never lost its form, is again
restored to the conditions of common vitality. Sometimes,
no doubt, the scene, in which, to borrow Hippocrates's
thought, the surgeon himself, in the midst of another's
agon}^, endures his own tortures, becomes complicated in
an unforeseen way, and dangerous risks make it more tragic
still ; but art consists precisely in foreseeing and subdu-
ing these, and it is in this that the superior practitioner is
eminent above another.

While Sedillot teaches and proves that it is necessary,
in the interest of the reproduction of bone and the restora-
tion of the limb, to get rid only of the diseased part of the
endangered bone, and to preserve its sound layer clinging
to the periosteum, some surgeons maintain rather that every
thing should be removed, except the periosteum, that is to

ANIMAL GRAFTS AND REGENERATIONS.

say, that the bone should be withdrawn from it, almost as
one draws the finger out of a glove. They maintain that,
this membrane being the exclusive agent in the production
of the bones, they themselves may be cut away completely,
and that they must be reproduced entirely, so long as the
membrane is preserved.

Two distinguished practitioners, Larghi, of Verceil, and
after him Oilier, of Lyons, have advocated that mode of
operating which has received the name of sub-periosteal
resection. The propriety of such a method of operating,
after having been the occasion of doubts among surgeons
who were in the way of examining it directly, is at this time
unanimously condemned. The reasons against it are deci-
sive. Indeed, how can it be admitted that the mere peri-
osteum, that is to say, a soft sheath, without support or firm-
ness, exposed by a cruel operation, more or less impaired
by dissection, should effect the reproduction of a bone with
its proper shape and size, when it is so difficult at any rate
to effect the consolidation of a simple fracture without
shortening ? Would not this sheath, lost in the midst of
the muscular mass, be in danger of inflammations of every
kind, and exposed especially to the influence of many me-
chanical causes which will be apt to distort it, and conse-
quently to cause the production of an irregular bone, short-
ened, and useless for serviceable action? Such are the
fears and objections which impressed surgeons, and dis-
suaded them from sub-periosteal resections. These opera-
tions have in some cases allowed the renovation of the re-
moved bone, but under such conditions that the limb has
lost all strength and mobility, and has not escaped endless
and fatal suppuration. The question in surgery is not
merely as to reproducing bones, they must also be reno-
vated with sufficient regularity of shape and sufficient firm-
ness of structure to insure full use of the limbs. Now, such
a result can only be gained by preserving the regularity

242 NATURE AND LIFE.

and fixed consistency of the surfaces, sheaths, or moulds,
in which the cells of the new bones are to deposit and
grow together. The method of cutting out assures the ex-
istence of such a firm and unchanging mould by keeping a
sheath of bone in the best conditions to procure a new
growth of bony tissue, while that of sub-periosteal resec-
tions expects the regeneration of the organ out of a perios-
teum unsupported, injured, weakened, and bent under the
influence of muscular contraction. Sedillot, who has the
finest feeling for ancient medical art, and understands it
thoroughly, has not left us in ignorance that Celsus had al-
ready, a little less than a thousand years ago, proposed cut-
ting out of the bones ; but the teaching of Celsus had not
been accepted in practice. The famous French surgeon
rescued these precepts from oblivion, proved their useful-
ness and importance by new arguments, explained the
causes that warrant them, and their success, and has thus
restored to the skillful and enlightened practice of the art
one of the most precious means of relief for the formidable
injuries and diseases of the bones.

II.

Life is a searching and expanding force which strives
to seize upon all that comes within the range of its activity.
We have just seen that it fills up the voids produced by
the removal of certain organic parts ; we are now about to
see that it wins, by inverse operation, certain parts which it
adds to living beings ; for grafts are nothing less than liv-
ing fragments pieced on to an organism already complete.
In the vegetable graft, the grafted part does not make an
integral portion of the single whole to which it has been
transplanted. It does not live with the same life. It de-
velops itself after a kind of parasitic fashion at the expense
of the other, like misletoe on the oak ; and, whether the
grafted fragment be or be not of the same species as the

ANIMAL GRAFTS AND REGENERATIONS. 243

tree to which it is united, it remains always physiologically
distinct from it. The case is not the same with animals.

Animal grafting consists, in a general way, in fixing
upon some point in an individual a part taken from another
point in the same individual, or from a different subject, and
in effecting the connection of the grafted part with the or-
ganism which serves for its siipport, in such a way that it
may become completely incorporated with the latter, and
may live with the same life, and follow the same physio-
logical course. We may thus transfer from one animal to
another either fragments of tissue, or whole organs in their
completeness, or simple anatomical elements. The cells of
the choroid of the eye, placed beneath the skin of an animal,
preserve their vitality in that new region, and there even
become the starting-point for a more or less extensive forma-
tion of similar cells. Transfusion of blood is nothing but
the introduction of red globules borrowed from one organ-
ism into a different organism. This operation succeeds,
even when the blood passes from one individual to another
of quite a different species. Thus the blood of a mammal
may be introduced into the veins of a frog, and those glob-
ules be found in the latter after some time, still living*, and
easily distinguishable as those of the superior being. We
can without difficulty graft upon a cock's comb either spurs
taken from the same bird, or teeth from a mammal ; but
such facts have hitherto had no interest other than that of
curiosity, and need not detain us.

We have seen that bones may readily be reproduced by
means of the periosteum. This property has suggested to
some experimenters the idea of transplanting fragments of
periosteum into different parts, so as to learn whether they
would there occasion a formation of bone. Oilier, among
others, has shown that the periosteal membrane, quite sepa-
rated from the bone and grafted at some remote point, pro-
duces upon its deeper side a new bone. He effected a like

244 NATURE AND LIFE.

reproduction by grafting not the whole periosteum, but
merely the cells which compose the rudimentary layer ad-
hering to that membrane, and which are the true producers
of the elaboration of bone. Goujon has brought about the
production of bone by grafting marrow. The insertion of
a few medullary cells beneath a dog's skin, for instance,
caused the development of a small bone at the spot in a few
months. Surgeons at one time hoped to gain some advan-
tage from these facts in the artificial renovation of the bony
parts. Some of them affirm that they have even made
new noses ; but it is now clearly proved that noses pro-
cured by grafting with periosteum or with marrow have
an insuperable tendency to be reabsorbed, and to disappear
after a longer or shorter time, on account of the unfavorable
conditions, with regard to nutrition, in which they exist.
With no vascular or nerve connections, they are like for-
eign bodies in the place where they are developed.

We may class with the grafting of bones those experi-
ments, still in course of execution, in which Magitot and
Legros are engaged, relating to the grafting of teeth. The
teeth grow out of a little sac called the dental follicle, in
which are distinguished the organ of the ivory, or bulb, and
the organ devoted to the growth of the enamel. By graft-
ing upon a full-grown dog a complete follicle taken from a
dog just born, these experimenters have noted the regular
development of the germ and the production of a complete
tooth. The organ of the enamel, grafted by itself, did not
retain life ; the germ of the ivory, on the contrary, occa-
sioned a formation of regular ivory. Again, when the follicle,
grafted in its entirety, was injured during the experiment,
whether by accident or purposely, the appearance of a sort
of bony tumor was noticed. These extremely interesting in-
vestigations allow us to hope that we may be able at some
time to produce, in clearly-defined conditions, the physio-
logical replacement of teeth removed. It is proper to re-

ANIMAL GRAFTS AND REGENERATIONS. 245

mark, indeed, that in this case a grafting is made of a whole
complete organ, with a structure and vascular arrangements
which may make its development certain, while the trans-
plantation of a fragment of periosteum or of marrow has
the effect of isolating.and encysting it.

The most exact and curious experiments that have been
made in animal grafting, of late years, are due to Paul
Bert. This learned physiologist has shown that, if the tail
of a young rat be cut off and inserted, after flaying it, under
the animal's skin, in any part of the body, it adheres to the
place and continues to develop there. The organ gains
in size almost as rapidly as in its normal conditions. Bert
has also practised animal layering. He flays the point of
a rat's tail, inserts the end in a hole made beneath the ani-
mal's skin, near the head, for instance, and joins the edges
of the two wounds by stitches at points. The parts placed
in contact quickly unite, and the tail, thus endowed with
the shape of a handle, keeps its vitality. If it is then cut
at any point, it is found that the fragment grafted in at the
head preserves its physiological properties. The vessels
are formed again in it, the nerves renew their life, and sen-
sibility returns by degrees. The rat is thus furnished with
a sort of trunk as much alive as its other, organs. The re-
turn of sensibility in this trunk proves not only the con-
nection of the nerve-threads of such an appendix with
those of the back, but also the possibility of the propaga-
tion of sensor nerve-action in an opposite direction to that
it previously followed, that is to say, the power of the
nerves to carry impressions in a centripetal course as well
as in a centrifugal one.

Siamese grafting has been effected by Bert under ex-
ceedingly interesting conditions. Strips of skin are sepa-
rated by cutting along the opposite sides of two animals,
and by means of these ribbons pressed face to face, and
stitched together, the two subjects are sewed into union.

246 NATURE AND LIFE.

After a few days the connection has grown cqmplete, and
we have such a pair as the Siamese twins. Bert kept two
white rats thus banded together for more than two months ;
but they lived on such bad terms that at the end of that
time it was necessary to separate them. By poisoning one
of two animals of such a brace, the other is poisoned also,
thus proving that there is complete mutual circulation of
blood. Bert effected like graftings between the white rat
and the Norway rat, and between the white rat and the Bar-
bary rat. He attempted to perform them between animals
of different species — between a rat and a Guinea-pig, be-
tween a rat and a cat — but the success was never complete ;
only the beginning of adherence was obtained. Still this
failure seems to depend less on the incompatibility of the
tissues themselves than on the difficulty of keeping animals
so little disposed to live harmoniously together in the ne-
cessary state of quiet. Once more, Balbian succeeded in
uniting two fragments of tails taken from two different
young bull-heads, so as to obtain a physiological adhesion
for a certain length of time.

If the interest attached to such experiments is rather
philosophic than practical, a point to be considered here-
after, this is not the case with those which obtain as results
what are called epidermic grafts. These indeed have had
the privilege of attracting the highest degree of attention
from physiologists, and particularly from surgeons. We
owe to a Swiss surgeon, Reverdin, formerly an interne of
the Paris hospitals, the discovery and the first application
of these. Whenever, after a surgical operation, a burn or
a wound, the skin over a certain extent of surface is de-
stroyed, the void produced is filled up only very slowly
by means of a growth of scar-tissue. In spite of the
use of the most judicious methods of dressing, the ex-
posed surface is never restored but with difficulty. In
seeking a remedy for this grave inconvenience, Reverdin

ANIMAL GRAFTS AND REGENERATIONS.

conceived the idea of applying over such wounds a shred
of healthy skin, taken from the injured subject himself or
from some other person. The first attempts were under-
taken in 1869, in the Paris hospitals, and were crowned
with full success. Numerous experiments were at once
made. Gosseliri, Guy on, Oilier, Duplay, Hergott, and
others, in France, obtained very satisfactory results. Eng-
lish, Russian, and German practitioners did not hesitate to
contribute their share of confirmatory observations, and we
may be allowed to say that at this day epidermic grafting
has taken a definite place in surgical practice. This does
not prevent the admission that it presents difficulties of
more than one kind. This application of shreds of foreign
substance to the denuded surface of a wound requires ex-
treme delicacy of attention on the part of the surgeon
who proposes to effect it. In the first place, an attempt to
cover the entire wound by one single grafting would not
succeed ; several slips of very small dimensions must be
applied, the progress of cicatrization must be watched day
by day, the strips that fail to adhere replaced, etc. Usual-
ly the graft is complete at the end of twenty-four hours.
At that time the transferred part forms one body with the
wound, by the intervention of cells produced in the inter-
space between them. It thus follows that cicatrization is
completed very rapidly. The scar is firmer and more pliant
than the ordinary ones, and does not exhibit, as they do,
any disposition to contract.1

The name given to this process, " epidermic graft," is
not quite precise. In reality, the strips used in such a
case are not composed of epidermis alone ; to procure
them, the epidermis is detached in connection with the thin

1 Grafts on men have been made not only of human skin but of skin
borrowed from animals also. Dubreuil has lately performed some curi-
ous experiments on this subject. He has grafted Guinea-pig's skin upon
a man.

248 NATURE AND LIFE.

cellular layer (Malpighi's layer) on which it directly rests,
and this condition is essential, because the Malpighi cells
seem to be the seat of that.formative elaboration which ef-
fects the adhesion of the graft. Since Reverdin's experi-
ments, some surgeons have attempted to transfer the whole
complete skin, instead of the epidermis. Oilier has tried
to graft large cutaneous strips, comprising the whole
thickness of the skin. The chances of success by this pro-
cess seem to be much slighter, and nothing as yet encour-
ages us to regard cutaneous grafting, properly so called, as
a fortunate operation.

III.

These grafts, in which we see an organized portion,
severed for a time from the individual whole to which it
belongs, retain the springs of life and regain its functions
when it is transplanted to another individual even of a dif-
ferent species ; these regenerations, in which we see de-
stroyed organs grow again with their original forms and
their properties, living fragments reproducing a whole com-
plete being — are facts of a kind to yield us, if suitably ex-
amined, valuable knowledge as to the essence of vitality it-
self. They prove that it does not depend on an indivisible
spirit animating the body (mens agitat molem), but on an
activity distributed among the minute particles that make
it up, consubstantial with these particles, and as variable
in its characteristics as they themselves are in their struct-
ure ; in other words, the total life of the individual is but
the sum, the resultant, of the lives peculiar to each anatom-
ical element, the harmonious union of the simultaneous
working of myriads of monads — the monads of Leibnitz —
gifted with life in different degrees, from the bony cell, al-
most inert and mineral, to the nerve-cell in which a strong
and fine fire burns unceasingly.

Every one of these living corpuscles is a complete whole.

ANIMAL GRAFTS AND REGENERATIONS. 249

having at bottom the same forces, the same tendencies, the
same aspirations as the more or less complex systems to
which it gives birth by a thousand associations and vari-
ous interweavings. "Nature's machines," says Leibnitz,
" are machines throughout, however small the part in them
one may take ; or, rather, the least part is in its turn an infi-
nite world, and one even that expresses, after its fashion, all
that there is in the rest of the universe. This surpasses
our conception, yet we know that it must be so, and all
that infinitely infinite variety is established in all its parts
by a sublime constructive wisdom more than infinite." 1

But what is in itself the vital force peculiar to these tiny
machines, the force that we observe maintaining itself in
the several parts of the organism, and restoring the voids
produced in the tissues ? what is the fundamental character,
the mark of life ? It is nutrition, that is to say, the fact, as
plain as it is inexplicable, of the continuous molecular re-
newal of organized substance. It is in the understanding
of the phenomena of nutrition, the " trophic " phenomena,
that the whole future of biology lies. We shall never grasp
the secret of the deepest and most essential vital actions,
until we shall comprehend the equations of the statics and
dynamics of those fleeting systems, restlessly passing
through cycles of change, which compose the anatomical
elements.

Whatever future the knowledge of trophic phenomena
will bring with it, the conception of life won for us by nat-
ural philosophy opens from this time forward a new path
for investigations. It suggests the thought of examining
into the variations of physiological determinism, that is, of*
studying the boundaries within which life moves, or, in other
words, the profound modifications of which organisms are
susceptible, whether from the point of view of the specific

1 "Letter to Bossuet," Unedited Works, published by Foucher de
Careil, vol. i., p. 276.

250 NATURE AND LIFE.

type, or from that of their internal modes of action. The
plan of such an undertaking is the boldest of all those that
imagination and human knowledge dream of, in the region
of scientific activity. Yet Claude Bernard, whom no one
suspects of unfaithfulness to the method of experiment,
does not hesitate to regard it as allowable. He is convinced
that, by acting on the phenomena of evolution, we might be
able to alter the configuration and to transform the arrange-
ments of the organs. " Observation tells us," he says, " that
by cosmic influences, and especially by means that modify
nutrition, we act upon organisms in various ways, and we
create individual varieties possessing special properties, and
making, in some sort, new beings. . . . There is no reason
why these modifying agencies, working on the living organ-
ism under certain conditions, may not produce changes such
as would create new species : for we must conceive of spe-
cies as being in themselves the result of persistence for an
indefinite time in their same conditions of being and of nu-
trition, in consequence of an earlier organic tendency which
was communicated to them by their ancestors. By modify-
ing the internal media of nutrition and evolution, by taking
hold of organized matter in some sort at its springing state,
we may hope to change its course of evolution, and conse-
quently its final organic expression." 1

These remarks of the famous physiologist, to which, per-
haps enough attention has not been given, are, however, in
the highest degree worthy of attracting notice from those
savants engaged in the problem of the transformation of
species. Certainly Darwinism is something more than a
bold hypothesis. The partisans of his teaching assert that
living species have been in former times transformed, but
thus far they have produced no instance of such a transfor-
mation taking place in the past, and the doubt is allowable
whether they will ever be able to give retrospective proofs

1 " Report on the Progress of Physiology," pp. 3 and 113.

ANIMAL GRAFTS AND REGENERATIONS. 251

of it. The fact is, that species heretofore have been sub-
jected only to the action of Nature's spontaneous influences5
and of the arts of zootechny ; but that which forces of this
kind were powerless to effect yesterday might very well be
accomplished to-morrow by the powers which the physiolo-
gist now has at his disposal. By directing action to the
eggs, as Claude Bernard suggests, that is, to the living
germs, we gain a far more powerful and solid grasp on the
remote plans of life. The embryo, that faint and indefinite
sketch of the future being, that microcosm in which the
silent forces of vitality slowly possess themselves of a soft
pulp, sensitive to the slightest disturbances, is not forced
to unfold itself in accordance with any unbending law :
Robin has demonstrated this.1 It might then be possible
to occasion, in the embryo of an animal, modifications com-
patible with life, to maintain these in the animal once formed,
to repeat and multiply them gradually upon the products
of following generations, so as to fix them definitely by
means of heredity. Some experiments made in this direc-
tion, among others those of Dareste, Brown - S6quard,
Tr£cul, etc., are highly promising; but the subject, we
easily see, requires the diligent cooperative labor of many
lives of men. It is in this way that the philosopher will be
able to disturb the mechanism of things, and invert the
course of natural transmutations. He will impose his own
will on the forces of the universe. Whenever he is shat-
tered by them, they know nothing of it ; when he subdues
them, it is with absolute knowledge of what he is doing.

These corpuscles themselves, these ultimate monads in
which life dwells, may we not regard them in their turn as
being susceptible to the action of inward modifications, and
capable of displaying new properties ? It is very interest-
ing to remark that the same anatomical element shows

1 See his remarkable work on the "Appropriation of Organic Parts,"
1869.

252 NATURE AND LIFE.

the same composition in all living species, at the lowest
degrees as well as at the heights of the zoological scale ;
that is to say, that living molecules, whatever be the varie-
ty of the different systems they form by association, are
at bottom always the same. On what do this unity and
constancy of composition in the elements out of which or-
ganic tissues are woven, depend ? On the fact that they
all live in the same medium, and all positively absorb ex-
actly the same nutritive materials. We might believe
that the organization exerts an act of choice among the
mass of the bodies that surround it, that it has a particular
affinity for certain principles, and a repugnance to assimilat-
ing others. Very certainly, some substances, a very small
number of them, are absolutely incompatible with life, at
least such as we conceive it ; but this does not prove that
organisms are endowed with the power to exert distinct
selection among the" total chemical ingredients of the air,
earth, and water. The first germs, and the animals *born
of them, took naturally and spontaneously what they found
around them, and grew by degrees accustomed to it. The
clay out of which a mysterious hand has fashioned them is
a complicated combination of every thing that exists in the
medium in which they float. That which was chance in
their original constitution became the law of their ultimate
constitution. Those immediate principles, thus more or less
readily assimilated during the rudimentary periods, became
adapted, under the sway of heredity, to conditions most
favorable to life ; harmony gradually arose between matter
and form ; and the nature of the functions followed upon
that of the organs. At least nothing authorizes us to as-
sert the contrary, and every thing leads to the belief that,
if the materials of the earthly medium had been otherwise
proportioned, the composition of living organs would not
be the same that we know. We thus see that the ques-
tion is no other than a completely rational one, whether we

ANIMAL GRAFTS AND REGENERATIONS. 253

might not undertake to modify directly the existing com-
position of anatomical elements.

This latter conception, which sets the bounds of physi-
ological determinism at a far greater distance than the
former does, is also capable of verification by experiments.
Just as we act upon phenomena of evolution, we may, by
processes of methodical and persistent boldness, disturb
the order of the operations of nutrition. The method we
have followed in our own researches on this subject con-
sists in suppressing certain essential principles of nutrition,
and substituting for them new immediate principles, more
or less similar. But the immediate principles that are nu-
tritious are found mingled with the substances of food in
the conditions most favorable to assimilation. The mineral
salts in them are intimately combined with azote matters.
In order, then, to replace these mineral salts of common
food with others, phosphate of lime, for instance, with phos-
phates of a different kind, it is necessary not merely to dis-
engage the food as much as possible from the salts that we
wish to reject, but also to associate with it in the closest
manner the new salts which we intend to fix in the system ;
that is to say, we must introduce them into it under the
form fittest for assimilation, and most capable of overcom
ing the natural resistance of the organism. It is also clear
that it is best to experiment on young animals, in which
the action of assimilation is most intense. Under such
conditions, and by such processes, we reach the end of
modifying the order and kind of the immediate principles
in organized substance. Personal experiments permit us
at least to assert this, as far as it regards the bony tissue,
and thus far we have seen nothing that compels us to doubt
our power of producing at length, by gradual transforma-
tions, following upon certain contrivances of nutrition, or-
ganisms of a new and harmonious equilibrium, from the
point of view of the system of immediate principles. In

254 NATURE AND LIFE.

any case, investigations of this kind have a very great in-
terest. They give us the means of determining the rela-
tions between the molecular weights of immediate princi-
ples, and their nutritive coefficients. On the other hand,
by introducing at a given time a certain assimilable prin-
ciple into the organism, and marking the time that elapses
between the moment of its entrance and that of its issue,
we have a process for measuring the speed of nutritive
movement.1

We do not dwell any longer on these experiments. It
is enough for us to have traced succinctly their general
direction in agreement with the movement going on in the
rest of physiology. No doubt, such labors are tedious and
difficult. Besides knowledge and patience, we need, to
attack them, faith and imagination ; but the labors of the
present can only be fruitful on the condition of a clear vi-
sion of ideal truth, that glorious star in which the philoso-
pher deserving that name will never cease with passionate
striving to read the destinies of the spirit.

1 See two memoirs published by me on this subject (" Comptes ren-
dus of the Academy of Sciences," 1870, vol. Ixxi., p. 372, and 1873, vol.
Ixxvi., p. 352).

FERMENTS, FERMENTATIONS, AND LIFE.

UNTIL very lately, all fermentations were supposed to
be produced by the spontaneous decomposition of organic
matter within a fermentable liquid. It was said that on
contact with air this organic matter undergoes a special
change which gives it the character of leaven, and this was
regarded as an agent having the power of spreading decom-
posing movement. It is true, brewer's yeast had long been
well known ; the facts of its cellular composition and its
organization were familiar ; but no relation was recognized
between this organized condition and those phenomena of
fermentation produced by yeast in saccharine liquids, such
as grape-juice or the wort of ale. In the first few years of
this century Turpin, and afterward Cagniard-Latour, at-
tempted in vain to prove that such a relation existed ; it
was always denied that any thing else could be observed
in alcoholic fermentation than an operation resembling all
those slow decompositions that were classed among fer-
mentations. We have admitted, in our time, that alcoholic
fermentation, instead of being an exception, is on the con-
trary the very type of the phenomena we are treating of ;
that the yeast-cells, far from being unimportant, take an
essential part in it, and that in all fermentations whatever
there occur low organizations, microscopic corpuscles, more
or less analogous to those of yeast. At least this is the
first result of investigations carried on in the past fifteen

256 NATURE AND LIFE.

years by several men of science, among whom in the first
rank Pasteur is to be cited.

Pasteur began the course of his labors in 1858, by the
study of alcoholic fermentation. He placed it beyond a
doubt that, in the case of grape-juice or beer-wort, as in
that of any other saccharine liquid exposed to the air, the
more or less rapid production of alcohol is always con-
nected with the production of a microscopic fungus, consist-
ing of rounded globules, a few thousandths of a millimetre
in diameter. These globules, known under the name of
brewer's yeast, multiply in the fermenting liquid at the
expense of the organic matters it contains, and, by the ex-
changes of growth they give rise to, produce decomposi-
tion of the sugar into alcohol and carbonic, succinic, and
glyceric acids. These are the four invariable products of
alcoholic fermentation. Sugar is the food of the yeast-fun-
gus; these products are its excretions. The laws of the
inner mechanism that elaborates them are yet unknown.
But every thing leads us to believe that the yeast-cells
secrete a substance more or less resembling those that
work out the phenomena of digestion in the higher animals.
Alcoholic fermentation would thus be a kind of digestion of
sugar within the globule.

Dumas, who signalized his entrance upon the career of
studies in natural science half a century ago, by memo-
rable discoveries in microscopic physiology, has lately re-
turned to researches of the same kind, precisely, in respect
to fermentations. In Pasteur's laboratory at the Normal
School he has taken up investigations on this subject, the
results of which, quite lately published, show that the dis-
tinguished savant in question has lost neither his cautious
diligence in experimental processes, nor his lucid concep-
tion in the* grasp of principles. He has attempted, among
other things, to determine the decomposing force, the
amount of activity, possessed by eacli cell of the alcoholic

FERMENTS, FERMENTATIONS, AND LIFE. 257

ferment. To ascertain this, he measured the quantity of
sugar decomposed in a given time by a fixed weight of yeast,
and he found — after first establishing that a cubic mil-
limetre of yeast contains about 2,772,000 cells — that the
power of a million of cells represents the force capable of
decomposing four grains of sugar in an hour. If we at-
tempted according to this estimate to express in figures the
number of cells employed in producing the wine, beer, and
cider, consumed every year, as Dumas says, even astrono-
mers would shrink from the task.

This active property of decomposing sugar, and forming
alcohol in consequence, does not belong to the cells of
brewer's yeast exclusively. Several chemical agents possess
the same power, and certain vegetable cells also are adapted
to use it. When fruits are placed in a medium filled with
oxygen, they absorb this gas, and occasion the release of
carbonic acid ; if, on the contrary, they are left in carbonic
acid or any other inert gas, they effect the production of
alcohol. The fruits remain firm and hard, without suffer-
ing any external change, but the sugar they contain is
transformed in part into alcohol. How is this phenomenon
to be explained ? In common air, the cell of the fruit is fed
by oxygen ; if this gas is withheld, it is forced to borrow the
materials of nutrition from the fluids that moisten it, that
is, from the saccharine juice, and then the latter is decom-
posed. Pasteur has noted that a similar alcoholic fermen-
tation takes place in other vegetable organs, in leaves, for
instance, and in every case he has proved that the phenom-
enon is due to the cells of the vegetables alone, and not
to yeast-globules. Far from throwing any doubt on the
physiological doctrine of fermentation, these singular facts
agree in lending it support, by giving it deeper and more
general application.

We have seen that the fermentation of sugar yields
alcohol. The latter, brought in contact with certain porous
12

258 NATURE AND LIFE.

substances, as, for instance, platinum sponge, can absorb
the oxygen of the air and transform itself, by oxidation,
into acetic acid. A phenomenon of this kind occurs in
wine when it sours, the alcohol contained in it being
changed into acetic acid ; only, the agent in the trans-
formation is in this case a microscopic plant, made up of
little elongated globules, some thousandths of a millimetre
in diameter. These globules, these mycoderms, develop on
the surface of wine exposed to the air, and form a scum
which plays the part of storing away a certain stock of
oxygen, afterward used to produce acetification in the
liquid. This scum, which is called mother of vinegar, only
acts while in communication with the air. As soon as it is
below the surface, it loses its efficacy, and the production
of acetic acid is checked. Thus the development of vine-
gar in the acetic fermentation is reduced to an oxidation
of alcohol, in which microscopic cells are the vehicles of the
oxygen.

When milk turns and sours, that phenomenon also is
due to the formation of an acid — lactic acid. This sub-
stance proceeds from the decomposition of sugar contained
in the milk, and this decomposition, again, is a fermenta-
tion. The microscopic being that effects it assumes several
forms ; sometimes it is made up of cells presenting much
resemblance to the cells of yeast, sometimes it consists of
straight and exceedingly fine rods. Milk also contains
casein, which is the substance that composes cheese, and,
when the fermentation of the sugar in milk is over, that of
the casein begins ; after lactic acid, butyric acid is produced.
Examining with a microscope the casein transforming into
butyric acid, we observe in it little rods, two thousandths
of a millimetre in diameter, and of a length from two
to five times as great ; this is the butyric ferment, which,
concurrently with other microscopic vegetable growths,
determines in various cheeses the slow production of

FERMENTS, FERMENTATIONS, AND LIFE. 359

butyric acid and several analogous acids, equally strong
in smell. To cite a last illustration, the decomposition
of urine, giving rise to an abundant release of ammoniacal
gases, is also the result of a fermentation ; under the action
of cells smaller than those of brewer's yeast, the contained
urea changes to carbonate of ammonia, rendering the liquid
highly alkaline and strongly odorous. In short, the fermen-
tations we have just described, and many others of the
same kind, participate in the nutrition and development of
microscopic beings, of an average size not exceeding some
thousandths of a millimetre, and presenting the form some-
times of spheroidal or of egg-shaped globules (as myco-
derms, torulaceas), sometimes of straight, bent, or curving
rods (as vibrios and bacteria). These diminutive beings
engender the ferment within the fermenting liquid itself, in
the degree and rate of their propagation in it.

There is another class of fermentations in which the im-
mediate presence of definitely-shaped corpuscles cannot be
traced. Thus diastasic fermentation consists in the trans-
formation of starch into sugar under the action of a form-
less yellowish matter, called " diastase." Amygdalic fer-
mentation is that in which amygdaline becomes the essence
of bitter-almonds, by the action of a like ferment, known
as " synaptase." The former takes place in the vegetable
embryo when the amylaceous matter of the seed is con-
verted into a soluble sugar, which permeates the growing
tissues of the plant. The latter occurs when bitter-almonds
are crushed in water ; on contact with the liquid, the mixt-
ure of these odorless kernels takes the characteristic smell
of the essence of bitter-almonds, which results from the
fermentation of amygdaline. We regard as fermentations,
moreover, a certain number of similar phenomena which can
be produced with the implements of a laboratory, and which
are constantly taking place in living organisms, of which the
cause is a zymotic substance. There exists, for instance, in

260 NATURE AND LIFE.

the saliva a principle called ptyaline, which, like diastase,
converts amylaceous matter into sugar. The gastric juice
contains another principle, pepsin, which has the effect of
liquefying albuminous substances, so that they may be pre-
pared for absorption. The pancreatic fluid contains another
principle which acts in a similar way. Digestion is thus re-
duced to a series of fermentations, as the ancient chemists
had rightly conjectured in regard to it. These different
phenomena, as well as those in which organisms take part,
have the two general characteristics of fermentation ; they
occur only within certain limits of temperature, and the
weight of the fermentable matter is always much greater
than that of the ferment which suffices to decompose it.

To conclude, fermentations occasioned in certain media,
by the act of development and nutrition of ascertained
microscopic animal or vegetable existences, present a group
of well-defined characteristics. They follow obediently all
the variations that may occur in the physiological activity
of the microscopic beings contained in the liquid. This
does not go into fermentation all at once ; it delays more
or less, and molecular movement makes itself perceptible
in it by degrees. The phenomenon is one of evolvement.
This appears to be the characteristic of alcoholic, lactic,
acetic, butyric, glyceric, and putrid fermentations — all of
those, in short, which Pasteur has studied with so convin-
cing accuracy. Is it the same with the conversion of amyla-
ceous substances into sugar, under the influence of diastase
or ptyaline, with the dissolving of proteic substances by
pepsin, with the change of amygdaline into the essence of
bitter-almonds, by contact with synaptase? Evidently
not. These phenomena present another aspect ; they show
no stages of evolvement. Doubtless they require a certain
time for their completion ; but they take place all at once,
and without any relation to the surrounding air.

These differences between the two kinds of fermenta-

FERMENTS, FERMENTATIONS, AND LIFE. 261

tion clearly depend on this : that, in the former, the phe-
nomenon is subjected to the conditions and vital progress
of those organized corpuscles which elaborate the ferment
within the substance of the fermentable liquids, while, in
the latter, the phenomenon is brought about by a ferment
already formed and prepared. But this latter ferment is no
less of organic origin ; it, too, arises from living beings,
animal or vegetable. Whether it emanates, like diastase,
from the young cells of the seed, or results, like pepsin,
from work done in the digestive apparatus, it is the labor
of life, just as much as if it had been completed by globules
of yeast or bundles of bacteria. Thus the efficient sources
of all fermentations are the same. All ferments are at bot-
tom alike, whether procured "directly for the fermentable
liquid by microscopic bodies inhabiting it, or emanating
from corpuscles that inhabit elsewhere. The true doctrine
of fermentations consists in this point.

Henceforth, then, we may consider ferments as products
of a fecundation taking place in cells, as secretions elabo-
rated by those myriads of infinitely little corpuscles, seme
crowded, squeezed, condensed, into the palpable organs of
animals and plants — others free and moving, disseminated,
as we shall see, into vast, intangible space. The energy
which distinguishes these microscopic animal and vegeta-
ble growths also belongs to the microscopic elements mak-
ing up the living tissues in the higher animals. We must
give to this property, hitherto considered as special, the
high dignity of a fundamental and universal attribute of
organized cells. We must detect, in the most complex
conversions and processes of nutrition in superior beings,
the same untiring and primitive force that marks the sub-
tile action of invisible and insignificant monads.

No doubt, the corpuscles of different species — to which,
in the last analysis, we reduce animals and plants of every
kind and degree — are not identical. Each species has its

262 NATURE AND LIFE.

own structure, its specific energy, its mode of nutrition, its
fixed secretions — characteristics, moreover, which vary with
circumstances and media. Yet we can point out more than
one interesting similarity between certain ones of these
species, which seem to discharge quite distinct functions,
and hold very unlike stations, in the vast harmony of vital
monads. The cells of fruits, when placed in certain condi-
tions, behave, as has been seen, like the cells of brewer's
yeast ; they both decompose sugar and yield alcohol. We
may trace resemblances not less close, as Blondeau and
Pasteur have done, between acetic mycoderms and blood-
globules. Both alike serve as carriers of oxygen — the first
for the slow combustion of alcohol ; the last, for the slow
combustion of the albuminoid matters in animal tissues.
It is even likely that there is a principle in mycoderms
similar to hemoglobine in the blood-globule, and provided
with a special affinity for oxygen. However this may be,
comparisons of this kind open a new path for physiology.
As that science is definitely summed up in the explanation
of existences and processes in the microscopic elements of
organs, it is plain that nothing can be more useful to it
than the study of these one-celled organisms in which the
phenomena are extremely simple, and life is reduced, in a
manner, to its primitive factors. It becomes more and
more evident that progress in the comprehension of the
superior animals is bound, with the very closest ties, to ad-
vance in the comprehension of the mechanism of nutrition
in the rudimentary units of life, in the smallest beings that
it is given us to study,

n.

Now, whence come those organized microscopic corpus-
cles to which, as we have seen, very many of the alterations
of organic matter must be attributed ? Upon this great
problem, opinions at this day are still very contradictory.

FERMENTS, FERMENTATIONS, AND LIFE. £63

Neither patient observations, nor minute experiments, nor
profound reasonings, have been wanting ; yet some still be-
lieve that these little bodies grow, by spontaneous genera-
tion, within fermentable liquids, while others assert, and
profess to have proved, that they come from germs con-
tained in the air. Certainly, the former opinion involves
nothing contradictory nor impossible. Those who reject
it by begging the question, in the name of some unknown,
mystical doctrine of life, do not even deserve to be listened
to in the investigation. It might possibly have occurred
that organized beings should be produced, complete at all
points, in a medium deprived of organization ; yet experi-
ment proves that this does not occur. We must, then, ac-
cept the other opinion — the panspermist doctrine — that is to
say, we must concede that the germs of microscopic animals
and vegetables, with which so many fermentations and
putrefactions are connected, exist in the air. This is one
of the conclusions, and perhaps the most legitimate and
most fertile one, of Pasteur's striking studies.

He deserves the glory of it precisely because he has not
priority in it. In truth, the originator of this idea only
had, and could only have, a dim intuition of it. He could
measure neither its importance nor its consequences. The
importance and the results of a great idea, whatever it may
be, only become apparent when, after undergoing a cer-
tain evolution, it has gained the precision, certitude, and
establishment, that nothing but long experience can confer
upon it. A conception must have acquired some age in
science to wear a fixed authority, and bestow fame on those
who comprehend, and cause to be comprehended, all its
grandeur and power. The circulation of the blood had
long been seen by glimpses, in the schools of physiology,
when Harvey gave it complete and vigorous demonstration.
Gravitation had long invited research, and suggested pre-
sentiment, before Newton drew its perfect system. So,

264 NATURE AND LIFE.

too, the panspermist theory, neglected and ignored since
the time of its earliest authors — among whom Astier, in
1813, deserves particular mention — has only been definitely
established in our time, through the experiments made by
Pasteur. That famous chemist has improved a vague
sketch into a finished and masterly drawing. These experi-
ments, repeated and varied in a thousand ways, all refer to
the investigation, by comparison, of what takes place in the
same fermentable liquid, under the different conditions of
exposure to common air, filled with dust, and of con-
tact with purified air. For instance, Pasteur puts a cer-
tain quantity of a liquid, that readily undergoes change,
into glass balls through which a current of air may be
made to pass. Fermentation and the development of small
organisms take place very soon in the balls through which
common air circulates ; but, if the air, before entering them,
passes through a plug of cotton, no change in the liquid is
observed. When the volume of air, thus filtered through
cotton, is considerable, the plug is so filled with dust as
to turn black. Now, this dust, in addition to a quantity
of mineral particles, and fluff of many kinds, contains spores
and germs of fermenting substance, as is proved by the
fact that the smallest quantity of it, sprinkled in pure liquid,
will produce fermentation in it. An experiment of another
kind is this : Pasteur, by an ingenious arrangement, inserts
and withdraws from a glass jar, filled with pure air, the
juice from the inside of a single grape, so that, during the
experiment, the juice communicates neither with the surface
of the grape nor with the atmospheric air. The juice,
thus obtained, shows no trace of fermentation, remaining
unchanged as long as the jar is closed ; but if it is opened,
or if its contents are mixed with a few drops of water in
which the surface of the grape has been washed, fermenta-
tion is set up in it at once. This is because the outside of
grapes is always covered with yeast-germs, even when the

FERMENTS, FERMENTATIONS, AND LIFE. 265

bunches have been subjected to constant rains. In this
case, plainly, fermentation is due to the germs suspended
in the air, or deposited on the surface of the grapes and
stems. Pasteur draws blood from an animal's veins by a
similar process, and introduces it into a glass vessel in con-
tact with pure air. The blood continues fresh for years.
Pasteur asserts and proves by experiment that grape-juice,
milk, blood, and all liquids that most readily undergo change
in ordinary conditions, are incapable of fermentation in air
which is pure, that is to say, deprived of the corpuscles it
contained. They remain, when so placed, for an indefinite
time, in a singularly sound state.

Pasteur had made still another set of experiments. He
had obtained development of fermentation in liquids freed
from albuminoid substances. It was supposed, before his
researches, that the cells remarked in the fermentation of
grape-juice proceed from the conversion of the albuminoid
substances which this fluid contains in its natural state.
Pasteur prepares a solution of sugar, tartrate of ammonia,
and some other salts, and sprinkles a few yeast-globules in
it. They swell, develop, and propagate in this artificial
medium quite as well as in the grape-juice. So it was sup-
posed that in the acid fermentation of milk the ferment is a
product of the conversion of casein. Pasteur proves that
supposition to be unfounded, by artificially producing the
lactic ferment in a compounded liquid containing not a
trace of casein. These very delicate experiments have not
only increased the vogue of the panspermic theory, but
they have been of great value also to vegetable physiology.
' Many objections have been raised to these theories on
the origin of ferments, to which Pasteur has almost always
replied by unquestionable facts and solid reasonings, though
he has sometimes done himself the injustice to be rough
and contemptuous in discussion toward his opponents.
Truth is strong enough to indulge charity for error. The

NATURE AND LIFE.

gravest of these objections, it must be said, have applied
to problems which do not concern the very foundation of
the dispute between the panspermic system and its op-
posite. For instance, Tr^cul, the skillful and noted microg-
rapher, BSchamp, and others, have proved that Pasteur
mistakes with regard to the evolutions and transformations
undergone by microscopic beings in fermenting media.
Pasteur has certainly made more than one mistake on this
subject, and there probably does exist between certain fer-
ment-corpuscles a closer relationship than is supposed at
the laboratory of the Normal School ; but that does not in
the least alter the fundamental character of the theory.
Attention is also called to the fact that corpuscles with a
determinate structure can be produced complete, without,
germs, in some liquids. No doubt, this is true, but only
on condition that the liquids are living ones. No doubt, the
cambium of vegetables, the blastema of animals, and gen-
erally all protoplasmic fluids, are fertile hatching-fields for
the spontaneous development of the cells and fibres of living
tissues. It is thus that the first elements of the embryo
show themselves in the animal ovule. And in this respect
the labors of Robin, Tre'cul, Onimus, Legros, and a great
number of other observers, are decisive ; but life is the
property of these protoplasms ; they depend upon an or-
ganized system. In the depths of the organism, and
shielded from the air, they toil at the creation of micro-
scopic corpuscles. Place them in contact with purified air,
in Pasteur's glass globes, and then they would be barren.

The last objection Pasteur has to meet is, that, if the
germs of all these microscopic* vegetable and animal lives
are in the atmosphere, they should be discovered and rec-
ognized there. But, in examining the dust of the air
microscopically, we do not by any means detect all the rudi-
ments of that infinitely minute flora and fauna whose exist-
ence is attested by the fermentation and putrefactions of

FERMENTS, FERMENTATIONS, AND LIFE. 267

organic matter. Pasteur has thus far met this argument
only by the evidence of his experiments which prove that,
in contact with purified air, neither fermentations nor putre-
factions are possible. That is strictly sufficient, but we can
go further. It is by no means a sure conclusion that these
germs do not exist, because many of them are invisible
under the lens. To begin with, we do note with certainty
a certain number of species in atmospheric dust. It is
therefore an admissible presumption that, if the remaining
ones elude our eyes and our microscopes, that merely proves
them to be smaller than the observed ones. But, perhaps,
the problem ought to be viewed in a different way. We
believe that these visible germs are the exceptions, that is,
that they are beings already arrived at a certain degree of
development, and that, in reality, all true germs are of
dimensions forever beyond the reach of microscopic obser-
vation, even conceiving lenses to be immensely more pow-
erful than they now are. The microscope barely brings
within our range of vision points that measure at least a
ten thousandth part of a milli metre. The primitive germs
of life cannot even approach the hundred thousandth part
of a millimetre. Physics and metaphysics both assure us
that we must here give up the hope of measuring and
estimating things according to the powers of our limited
senses. An effort is needed to pursue with the mind's eye
these perpetually-dwindling dimensions, still to go on
though the imagination fails in the task, and to realize at
last how far removed are the bounds of the microcosm. If
the faculty of reaching out beyond the limits of our nature>
which is one of the noblest prerogatives of our intelligence,
does not desert us, we attain to the idea of the vital monads
of Leibnitz, the organic molecules of Buffon, the compre-
hension of existence for primal organisms diffused through-
out the world by myriads of myriads, and the conception
of the infinitely minute within the infinitely minute.

268 NATURE AND LIFE.

Thus, just as the infinite universe through which the
spheres roll is filled with invisible particles of a subtile mat-
ter to which physicists and astronomers give the name of
ether, and which supplies the only key to cosmic phenom-
ena, the* finite universe in which organization unfolds it-
self is thronged with corpuscles no less invisible, forming
what the illustrious Ehrenberg calls the milky-way of lower
organisms, and no less essential for the explanation of the
processes of which we have traced the general course. As
there is an ether wanting in life, so there is an ether en-
dowed with life — a vital ether. Both are above denial;
they surpass our reason, yet reason cannot but demand
them. They elude the close grasp of experiment, yet ex-
periment does not permit them to be avoided ; they are
unseen, and without them there could be nothing seen.
The mind clings to them with the stress of all its power
to embrace, perhaps because it feels a secret, mysterious
affinity with them, perhaps because it is in substance of the
same essence with them.

III.

Our atmosphere, then, is the receptacle for myriads of
germs of microscopic beings, which play an important part
in the organized world. Penetrating agents of decay,
baneful toilers for disease, they lie ever in wait for the
chance to pierce the internal machinery of animals and
plants, and create slight or grave disturbances within it.
Life often resists or escapes them, but nothing can contest
with them its deserted vesture. The corpse is their natural
aliment, and death their chosen laboratory. There these
lowest of created things work out their lofty destiny in the
eternal drama of renewal of organic existences.

When the thin pellicle covering sweet fruits is torn at
any point, an opening is made for atmospheric germs. Fer-
menting cells pierce the interior of the fruit, and produce

FERMENTS, FERMENTATIONS, AND LIFE. 269

within it fermentation of the sugar, that is to say, the
formation of a little alcohol ; and this in its turn is sus-
ceptible of the passage into acetic fermentation, giving the
pulp an acid taste. At last the pulp itself is destroyed by
various fungous growths. When a fruit decays and takes
a more or less unpleasant flavor, this depends on the in-
tervention of ferment-cells of atmospheric origin, and on
the production of acid or alcoholic substances. An able
micrographist, Engel, who has lately studied these phe-
nomena minutely, discovers that the yeast-cells which thus
produce alcoholic fermentation in the juices of fruits present
some slight differences in various fruits, neither do they
have the same morphological character as those of grape-
must or beer-wort. Varieties occur in these cases, corre-
sponding to the different media in which the nutrition of
the little fungus takes place.

The microscopic fungi of the atmosphere play as in-
teresting a part in the alteration of wines. These grow
acid, change, become filmy or oily, or take on besides a
decided bitterness. All these sicknesses depend on the
development of different little plants recognized and de-
scribed by Pasteur ; and this scientist, not stopping at the
solution of the nature of these disorders, has sought the
means of preventing them. Resting on some former ob-
servations by D'Appert, he conceived the idea of subject-
ing wines to the action of a very high degree of heat, so as
to destroy the yeast-germs. There was no possibility of
doubt as to the destruction of these germs and the preven-
tion of any further change, but it might well be asked wheth-
er the delicacy and bouquet of certain wines would not
be endangered by the effects of heating. Long-continued
experiments prove not only that heating is an excellent
method of preventing sickness in wines, but also that, in-
stead of impairing their exquisite qualities, it ripens and
strengthens them. The recorded minutes of tastings of-

270 NATURE AND LIFE.

ficially performed during the past year by several members
of the syndical wine commission, at the suggestion of Pas-
teur, contain decisive testimony on this point. Fine Bur-
gundy wines, heated in bottle seven years ago to temper-
atures varying between 131° and 149°, appeared, at the
end of that time, superior to the same wines not so treated.
Persons who spoke with some authority, Pasteur says, de-
clared that heating would in time deprive the wine of its
color. The contrary is the case, when the air is excluded
during the process; the color grows livelier by heating.
It was said that heating would in time alter the bouquet of
fine wines, giving them dryness and too great age. On
the contrary, the bouquet seems to be heightened with the
lapse of time, more positively than with wines not heated.
In the case of chambertin and volnay, particularly, the
tasters noticed this fact. Pasteur was led t>y these studies
to investigate the cause of the aging of wines, and he dis-
covered that the phenomenon was due to slow oxidation.
Wine kept in glass tubes completely filled and closely
sealed does not age. By increasing and regulating the
aeration of wine, and particularly combining it with heat-
ing, he succeeded in manufacturing in one month excellent
old wine. In short, oxygen and heat, acting on wine in
certain proportions, promote instead of hindering the devel-
opment of those volatile principles to which the liquid owes
its perfume and part of its flavor ; but this discovery is addi-
tional to those he was in search of. What Pasteur did chief-
ly look for and did find, in giving exact and methodical rules
for heating wines, is a process, applicable on a great scale,
for preventing the diseases from which the common vineyard
products so often suffer, and that fortunate application is a
result from his researches on fermentation generally. In
the same way, in consequence of the examinations he under-
took as to the share of microscopic organisms in the diseases
of silk-worms, he was led to prescribe a practical way of

FERMENTS, FERMENTATIONS, AND LIFE.

hindering the development of these organisms, and thus
preventing the malady.

When we inject into the subcutaneous cellular tissue of
a living animal a putrefied or septic liquid, that is, one
containing those thread-like corpuscles known by the name
of vibrios and bacteria, it sometimes happens that the ani-
mal experiences no inconvenience. Dogs particularly re-
sist with vigor the poisonous influence of such a fluid, but
the case is different with other species, and notably with
rabbits. The system becomes the seat of grave phenomena,
almost always mortal, of which the general group com-
poses the affection known by the term septicaemia. The
microscopic organisms in such a case poison the animal, not
only by the mere fact of their presence in the blood, but
besides and especially because they develop and propagate
in it with astonishing rapidity, in the same way that yeast
reproduces itself in barley-wort. But the most singular
thing in these pathological fermentations is the fact noted
some years ago for the first time by Coze and Feltz, and
the study of which Davaine took up last year. Davaine
demonstrates, by experiments made on rabbits and Guinea-
pigs, that one drop of blood, from an animal affected with
septicsemia, has the power of imparting the infection to
another animal inoculated with it, that a drop taken from
the second can transmit the disease to a third, and so on.
Still more, very wonderfully, the poisoning power of the
blood of these animals increases with the degree of advance
in the series of inoculations. The culture of the virus
heightens its maleficent properties. This gradual increase
of the virulent force is such that, if we take a drop of blood
from an animal representing the twenty-fifth term in a
series of successive inoculations, and so dilute this drop
with water that a drop of the dilution corresponds to one
trillionth of the original drop, we get a liquid of which the
smallest quantity still displays mortal activity. These ex-

272 NATURE AND LIFE.

periments of Davaine, which exhibit the degree of venom
as increasing in an inverse ratio to the apparent quantity
of the poison, have been repeated and confirmed by sev-
eral eminent physiologists, among others by Bouley, and
have produced a sensation which still continues in the
schools of physiology and medicine. Apart from the in-
herent difficulty of forming a notion as to the influence of
those infinitesimal doses, they seemed to yield an argument
of a kind to support the assertions of homoeopathy. If the
difficulty is real, though it may be got over, the argument,
we take leave to say, is worthless. Let us look at the diffi-
culty first. This drop which is still mortal, though rep-
resenting only an infinitely small fraction of the original
quantity of poisonous matter to which it is distantly re-
lated, permits no corpuscle to be detected. That is true,
yet it contains the germs of them, and germs such in number,
size, and reproductive power, that nothing prevents them
from breeding again indefinitely, in spite of all efforts tried
to get rid of them. The discussions that have just occurred
in the Academy of Medicine on this grave subject, almost
at the same time that the question of ferments was under
debate in the Academy of Sciences, leave no doubt as to
the reality of this progressive breeding of virulent germs
by culture. But is this any argument for the homceopa-
thists ? None whatever. They attribute curative effects to
extremely small doses of certain inorganic substances most
evidently inert, which can in no way reproduce themselves.
If the virulent elements occasion disturbances so profound in
animal organisms, it is not by reason of their extreme minute-
ness, but it is because they multiply with prodigious rapidity
in the depths of the tissues and humors, where they labor
in a manner opposed to the harmonious life of the body

However this may be, the vibrios and bacteria have an
undeniable share in the production of human maladies.
They are found in the blood of persons attacked by infec-

FERMENTS, FERMENTATIONS, AND LIFE. 273

tious disorders, and, if in many cases their relation to these
disorders is only that of concomitants, in others their
relation of causality is very clearly ascertained. Thus
Davaine's investigations prove that the maladies called
carbuncular, so formidable in men and animals, are due to
the excessive development of a species of bacteria in the
blood. Typhoid fever also seems to acknowledge a cause
of the same kind. Rabbits die from inoculation with blood
taken from men attacked by this disease. Our knowledge
upon this difficult subject, it must be owned, is very little
advanced, in spite of the ardent labors devoted to its ex-
tension in the past few years. The illusions of the mi-
croscope and the exaggerations of a spirit of routine too
often impair the value of studies undertaken in this direc-
tion. Without going so far as does the opinion of those who
attribute all these disorders to microscopic corpuscles, and
regard all morbid phenomena as fermentations, it may at
any rate be admitted that these corpuscles, diffused through-
out the air, take an important place among the eternal
enemies of health. At all times surgeons and physicians
have recognized the danger from penetration of common air
into the interior of the organism, by the way of wounds or
otherwise. We now understand the explanation of the
danger. It is not the gases of the air that are dangerous ;
but the proto-organisms contained in that fluid must be
charged with the fatal influence it exerts in traumatic cases,
and putrid infection has no other origin. Thus the anxiety
of practitioners now is to protect wounds from access by
the germs in the air, by means either of impermeable coat-
ing or of antiseptic dressings containing alcohol or phenic
acid, or by pneumatic closing up, or by nitration of the air
itself through cotton. Under the influence of ideas dis-
tinctly introduced into science by the researches we have
just reviewed, several practices in surgery have undergone
great modifications.

274 NATURE AND LIFE.

After examining the alterations produced in the living,
we have to consider those occasioned by fermentations in
the dead. When life has retreated by slow degrees from all
the parts of an organized being ; when, after all partial
deaths have occurred, total death has possessed the depths
of the subject, and broken all the springs of its activity, the
work of putrefaction begins. Its task is to unmake this
body, to destroy its forms, and dissever its materials. The
work to be done is to disorganize it, to reduce it into
solids, liquids, and gases, fit to go back again into the vast
reservoir whence new life is incessantly issuing. This is
the task that heat, moisture, air, and germs, will undertake
in unison. It is all performed with steady diligence. Na-
ture knows no delays ; as soon as the body is cold, the pro-
tecting coating that covers all its surface, the epithelium,
decays in places, particularly in the moister parts. The
agents of disorganization, vibrios and bacteria, or rather
the germs of these thread-like corpuscles, penetrate through
the skin, wind into the small ducts, invade the whole
blood, and by degrees all the organs. Soon they swarm
everywhere, almost as numerous as the chemical molecules
in the midst of which they stir and circle. The albuminoid
matters are decomposed into fetid gases, escaping into the
air. The fixed salts, alkaline and earthy-alkaline, slowly
release themselves from the organic matters with which
they combined to form the tissues. The fats oxidize, and
grow acrid ; the moisture dries away. Every thing volatile
vanishes, and, at the end of a certain time, nothing remains
save the skeleton, but a formless mingling of mineral prin-
ciples, a sort of humus, ready to manure the earth. Now,
all these complex operations absolutely required the in-
tervention of the infusoria of putrefaction. In pure air,
deprived of living germs, they could not have been accom-
plished. To check putrid fermentations, to insure the con-
servation of animal or vegetable substances in a state of

FERMENTS, FERMENTATIONS, AND LIFE. 275

perfect integrity, only one means avails, but that is an in-
fallible one — that of thoroughly precluding the access to
them of the aerial germs of vibrios and bacteria. Whether
we adopt D'Appert's method and begin by subjecting
these substances to the action of high temperature, pre-
serving them after that in hermetically-closed vessels ; or
whether, as we have seen very lately practised by Bous-
singault, we introduce them into an extremely cold medium ;
or whether we saturate them with such salts as have an-
tiseptic properties, in every case they are protected from
putrefaction by paralyzing the effects of the lower organ-
isms. The corruption of animals is not more possible than
the fermentation of grape-juice, barley-wort, milk etc.,
when it is made impossible for the germs to act. This is
another fact demonstrated by Pasteur.

We have just used the term antiseptic, that is, capa-
ble of destroying germs, and preventing the action of fer-
ments. The interest connected with such substances is
easily understood. In truth, they are at the present time
the chief objective point of therapeutic researches. At the
same time that chemists and physiologists are engaged
with persevering zeal in studying the functions of micro-
scopic corpuscles in living Nature, physicians, perceiving
their manifold and baneful activity in the production of
disease, are seeking the means of reaching and destroying
them. Every one knows those principles, like phenic acid,
which are extracted from pitch, and are also found in smoke,
to which they impart antiseptic properties that have been
utilized from time immemorial. Other substances have
been lately discovered, not less remarkable for their ener-
getic resistance to fermentation and virus. Among the
number are the alkaline sulphites and hyposulphites, which
have been the object of very interesting examination on
the part of an Italian physician, Polli; the borates and
silicates of potassa and soda, to which Dumas invited the

276 NATURE AND LIFE.

attention of physiologists a year ago ; the acetate of po-
tassa, and others. Hitherto the physiological virtues of
active principles have been studied only with respect to the
higher order of animals: Dumas pointed out the great
interest there would be in examining the influence they
exert over the lower organisms charged with the elabora-
tion of ferments, and over ferments themselves. Such re-
searches not only contribute to a better knowledge of the
mechanism itself according to which these principles affect
the system of vital phenomena, but they also gain the most
useful indications for the healing art. Indeed, beginning
with the moment at which Dumas and other chemists
made known the result of their examinations on this
subject, coincident also in time with the experiments of
Davaine on septicaemia, a vast number of attempts were
entered upon, in hospitals and in laboratories, to discover
to what extent these anti-fermenting substances hinder mor-
bid fermentations. These attempts are still proceeding;
we cannot foretell their success, but we are authorized
even now to say that they will not be barren of advantage
to the healing art. In this, as in all other departments of
scientific activity, we see abstract studies result in useful
discoveries.1

As a general statement of the subject, all this immense
work of fermentations, putrefactions, and corruptions of
organic matter, is effected in the world by a small number
of species of microscopic cells and filaments, by fungi and
spores of the lowest order, of which the germs fill our
atmosphere. This is one of the most certain acquisitions
of modern science, one of the most important from the
point of view of natural philosophy, one of the most pro-
ductive for those arts that are concerned in improving the

1 Since these lines were written, silicate of soda, experimented on by
Rabuteau and myself, has taken a fixed place in the treatment of several
purulent and putrid disorders.

FERMENTS, FERMENTATIONS, AND LIFE. 277

condition of mankind. We may now regard it as firmly
established; but let us not forget that its establishment
has cost two centuries of investigations and labors. Leeu-
wenhoek, in the middle of the seventeeth century, was the
first to reveal the microscopic world of the air, and to con-
jecture its momentous functions. What severe toil, what
struggles and tedious trials, since the observations of the
Dutch micrographer to the time of the experimental
studies of our contemporary and compatriot, Pasteur !

GREAT EPIDEMICS— ASIATIC CHOLERA.

ON Monday, the 26th of March, 1832, epidemic cholera
made its first appearance in Paris. Four persons, living in
different parts of the city, were attacked during the day,
and died in a few hours. On the 31st of March, thirty-five
sections of the capital were found to be invaded, and the
thirteen others the next day. The patients all presented
the same group of symptoms. Already noted by physi-
cians, who had studied the disease in neighboring countries,
these symptoms soon became as well known to the prac-
titioners of Paris and the rest of France as those of any
other malady.

How did the cholera get into France ? In the month
of August, 1817, it raged with uncommon violence at Jes-
sore, whence it soon spread over the whole province of
Bengal, from the mouth of the Ganges to its junction with
the Jumna. In 1819 it prevailed in the lower Indies, at
Sumatra, and the Isle of France ; in 1820 and 1821 it
seized upon the whole of China, the archipelago of the
Philippines, and Java. At the same time it crossed the
gulf of Oman, extended along the shores of the Persian
Gulf, and made its way into Persia. It ravaged the latter
country for a long time before it penetrated into Europe.
At last, in 1823, setting out from Recht, in the province of
Ghilan, it passed along the coast of the Caspian Sea, and
crossed the boundary of Russia. By the 22d of Septem-

GREAT EPIDEMICS— ASIATIC CHOLERA. 279

her of that year it had reached Astrakhan. It appeared
there, however, for a short time only ; but, in 1829, the chol-
era, which had raged without intermission in Northern Persia
and Afghanistan, was brought to Orenburg, then to Tiflis,
then to Astrakhan, and this time it prevailed over all Rus-
sia. By the 20th of September, 1830, it broke out at Mos-
cow, where it continued a year. The plague then spread
as far as Kiev, and throughout all the western provinces of
Russia up to the frontiers of Poland. The armies at that
time in the field in that country aided perceptibly in the
spread of the disease, and the transmission of the epidemic
by the movement of troops was distinctly observed there
for the first time. In May and June, 1831, Moldavia and
Galicia, and, in August, Prussia, were invaded ; then came
the turn of Hungary, Transylvania, and the Baltic coasts.
The 27th of January, in 1832, the cholera was announced
at Edinburgh, and on the 10th of February its presence
was made known in London. From the English coasts the
scourge threatened France and Holland. The 15th of
March, 1832, it appeared at Calais, and on the 26th of
March it was at Paris. The epidemic in the great city
lasted six months ; it gained its greatest intensity the 9th
of April, on which day there were eight hundred and
fourteen deaths, remained stationary for a few days, and
then began to decrease ; eighteen thousand four hundred
people were carried off, out of a population of nine hundred
and forty-five thousand inhabitants. From Paris the plague
had radiated in all directions, and reached the rest of
France by slow degrees. English emigrants had carried it
on the other hand to America, Portugal, and Spain. It
did not reach Italy before 1835. Switzerland and Greece
were spared. The first invasion, as we see, was very slow ;
it took twenty years to reach all the world. The latter
invasions will display more rapidity. Owing to the activ-
ity of transfers, the speed and frequency of communication,

280 NATURE AND LIFE.

the germs of the cholera will be found to circulate after
this with surprising celerity.

Between the years 1837 and 1847, Europe, freed from
the cholera, cared very little about it ; but physicians, who
followed with a watchful eye the movement of diseases on
the surface of the globe, still felt the fear of an earlier or
later return of the Asiatic scourge. An epidemic which
had ravaged the Burman Empire in 1842, and Afghanistan
and Tartary next, had reached Persia toward the end of
1845. Thence it took its course in two different directions,
from east to west by way of Bagdad and Mecca, and on the
north toward Tauris and the Caucasian provinces. In the
early part of 1847 the cholera broke out in the west of the
Caucasus among the ranks of the Russian army then keep-
ing the field in Circassia, and by slow degrees it reached
the rest of Europe. Thus on the 5th of October, 1848, a
vessel coming from Hamburg with sailors aboard affected
with cholera landed at Sunderland ; on the 24th of that
month a part of Great Britain was infected ; on the 20th
of the same month, immediately after an English ship had
come into port at Dunkirk, the disease made its appearance
in the north of France; Lille, Calais, Fecamp, Dieppe,
Rouen, Douai, in succession suffered the attack of the
scourge. The 29th of January, in 1849, immediately after
the arrival of a battalion of infantry-chasseurs coming from
Douai, the first case of cholera was noted at St.-Denis. On
the 7th of March the plague was at Paris.

Those two epidemics of which we have spoken were
thus of direct Asiatic origin. The same thing could hardly
be said of that which raged in Europe from 1852 to 1855 ;
at least the track of no epidemic was followed marking a
progress from east to west and from south to north. This
visitation, after having prevailed without much violence in
Bohemia about the end of 1851, displays itself with sudden
and remarkable intensity, in the month of May, 1852, in

GREAT EPIDEMICS— ASIATIC CHOLERA. 281

the grand-duchy of Posen, whence it spreads at first
toward the east in the direction of Russia, and then tow-
ard the west, approaching Germany. In 1853 we find it
in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and then in England
and France, where it reached its highest point of virulence
in 1854. During this fatal year the scourge ravaged the
whole of Europe. Those great movements of troops which
were occurring at that period facilitated the diffusion of the
poison, while at the same time the great multitudes col-
lected together in Turkey and the Crimea formed a kind
of secondary centre for the abundant increase of epidemic
effluvia. The cholera of 1852 to 1855 entered Paris in
November, 1853, declined in force there in January, 1854,
revived in February, and raged violently in March and
during the following months, leaving the capital in the
month of August. Sixty-six departments, chiefly those of
the northeast, received a visit from the plague. It must
be observed that Switzerland, which had escaped the two
former invasions, paid its tribute this time.

Hitherto these epidemics had made their entrance into
Europe only by way of the land. That of 1865-'66 pene-
trated it by sea, through the ports, principally those of
Marseilles and Constantinople. The cholera was intro-
duced in 1866 into the Hedjaz by way of India and Java.
It made terrible ravages there, and the pilgrims, mad with
terror, hurried in crowds to Djeddah,1 on the Red Sea, where
they got the means, almost by force, of embarkation to the
port of Suez. From the 17th of May to the 10th of June
ten steamers brought into that city from twelve to fifteen
thousand pilgrims, more or less ill, who thence scattered
themselves over all Egypt. By the 3d of June, Egypt was
invaded, and in less than three months over sixty thousand

1 Djeddah is a port on the Red Sea, distant only two days' journey
from Mecca ; it is the point of embarkation for pilgrims returning by sea
to Egypt, Asia Minor, etc.
13

282 NATURE AND LIFE.

victims were counted there. The panic that seized the
inhabitants brought on a considerable emigration, which
was directed to the great commercial towns of the Mediter-
ranean coasts — Beyrout, Cyprus, Malta, Smyrna, Constan-
tinople, Trieste, and Marseilles — whence the cholera could
easily extend into the rest of Europe. In the former epi-
demics the disease, traveling by land, took years to pass
over difficult routes. This time, brought over the sea by
steam, it needed but a few months to become mistress of
Europe.

To sum up, four great epidemics may be counted up to
this time in France, those of 1832, 1849, 1854-'55, and, last,
that of 1865, which continued more than two years. The
invasion of 1832 attacks fifty-six departments, and de-
stroys during the year from a hundred and ten to a hun-
dred and twenty thousand victims; in 1849, the plague
ravages fifty -seven departments, and causes from a hun-
dred to a hundred and ten thousand deaths ; the epidemic
in 1854 gradually extends to seventy departments, and de-
stroys over one hundred and fifty thousand people ; that
of 1865 begins in the month of June, rages for some time
at Marseilles and Toulon, does not reach Paris till several
months later, revives there during the following summer,
lingers through the winter in the northwest of France, and
only disappears completely at the end of 1867, after having
ravaged less territory, and produced a smaller mortality,
than the former epidemics did.1

If science has succeeded in tracing with some exactness
the geographical advance of the symptoms of cholera, it
has hitherto been powerless in fixing the real relations of
that disease with the totality of conditions of climate,
geology, society, etc. The many and diligent researches
undertaken upon this subject have as yet yielded only ques-

1 The mortality occasioned by this epidemic in France is not yet quite
ascertained. In Paris alone more than six thousand fell victims to it.

GREAT EPIDEMICS— ASIATIC CHOLERA. 283

tionable and contradictory results. In Europe, high re-
gions have generally been spared, but the epidemic has
raged violently on the plateaus of Mexico and the summits
of the Himalayas. If localities overlying granite and other
solid rocks have seemed to enjoy special immunity, as Pet-
tenkofer has proved, cases are known, like that of Helsing-
fors in 1849, in which those parts of the town built on
granite were decimated, while the marshy parts and those
near the shore remained exempt. Some countries, such as
WUrtemberg, some cities, Lyons for instance, have hitherto
escaped the attacks of the pestilence almost wholly, with-
out any assignable reason. What is more indisputable is
the fact that the collection of multitudes of people facilitates
the development of the disease. Armies in the field, popu-
lous cities, make a sort of centre from which it radiates.
Thus the war in Poland in 1831 seems to have been the cause
of the rapid spread of the cholera in Europe. We know
no instance of a rural population swept by the epidemic
where there was not a town in the neighborhood which
had first suffered from its effects. In the towns, the most
closely-built and unwholesome quarters are attacked and
affected'more severely than the others. In a word, the chol-
era has a special affinity for large collections of human be-
ings ; in them it concentrates, and through them it spreads.
Observed facts are decisive in this respect, and no argument
could prevail against the accumulated evidence. The close
study of epidemics shows that we must attribute the more
or less rapid spread of cholera beyond the centre of its ori-
gin neither to winds nor to water-courses, nor to supposed
miasmatic emanations, but it must be attributed to pilgrim-
ages, fairs, movements of troops, and similar changes of
place by masses of men. Single travelers in good health
have, as may well be imagined, very few chances of carry-
ing the disease with them from an infected country to a
healthy one ; but travelers in crowds, among whom there

284 NATURE AND LIFE.

are always more or fewer sick ones to be found, necessa-
rily transport the seeds of the plague. The Crimean War
afforded many proofs of this ; on that occasion it was our
troops that imported the cholera into the East. The fol-
lowing fact is peculiarly instructive : the Bosquet division,
affected with cholera, pitched camp at Baltchick the 9th of
August, where a great part of our squadron, till then ex-
empt, was anchored. At the end of ten days it was at-
tacked, and in less than a week it counted more than eight
hundred dead in an effective force of thirteen thousand sail-
ors. If further instances were needed, we might mention
also the introduction of the cholera in 1865 at Guadeloupe.
The labors of Marshal de Calvi and of a skillful surgeon in
our navy, Pellarin, prove that the cholera was brought into
Pointe-a-Pitre by the ship Sainte-Marie, equipped at Bor-
deaux the 14th of September, 1865, cleared the same day for
Matamoras, in Mexico, and touching at Pointe-a-Pitre the
20th of the following October.

On the whole, it is certain that the cholera travels from
one country to another by the change of place of masses
of human beings, which are true moving centres. It regu-
larly follows the great channels of communication, frequent-
ed roads, navigable rivers, etc. Whether the question is
as to pilgrims in India, caravans in upper Asia and Eastern
Russia, armies crossing the Caucasus, or in our Crimean
expedition, immigrants in America, or Moslem pilgrims to
Mecca, the conditions of transmissibility of the epidemic
are still the same, its propagation is always more rapid
in proportion as the means of communication are more
speedy.

How does a human being transport the cholera ? The
question is not completely settled. Some believe that the
epidemic germs are planted in the organism itself, and
there preserve their vitality. Others, as Pettenkofer, who
has published remarkable essays on this subject, suppose

GREAT EPIDEMICS— ASIATIC CHOLERA. 285

that man, as an individual, has hardly any share in the
propagation of the evil. This physician asserts that neither
the living body, nor the corpse, nor the excretions of chol-
era-patients, have the power of retaining and increasing the
unknown miasma which is the cause of the diffusion of dis-
ease. Pettenkofer holds even that the origin of the chol-
era is not to be looked for in some special physiological
condition of the Indian population in the basin of the
Ganges ; that the pest must spring from certain circum-
stances of soil and climate ; and, further, that it can only be
diffused through the cooperation of certain telluric and at-
mospheric elements. It is, perhaps, going a little too far
to maintain that neither man nor animal matters take any
part in the production of the effluvia of cholera, and Petten-
kofer's theory, ingenious as it may seem, is not likely to be
generally adopted. The cholera sometimes is communi-
cated by means of persons who are themselves free from
it; this is the sole argument used by advocates of the
non-transmissible nature of the disease ; but it has little
force, if it can be shown that the germs of cholera may
have for their vehicle clothes, baggage, merchandise, etc.
Now, this has been proved by several authors ; among oth-
ers, Grimaud de Caux. The latter even asserts that he
has noticed, at the Marseilles post-office, cases of cholera
transmitted by packets of letters.

Is the cholera contagious ? It is beyond dispute that
the cholera is brought into one country by collected masses
of men who have contracted it in another country ; but the
transmission is not direct. A person positively affected
with cholera does not transmit the malady to this or that
person who in his turn communicates it to another, and
so successively. The first patients who come into a healthy
place infect the local atmosphere, and in that infected at-
mosphere the germs of the disease multiply which will carry
off more or fewer victims ; but they may be found among

NATUKE AND LIFE.

people who have kept themselves entirely apart from those
affected, as well as among others who have been near them.
Very few physicians die while attending such patients. It
may perhaps be useful to recall our personal experience on
this subject, and the observations we made during the epi-
demic of 1865, in connection with Legros and Goujon in
the laboratory of Robin at the practice school of the medical
faculty. Engaged for some months, and careless of any
special precautions, in handling and examining in all ways
the blood and excretions of cholera-patients, we suffered
no injurious effects, no inconvenience even. Se"dillot re-
lates that during the campaign of Poland, in 1831, it hap-
pened to him more than once to sleep with impunity in
sheets just taken from patients who had died of cholera.
It is clear, therefore, that it is not transmitted by the con-
tact of persons or objects affected. It is the air which
within a more or less circumscribed space is the receiver
of that subtile and unknown matter that the poison lurks in ;
we say the receiver, not the vehicle, for the cholera-germ
which multiplies within that space has no spontaneous
tendency to move away from it. Its movement further and
its extension to a distance are occasioned by the constant
migrations of mankind.

The very noticeable examinations of Tholozan have
placed it beyond doubt that, independently of the four great
epidemics, the cholera, since 1830, has hardly ceased at any
time to exist in Europe in different degrees of intensity
and under varying forms. Among us, as in India, it may
be epidemic, endemic, or sporadic. It has been attempted,
indeed, to mark a distinction between cholera which de-
stroys a great number of people at one time and that which
chooses only single victims ; 1 but these two maladies offer
no fundamental specific differences. The first, when it has

1 The latter has been called " nostras cholera," in opposition to "Asi-
atic cholera."

GREAT EPIDEMICS— ASIATIC CHOLERA. 287

finished its work, languishes, and seems to disappear, but
it still continues to betray its presence here and there at
longer or shorter intervals.

II.

We have seen that the first great epidemic observed in
the Indies, before its appearance in Europe, occurred in
1817 ; at that date the cholera became a traveler, but it
had long existed in Asia. The testimony of philology and
archaeology proves in the clearest way that it has" been
known there from early antiquity. Hindoo mythology re-
lates that the two Aswyns, or sons of Surya, the sun, taught
medicine to Indra, who composed the " Ayur-Veda," the most
ancient medical book in India. Indra in turn taught the
art to Dhawantrie, and he had for a -scholar Susruta, con-
temporary with Rama, the hero of the Ramayana. Now,
Susruta left a work which Dr. Wise, director of the medical
service at Bengal, translated and abridged in 1845, and in
which a distinct description of the cholera is found. It is
not easy to give the true date for this composition ; but
Tholozan supposes there are good reasons for fixing it
about the third century before the Christian era. Other San-
scrit works of the same date speak of a similar malady. The
most curious illustration is an inscription copied at Viz-
zianuggur by Sanderson, upon a monolith, part of the ruins
of an ancient temple. This inscription, which is ascribed
to a pupil of Buddha, and seems to date from an age pre-
ceding the conquest of Alexander, reads as follows : " Blue
lips, a shrunken face, hollow eyes, the belly knotted, the
limbs cramped and crooked as if by effect of fire, are marks
of the cholera, which comes down by malign conjurations
of the priests to destroy heroes. The thickened breath
clings to the warrior's face, his fingers are bent and twisted
in different ways ; he dies in contortions, the victim of the
wrath of Siva." Many Hindoo and Persian works of a later

288 NATURE AND LIFE.

date contain similar proofs. When the Portuguese, in 1498,
and afterward the Dutch and the English, landed on the
shores of India, they had frequent opportunities to observe
epidemic cholera and it is not strange that a description of
the disease could have been made by European doctors in the
seventeenth century. We have still detailed accounts of
the plagues that raged in the eighteenth century, of which
that of Hurdwar is the most famous. In short, to whatever
period we recur, we come upon one of the links of that long
chronological chain of the cholera, which begins with the
oldest books of Hindoo medicine.

The causes which have always aided the development
of cholera in the Indies are active there at the present day.
Almost every year the disease breaks out in places where
pilgrims gather. Among these localities, of which some
are also commercial towns, three particularly attract the
crowd : they are Hurdwar, on the Ganges, in the north of
Hindostan ; Juggernath, on the coast of Orissa, at the
northwest of the gulf of Bengal ; and Conjeveram, in the
south of Madras. Pilgrims arrive at these places in the
warm season, after a journey of more than a hundred leagues,
almost always made on foot, in a state of exhaustion and
wretchedness of which we can hardly form an idea. Once
in these holy places, their crowding together, their bad food,
uncleanliness, and debauchery, bring them into such con-
ditions that the germs of plague develop, and the epidemic
kindles among them. This infected multitude then scatters
abroad, and passes through the country in all directions,
sowing miasma and contagion.

Thus these immense gatherings of people favor the ex-
tension of the cholera. Are they at the same time its origi-
nating causes ? We cannot answer positively in either way.
All possible suppositions have been indulged as to the
origin of the cholera in India, but none of them really ex-
plains the difficulty. What is the cause that produces the

GREAT EPIDEMICS— ASIATIC CHOLERA. 289

birth of the miasma ? Is it the crowding together of pil-
grims under bad hygienic conditions ? Is it the 'putrefaction
of vegetable matters under a torrid sun, or the stagnant
waters of the Ganges, loaded with corpses and filth, or is
it a special state of the soil ? We do not know. What is
certain is, that pilgrimages aid in propagating the cholera,
and that it in some way seeks out a pestilential atmosphere.
Therefore the wish is reasonable that the British Govern-
ment should control these pilgrimages, and give greater
activity to the labors of canal - making and the sanitary
measures it has undertaken to render the country healthy.
When medical savants suggest going to attack the evil at
its root and destroy it forever, and preach a crusade to India
in which all civilized nations should join to cut off the heads
of the hydra, as Hercules of old did those of the Lernean
monster, we may applaud the spirit and generosity of the
project, but must ask what means are to be found for its
execution.

Persia, situated between India and Europe, is not a
focus of cholera, but it is a country where the disease finds
so suitable a region that it very often prevails in it. Only
a few years ago the shah's kingdom presented a miserable
spectacle in this respect. Dirt and offal were not removed ;
the bodies of animals, camels, oxen, horses, mules, were eaten
by dogs, jackals, and birds of prey, in the towns or in their
environs. A deeply-rooted religious belief in the country
caused it to be regarded as a sacred duty to carry the
dead far away and bury them in holy cemeteries. This
transportation was performed under deplorable circum-
stances. The bodies, already in different stages of putre-
faction, were merely wrapped in felt cloths, seldom inclosed
in coffins of thin, ill-joined boards. In this state the bodies
were carried on the backs of camels or mules, in all weathers,
to distances averaging thirty or forty days' march. There
were caravans of corpses, as there are caravans of pilgrims ;

290 NATURE AND LIFE.

and travelers occasionally met some of them carrying one
or two hundred dead bodies. It is needless to say how
greatly these moving charnel-houses, by infecting the at-
mosphere, must have increased the energy of epidemic
manifestations. The International Conference urged upon
the Persian Government to prevent the extension of the
cholera-poison throughout its own territory by all possible
means. It insisted on effecting the suppression of customs
and practices which could only keep up the unhealthy state
of the country ; it demanded the formation of councils of
health commissioned to secure the carrying out of regula-
tions admitted to be indispensable to protect Persia itself,
and consequently to shield Europe against the attacks of
the scourge. Similar wishes had already been many times
expressed to the Shah of Persia by his physician, Tholozan.
In 1867 a formal edict of the prince forbade everywhere
transportation of bodies ; at the same time other sanitary
reforms were planned. The suggestions of the Conference,
therefore, could not have been otherwise than generally
well received by the government of Teheran ; but, if it made
no opposition itself, it has not been and it is not yet easy
for it to overcome that of the inhabitants. Not in a day,
especially among Eastern populations, can the suppression
of ancient customs be brought about, when they are bound
up with religious prejudices. The members of the Con-
ference seem not to have always given sufficient heed to
the difficulties of such an undertaking, and Tholozan urged
with much wisdom the need of using caution and modera-
tion. However that may be, Proust, physician of the Paris
hospitals, who was charged in 1869 with a mission to Rus-
sia and Persia, for the study of preventive measures against
cholera, could ascertain for himself the excellent inclina-
tion of the Persian administration. " Most of the measures
which the French Government would urge to have put in
practice," says Proust, " have already been begun upon by

GREAT EPIDEMICS— ASIATIC CHOLERA. 291

the government of the shah. A high council of health has
been instituted ; the chief physicians of Persia have been
invited to seats in this council. They have considered the
most important questions of public and private hygiene."
Let us add that the Persian Government has determined,
on Tholozan's suggestion, to order the breaking off of all in-
tercourse, and the prevention of pilgrimages in case the in-
vasion of cholera into neighboring countries is ascertained.
In short, the situation is greatly improved as regards the
internal hygiene of Persia, and it grows better every day,
which is a great point gained. But a new question is now
presented : how can the cholera be prevented from passing
out of Asia into Europe ? This is one of the gravest diffi-
culties of sanitary police and international hygiene. Let
us consider what has been done to solve it, and what degree
of success, or rather what hope of succeeding at all, has
been gained.

The cholera passes from Asia to Europe by land and by
sea, that is, by the frontier between Russia and Persia, and
by the Caspian Sea. It may also come across the Mediter-
ranean, either from Asia Minor or from Egypt, and conse-
quently there is occasion to prevent its introduction into
those two countries by the boundary-lines separating them,
whether from Persia or from Arabia. This simple geo-
graphical route shows the range and complication of the
system it is proposed to establish. All European govern-
ments have shown active diligence in organizing the plan
of protective measures and preparing the working of those
sanitary arrangements suggested by the members of the
Conference, that is, the quarantine service. It would be too
soon to decide in a positive way as to the efficiency of quar-
antines ; but it is as well to say that quite a number of com-
petent physicians absolutely deny it, and that such an
opinion is unfortunately too well supported by facts.

Proust, who has examined carefully the boundary be-

NATURE AND LIFE.

tween Russia and Persia on which Russia has established
quarantines and stations of Cossacks, believes that an active
enough watchfulness to defeat the entrance of cholera on
that side may be exerted over that region. Yet he con-
fesses that it is not easy to interfere with the movements
of smugglers at several points. As concerns its introduc-
tion through the Caspian Sea, the question is less simple.
All vessels sailing from the Persian. shore of that great lake
take for their point of arrival on the Russian side a certain
number of ports, the chief of which are Bakou, Derbent,
and Astrakhan. Some of these ports have lazarettos ; oth-
ers, as Astrakhan, have no sanitary establishments. The
number of officials seems to be too small also ; nowhere are
the examination and questioning of passengers rigorously
attended to. At least, this is what Proust observed. This
physician was urgent with the governments of Russia and
the Caucasus to obtain more rigorous and efficient oversight.
He demanded especially the establishment of vigilance
stations along the coast so as to prevent, in case of need,
the landing of vessels intending to break the prescribed
regulations. Nothing could be easier, since there are none
but Russian ships on the Caspian Sea. Proust's observa-
tions, moreover, came the more seasonably, because the
quarantine establishments, erected at an earlier period for
protection against the plague, are in process of alteration.
He engaged the attention of several high Russian function-
aries in these important interests ; he expressed his ideas
at length on these subjects before the Medical Society at
Tiflis, and came away with the conviction that if the plans
suggested by him are carried out carefully, as he hopes,
upon the shores of the Caspian Sea, any new introduction
of disease from Persia into Russia will become very difficult ;
but that remains to be seen in the future.

Let us now pass over to the boundaries of Persia and
of Turkey in Asia. Along the whole extent of the frontier

GREAT EPIDEMICS— ASIATIC CHOLERA. 393

between Persia and Turkey, from Mount Ararat to the
Persian Gulf, the Ottoman Government keeps up vigilance
stations, which it turns into quarantines at need. Now
these posts, costly to the treasury, harassing to the in-
habitants, especially to the Persians, have hitherto been
powerless to keep the Ottoman territory safe from inva-
sions of cholera. This results from the fact that there is a
great number of nomad tribes on this frontier — Koords,
Bactrians, and others — who in summer drive their flocks to
pasture on the high table-lands of Persia, and in winter
come down toward the plains of Asia Minor. There is
thus kept up on this line a constant movement of migra-
tion which there is no possibility of subjecting to quaran-
tine regulations. Tholozan believes, with reason, that in
this quarter the measures proposed by the International
Conference could not be put in force.

A more useful quarantine system is that which prevented
the spread in Egypt of that epidemic which raged in 1871
on the west coast of the Red Sea. A part of this country,
that in which Medina and Mecca are situated, was swept
by the cholera about the end of 1871. In view of the
danger threatening Egypt the moment the pilgrims should
return, the sanitary administration of that country resolved
at once that if necessary all intercourse by sea between
Hedjaz and Egypt should be stopped ; but, not finding the
danger urgent, it afterward modified this determination,
and ordered that all pilgrims returning from Mecca by
Egypt should first go and perform quarantine at El-Wedj,
a small port on the coast of Arabia, situated three hundred
and fifty miles from Suez, after which they might cross the
isthmus by canal without going into Egypt, or else undergo
another inspection at the station established for that pur-
pose at the Springs of Moses. A lazaretto under canvas
was then arranged at El- Wed j, under the direction of two
physicians. A special commission was stationed at Suez,

294 NATURE AND LIFE.

to examine all arrivals, and the physicians appointed for
the supervision of Hedjaz were requested to transmit to
Egypt reports on the sanitary state of the pilgrims. The
prescribed rules were observed, without any appearance
made by cholera as usual, and it was supposed for a time
that leave might be given to the vessels with their freight
of pilgrims to go directly to Suez. The first one was on
the point of sailing, when the epidemic broke out at Mecca.
A carrier promptly brought orders to Djeddah to deliver
foul bills to the vessels, and dispatch the pilgrims to El-
Wedj. The disappointment of the captains and ships'
agents may be imagined. Several of them even declared
that they would sail straight for Suez in spite of the order.
The firmness of the physicians prevented them, though
with great difficulty. At the same time this revival of the
cholera at Mecca created so great a panic among the pil-
grims that they deserted the city with all speed, so as to
put any gradual succession of departures out of the ques-
tion. Hard as it was, the lazaretto at El-Wedj discharged
its duty sufficiently, thanks to the sagacity and devoted-
ness of the medical men, and the cholera did not make its
way into Egypt.

If the system of sea quarantines is efficient in some
cases, it does not for the most part give governments the
means of intercepting the cholera with certainty. We
give another instance of the most instructive kind, which
will close our remarks upon international preventive
measures against the Asiatic plague.

Until the month of May, in 1856, quarantine was com-
pulsory and general for persons arriving in Russia by sea.
All travelers, without exception, were placed under sani-
tary inspection and seclusion for from ten to twenty days.
A French cultivator of the vine settled in the Crimea lately
told De Valcourt that on his arrival at Odessa, in 1848, he
with his family and the other passengers were made to land

GREAT EPIDEMICS— ASIATIC CHOLERA. 295

on the quay at ten o'clock in the morning, and the landing-
plank was withdrawn. The passengers, guarded by the
quarantine soldiers, were obliged to remain, without food
or drink, in the hot sun till four in the afternoon. At last,
surrounded by lines of functionaries, they were led to the
inspection-room. There a physician questioned them and
made them undress completely. A coarse shirt and Russian
soldier's coat were then given them. Their clothes were
not given back until twenty-four hours later, after fumigat-
ing. Their seclusion lasted fifteen days, though there was
no epidemic either in Russia or in any of the ports at which
the vessel had touched. In 1856 these severities were put
an end to. They were again put in force, though a little
moderated. At present, the cholera prevailing in Odessa,
quarantine is in operation, and employs a large force of
men. Now De Valcourt, on his return from Russia, as-
serts that thirty travelers a day, on an average, land at
Odessa and perform quarantine there, while four hundred
travelers arrive by rail, and pass freely into the town. On
the side of Turkey it is quite as easy to elude quarantine
regulations. This year, the Ottoman Government, to pro-
tect the country against the cholera prevailing in Russia,
has established a quarantine of ten full days at Sulina for
ships going to the Danube, on the Bosporus for those
bound to Constantinople, and at Batoum for those coming
from the ports of the Caucasus. Besides, it has discon-
tinued steam service between Galatz and Odessa. What
is the result ? It is this, that travelers leave Russia by the
Wolociska Railway to the frontier between Austria and
Russia, and reach Constantinople by Vienna and Burrach,
as the Russian embassador near the Sublime Porte has
just done. The railway joining Kichenev to Jassy will
soon be finished and the passage will be very much more
shortened. Quarantine, therefore, is futile.

It must be admitted that the system of quarantines offers

296 NATURE AND LIFE.

complications and difficulties which make it in many in-
stances inefficient and impracticable. Not only is it difficult
to find sufficiently vigilant officials, but it is often impossi-
ble to block the transfers and the movements of travelers
which are agents in spreading the epidemic.

. III.

If it is out of the question to destroy the cholera at its
source, if it is very difficult to prevent its making its way to
us, does not science at least possess an antidote to meet it
with, a remedy to fight with against it when it has succeed-
ed in making a lodgment among us ? Just as in speaking
of the nature of the evil the physician must own the almost
entire uncertainty of knowledge, so, in view of the victims
of the cholera's attacks, he must confess the impotence of
art, almost always beyond remedy. The prescriptions sug-
gested for the cure of cholera are as numerous as the sup-
positions framed for its explanation. On either hand the
illusion is the same. Those who regard the cholera as a
disease caused by parasites,1 naturally look for the methods
of destroying these parasites. Doctors who look on it as
an affection by virus, occasioning a kind of molecular
change in the whole mass of the humors, and especially of
the albuminoid matters, are persuaded that acids might be
of healing effect in these cases. Others, supposing that
the most important point of all is to restore the liquidity
of blood coagulated in the veins, resort to alkalies. Salts
of copper have also been employed, regarded by some phy-
sicians as genuine specifics, as also alkaloids, such as caf-
eine, etc. Those physiologists who fix the seat of the dis-
ease in the nervous structure of the great sympathetic are

1 Among the supporters of this notion must be cited a German doctor,
Hallier, who thinks it is proved that the cholera is caused by micrococ-
cus. And Hallier explains all diseases by micrococcus, or by infinitely
little beings of the same order.

GREAT EPIDEMICS— ASIATIC CHOLERA. 297

•%

•%

induced to preach up antispasmodic drugs. In a word, rem-
edies have almost all seemed to fail of useful effect, and the
most sensible treatment is still the same as that of cholera
in the early days, the treatment of symptoms. It consists,
not in prostrating the disease solidly by making one single
heroic attack on it, but in fighting it through successive
skirmishes by attacking the various symptoms of the evil,
one after the other. Cholera-patients have cramps — we
endeavor to check them. They suffer cold — we warm them
by frictions and drinks. Their circulation becomes slow
and languid — we try to restore its regular conditions by
stimulating the flow of the blood. The secretions diminish —
we provoke them by suitable means. Thus, and without
attacking the evil at its root, we often reach fortunate re-
sults. The great obstacle to the action of remedies on
cholera-patients is the fact that they can absorb nothing.
Some doctors have had the idea of injecting medicinal prin-
ciples directly, either beneath the skin, or into the veins.
Some attempts of this kind have succeeded, and this method
is the right one. Only we need to continue our advances
in it with persistent and systematic boldness, if we would
secure certain advance in the treatment of cholera and other
diseases. Instead of feeling the way blindly and timidly
in experiments on the living subject, there is need of force
and directness in proceeding. It is the only way to have
at some future day strong and tempered weapons for our
contests with disease.

It is perhaps proper in connection with this to point
out to the attention of physicians the remarkable proper-
ties of the alkaline borates and silicates recently disclosed
by Dumas. These salts, which exert no very striking
poisonous influence upon superior organisms, are on the
contrary fatal to the microscopic beings and the subtile
agents, organized or formless, which take an undeniable
part in infectious diseases. Experiments made quite late-

298 NATURE AND LIFE.

ly have proved that at least such substances check the de-
velopment of every kind of fermentation, delay putrid de-
composition, and impede the decay of organic matter. It
is allowable to suppose that these qualities, distinctly noted
in chemists' laboratories, will be effectual in the laboratory
of the animal system.

Apart from the remedies used against decided cholera,
there are preventives which may be prudently and season-
ably employed : these are disinfecting and antiseptic sub-
stances, as phenic acid, coal-tar, chloride of lime. The cor-
rosive nature of these substances prevents their internal
administration, and the test of their therapeutic effect ; but
it is positive that they exert a destructive influence over all
organic corpuscles, and usually annul their injurious proper-
ties. On this account it is wise to employ them in cleans-
ing and sweetening the atmosphere, particularly the confined
air of rooms and hospitals, while epidemics are prevalent.
It is the duty of government to take prompt steps and give
plain instructions to insure the use of these substances
everywhere at periods when they are required.

From the point of view of individual hygiene, the only
prescription is to live regularly and temperately. Excesses,
always dangerous, are more than ever so during an epidem-
ic. It is a matter of course that extreme cleanliness is not
less imperative ; what, perhaps, is yet more so is calmness
and mental cheerfulness. Moral force is here no less im-
portant than physical health. While cholera prevails, dis-
orders of the bowels are very common, and in the very
great majority of cases the disease does not come as a sud-
den attack, but as the result of diarrhoea, more or less
protracted. Experience has shown that the breaking out
of cholera is often prevented by attacking this first threat-
ening symptom with opiates and the subnitrate of bis-
muth. When the cholera prevails in England, the gov-
ernment organizes visits to every house, to ascertain and

GREAT EPIDEMICS— ASIATIC CHOLERA. 299

treat, if there be occasion, such forerunners of the pesti-
lence.

We find that there is as yet no specific against cholera.
Can therapeutics indulge the hope of hereafter discovering
one ? We have no reason to doubt it. An heroic remedy
for intermittent fevers has been discovered, quinine, though
we have no knowledge whatever of the first cause of that
disease, nor the least notion of what the miasma of marshes
is. Perhaps in the same way we shall learn how to destroy
the miasma of cholera before penetrating its inner nature.
Meanwhile, it is allowable to rely on this, that the cholera,
subject in that respect to that mysterious law which gov-
erns the secular evolution of epidemics, will lose its inten-
sity in proportion to its remoteness from its origin. Those
morbid germs, those forms of virus, seem not to be gifted
with the power of indefinite reproduction. They exhaust
themselves by their own activity. The death they sow at
last overtakes themselves some day. Is it the influence of
civilization which thus sets a limit to their deadly work, or
is that end assigned to their career the fulfillment of a
fixed decree ? In any case the cholera must die some day.
Till then the best way of working for its annihilation is to
pursue the study of it scientifically.

We must see, therefore, what science and its teachings
suggest for the future in the nature of labors that may
serve to elucidate the serious problem of the character of
cholera, and of infectious diseases generally. Researches
in physics and chemistry grow daily easier, so simple are
their phenomena, so sure their formulas, their theories so
interdependent, and their processes so exact. The share
given in them to discovery and origination becomes ever
smaller ; that taken by measurement and calculation grows
constantly in proportion. The masters have enounced the
grand laws and fundamental methods ; the scholars do lit-
tle else than determine special cases. This is less true of

300 NATURE AND LIFE.

the science of life and diseases. This is a mine in which
priceless and unexplored veins are yet abundant. Great
triumphs are in store for those who shall have skill to ex-
tract that metal and bring it into circulation ; but such labor
demands bold enterprise no less than sagacious diligence.

There are diseases which have their seat in some one
of the viscera, and at first oppress it alone with suffering.
Thus the lungs, the liver, the stomach, the brain, may be
differently affected. Others extend to a whole organic sys-
tem, as the nervous or muscular system, that of the joints
or the skin, etc. Others, again, seize on the whole vital
frame, and to these is given the name of general disorders.
It is as to these that we have least acquaintance with the
outward causes and the internal derangements, because
both have hitherto remained beyond the reach of medical
research. Yet we may affirm that the blood, which bathes
the whole organism and maintains the connection between
the parts in it, must be in such cases the chief seat of mor-
bid change. Without here going into the details of the dis-
tinctions set up by pathologists between disorders of this
nature, it will suffice to say that they have classed cholera
among the infectious diseases, that is, among diseases oc-
casioned by poisons that have their origin in the atmos-
phere, as the yellow fever, the plague, typhus, varioloid,
typhoid fever, etc.

Whatever hypothesis we may form as to the atmos-
pheric origin of which we have just spoken, it is clear that
these diseases affect the blood. In them the nourishing
fluid experiences a transformation, not merely in the order
and proportion, but also in the nature, of its components,
particularly the most important of all, the albuminoid mat-
ter. The latter, which is the essential and nutritive part
of the blood, the plastic part, to which the exhausted tis-
sues owe their body and spring, then undergoes a deep
change in the inmost parts of its molecular composition.

GREAT EPIDEMICS— ASIATIC CHOLERA. 301

It not only suffers a marked change in its physical appear-
ance, but it loses its original organic properties. • It becomes
impotent to perform the part of restorer which is imposed
on it. Of what nature is this corruption of the albumen ?
We cannot say, so long as we remain ignorant of the
nature of that very albumen in its normal state. In other
words, there will be no chance to begin the study of cor-
ruptions of the blood until the blood of man in sound health
shall be sufficiently understood, that is, until we shall have
established the nature of the albuminoid substances with
definite chemical exactness. That, for the moment, is the
grand desideratum of biology. Chemistry is much ad-
vanced, physiology is developing; that which remains
stationary is the region of questions making the transition
between those two sciences, and the answers to which,
perhaps of little importance to the former, would be the
source of most desirable illumination for the latter. Nu-
trition will never be explained until we shall have estab-
lished exactly the formula for those transformations through
which food passes from the moment it is dissolved in the
stomach until the moment it is thrown off by the various
emunctories under the form of products of disassimilation.
Such an explanation would not only give the key to those
difficulties in physiology which still hold savants in check,
but would also be of very great service in the knowledge
of diseases, and, to return to our direct subject, in that of
infectious diseases. It is therefore to the study of the albu-
minoid substances, and of the complex, rapid, and infinite
changes which they undergo in the blood, that capable ex-
aminers should now direct their attention. Those who un-
dertake it will not deserve the censure of setting out on a
beaten path, for they will have every thing to create, be-
ginning with the methods. At the present time we have
never yet compared, and we have not even the means of
comparing, in respect to the molecular elaboration that has

302 NATURE AND LIFE.

taken place in them, two specimens of blood taken at two
different points in the body. When we shall have mastered
the composition of albumen, and when we shall have it in
our power to make the comparison just alluded to, the
problem of infectious diseases will not be long in coming
into full light, and the cholera will be no more a dismal
mystery.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH.

OP old, the spoils of death fell to the anatomist's share,
while the physiologist took for his part the phenomena of
life. Now we submit the corpse to the same experiments
as the living organism, and pry into the relics of death for
the secrets of life. Instead of seeing in the lifeless body
mere forms ready to dissolve and vanish, we detect in it
forces and persisting activities full of deep instructiveness
in their mode of working. As theologians and moralists
exhort us to study the spectre of death face to face at
times, and strengthen our souls by courageous meditation
on our last hour, so medicine regards it as essential to
direct our attention toward all the details of that mournful
drama, and thus to lead us, through gloom and shadows, to
a clearer knowledge of life. But it is only with respect to
medicine in the most modern days that this is true.

Leibnitz, who held profound and admirable theories of
life, had one of death also, which he has unfolded in a fa-
mous letter to Arnauld. He believes that generation is
only the development and evolution of an animal already
existing in form, and that corruption or death is only the
ree'nvelopment or involution of the same animal, which
does not cease to subsist and continue living. The sum of
vital energies, consubstantial with monads, does not vary
in the world ; generation and death are but changes in the
order and adjustment of the principles of vitality, sirnple

304 NATURE AND LIFE.

transformations from small to great, and vice versa. In
other words, Leibnitz sees everywhere eternal and incor-
ruptible germs of life, which neither perish at all nor be-
gin. What does begin and perish is the organic machine
of which these germs compose the original activity : the
elementary gearing of the machine is broken apart, but
not destroyed. This is the first view held by Leibnitz. He
has another, too, conceiving of generation as a progress of
life through degrees ; he can conceive of death also as a
gradual regress of the same principle, that is to say, that
in death life withdraws little by little, just as it came for-
ward little by little in generation. Death is no sudden
phenomenon, nor instantaneous evanishing — it is a slow
operation, a " retrogradation," as the Hanoverian philoso-
pher phrases it. When death shows to us, it has been a
long time wearing away the organism, though we have not
perceived it, because " dissolution at first attacks parts in-
visibly small." Yes, death, before it betrays itself to the
eye by livid pallor, to the touch by marble coldness, before
chaining the movements and stiffening the blood of the
dying person, creeps with insidious secrecy into the small-
est and most hidden points of his organs and his humors.
Here it begins to corrupt the fluids, to disorganize the
tissues, to destroy the equipoise and endanger the harmony.
This process is more or less lingering and deceitful, and,
when we note the manifest signs of death, we may be sure
that the work lacked no deliberate preparation.

These ideas of Leibnitz, like most of the conceptions
of genius, waited long after the time of their appearance
for confirmation by demonstrative experiment. Before his
day, bodies were dissected only for the sake of studying
in them the conformation and normal arrangement of the
organs. When this study was once completed, science
took up the methodical inquiry into the changes produced
in the different parts of the body by diseases. Not until

THE PHYSIOLOGY OP DEATH. 3Q5

the end of the eighteenth century did death in action be-
come the subject of investigation by Bichat;.

Bichat is the greatest of the physiological historians of
death. The famous work he has left on this subject, his
" Physiological Researches upon Life and Death," is as
noteworthy for the grandeur of its general ideas, and its
beauty of style, as for its precision of facts and nicety of
experiment. To this day it remains the richest mine of re-
corded truths as to the physiology of death. Having de-
termined the fact that life is seriously endangered only by
alterations in one of the three essential organs, the brain,
the heart, and the lungs, a group forming the vital tripod,
Bichat examines how the death of one of these three or-
gans assures that of the others, and in succession the
gradual stoppage of all the functions. In our day, the ad-
vance of experimental physiology in the path so success-
fully traversed by Bichat, has brought to light in their mi-
nutest details the various mechanical processes of death,
and, what is of far greater consequence, has disclosed an
entire order of activities heretofore only suspected to be at
work in the corpse. The theory of death has been built
up by slow degrees along with that of life, and several
practical questions that had remained in a state of uncer-
tainty, such as that of the signs of real death, have re-
ceived the most decisive answer in the course of these re-
searches.

I.

Bichat pointed out that the complete life of animals is
made up of two orders of phenomena, those of circulation
and nutrition, and those that fix the relations of the living
being with its environment. He distinguishes organic life
from animal life, properly so called. Vegetables have only
the former; animals possess both, intimately blended.
Now, on the occurrence of death, these two sorts of life do
not disappear at one and the same moment. It is the ani-

306 NATURE AND LIFE.

mal life that suffers the first stroke ; the most manifest ac-
tivities of the nervous system are those which come to a
halt before all the rest. How is this stoppage brought
about ? We must consider separately the order of occur-
rences in death from old age, in that occasioned by disease,
and in sudden death.

The man who expires at the close of a long decline in
years, dies in detail. All his senses in succession are
sealed. Sight becomes dim and unsteady, and at last loses
the picture of objects. Hearing grows gradually insensi-
ble to sounds ; touch is blunted into dullness ; odors pro-
duce but a weak impression ; only taste lingers a little.
At the same time that the organs of sensation waste and
lose their excitability, the functions of the brain fade out
little by little. Imagination becomes unfixed, memory
nearly fails, judgment wavers. Further, motions are slow
and difficult on account of stiffness in the muscles; the
voice breaks ; in short, all the functions of outward life
lose their spring. Each of the bonds attaching the old
man to existence parts by slow degrees. Yet the internal
life persists. Nutrition still takes place, but very soon the
forces desert the most essential organs. Digestion lan-
guishes, the secretions dry up, capillary circulation is
clogged, that of the large vessels in their turn is checked,
and, at last, the heart's contractions cease. This is the in-
stant of death. The heart is the last ihing to die. Such
is the series of slow and partial deaths which, with the old
man spared by disease, result in the last end of all. The
individual who falls into the sleep of eternity in these con-
ditions, dies like the vegetable which, having no conscious-
ness of life, can have no consciousness of death. He
passes insensibly from one to the other, and to die thus is
to know no pain. The thought of the last hour alarms us
only because it puts a sudden end to our relations with all
our surroundings ; but, if the feeling of these relations has

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. 307

long ago faded away, there can be no place for fear at the
brink of the grave. The animal does not' tremble in the
instant before it ceases to be.

Unfortunately, death of this kind is very rare for hu-
manity. Death from old age has become an extraordinary
phenomenon. Most commonly we succumb to a disturb-
ance in the functions of our vital system, which is some-
times sudden, sometimes gradual. In this case, as in the
former one, we observe animal life disappearing first, but
the modes of its conclusion are infinitely varied.1 One of
the most usual is death through the lungs ; as a result of
pneumonia and different forms of phthisis, the oxidation of
the blood becoming impossible on account of the disor-
ganization of the pulmonary globules, venous blood goes
back to the heart without gaining revivification. In the
case of serious and prolonged fevers, and of infectious
diseases, whether epidemic or otherwise, which are, charac-
teristically, blood-poisonings, death occurs through a gen-
eral change in nutrition. This is still more the fact as to
death consequent upon certain chronic disorders of the di-
gestive organs. When these are affected, the secretion of
those juices fitted to dissolve food dries up, and these fluids
go through the intestinal canal unemployed. In this case
the invalid dies of real starvation. Haemorrhage is one of
the commonest causes of death. Whenever a great artery
is opened from any cause, permitting the copious outflow
of blood, the skin grows pale, warmth declines, the breath-
ing is intermittent, vertigo and dimness of sight follow,
the expression of the features changes, cold and clammy
sweat covers part of the face and the limbs, the pulse gets
gradually weaker, and, at last, the heart stops. Virgil de-
scribes haemorrhage with striking fidelity in the story of
Dido's death.

1 Mille modis morimur raortales, nascimur una. Una via est vitae,
moriendi mille figurse.

308 NATURE AND LIFE.

Sudden death, unconnected with outward and acci-
dental causes, may occur in various ways. Very violent
impressions on the feelings sometimes abruptly check the
movements of the heart, and produce a mortal swoon. In-
stances are well known of many persons dying of joy — Leo
X. is one — and of persons who succumbed to fear. In
foudroyant apoplexy, if real death is not instantaneous,
there is at least the sudden occurrence of the phenomena
of death. The sufferer is plunged in profound sleep, called
by physicians coma, from which wakening is impossible ;
his breathing is difficult, his eyes set, his mouth twisted
and distorted. The pulsations of the heart cease little by
little, and soon life utterly vanishes. The breaking of an
aneurism very often occasions sudden death. Not less
often the cause of death is found in what is called embo-
lism, that is, a check to the circulation by a clot of blood
suddenly plugging up some important vessel. And there
are also cases of sudden death still unaccounted for, in the
sense that subsequent dissection discovers nothing that
could explain the stoppage in the operations of life.

Death is usually preceded by a group of phenomena
that has received the name of the death-agony. In most
cases of disease the beginning of this concluding period
is marked by a sudden improvement of the functions. It
is the last gleam springing from the dying flame ; but soon
the eyes become fixed and insensible to the action of light,
the nose grows pointed and cold, the mouth, wide open,
seems to call for the air that fails it, the cavity within it
is parched, and the lips, as if withered, cling to the curves
of the teeth. The last movements of respiration are spas-
modic, and a wheezing, and sometimes a marked gurgling
sound, may be heard at some distance, caused by obstruc-
tion of the bronchial tubes with a quantity of mucus. The
breath is cold, the temperature of the skin lowerecL If
the heart is examined, we note the weakening of its sounds

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. 309

and pulsations. The hand, placed in its neighborhood, feels
no throb. Such is the physiognomy of a person in the last
moments of death in the greater number of cases, that is,
when death follows upon a period of illness of some dura-
tion. The death-struggle is seldom painful, and almost
always the patient feels nothing of it. He is plunged into
a comatose stupor, so that he is no longer conscious of his
situation or his sufferings, and he passes insensibly from
life to death, in a manner that renders it sometimes difficult
to fix the exact instant at which a dying person expires.
This is true, at least, in chronic maladies, and especially
in those that consume the human body slowly and silently.
Yet, when the hour of death comes for ardent organiza-
tions— for great artists, for instance, and they usually die
young — there is a quick and sublime new burst of life in
the creative genius. There is no better example of this
than the angelic end of Beethoven, who, before he breathed
out his soul, that tuneful monad, regained his lost speech
and hearing, and spent them in repeating for the last time
some of those sweet harmonies which he called his " Prayers
to God." Some diseases, moreover, are most peculiarly
marked by the gentleness of the dying agony. Of all the
ills that cheat us while killing by pin-pricks, consumption
is that which longest wears for us the illusive look of health,
and best conceals the misery of living and the horror of
dying. Nothing can be compared with that hallucination
of the senses and that liveliness of hope which mark the
last days of the consumptive. He takes the burning of his
destroying fever for a healthful symptom, he forms his
plans, and smiles calmly and cheerfully on his friends, and
suddenly, some morrow of a quiet night, he falls into the
sleep that never wakes.

If life is everywhere, and if, consequently, death occurs
everywhere, in all the elements of the system, what must be
thought of that point in the spinal marrow which a famous

310 NATURE AND LIFE.

physiologist styled the vital knot, and in which he professed
to lodge the principle of life itself ? The point which Flou-
rens regarded as this vital knot is situated nearly at the
middle of the prolonged spinal cord — that is, the middle
of that portion of the nerve-substance which connects the
brain with the spinal marrow. This region, in fact, has a
fine and dangerous excitability. A prick, or the penetra-
tion of a needle into it, is enough to cause the instant death
of any animal whatever. It is the very means used in
physiological laboratories to destroy life swiftly and surely
in dogs. That susceptibility is explained in the most nat-
ural way. This spot is the starting-point of the nerves
that go to the lungs ; the moment that the slightest injury
is produced in it, there follows a check on the movements
of respiration, and ensuing death. This vital knot of Flou-
rens enjoys no sort of special prerogative. Life is not
more concentrated nor more essential in it than elsewhere ;
it simply coincides with the initial point of the nerves ani-
mating one of the organs indispensable to vitality, the or-
gan of sanguification ; and in living organisms any altera-
tion of the nerves controlling a function brings a serious
risk as to its complete performance. There is, therefore,
no such thing as a vital knot, a central fire of life, in ani-
mals. They are collections of an infinity of infinitely small
living creatures, and each one of these microscopic living
points is its own life-centre for itself. Each on its own
account grows, produces heat, and displays those charac-
teristic activities which depend upon its structure. Each
one, by virtue of a preestablished harmony, meets all the
rest in the ways that they require ; but, just as each lives
on its own account, so on its account each dies. And the
proof that this is so is found in the fact that certain parts
taken from a dead body can be transferred to a living one
without suffering any interruption in their physiological
activity, and in the fact that many organs which seem dead

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. 3H

can be excited anew, awakened out of their torpor, and
animated to extremely remarkable vital . manifestations.
This subject we now proceed to consider.

II.

Death seems to be absolute from the instant that the
pulsations of the heart are stopped without renewal, be-
cause, the circulation of the blood no longer proceeding,
the nutrition of the organs becomes impossible, and nutri-
tion is demanded for the maintenance of physiological har-
mony ; but, as we have said above, there are a thousand
little springs in the organism which keep up a certain de-
gree of activity after the great main-spring has ceased to
act. There is an infinite number of partial energies that
outlive the destruction of the principal energy, and with-
draw only by slow degrees. In cases of sudden death
especially the tissues keep their peculiar vitality a very
long time. In the first place, the heat declines only quite
slowly, and the more so in proportion as death has been
quick. For several hours after death the hair of the head
and body, and the nails, continue to grow, nor does ab-
sorption either stop at once. Even digestion, too, keeps
on. The experiment performed by Spallanzani to test this
is very curious. He conceived the idea of making a crow
eat a certain quantity of food, and killing it immediately
after the meal. Then he put it in a place kept at the same
temperature as that of -a live bird, and opened it six hours
later. The food was thoroughly digested.

Besides these general manifestations, the dead body is
capable, during some continued time, of different kinds of
activity. It is not easy to study these on the bodies of
persons dying of sickness, because they are not permitted
to be made the subject of anatomical examinations until
twenty-four hours after death ; but the bodies of beheaded
criminals, which are given up to savants a few moments

312 NATURE AND LIFE.

after their execution, can be of use in the investigation of
what takes place immediately after the stopping of the
living machine. If the heart is uncovered a few minutes
after execution, pulsations are remarked which continue
during an hour or longer, at the rate of forty to forty-five
a minute, even after the removal of the liver, the stomach,
and the intestines. For several hours the muscles retain
their excitability, and undergo reflex contractions from the
effect of pinching. Robin noted the following phenomenon
in the case of a criminal an hour after his execution : " The
right arm," to quote his description, " being placed ob-
liquely extended at the side of the trunk, with the hand
about ten inches away from the hip, I scratched the skin
of the chest, at about the height of the nipple, with the
point of a scalpel, over a space of nearly four inches, with-
out making any pressure on the muscles lying beneath.
We immediately saw the great pectoral muscle, then the
biceps, then the anterior brachial, successively and quickly
contract. The result was a movement of approach of the
whole arm toward the trunk, with rotation inward of the
limb, and half flexion of the forearm upon the arm, a true
defensive movement, which threw the hand forward toward
the chest as far as the pit of the stomach."

These spontaneous exhibitions of life in a corpse are
trifles compared with those excited by means of certain
stimulants, particularly of electricity. Aldini, in 1802,
subjected two criminals, beheaded at Bologna, to the action
of a powerful battery. Influenced by the current, the
facial muscles contracted, producing the effect of horrid
grimaces. All the limbs were seized with convulsive
movements ; the bodies seemed to feel the stir of resur-
rection, and to make efforts to rise. The springs of the
system retained the power of answering the electric stimu-
lus for several hours after beheading. A few years later,
at Glasgow, Ure made some equally noted experiments on

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. 313

the body of a criminal that had remained more than an hour
hanging on the gallows. One of the poles of a battery of
seven hundred pairs having been connected with the spinal
marrow below the nape of the neck, and the other brought
in contact with the heel, the leg, before bent back on itself,
was thrust violently forward, almost throwing down one of
the assistants, who had hard work to keep it in place.
When one of the poles was placed on the seventh rib, and
the other on one of the nerves of the neck, the chest rose
and fell, and the abdomen repeated the like movement, as
takes place in respiration. On touching a nerve of the
eyebrow at the same time with the head, the facial muscles
contracted. " Wrath, terror, despair, anguish, and fright-
ful grins, blended in horrible expression on the assassin's
countenance."

The most remarkable instance of a momentary reappear-
ance of vital properties, not in the whole organism, but in
the head alone, is {he famous experiment suggested by
Legallois, and carried out for the first time in 1858 by
Brown-Sequard. This skillful physiologist beheads a dog,
taking pains to make the section below the point at which
the vertebral arteries enter their bony sheath. Ten min-
utes afterward he sends the galvanic current into the dif-
ferent parts of the head thus severed from its body, with-
out producing any result of movement. He then fits to
the four arteries, the extremities of which appear in the
cutting of the neck, little pipes connected by tubes with a
reservoir full of fresh oxygenated blood, and guides the in-
jection of this blood into the vessels of the brain. Imme-
diately irregular motions of the eyes and the facial mus-
cles occur, succeeded by the appearance of regular harmo-
nious contractions, seeming to be prompted by the will.
The head has regained life. The motions continue to be
performed during a quarter of an hour, while the injection
of blood into the cerebral arteries lasts. On stopping the

/ 314 NATURE AND LIFE.

injection, the motions cease, and give place to the spasms
of agony, and then to death.

Physiologists asked whether such a momentary resur-
rection of the functions of life might not be brought about
in the human subject — that is, whether movement might
not be excited and expression reanimated by injecting fresh
blood into a head just severed from a man's body, as in
Brown-Se'quard's experiment. It was suggested to try it
on the heads of decapitated criminals, but anatomical obser-
vations, particularly those of Charles Robin, showed that
the arteries of the neck are cut by the guillotine in such a
way that air penetrates and fills them. It follows that it
is impracticable to inject them with blood that can produce
the effects noted by Brown-Sequard. Indeed, we know
that blood circulating in the vessels becomes frothy on con-
tact with air, and loses fitness for its functions. Robin
supposes that the experiment in question could be success-
ful only if made upon the head of a m*an killed by a ball
that should strike below the neck ; in that case it would be
possible to effect such a section of the arteries that no en-
trance of air would occur, and, if the head were separated
at the place pointed out by Brown-S6quard, those mani-
festations of function remarked in the dog's head would
probably be obtained by the injection of oxygenated blood.
Brown-S6quard is convinced that they might be obtained,
if certain precautions were observed, even with the head
of a decapitated criminal ; and so strong is his conviction
that, when it was proposed to him to try the experiment —
that is, to perform the injection of blood into the head of a
person executed — he refused to do so, not choosing, as he
said, to witness the tortures of this fragment of a being re-
called for an instant to sensibility and life. We under-
stand Brown-Sequard's scruples, but it is allowable to
doubt whether he would have inflicted great suffering on the
head of the subject ; at most, he would only have aroused in

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. 315

it a degree of very dim and uncertain sensibility. This is easi-
ly explained. In life, the slightest perturbation in the cere-
bral circulation is enough to prevent thought and sensation
utterly. Now, if a few drops of blood too much or too little
in the brain of an animal in full health suffice to alter the
regularity of its psychical manifestations, much more cer-
tainly will the completeness of the brain's action be de-
ranged if it is awakened by an injection of foreign blood, a
forcible ingress too, which, of necessity, cannot cause the
blood to circulate with suitable pressure and equipoise.

Corpse-like rigidity is one of the most characteristic
phenomena of death. This is a general hardening of the
muscles, so great that they lose the property of extension
till even the joints cannot be bent ; this phenomenon begins
some hours after death. The muscles of the lower jaw are
the first to stiffen ; then rigidity invades in succession the
abdominal muscles, those of the neck, and at last the tho-
racic ones. This hardening takes place through the coagu-
lation of the half-fluid albuminoid matter which composes
the muscular fibres, as the solidification of the blood results
from coagulation of its fibrine. After a few hours the
coagulated musculine grows fluid again, rigidity passes
away, and the muscles relax. Something not dissimilar
takes place also in the blcod. The globules change, lose
shape, and suffer the beginning of dissociation. The agents
of putrefaction, vibrios and bacteria, thus enter upon their
great work by insidiously breaking up the least seen
parts.

At last, when partial revivals are no longer possible,
when the last flicker of life has gone out and corpse-like
rigidity has ceased, a new work begins. The living germs
that had collected on the surface of the body and in the
digestive canal develop, multiply, pierce into all the points
of the organism, and produce in it a complete separation
of the tissues and humors ; this is putrefaction. The mo-

316 NATURE AND LIFE.

ment of its appearance varies with the causes of death and
the degree of outward temperature. When death is the
result of a putrid malady, putrefaction begins almost im-
mediately when the body has grown cold. It is the same
when the atmosphere is warm.1 In general, in our cli-
mates, the work of decomposition becomes evident after
from thirty-eight to forty hours. Its first effects are
noticeable on the skin of the stomach; this takes on a
greenish discoloration, which soon spreads and covers suc-
cessively the whole surface of the body. At the same
time the moist parts, the eye, the inside of the mouth,
soften and decay ; then the cadaverous odor is gradually
developed, at first faint and slightly fetid, a mouldy smell,
then a pungent and ammoniacal stench. Little by little
the flesh sinks in»and grows watery; the organs cease to
be distinguishable. Every thing is seized upon by what is
termed putridity. If the tissues are examined under the
microscope at this moment, we no longer recognize any of
the anatomical elements of which the organic fabric is made
up in its normal state. " Our flesh," Bossuet exclaims in
his funeral-sermon on Henrietta of England, u soon changes
its nature, our body takes another name ; even that of a
corpse, used because it still exhibits something of the
human figure, does not long remain with it. It becomes a
thing without a shape, which in every language is without
a name." When structure has wholly disappeared, nothing
more remains but a mixture of saline, fat, and proteic mat-
ters, which are either dissolved and carried away by water,
or slowly burned up by the air's oxygen, and transmuted
into new products, and the whole substance of the body,
except the skeleton, returns piecemeal to the earth whence
it came forth. Thus the ingredients of our organs, the

1 Yet a very high temperature acts as cold does in delaying the mo-
ment of putrefaction by so coagulating the albuminoid matters as to
make them less liable to decay.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. 317

chemical elements of our bodies, turn to mud and dust
again. From this mud and this dust issue unceasingly
new life and energetic activity ; but a clay fit for the com-
monest uses may also be got from it, and, in the words of
Shakespeare's Hamlet^ the dust of Alexander or Cassar may
plug the vent of a beer-cask, or " stop a hole to keep the
wind away." These " base uses," of which the Prince of
Denmark speaks to Horatio^ mark the extreme limits of
the transformation of matter. In any case, the beings of
lowest order that toil and engender in the bosom of putre-
faction are really absorbing and storing away life, since
without their aid the corpse could not serve as nutriment to
plants, which in their turn are the necessary reservoir
whence animality draws its sap and strength. It is in
this sense that Buffon's doctrine of organic molecules is a
true one.

Death is the necessary end of all organic existence.
We may hope more or less to set at a distance its inevita-
ble hour, but it would be madness to dream of its indefi-
nite postponement in any species whatsoever. No doubt
there is no contradiction in conceiving of a perfect equilib-
rium between assimilation and disassimilation, such that
the system would be maintained in immortal health. In
any case, no one has yet even gained a glimpse of the
modes of realizing such an equilibrium, and death con-
tinues, till further orders, a fixed law of Fate. Still,
though immortality for a complete organism seems chi-
merical, perhaps it is not the sense with the immortality of
a separate organ in the sense we now explain. We have
already alluded to the experiments of Paul Bert on animal-
grafting. He has proved that, on the head of a rat, cer-
tain organs of the same animal — as the tail, for instance —
may be grafted. And this physiologist asks himself the
question, whether it would not be possible, when a rat pro-
vided with such an appendage draws near the close of his

318 NATURE AND LIFE.

existence, to remove the appendage from him, and trans-
plant it to a young animal, which in his turn would be de-
prived of the ornament in the same way in his old age in
favor of some specimen of a new generation, and so on in
succession. This tail, transplanted in regular course to
young animals, and imbibing at each transference blood
full of vitality, perpetually renewed, yet ever remaining
the same, would thus escape death. The experiment, deli-
cate and difficult, as we well see, was yet undertaken by
Bert, but circumstances did not allow it to be prolonged
for any considerable time, and the fact of the perpetuity of
an organ, periodically rejuvenated, remains to be demon-
strated.

III.

Real death, then, is characterized by the positive ceas-
ing of vital properties and functions both in the organic or
vegetative life, and in the animal life, properly so termed.
When animal life disappears without any interruption oc-
curring in organic life, the system is in a state of seeming
death. In this state the body is possessed by profound
sleep quite similar to that of hibernating animals ; all the
usual expressions and all signs of internal activity have
disappeared, and give place to invincible torpor. The most
powerful chemical stimulants exert no control over the or-
gans, the walls of the chest are motionless ; in short, see-
ing the body presenting this appearance, it is impossible
not to think of it as dead. There are quite numerous
states of the organism which may thus imitate death more
or less closely ; the commonest one is that of fainting. In
this case neither sensation nor movements of circulation or
respiration are any longer perceptible; the warmth is
lowered, the skin pallid and colorless. Instances of hys-
teria are cited in which the attack has been prolonged for
several days, attended with fainting. In this strange con-

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. 319

dition all physiological manifestations remain suspended ;
yet they are not, as it was long supposed, 'suspended abso-
lutely. Bouchut has proved that, in the gravest cases of
fainting, the pulsations of the heart continue, weaker and
rarer, and harder to be heard than in normal life, but
clearljT distinguishable when the ear is laid on the precor-
dial region. On the other hand, the muscles retain their
suppleness and the limbs their pliability.

Asphyxia, which properly is suspension of breathing,
and consequently of the blood's revivification, sometimes
passes into a serious fainting condition followed by seem-
ing death, from which the sufferer recovers after a period
of varying length. This state may be induced either by
drowning or by inhaling gas unfit for respiration, such as
carbonic acid in deep wells, emanations from latrines, or the
choke-damp of mines, or by suffocation. In 1650 a woman
named Ann Green was hanged at Oxford. She had been
hanging for half an hour, and several people, to shorten her
sufferings, had pulled her by the feet with all their strength.
After she was placed in her coffin it was observed that she
still breathed. The executioner's assistants attempted to
end her existence, but, thanks to the help of physicians,
she came back to life, and continued to live some time after-
ward. Drowning occasions an equally deep insensibility,
during which, very singularly, the psychical faculties re-
tain some degree of activity. Sailors, after timely resusci-
tation from drowning, declare that, while under water, they
had returned in thought to their families, and sadly fancied
the grief about to be caused by their death. After a few
minutes of physical rest, they suffered violent colic of the
heart, which seemed to twist itself about in their chests ;
afterward this anguish was followed by utter annihilation
of consciousness. It is very difficult, moreover, to deter-
mine how long apparent death may be protracted in an or-
ganism under water. It varies greatly with temperaments.

320 NATURE AND LIFE.

In the islands of the Greek archipelago, where the busi-
ness of gathering sponges from the bottom of the sea is
pursued, children are not allowed to drink wine until, by
practice, they have grown accustomed to remain a certain
time under water. Old divers of the archipelago say that
the time to return and take breath at the surface is indi-
cated to them by painful convulsions of the limbs, and very
severe contractions in the region of the heart. This power
of enduring asphyxia for some time, and resisting by force
of will the movements of respiration, has been remarked
under other circumstances. The case of a Hindoo is men-
tioned, who used to creep into the palisaded inclosures
used for bathing, in the Ganges, by the ladies of Calcutta,
seize one of them by the legs, drown her, and rob her of
her rings. It was supposed that a crocodile carried her off.
One of his intended victims succeeding in escaping, the as-
sassin was seized and executed in 1817. He confessed
that he had practised the horrible business for seven years.
Another instance is that of a spy, who, seeing prepara-
tions making for his execution, endeavored to escape it by
feigning death. He held his breath, and suspended all
voluntary motions for twelve hours, and endured all the
tests applied to him to put the reality of his death beyond
doubt. Anaesthetics, too, like chloroform and ether, some-
times produce stronger effects than the surgeons using
them desire, and occasion a state of seeming death instead
of temporary insensibility.

It is easy to recall persons to life who are in a state of
seeming death ; it is only needful to stimulate powerfully
the two mechanical systems that are more or less com-
pletely suspended in action, namely, those of respiration
and circulation. Such movements are communicated to
the frame of the chest, that the lungs are alternately com-
pressed and dilated. A sort of shampooing is applied over
the whole body, which restores the capillary circulation ;

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. 321

chemical stimulants, such as ammonia or acetic acid, are
brought under the patient's nostrils. This is the mode of
treatment for drowned persons, whose condition is brought
on by ceasing to breathe the air, not by taking in too much
water. A very effective method in cases of apparent death,
caused by inhaling a poisonous gas, such as carbonic acid
or sulphuretted hydrogen, consists in making the patient
draw in large quantities of pure oxygen. And, again, it
has very lately been proposed, as Halle* suggested without
success early in this century, to adopt the use of strong
electric currents for stimulating movement in persons who
are in a state of syncope.

In all the cases of seeming death we have just men-
tioned, one mark of vitality persistently remains, that is,
pulsation of the heart. Its throbs are less strong and fre-
quent, but they continue perceptible on auscultation. They
are regularly discernible in the deepest fainting-fits, in the
various kinds of asphyxia, in poisonings by the most vio-
lent narcotics, in hysteria, in the torpor of epilepsy, in
short, in the most diverse and protracted states of lethargy
and seeming death.

Yet, this result, now a practical certainty, was unknown
to physicians of old, and it cannot be denied that, in former
times, seeming death was quite often mistaken for true
death. The annals of science have recorded a certain num-
ber of errors of this kind, many of which have resulted in
the interment of unfortunate wretches who were not dead.
And for one of these mistakes that chance has brought to
light either too late, or in time for the rescue, even then,
of the victim, how many are there, particularly in times
of ignorance and carelessness, that no one has ever known !
How many live men have only given up their last breath
after a vain struggle to break out of their coffin ! The
facts collected by Bruhier and Lallemand in two works
that have become classic compose a most mournful and

332 NATURE AND LIFE.

dramatic history. These are some of its episodes, marked
by the strange part that chance plays in them. A rural
guard, having no family, dies in a little village of Lower
Charente. Hardly grown cold, his body is taken out of
bed, and laid on a straw ticking covered with a coarse
cloth. An old hired woman is charged with the watch
over the bed of death. At the foot of the corpse were a
branch of box, put into a vessel filled with holy water, and
a lighted taper. Toward midnight the old watcher, yield-
ing to the invincible need of sleep, fell into a deep slum-
ber. Two hours later she awoke surrounded by flames
from a fire that had caught her clothes. She rushed out,
crying with all her might for help, and the neighbors, run-
ning together at her screams, saw in a moment a naked
spectre issue from the hut, limping and hobbling on limbs
covered with burns. While the old woman slept, a spark
had probably dropped on the straw bed, and the fire it
kindled had aroused both the watcher from her sleep and
the guard from his seeming death. With timely assistance
he recovered from his burns, and grew sound and well
again.

On the 15th of October, 1842, a farmer in the neighbor-
hood of Neufchatel, in the Lower Seine, climbed into a
loft over his barn to sleep, as he usually did, among the
hay. Early the next day, his customary hour of rising
being past, his wife, wishing to know the cause of his de-
lay, went to look for him, and found him dead. At the
time of interment, more than twenty-four hours after, the
bearers placed the body in a coffin, which was closed, and
carried it slowly down the ladder by which they had gained
the loft. Suddenly one of the rounds of the ladder snapped,
and the bearers fell together with the coffin, which burst
open with the shock. The accident, which might have
been fatal to a live man, was very serviceable to the dead
one, who was roused from his lethargy by the concussion,

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. 333

i

returned to life, and hastened to get out of his shroud .
with the assistance of those of the by-standers who had riot
been frightened away by his sudden resurrection. An hour
later he could recognize his friends, and felt no uneasiness
except a slight confusion in his head, and the next day was
able to go to work again. At about the same time a resi-
dent of Nantes gave up life after a long illness. His heirs
made arrangements for a grand funeral, and, while the per-
formance of a requiem was going on, the dead man re-
turned to life and stirred in the coffin, that stood in the
middle of the church. When carried home, he soon re-
gained his health. Some time afterward, the cure, not
caring to be at the trouble of the burial ceremonies for
nothing, sent a bill to the ex-corpse, who declined to pay
it, and referred the cure to the heirs who had given orders
for the funeral. A lawsuit followed, with which the papers
of the day kept the public greatly amused. A few years
ago Cardinal Donnet, in the Senate, told his own story of
the circumstances under which he narrowly escaped being
buried alive.

Besides these instances of premature burial in which
the victim escaped the fearful consequences of the mistake
made, others may be cited in which the blunder was dis-
covered only too late. Quite a number of such cases are
known, some of which are told with details too romantic
to entitle them to implicit belief, while, however,, many
of them show unquestionable signs of authenticity. There
long prevailed a tradition, not easily traceable to any source,
which attributed the death of the Abb6 Provost to a mis-
take of this kind. All his biographers relate that the
famous author of " Manon Lescaut," falling senseless from
the effect of a rush of blood, in the depths of the forest of
Chantilly, was supposed to be dead ; that then the surgeon
of the village having made an incision into his stomach,
by direction of the magistrate, to ascertain the cause of

324 NATURE AND LIFE.

death, Provost uttered a cry, and did then die in earnest.
But it has since been proved that the story is imaginary,
and that it was made up after Provost's death ; nor do any
of the necrological accounts published at the time refer it
to the consequences of a premature autopsy. Though the
account of Prevost dissected alive seems doubtful, that is
not the case with the story told with regard to an opera-
tion by the famous accoucheur, Philip Small. A woman,
about to be confined, fell into a state of seeming death.
Small relates that when he was summoned to perform the
Cesarean operation, the by-standers, convinced that the
woman was dead, urged him to proceed with it. " I sup-
posed so, too," he says, " for I felt no pulse in the region
of the heart, and a glass held over her face showed no sign
of respiration." Then he plunged his knife into the body,
and was cutting among the bleeding tissues, when the
subject awoke from her lethargy.

We cite some still more startling instances. Thirty
years ago, a resident of the village of Eymes, in Dordogne,
had been suffering for a long time from a chronic disorder
of little consequence in itself, but marked by the distressing
symptom of constant wakefulness, which forbade the pa-
tient any kind of rest. Worn out with this condition, he
consulted a doctor, who prescribed opium, advising great
caution in its use. The invalid, possessed with that com-
mon-enough notion that the efficacy of a drug is propor-
tioned to its quantity, took at one time a dose sufficient
for several days. He soon fell into a deep sleep, which
continued unbroken for more than twenty-four hours. The
village doctor, being summoned, finds the body without
warmth, the pulse extinct, and, on opening the veins of
both arms in succession, obtains but a few drops of thick
blood. The day after, they prepared for his burial. But,
a few days later, closer inquiry revealed the imprudence
the poor wretch had committed in taking an excessive

THE PHYSIOLOGY OP DEATH. 325

quantity of the prescribed narcotic. The report spreading
among the villagers, they insist on his disinterment, which
is allowed. Gathering in a crowd at the cemetery, they
take up the coffin, open it, and are met by a horrible sight.
The miserable man had turned over in his coffin, the blood
gushing from the two opened veins had soaked the shroud ;
his features were frightfully contorted, and his convulsed
limbs bore witness to the cruel anguish that had preceded
death. Most of the facts of this kind are of rather remote
date. The latest instances have happened in the country,
among an ignorant population, usually in neighborhoods
where no' physician was called on to ascertain the decease,
that is, to distinguish the cases of seeming death from those
of true death.

How, then, can we certainly know apparent from real
death? There is a certain number of positive signs of
death ; that is to say, signs which, when absolutely dis-
cerned, leave no room for mistake. Yet some physicians,
and many people who know nothing of science, are still so
doubtful about the certainty of these signs as to wish that
physiology could detect others of a more positive charac-
ter. A zealous philanthropist quite lately gave a sum for
a prize of twenty thousand francs to the discoverer of an
infallible sign of death. Doubtless the intention is ex-
cellent, but we are safe henceforward in regarding the sex-
toii's work without alarm ; the signs already known are
clear enough to prevent any mistake, and to. make the fatal
risk of premature burial impossible.

We must point out, in the first place, the immediate
signs of death, The first and the most decisive is the
absolute stoppage of the heart's pulsations, noted for a
duration of at least five minutes, not by the touch, but by
the ear. " Death is certain," says the reporter of the com-
mission named in 1848 by the Academy of Sciences to
award the prize of competition as, to the signs of true death,

326 NATURE AND LIFE.

" when positive cessation of pulsations of the heart in the
subject has been ascertained, which is immediately followed,
if it has not been preceded, by cessation of respiration and
of the functions of sensation and motion." The remote
signs equally deserve attention. Of these, three are recog-
nized : corpse-like rigidity, resistance to the action of gal-
vanic currents, and putrefaction. As we have already seen,
rigidity does not begin till several hours after death, while
general and complete disappearance of muscular contrac-
tility, under the stimulus of currents, and, last of all, pu-
trefaction, are only manifest at a still later period. These
remote signs, particularly the last, have this advantage,
that they may be ascertained by those unacquainted with
medicine, and it is very well to pay some attention to them
in countries where physicians are not charged with the
verification of the disease, but they are of no importance
wherever there are doctors to examine the heart with in-
struments, and to decide promptly and surely upon the
death, from the complete stoppage of pulsation in that
organ. At the beginning of the century, Hufeland and
several other physicians, convinced that all the signs of
death then known were uncertain, except putrefaction,
proposed and obtained in Germany the establishment of
a certain number of mortuary houses, intended to receive
and keep for some time the bodies of deceased persons.
During the whole existence of these establishments, not
one of the bodies transported into those asylums has been
known to return to life, as the authentic declarations of the
attendant doctors agree. The usefulness of such mortuary
houses is still more questionable in our time, when we have
a positive and certain means of recognizing real death.
Those police regulations that forbid autopsies and inter-
ments until the full term of delay for twenty-four hours,
measured from the declaration of death, still remain pru-
dent precautions, but they do not lessen at all the certainty

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. , 327

of that evidence furnished by the stopping of the heart.
When the heart has definitely ceased to beat, then resur-
rection is no longer possible, and the life which deserts it
is preparing to enter upon a new cycle.

Hamlet^ in his famous soliloquy, speaks of " that undis-
covered country from whose bourn no traveler returns,"
and mournfully asks what must be the dreams of the man
to whom death has opened the portals of those gloomy
regions. We can give no clearer answer in the name of
physiology than Shakespeare's prince gives. Physiology
is dumb as to the destiny of the soul after death ; of that
it teaches, and it can teach us, nothing. It is plain, and
it would be childish to deny it, that any psychical or sen-
tient manifestation and any concrete representation of the
personality are impossible after death. The dissolution
of the organism annihilates surely, and of necessity, the
functions of sensation, motion, and will, which are insepa-
rable from a certain combination of material conditions.
We can feel, move, and will, only so far as we have organs
for reception, transmission, and execution. These assur-
ances of science are above discussion, and should be ac-
cepted without reserve. Do they tell us any thing of the
destiny of the psychical principles themselves ? Again we
say, No, and for the very simple reason that science does
not attain to those principles ; but metaphysics, which does
attain to them, authorizes us, nay, further, compels us, to
believe that they are immortal. They are immortal, as
the principles of motion, the principles of perception, all
the active unities of the world, are immortal. What is the
general characteristic of those unities ? It is that of being
simple, which means being indestructible, which means
being in harmonious mutual connection, after such a man-
ner that each one of them perceives the infinite order of
the other. If this connection did not exist, there would
be no world. What is the characteristic of the psychical

328 NATURE AND LIFE.

unities more especially ? It is that of having, moreover,
the consciousness of such perception, the feeling also of
the relations that bind the whole together, and those facul-
ties, more or less developed, which that consciousness and
that perception imply. Bat why should these unities be
any more perishable than the others? Why, if all these
forces, all these activities, are eternal, should those alone
not possess eternity which have this high privilege, that
of knowing the infinite relations which the others sustain
without knowing that they do so ?

To form a conception of the immortality of the soul,
then, we must place ourselves at that point of view to
which men rarely and hardly rise, of the simplicity and
the indefectibility of all those principles of force that fill
the universe. We must train ourselves to understand that
what we see is nothing in comparison with what we do not
see. The whole force, the whole spring, of the most com-
plex movements, the most magnificent phenomena of Na-
ture and the most subtile operations of life, thought in-
cluded, proceed from the infinite commingling of an infinity
of series of invisible and unextended principles, whose ac-
tivities ascend in the scale of perfection from simple power
of movement up to supreme reason. Human personality,
such as we see -and know it, is only a coarse and complex
result from those of these primitive activities which are
the best and deepest thing in us. It is not that person-
ality which is immortal — that is no more immortal than
the motive force of a steam-engine is, or the electricity of
a voltaic battery, although movement and electricity are
of themselves indestructible. It is not that personality
which can aspire to a home in the bosom of God. Our
true personality, our real T9 that which may without illu-
sion count on a future life, is unity released from every
material bond, and all concrete alloy ; it is that force, neces-
sarily pure, which has a more or less clear consciousness

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. 339

of its own relations with the infinity of like unities, and
which more or less draws near to them by thought and by
love. It is beyond our power to conceive what will become
of that unity when, quitting its prison of flesh, and soaring
into the ideal ether, it will no longer have organs with
which to act ; but what we can affirm is that, precisely by-
reason of this freedom, it will rise to a clearer knowledge
of all that it had only known obscurely, and to a purer love
of what it had adored only through the veil of sense. And
this certainty, which is the ennobling and elevating force
of life, is also the consolation for death.

15

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE,
AND IN PSYCHOLOGY.

THERE are many grounds of pride and satisfaction for
the mind in the sciences known to man, but reasons for hu-
mility and bitter regret are also supplied by them to the
full. Spite of the persistent strivings and labored medita-
tions of the legions of investigators who have gone before
us, Nature still has her deep and dark abysses, at whose
blank look all insight turns to blindness, all boldness dies
in fear, and all confidence becomes despair. When we at-
tempt to throw a little light upon the heart of these mys-
terious chasms, that light merely reflects to our view the
ghosts of our own ignorance, and we gain from the futile
effort only a fresh conviction of our own impotence and
poverty. It would be wise to gain from it something
more ; I mean, a lesson to benefit us. Indeed, nothing
should so chide us back to humility and patience, so cool
our presuming eagerness and daunt our daring arrogance,
as the study of those phenomena which Providence seems
to have ordained purposely to baffle human inquisitiveness.
Yet many men affect to be unconscious of the astounding
and intricate operations which are taking place in regions
that sight and sense never sound, and stubbornly dispute
the existence of unseen activities and unfelt powers. This
is the deadly, doubting temper that the evidence of those
sphinxes of which we are now treating must be brought
to attack. The lesson is all the more eloquent because, by
strange contrast, those questions that defy every kind of

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 331

theoretical exposition and of pictured conception are pre-
cisely the ones best understood on their practical side.
Familiarity with effects seems in these cases unavailing to
gain any understanding of causes.

These reflections have a particular application to he-
redity. The fact exists that the ovule contains in its sub-
stance, seemingly homogeneous, not simply the anatomical
organism of the individual about to issue from it, but, more-
over, his temperament, character, capacities, his thoughts,
and his feelings. The parents lodge in that molecule the
future of an existence almost always identical with their
own from the physiological point of view, often so in re-
spect to the pathological one, and wholly so in many in-
stances when psychologically regarded. We propose to
bring to our readers' knowledge the results of the latest
researches on the subject of that amazing work of vital
economy.1

I.

Heredity is that biological law in virtue of which living
beings incline to transmit to their progeny a certain por-
tion of the traits which characterize themselves. It is a
very delicate problem to decide whether we are to attrib-
ute to heredity the handing down of the anatomical forms
and the physiological functions of that species which is
represented in the particular system. At all events, in this
respect it is plain that the reproduction of parents in their
children is thorough and absolute ; otherwise there would
be no such thing as species ; there would be mere succes-
sions of beings, with no other relations to each other than
that of generation. Within our experience, as limited by
history, the constant new production of specific characteris-
tics, always identical, in other words, the permanent integ-
rity of species, is a fact almost beyond dispute. Such

1 See particularly Th. Ribot, " Heredity, its Phenomena, its Laws,"
etc. Paris, 8vo, 1873.

332 NATURE AND LIFE.

characteristics as mark the differences between races and
varieties are transmitted ,with less certainty and uniformity,
and the fact of the various transformations which these
may undergo from generation to generation is precisely the
one upon which a famous school of naturalists insists, in its
attempt to demonstrate, within certain limits, as to extent,
the utter change of organisms in the lapse of ages. Still
less fixed and amenable to rule is the reproduction of those
characteristics, not so general as those of race and species,
which may be looked on as peculiar to the individual.
Thus, as characteristics increase in peculiarity and special-
ty, escaping the law of heredity, the chances increase that
children will differ from their parents. Yet observation —
and that as ancient as man himself is — fixes the truth that
these completely personal characteristics may be transmit-
ted by generation. Within what limits, and under what
conditions ? This is the point that we must examine with
the wariest caution, for a question does not exist about
which there is a greater risk of slipping in perilous down-
ward paths.

Heredity is peculiarly manifest in continuous existence
of pathological and physiological conditions. It is espe-
cially betrayed in the expression and features of the face.
The ancients took note of this; hence, among the Romans,
the nasones, labeones, buccones, capitones, etc. The nose
is perhaps that one of all the features which heredity most
persistently maintains ; the Bourbon nose is famous. He-
redity shows itself also in fecundity and longevity. In
the old French nobility many families possessed immense
vigor in propagation. Anne de Montmorency, who, when
past seventy-five, was still strong enough to smash with
his sword the teeth of the Scotch soldier who gave him his
death-blow in the battle of Saint-Denis, was the father of
twelve children. Three of his ancestors, Matthew (1st),
Matthew (3d), and Matthew (3d), had among them eighteen

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 333

children, fifteen of whom were boys. The son and the
grandson of the great Conde counted nineteen children in
their two families, and their great-grandfather, killed at
Jarnac, had ten. The first four Guises counted together
forty-three children, thirty of them boys. Achille de
Harlay, father of the first President de Harlay, had nine
children, his father ten, his great-grandfather eighteen. In
some families this fertility persisted for five or six genera-
tions. The mean length of human life depends on locali-
ties, food, state of civilization, but individual longevity
seems to be wholly independent of these conditions. It is
remarked among those who lead lives of the hardest toil,
as well as among those who take the greatest care of their
health, and it seems to depend upon some inward potency
of vitality received by individuals from their ancestors.
This is so well understood that, in England, life-insurance
companies require from their agents full reports as to the
longevity of the ancestors of applicants. In the family of
Turgot the age of fifty-nine years was seldom outlived, and
the man who has given lustre to its name, on the day he
reached his fiftieth year, felt a presentiment that the end of
his life was not far off. Notwithstanding his appearance
of perfectly good health, and his extremely vigorous con-
stitution, from that time he held himself in readiness for
death, and he did in fact die at the age of fifty-three.

Heredity often transmits muscular strength, and vari-
ous other motive energies. Antiquity had its families of
athletes. The English have their families of boxers. The
late inquiries of Mr. Galton on the subject of wrestlers and
racing-crews, prove that the victors in the contests in
which these men take part usually belong to a small num-
ber of families in which skill and agility come by descent.
Suppleness and grace in dancing movements are transmit-
ted, too, as the famous family of the Vestris witnesses. It
is the same with different peculiarities of the voice, stam-

334 NATUKE AND LIFE.

mering, nasal speaking, slurring the r, etc. Families of
singers are numerous. Most children born of talkative
people chatter from their cradle. Dr. Lucas mentions an
instance of a servant of boundless loquacity. She talked
people utterly out of breath ; she would chatter to animals,
to things ; she gabbled aloud to herself. Her master was
obliged to dismiss her. " But," she said, " it is not my
fault, it comes from my father ; it was so strong in him that
it drove my mother wild, and he had a father exactly like
me in that."

Heredity in anomalies of the organization has been no-
ticed in a great number of cases. One of the strangest is
that of Edward Lambert, whose body, excepting his face,
the palms of his hands, and the soles of his feet, was cov-
ered with a sort of armor of horny excrescences. He had
six children, all of whom, from six weeks of age, showed
the same singularity. The only one that survived trans-
mitted it, like his father, to all his sons, and this transmis-
sion, passing from male to male, continued for five genera-
tions. The Colburn family is mentioned also, in which the
parents transmitted to the children, during four genera-
tions, what is called sexdigitism, that is, six fingers on each
hand, and feet with six toes each. In the same way al-
binism, lameness, hare-lip, and other anomalies, are repro-
duced in the progeny. It has been observed that entirely
individual peculiarities may be subject to a like tendency
to reappearance. Giron de Buzareingues says that he
knew a man who had the habit, when in bed, of lying on
his back and crossing the right leg over the left one. One
of his daughters was born with the same habit ; she regu-
larly took that position in the cradle, in spite of the impedi-
ment of her baby-dress. The same author declares that he
has often remarked children who had inherited habits
equally singular, which could be accounted for neither by
imitation nor by education. Darwin mentions another

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 335

instance of the kind : A child had the odd trick of moving
his fingers rapidly about when pleased. When greatly ex-
cited he would raise both hands on either side of the face,
as high as the eyes, still shaking his fingers. After reaching
old age, he still found it troublesome to refrain from making
those gestures. He had eight children, one of them a lit-
tle girl, who from the age of four years had her father's
trick of shaking her fingers and lifting her hands. So, too,
heredity in handwriting has been noticed. There are fami-
lies in which left-handedness is hereditary. Various pecu-
liarities in the state of the organs of sense are transmitted
in like manner. Almost all the members of the Montmo-
rency family were affected with a slight squint, which was
called the Montmorency look. Inability to distinguish be-
tween different colors is well known to run in families; the
famous English chemist Dalton, and two of his brothers,
were thus affected ; and hence the name of daltonism is
given to that peculiarity. Deafness and blindness are
sometimes hereditary, though rarely so ; the condition of
deaf-muteness still more rarely. Many strange instances
of the transmission of certain perversities of the sense of
taste are cited. Lucas relates, Zimmermann says, the fol-
lowing fact : In Scotland a man was haunted by an uncon-
querable longing to eat human flesh. He had a daughter.
Though separated from her father and mother, who were
sentenced to burning before she was a year old, and though
brought up among people in a good station of life, this
young girl gave way, like her father, to the incredible
craving for cannibalism. This instance clearly borders on
insanity.

Insanity is assuredly transmitted by heredity. Esquirol
found among thirteen hundred and seventy-five cases of
madness three hundred and thirty-seven in which it was in-
herited. Guislain and other physicians calculate in a gen-
eral way that the number of cases of hereditary mental

336 NATURE AND LIFE.

alienation represents a quarter of all those who are thus
diseased. Moreau (of Tours) and others state that the
proportion is even greater. Heredity in madness does not
merely comprise direct transmission of insanity properly so
called ; hysteria, epilepsy, chorea, idiocy, hypochondria, may
proceed from madness, and it may in turn reproduce them.
In their passage from one generation to another, these
various diseases of the nerves become in a manner mutually
transformed.1 Herpin, the Genevese, noted, among the an-
cestors of two hundred and forty-three epileptic subjects,
seven epileptics, twenty-one insane, and twenty-four per-
sons affected with cerebro-spinal diseases. Georget draws
the conclusion, from numerous observations made at la
Salpe'triere, that hysterical women almost always had
among their near relatives those who were hysteric,
epileptic', hypochondriac, or insane. Moreau dwells on
the very frequent occurrence of morbid nervous conditions
among the ancestors of the idiotic and imbecile. A single
fact will suffice to convey some conception of the various
and strange complications following on the transmission by
descent of nervous disorders. Dr. Morel attended four
brothers of the same family. The grandfather of these
children died insane ; their father was quite incapable of
fixing his mind on any thing ; their uncle, a distinguished
physician, marked by high intellectual power, was noted
for his eccentricities. Now, these four children, sprung
from the same stock, exhibited very differing forms of psy-
chical disorders : one was a madman, subject to periodi-

1 Mere alcoholic intoxication may be transformed into serious nervous
diseases. Children conceived in an acute attack of drunkenness are
often epileptic, insane, idiotic, etc. These facts have been remarked since
very ancient days. A law of Carthage forbade any other beverage but
water on the day of marital cohabitation, and Amyot says, " Drunkenness
begets nothing of any worth." Late and accurate researches prove that
a child begotten even in a mere passing fit of intozication always bears
ineffaceable marks of more or less grave degeneracy.

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 337

cal and furious fits ; the second, a hypochondriac, was re-
duced by brooding inaction to the state of a mere automa-
ton ; the third was peculiar from his excessive irascibility,
and his disposition to suicide ; the fourth was distinguished
by great capabilities for the arts, but was timid and suspi-
cious by nature.

Scrofula, cancer, tubercles, syphilis, gout, arthritis, tetter,
and generally those chronic constitutional complaints which
take the name of diatheses and cachexies, very often descend
from parents to children. The heredity of these diseased
states is almost as common and positive as that of nervous
affections. Tt may also be asserted, though the case is
much more unusual, that disorders of the skin, especially
psoriasis, may be transmitted.

Nothing can be more dramatically interesting than the
evolution of these hereditary maladies, which, lodged in the
system of children in the form of germs, of mere predis-
positions, sometimes are destroyed utterly by a combina-
tion of fortunate conditions and precautions, sometimes be-
gin at once their destined destructive work, sometimes lurk
in secret for years, and are aroused some day, pitiless and
terrible, under the goad of various stimulations. Thus
age, sex, temperament, practices, habits, conditions of
health, the surrounding medium, all take part in the de-
velopment of diseased action, coming from heredity. In-
sanity is rare in childhood ; epilepsy most commonly breaks
out in early youth. Hysteria, scrofula, rachitis, and tu-
bercles, make their appearance in childhood and youth ;
gout, gravel, calculi, baldness, cancer, are hereditary con-
ditions manifest in the adult. Women are more liable to
insanity, epilepsy, and hysteria, than men. The latter, to
balance the scale, are much oftener attacked by gout, grav-
el, and stone. The nervous temperament facilitates the
appearance of neuroses, the lymphatic-sanguine tempera-
ment that of arthritis and tetter, the lymphatic that of

338 NATURE AND LIFE.

scrofula. The changes that occur in the physiological bal-
ance of the individual act decidedly upon the progress
and the appearance of constitutional disorders. Thus in-
sanity very often makes itself known just after menstrua-
tion, pregnancy, or childbirth ; epilepsy and hysteria in
like manner become active at the time when the signs of
puberty first appear. Education and manners have a simi-
lar influence. Cruel treatment and extreme severity, as
also utter want of discipline and of watchful care, often
produce lamentable effects on the brain of young children.
Alcoholic indulgences and high living are fatal to per-
sons born of parents afflicted with gout and gravel ; while
poverty and unwholesomeness in their surroundings deci-
mate those who bear the seeds of consumption within
them.

At any rate, the destructiveness of hereditary diseases
is a sad and striking fact, known in all its mournfulness only
to those who are called every day to observe its conse-
quences. One needs to see the premature infirmities, the
wasting sufferings, the irredeemable misfortunes, the keen
and lingering anguish to which parents often doom their chil-
dren while they believe they are transmitting to them the
blessing of life, if one would judge of the might of that
fell spirit of disease lurking in the inmost depths of their
being. One must read the authors who have written on
these subjects, and especially our learned French special-
ists in insanity, to gain acquaintance with that mysterious
and maleficent potency which that frail and innocent being,
the object, for one fleeting moment of illusions, of every
joy, and blessing, and smiling hope, so often brings as its
companion when it opens its eyes to the light of day.

As a general statement, it may be said that hereditary
transmission, either of personal peculiarities in anatomical
structure and in temperament, or of aptitudes to take on
one or another morbid state, which also depends on certain

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 339

bodily dispositions, is a very common though not a uni-
form phenomenon among animals and in man.

Transmission by descent of individual peculiarities in
the order of intellect or the affections, and heredity in
predisposition to some one or other moral or speculative
activity, are also phenomena sometimes remarked, but not
so commonly as the foregoing ones. When we review the
series of instances and proofs collected and appealed to by
some authors, we are struck, it is true, by the seeming
strength of these arguments, and we are ready to concede
to heredity a very large share in the development of the
intellect and character in the genesis of the thinking indi-
vidual. We fail to see, or we forget, the prodigious num-
ber of facts that bear witness the contrary way. The illu-
sions of that mirage have not been without their use, in
the sense that they have induced very interesting re-
searches, but they would be a source of danger did they
lead the public to put faith in the conclusions drawn
by some authors from these investigations. We will
briefly point out the real advantage to be gained from
these researches, and will attempt to disprove the infer-
ences.

According to Galton, the faculty of memory in the
family of Richard Porson, the famous Greek scholar, was
so wonderful that it had passed into a byword — " the Por-
son memory." Lady Esther Stanhope, who led so advent-
urous a life, notes, among many points of likeness between
herself and her grandfather, that of the memory. " I have
mv grandfather's gray eyes and his memory for places," she
says. "If he saw a stone on the road, he recollected it,
and I do the same ; his eyes, dull and without expression
at ordinary times, blazed with a startling light as mine -do
when sudden emotion seized him." The creative and im-
aginative faculties, which take a dominant part in poetry
and the arts, sometimes pass down from father to son.

340 NATURE AND LIFE.

Galton, in the work published by him four years ago,1 and
Th. Ribot, in his very late book, give long lists of painters,
poets, and musicians, designed to prove the part which
heredity takes in the production of these artists' talents.
In these lists many instances appear in which that influence
cannot be called in question, but there are very many
more in which it is extremely disputable. Thus these au-
thors discover the influence of heredity in the poetic genius
of Byron, Goethe, and Schiller, because they find in their
ancestors certain passions, certain vices or qualities, as if
such peculiarities of character could have any thing to do
with determining poetic genius. In fact, their catalogues
do not name one great poet who inherited his powers from
his parents. We do learn from them that a great poet
sometimes becomes the father of tolerably good poets,
which is by no means the same thing. Hereditary predis-
position for painting is more real ; in a list of forty-two
famous Italian, Spanish, or Flemish painters, Galton cites
twenty-one who had famous parents. The names of Bel-
lini, Caracci, Teniers, Van Ostade, Mieris, Van der Yelde,
Vernet, are proof enough of the existence of families of
painters. In Titian's family nine meritorious painters are
met with. The history of musicians presents more striking
instances. The family of Bach begins in 1550 and ends
in 1800 ; its founder was Veit Bach, a baker at Presburg,
who sought recreation from his work in music and singing.
He had two sons, who began that unbroken succession
of musicians of the same name which filled Thuringia,
Saxony, and Franconia, for nearly two centuries. They
were all organists, or parish singers, or town musicians, as
they are styled in Germany. When the members of this
family had scattered, becoming too numerous to live in the
same neighborhood, they agreed to come together on a
fixed day once a year, in order to keep up a sort of patri-
1 " Hereditary Genius," London, 1869.

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 341

archal bond among tbem. This custom was observed till
toward the middle of the eighteenth century, and as many
as a hundred and twenty persons, men, women, and chil-
dren, of the name of Bach, were often seen together. In
that family are enumerated twenty-nine eminent musicians,
and twenty-eight of inferior repute. The father of Mozart
was second chapel-master to the Prince-bishop of Salzburg.
Beethoven's was a tenor in the chapel of the Elector of
Cologne. His grandfather had been a singer in the same
chapel, and afterward chapel-master. The parents of Ros-
sini used to perform music at fairs.

We find that heredity intervenes almost as powerfully
and constantly in the transmission of those passions and
feelings, of a wholly different order, which produce vicious
inclinations. The taste for alcohol, the habit of debauchery,
the passion for gaming, gain a control over some persons
from their ancestors. " A lady among my intimates, pos-
sessing a large fortune," says Gama Machado, " had a pas-
sion for play, and passed her nights at the gaming-table ;
she died while young, of a pulmonary complaint. Her el-
dest son, who was like her in every respect, was equally mad
for gambling ; he, too, died of consumption, like his mother,
and at nearly the same age. His daughter, who resembled
him, inherited the same tastes, and died young." Heredity
in a disposition to theft, to rape, to assassination, to sui-
cide, has been noted in very many cases.

In the degree in which we rise from purely physiologi-
cal or pathological regions to those in which mental activity
is more clearly present, heredity is observed to lose its force
and its uniformity. There have been families of savants,
as those of Cassini, Jussieu, Bernouilli, Darwin, Saussure,
Geoffroy, Pictet. In learning and literature we may men-
tion those of Estienne, Grotius, and a few others. The
Mortemart family were famous for their wit. A genius for
statesmanship, or for war, has sometimes been traced con-

342 NATURE AND LIFE.

tirmously for several generations in some families. Taken
all together, these facts of transmission of the psychic fac-
ulties are not numerous. If they are so carefully noted,
and put forward so prominently, it seems to be because
they are not common, even apart from the remark that
there are several of them with which perhaps education
has had as much to do as ancestral influence.

Several years ago there appeared a book under the title
" Phrenyogeny," in which is to be found, together with
many visionary or paradoxical propositions, one idea that
deserves attention, the more so because it points at a pecu-
liarity about which physiologists hitherto seem not to have
concerned themselves. The author of this book, Bernard
Moulin, attempts to prove in it that children are living
photographs of their parents as 'these are at the very in-
stant of conception : in his view parents transmit to children
those tastes and predispositions which were at that instant
exerting their most powerful effect, whether spontaneously
or of intention. The positive conclusions drawn by Moulin,
from his researches as to the art of procreating children of
the best kind, sometimes cause a smile, but the facts ad-
duced in support of them are curious. We mention some
of them. Nine months before the birth of Napoleon I.,
Corsica was in a state of confusion. The famous Paoli,
at the head of an army of citizens formed by his exer-
tions, was striving to quench civil war and prevent a for-
eign invasion. Charles Buonaparte, his aide-de-camp and
secretary, exhibited admirable courage by his side. The
young officer had his wife with nim, Letitia Ramolino, Ro-
man in her beauty, and of vigorous and masculine character.
Napoleon was conceived under canvas, on the eve of a bat-
tle, two paces from the guns trained on the enemy. Robes-
pierre had his origin in the year 1758, that year which saw
the regicide Damiens broken on the wheel and quartered
in the Place de Greve, a year of war, famine, and disquiet.

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 343

His father was a lawyer, and an insatiate reader of the
" Ccmtrat social." Peter the Cruel, King of Castile, was the
son of Alphonso XL, who lived on bad terms with his wife.
Scandalous scenes of anger, jealousy, and violence, contin-
ually disturbed the royal household, and the issue of the in-
tercourse of the married pair was Peter the Cruel, a monster
of physical and moral ugliness. History shows us Raphael's
parents, both devoted to the art of painting. The wife, a
real Madonna, delighted in pious and graceful subjects. The
father, a vigorous dauber, preferred energy for his share.

Ribot, in the remarkable work which he has just devoted
to heredity, examines the laws of that mysterious influence
which he judges to be a kind of habit, or perpetual memory.
These laws are little else than the ascertainment of the usual
directions in which the hereditary impulse acts. Sometimes
transmission passes from the father to the daughter, from
the mother to the son ; sometimes the child takes from both
its parents. Again, it often occurs that the child, instead of
being like its immediate parents, resembles one of its grand-
parents or some yet more remote ancestor, or some distant
member of a collateral branch of the family. This is what
is called atavism, or reversed heredity.1 The latter fact
was well known to the ancients. Montaigne expresses his
wonder at it. " What a prodigy is it," he says, " that the
drop of seed from which we spring bears in itself not

1 The singular phenomenon of alternating generations has been com-
pared with atavism. In 1818, Chamisso, in studying the biphora, or salpas,
discovered that these creatures are alternately single or grouped. In the
first generation the biphora are found as chains, produced by gemmation ;
in the second they are single, produced by spores ; in the third we find
chains of biphora again, so that the son is never like its father, and
always like its grandfather. The researches of Saars and Steenstrup
have brought the fact to light that in some other creatures the cycle goes
through three generations, and that the likeness, instead of being one be-
tween the grandfather and grandson, is one between the great-grand-
father and the great-grandson.

344 NATURE AND LIFE.

merely the impress of the corporeal form of our fathers,
but their thoughts and dispositions too ! That drop of
fluid, where does it find room for that infinite multitude of
forms? and how does it carry those resemblances in so
strange and irregular a course that the great-grandson will
answer to the great-grandfather, the nephew to the uncle ? "
Montaigne's amazement is reasonable, nor do we under-
stand any better now than they did in the sixteenth cen-
tury the causes of these singular transmissions.

Such are the facts. We should in vain attempt to get
rid of their character by multiplying their number, or by
reasoning upon them. In the region of psychology, the
instances of heredity will never be any thing but excep-
tions, compared with those that stand for the opposite.
Now, if they are exceptions, by what right can heredity be
set up as the general law of development of intellectual
action ? By what right is it asserted that in this matter
heredity is the rule, and non-heredity the exception ? Ri-
bot piles up the most ingenious arguments to prop up that
singular proposition, but he wastes his time and ability in
it. Any fashion of explaining how the heredity of intel-
lectual aptitudes is almost uniformly overcome by opposing
or disturbing causes, does not make it out as overcoming
them. Whatever ingenious reasons may be found for con-
solation because the fancied sovereignty of heredity is
seen to be brought down in the nature of things to a very
limited control, they do not enlarge that control. In a
word, if in fact non-heredity does have a far greater power
and sway than heredity, the question is, Why does Ribot
adopt a formula that implies the reverse ?

Moreover, does not the spectacle of the development of
civilization by itself alone clearly prove the dominant effi-
cacy, in man's bosom, of a permanent tendency toward
transformation, innovation, change? Unalterableness in
thoughts and permanence in habits were the law of primi-

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 345

tive races, it is true, and they still are the law of savage
tribes ; but nothing, to begin with, proves that heredity is
the cause of this. Such a reappearance, during a longer
or shorter tract of time, of societies exactly alike, seems to
be much more properly attributable to the potent and irre-
sistible instinct of imitation, and to positive respect for
rites and customs commanded by religion. With these
tribes, the future is like the present, and the present re-
peats the past only because the same unbending rule, the
same authority and the same tyrannical superstition, press
on all alike. Nothing has any strength or respect among
such people, except through tradition, and tradition among
them is merely the honored memory of a will once of old
expressed by mysterious powers. When the English de-
sire to interest the Hindoos in the works of communication
and of hygiene that they are effecting in India, they are
even at this day forced to convince them first that the useful-
ness of such works was well understood by the Brahmans
in the remotest times, so difficult is it for that ancient race
to believe that a rule can be obligatory unless it is tradi-
tional.

At all events, and whatever part heredity may be al-
lowed in this matter, it is certain that its part is not great,
because that strange homogeneity of primitive races, in-
stead of maintaining and strengthening itself, yields sooner
or later to diversity. Every people in turn is invaded by
a force as powerful for action counter to that of hereditary
influences as it is in striking off the iron yoke of primal
customs. It was in Greece, nearly three thousand years ago,
that the first throe of that force shaped and worked what
Goethe calls "the liberation of humanity." Since then,
the crossings of distinct races, new needs and the diversi-
fied inventions which they have suggested without end, the
ideas awakened in man by the ever-growing closeness of
his contact with Nature, have brought into the place of

346 NATURE AND LIFE.

primitive simplicity a manifold and resistless variability,
of which the present condition of the world is the con-
vincing proof.

II.

What precedes is but an historic refutation. A more
direct and scientific refutation will, at the same time, be
more positive and more instructive. After proving that
heredity has not exerted exclusive and unbroken influence,
we must state the causes which act together with and in
opposition to it. We must point out the continuous and
potent activity of those forces which tend, as we have said,
to modify, to alter, and complicate thought, feeling, passion,
manners, and customs.

The special object of education is to transmit to the
child the sum of those habits to which he will need to con-
form in practical life, and the sum of those acquirements
which will be essential to him for pursuing his calling ; but
it must begin by unfolding in him those powers which will
enable him to become master of such habits and of such
acquisitions. It teaches the child to speak, to move, to see,
to feel, to hear, to understand, to judge, to love. Now the
influence of education, counter to that of h eredity, is so
great that the former of itself, in most cases, has the power
of effecting a real moral and psychological likeness be-
tween parents and children. If heredity positively and
irresistibly brought about in descendants the reproduction
of all the characteristics constituting the personality of
their ancestors, education would be of no use. Since edu-
cation, and that a protracted, watchful, and toilsome educa-
tion, is indispensable to bring out the appearance and pro-
duce the development of the child's aptitudes and mental
qualities, we must needs conclude that heredity takes
merely a secondary part in this wonderful genesis of the
moral person. This argument is unanswerable. It would

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 347

be highly unscientific to deny that hereditary influences
are manifest in predispositions and fixed tendencies ; but
it would be quite as inexact to maintain that these im-
plicitly contain the future conditions and control the evolu-
tion of the psychical being.

There is nothing more complicated than education. We
cannot here undertake to go to the depths of its general
management, which has been the subject of so many vol-
umes. The importance everywhere attributed to works
on the training of children is in itself alone a protest
against the abuse of theories on heredity. A few novel
details as to one of the main instruments of education, the
instinct of imitation, and as to the share it has in the de-
velopment of individuals and races, will suffice to teach an
estimate of the power of those influences alien to heredity.

A learned English historian, Bagehot, has lately written
some admirable pages to prove how strong an influence the
unconscious imitation of a popular character or type, and
the general favor shown to this character or this type, the
traits of which are instinctively copied by the public, exerts
over the formation of customs and of tastes, while at the
same time giving the key to periodical revolutions in such
tastes and customs. In his view, national character is
nothing else than local character which has made its way
upward, precisely as the national tongue is merely the
lasting extension of a local dialect. Nothing is more real
than the force of that tendency to imitation, in consequence
of which, in industry, the arts, literature, and manners, cer-
tain ways of doing, devised under very special , conditions,
gain general prevalence, and very soon impress themselves,
at first on the unreflecting and obedient multitude, and
then upon those who have most ability to test and resist
them. This leads to the remark that the chosen few are
almost always forced to follow the tastes and demands of
the many, under 'pain of being neglected or despised. A

348 NATURE AND LIFE.

writer conceives a style which the public enthusiastically
welcomes. He strikes a vein. He breaks in the readers
of his books, the hearers of his plays, to this style, be it
good or bad ; and we see for a time all authors sentenced,
if they would succeed, to imitate the lucky inventor. Thus,
even if there were no natural or instinctive imitation, there
would be interested or compulsory imitation. The founder
of the Times was asked one day how it happened that all
the articles in that paper seemed to come from the same
hand. " Oh," he answered, " there is always one editor
superior to the rest, and all the others imitate him."

The whole history of religions is full of instances prov-
ing to what extent men are led, not by reasonings, but by
examples, and what a disposition they have to repeat what
they have seen or heard, to govern their lives in accordance
\vith the striking or successful models they have in view.
Many a winning cause, famous for the persuasive genius of
its advocates, owes its tiiumph rather to that hidden impulse
which urges us irresistibly to imitation of others. Is not this
potency of surroundings in producing by degrees radical
changes in habits, opinions, and even in creeds, manifest
also in the scene of political society ? Is there any thing
easier than for a man, who has gained control over the mul-
titude, to bring it round to his feelings, his thoughts, his
visions ? Is not this as strikingly and as distinctly taught
by the daily experience in the education of children ? We
often remark in a school that the outward characteristics,
the tone, the ways, the amusements, change from year to
year. It is because some leading spirits, two or three chil-
dren who had an ascendency, have gone. Others have
come, and every thing is altered. As the models change,
the copies change too. New things are praised, and differ-
ent things are ridiculed. The instinct of imitation is spe-
cially developed among men who are wanting in education
or civilization. Savages copy quicker and better than Eu-

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 349

ropeans. Like children, they are natural mimics, and can-
not refrain from aping what is done in their presence.
Their mind supplies nothing that can resist that inclination
to imitate. Every enlightened man has within himself a
lar.ge reserve of ideas toward which he can turn his mind ;
that resource does not exist for the savage and the child.
The occurrences that take place before them are their pe-
culiar life. They live upon what they see and hear. They
are the sport of external things. In civilized nations, un-
cultivated people are in the same condition. Send a cham-
bermaid and a philosopher to a country of the language
of which both are ignorant, it is likely that the girl will
learn it before the philosopher does. He has something
else to do. He can live with his thoughts, but she, unless
she is talking, is lost. The instinct of imitation is in in-
verse ratio to the power of mental abstraction.

We learn from these details that the potent and instinc-
tive force of doing as others do, which plays so great a part
in the education of persons and of races, differs wholly from
heredity. It may act, and it does act, concurrently with
hereditary impulses, but it works much oftener in an inde-
pendent and even a contrary fashion. This is quite as
true of another force, a bolder rival and stronger opponent
of heredity, the work of which is next to be studied : we
mean personality.

Eminently the instrument of free invention, the unfail-
ing spring of the voluntary action that makes things new,
the individual personality of the soul, may be designated,
in opposition to the term heredity, by the name innateness.
To give an idea of the power of innateness as compared
with that of heredity, lists might be drawn up, containing
the instances in which the manifestation of various passions
or various talents does not proceed from ancestors, in which
the individual is born distinct from those who went before
him, or has made himself distinct from them by the reac-

350 NATURE AND LIFE.

tion of his own will. Such lists would be endless, because,
contrary to the opinion of those who advocate absolute
heredity, it is innateness, it is personal activity, which is
the general rule in the unfolding of mind. On the whole
(and this is an essential point), heredity has its root in in-
nateness ; for, after all those aptitudes and those qualities
which ancestors transmit, beginning at a certain fixed time
and for a longer or shorter continuance, to their descend-
ants, these very aptitudes and qualities necessarily come to
birth at such time through the spontaneous effort of a more
or less independent will. On the one hand, we are bid to
notice hysterical, epileptic, and insane people ; and, on the
other, painters, musicians, and poets, who evidently get
from their parents the activity, in doing well or ill, which
characterizes them. True, doubtless, but the point is now
to learn whence the parents themselves in their turn got
it, and whether we must not rest in our retrospective ex-
amination of ancestry at some point at which innateness
was sovereign. This supremacy is the less disputable, in-
asmuch as it soon reappears too in the descendants. The
effects of heredity come to an end, just as they once made
a beginning. At the outset they prevail over innateness,
whose influence they suspend ; then they run out, and the
latter regains its rights. Thus innateness is the enduring
and continuous force, while heredity is the intermittent
and perishing force. Human nature, studied in its course
through ages, is a succession of free souls, the more free
in the degree that they have less need, for will and action,
of aid from mechanical or organic powers. When they do
need any such aid, they resign a part of their innate lib-
erty to the sway of the blind influences of heredity. Yet,
even with respect to the origin of aesthetic aptitudes, in-
nateness keeps its predominance.

In the study of the history of famous men, how number-
less are the instances we find of marvelous memories, glow-

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 351

ing imaginations, extraordinary capacities for the arts, for
poetry, for composition, which are not in the slightest de-
gree derived from transmission ! We need not look very
far for proofs. Lamartine, .Alfred de Musset, Meyerbeer,
Ingres, Delacroix, Merimee, Henry Regnault,1 not to in-
stance the living, exhibited talents for which they are not
in the least indebted to their forefathers. The history of
savants, properly so called, shows us the share of heredity
still further reduced. Families of savants are cited. How
many of them are there ? A dozen at most. On the other
hand, how many famous savants are there among whose
forefathers we find either mere commonplace people, or
else people noted for talents very different from those that
distinguish the savant! Where are the ancestral influ-
ences that have formed a Cuvier, a Biot, a Fresnel, a Magen-
die, an Ampere, a Blainville, a Gay-Lussac ? It is plain
that in this matter innateness and education have taken the
chief part. Neither is the life of literary men at all more
accordant with the claims of the thorough partisans of he-
redity.

1 " I believe that the sun which shines on you is not the same as ours,"
he wrote from Tangiers, " and I am terrified on seeing afar the moment
when I must once again in Europe look on the mournful aspect of houses
and crowds ; but before returning thither I intend to make the real
Moors live once again — then Tunis, Egypt, India. I shall soar from en-
thusiasm to enthusiasm, I shall be intoxicated with wonders, until, trans-
ported and ecstatic, I shall be able to fall back again into our dull and
commonplace world, without fearing lest my eyes lose the light they will
have drunk in for two or three years. Whenever, once more in Paris, I
shall long for clear vision, I shall need only to close my eyes, and then
Moriscos, Fellahs, Hindoos, granite colossi, white-marble elephants, fairy
palaces, plains of gold and lakes of azure, and diamond cities, the whole
East will pass again in procession before me. Oh, what an intoxication
is light ! " — " Correspondence of Henry Regnault," collected by M. Ar-
thur Duparc, 1872.

Assuredly these thoughts and emotions were not hereditary in Henry
Regnault.

352 NATURE AND LIFE.

The case in which innateness seems especially trium-
phant is that of the philosophers. The authors give no lists
of philosophers who inherited from their forefathers apti-
tudes for speculation. There, is here a series of expressly
negative facts which they pass over in silence, and to which
sufficient attention is not usually paid. Metaphysicians,
precisely because the spiritual element alone works in them,
are freed from all influences of hereditary predestination.
That loses its energy just in proportion as there is occasion
for transmitting such qualities as are less physiological
and more psychological. Now, what can be more psycho-
logical, what more free from elements mixed with sense, and
factors that work mechanically, than the mind of a specula-
tive philosopher ? In truth, great metaphysicians had no an-
cestors, and have left no posterity. The philosophic genius
has always appeared completely individual, inalienable, and
untransmissible. There is not a single renowned thinker in
whose ascending or descending line can be found the warn-
ing forerunner or the reminder of the eminent capabilities
that made his fame. Descartes and Newton, Leibnitz and
Spinoza, Diderot and Hume, Kant and Maine du Biran,
Cousin and Jouffroy, have neither ancestors nor posterity.

Such is innateness. To estimate exactly its function,
we should need to ascertain in a general way and in its re-
lations with the temperament, the training, the cosmic and
social medium, etc., the production and development of those
capacities by which some man of a high order is clearly
differenced from his ancestors ; and we should need to
bring into one view, and as far as possible to coordinate,
those characteristic elements which make up the very es-
sence of personality and of individuality, those elements
of bold departure from the beaten track, of plenary self-
dependence, so mighty and so amazing, by which genius
asserts itself. We should then see how, in almost all in-
stances, eminent capacities are so inmost to those who dis-

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 353

play them, so deep and instinct with life, that training and
discipline, instead of aiding them, impede their improve-
ment. We should discover in the man of genius a self-
reliant precocity, an adventurous ardor, a powerful con-
viction of his mission, a pride lifting him above prejudices
of sect and party ambitions, and attaching him solely to
the object of his thoughts, which alone gives life a charm
for him. Even though his daily needs compel him to inter-
course with men, the world is for him only a peopled desert
in which his soul dwells apart.

A part of the materials for such a study exists ; it may
be sought in the biographies prepared by the secretaries
of the great academies during the last two hundred years,
and in the autobiographical memoirs left by many famous
men. A learned and ingenious Russian writer, Wechnia-
kof, has lately published several papers, in which he inves-
tigates from this point of view the anthropological and so-
ciological peculiarities that have affected the individual
development of original geniuses. These little works, un-
fortunately, do not form a complete whole ; yet nothing
could be more curious and useful than a treatise on innate-
ness.

The group of all the causes of diversity, heterogeneity,
and innovation, which are working upon the human race in
opposition to the principles of simplicity, homogeneity, and
conservation, may be described in a single word, that of
evolution or progress. Regarded within the limits of our
actual observation, blind Nature remains identically ever
the same. It is, to-day, in its totality, what it was in
Homer's time, and what it will assuredly be many ages
hence. The same skies exist, the same oceans, the same
mountains, forests, and flowers. Man, on the contrary, is
ceaselessly changing. Generations follow and do not re-
semble each other. They are, in relation to their beliefs,
their arts, their wants, in a state of rapid and constant
16

354 NATURE AND LIFE.

transformation. Nations, like individuals, have their times
of greatness and of decay. Looking on the face of Nature
in Greece, Childe Harold exclaims :

" Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild ;
Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields ;
Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled,
And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields ;
There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,
The free-born wanderer of thy mountain air ;
Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,
Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare ;
Art, glory, freedom fail, but Nature still is fair."

We might multiply endlessly these historic contrasts
between the unchangeableness of that general determinism
that rules in Nature and the ceaseless movement of human
freedom and inventiveness, the eternal struggle of the soul
to wrench itself from the grip of fatality. History is mere-
ly the story of what that movement and struggle have
brought forth in the ages. It is a lengthened drama,
through which the good genius of freedom strives for vic-
tory with the evil genius of brute force, in which, under
the divine eye and with divine aid, through lingering and
suffering, triumph is won for the spirit which seeks, dis-
covers, invents, creates, loves, and worships.

III.

In the first part of this essay, we proved the existence
of the facts of heredity, and pointed out the part they take
in the indefinite reproduction of physiological and psycho-
logical characteristics in man. In the second, we noted
and examined the causes that work in opposition to the
more or less imperious impulses of Nature and to the re-
straints of mechanical structure. It is well now to state
some practical conclusions as to the use that may be made
of these kinds of knowledge for the improvement of the race.

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 355

Homer's valiant warriors invoked the name of their
fathers and forefathers and the noble blood they inherited.
It was a high instinct, and men who have good claims to
boast of their ancestors will always have the better chance
to deserve the gratitude of their posterity too. In fact,
the phenomena of heredity justify the belief that parents,
endowed with bodily and mental excellence, are in the best
conditions for procreating descendants who shall be like
them.

What measures, then, should be resorted to to make
sure of fortunate alliances able to originate children dis-
tinguished in physical and moral respects ? The delicacy
of this question may be readily seen, and we can answer it
here only in a very general way, relying particularly on an
original essay, yet unpublished, by our distinguished sur-
geon, S4dillot, who devotes the leisure of his honored re-
tirement to studies on the means of improving the race.
Se"dillot begins with the suggestion that very good infor-
mation as to an individual's quality may be gained by con-
sulting his genealogy — the history of his forefathers for
four or five generations, examined from the point of view
of intelligence, morality, vigor, health, longevity, social
position, contains potentially a part of his own history.
An examination of the head may also give hints of the
greatest value. It was settled long before Gall's time,
and it continues settled, apart from Gall's exaggerations,
that the shape of the head betrays to some extent the de-
gree of mental worth in the man. From the remotest
antiquity popular good sense had noticed the relation ex-
isting between a very large head and eminent abilities,
and language is full of expressions witnessing to the
reality of that relation. Pericles of old excited the won-
der of the Athenians on account of the extraordinary size
of his head. Cromwell, Descartes, Leibnitz, Voltaire, By-
ron, Goethe, Talleyrand, Napoleon, Cuvier, etc., had very

356 NATURE AND LIFE.

large heads. We know that Cuvier's brain weighed 1,829
grammes (64 -{- oz.), while the mean weight of the brain
among Europeans, as Broca states, is from 1,350 to 1,400
grammes (48 -j- to 50 oz.). Sedillot regrets that we do
not have, and wishes that pains were taken to obtain, the
measure of the different dimensions of the skull among
men conspicuous for marked capacities, in order to study
the very noteworthy relations existing between those di-
mensions and such capacities. At least we know, in a
general way, what characteristics and what proportions in
the skull correspond with the various degrees of cerebral
activity. Almost all anthropologists are aware that the man
whose head does not measure fifty centimetres (19.68 inch-
es) in horizontal circumference is almost doomed to medioc-
rity, and that one in whom that measurement equals or ex-
ceeds fifty-eight centimetres (22.83 inches) has many chances
to become quite eminent. It is true, some instances of
distinguished men with small heads are mentioned, but,
then, the case is that of men eminent in some very narrow
specialty. These dimensions, however, form only one of
the external signs by which the intellectual quality of the
individual may be determined with some accuracy. We
must study besides these the general shape and the rela-
tive proportions of the different regions of the cranium,
that is to say, the harmony which is called beauty. An
easy way, Sedillot thinks, to judge of the conformation of
the head, is to look at it from the side or in profile, and
slightly back from the front of it. This strikingly brings
out the relations of the height and breadth of the forehead
and temples with the face, and shows clearly the relative
proportions between the anterior or frontal contour of the
head and the occipital or posterior one. Any one who has
the eyebrow arches prominent, the temples open, straight
or almost vertical, and high, whose forehead is broad and
high, and his expression of countenance neither wandering

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 357

nor sleepy, may be regarded in general as presenting a
really human type, as the mask of a soul capable of doing
honor to his species. The story is told of an Englishman,
a friend of Shakespeare, who once sent a groom into an
inn to look for him. " How shall I know him ? " the ser-
vant said. " Nothing is easier," was the answer. " Every
face looks something like some animal's ; but, when you see
Shakespeare, you will say, ' There is the man.9 " Yes, man
imagined in the fullness of his harmonious beauty ; that
is the ideal toward the realization of which the efforts of
our present imperfect humanity should strive, and it is full
time that we should neglect no means for bringing our-
selves, by the skillful management of heredity, that is, by
propagation in a sound and wise way, nearer to a human
race from which the last traces of animalism shall have
vanished, and among whom man shall be less rare.

What constitutes the superiority of the English aristoc-
racy ? It is the constant interest they are animated by to
endow their descendants with the best bodily, mental, and
moral qualities. An Englishman does not marry from
fancy or passion ; he marries under the conditions fittest to
insure his children's happiness, for he knows that his own
and the honor of his name depend on this. The respect
with which young English women are surrounded, the
honorable freedom they enjoy, the little consequence that
is attached to their fortune, and the esteem in which their
personal merit is held, are all so many causes for the in-
crease among that people of happy marriages, and conse-
quently for the growing vigor of their population. This is
one of the grand secrets of improvement through heredity.
Men, instead of requiring wealth with their brides, must
ask for beauty, character, and virtue. So long as they have
no fear of intermarrying with women who are feeble, or want-
ing in solid qualities, the race will decline and grow worth-
less, and the like deplorable result follows from the mar-

358 NATURE AND LIFE.

riage of women of distinction and high natural qualities
with men more or less degraded. Happily, the tact and
dignity instinctive in women, the natural sympathy they
feel for superior natures, very often prevent them from
stooping to humiliating or unsafe marriages, and almost
always protect them from ill-assorted ones. " Instead of
yielding to passionate attractions," says Sedillot, " which
easily disturb the judgment, let one ask, on seeing an
agreeable person, whether one would wish to have sons and
daughters like her, and the frequency of negative answers
would be surprising. Certainly it would hardly be reason-
able to give up the advantages of the present for those of
an uncertain futurity, but wisdom bids us reconcile them
both, remembering the swiftness with which time flies, and
the little worth of the passing hour, compared with the
hopes and enjoyments of the future." Se'dillot adds that,
in ordinary times, hygienic care and the moral evidence of
the advantages of health and intelligence will suffice for
the regeneration of a people. Unfortunately, France needs
a more powerful and effectual source of elasticity, if she
would rise again. She must bathe in the very spring of
restoration and of life. She must plan the readiest means
for preparing a future of energy and virtue for the genera-
tions that are coming forward. At another time it would
have perhaps seemed difficult or unwise to introduce into
discussions relating to human reproduction such calcula-
tions and such valuations as resemble those of zootechny,
the art that has so long made practical use of selection.
At this day such refined scruples must vanish before the
warnings of necessity, telling us with its most solemn and
earnest voice that not one blunder more must be committed.1

1 With respect to the outward indications that may give some idea of
capacities, the remarkable researches of Quetelet deserve to be con-
sulted, condensed in the late work published by him under the title of
" Anthropometry."

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 359

Upon this point the means should be indicated for
checking and diminishing as much as possible that per-
sistent morbid heredity which is so formidable an impedi-
ment to improvement. The preventive or prophylactic
measures that may properly be used in staying the evolu-
tion of the germs of disease must, of course, depend on
the nature of those germs. A mother suffering from
phthisis, or predisposed to tubercles, should not suckle
her child, but trust it to a good nurse. To persons born
of consumptive parents, a highly-animalized regime is
unsuitable ; white meats and food without fat are better
adapted for them. As regards a pursuit, such persons must
carefully avoid those that would expose them to inhaling
dust, to sudden changes of heat and cold, or to the con-
stant exercise of the voice. Residence at places on the
southern seaboard, and in regions where phthisis is uncom-
mon, is the best preventive of that formidable disease.
The essential things for persons predisposed to scrofula
are pure air, substantial tonic nourishment, and the mari-
time atmosphere of the northwest of Europe. Those who
are threatened with gout or gravel must restrict them-
selves to rigid temperance, and take much exercise. Reg-
ularity and uniformity of living are the rule for those with
a tendency to cancer. Persons who count epileptics among
their ancestors require the most watchful attention. Quiet
in all their ways of life must be assured them, all excess be
forbidden, all fatigue shunned, all emotions kept at a dis-
tance ; in a word, every thing that can excite must be put
out of their way. Those who are disposed to insanity
should be treated in a similar way, that is, with great
gentleness. Their 'passions must be lulled to sleep. The
existence most suitable for them is one requiring them to
put forth no strong mental action, and free from exciting
hopes of fortune or fame. To check or to destroy the
development of morbid germs in the constitution of such

360 NATURE AND LIFE.

t persons themselves, is but the secondary point in these
cases; the main one is to prevent the transmission of these
germs to new generations. To be certain of this result, it
is important not only to make those marriages conformed
to the laws of health and of morality easier and more
common, but, still further, to thwart such unions as can only
produce children wretched in body and mind. Physicians
should use all their influence to forbid marriage between
two persons both with strong constitutional tendencies
toward the various nerve-disorders, toward tubercles, scrof-
ula, etc. When one of two such persons has morbid he-
reditary antecedents, the physician should at least urge
the necessity of union between the unsound person and a
husband or wife in a perfect state of health, of superior
strength and sexuality, and, above all, different in temper-
ament. In this way we should at least lessen those
chances of hereditary contamination to which it would be
far better not to expose one's offspring at all. This is too
delicate a subject to be urged here. Yet something should
be said of marriages between blood relations, which have
occasioned warm controversies of late years. Some phy-
sicians and anthropologists, Broca and Bertillon among the
rest, maintain that the purest and least mixed races resist
causes of degeneracy better than crossed races. In their
view, the bad results attributed to consanguinity depend
on agencies altogether foreign to it, mainly upon ancestral
hereditary disorders. Trousseau and Boudin, on their side,
maintain that unions between persons of the same family
often produce unsound offspring, insane, and idiotic. The
discussion seems at the present time to be settled in favor
of the partisans of the former opinion. " Quite lately, again,
Auguste Voisin decided, after inquiring among the con-
nections of more than fifteen hundred patients at Bicetre
and la Salpetriere, that the condition of none of those suf-
ferers could be charged upon the effect of consanguinity.

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 361

If that were so decisive a cause of degeneracy, its influence
must have been seen among that multitude of the insane
and idiotic.

At any rate, whatever exaggeration there may be
among those who theorize on heredity, it has an indisput-
able share in the production of temperament and character,
and the reality of that fact justifies every practice of a kind
calculated to aid the transmission of the best tendencies.
At Rome, the most distinguished and respected women
sometimes, with their husbands' consent, contributed to
some other family the superior qualities of their blood.
Quintus Hortensius, Cato's friend and admirer, not succeed-
ing in gaining his daughter Pereia, asked for his wife, Mar-
cia, and Cato gave her up to him. The coarseness of such
usages shocks our sense of delicacy, but it is easily ex-
plained by the desire always felt by the head of a Roman
family to make sure in his descendants of the most manly
vigor and the highest virtues. In our old French society, the
continuance of masterships, of offices and professions in tte
same families in which they were handed down from father
to son, originated in and was founded on the unconscious
remarking of hereditary transmission of aptitudes; and
Sedillot regrets that the overturnings in modern societies
have banished that wholesome tradition which held the son
morally bound, in all degrees of the social scale, to take
the father's place. This is another recollection which
should not be left out of view by races desirous of their own
improvement.

Something which should be equally kept in view, and
which is yet more easy of appreciation, is the system of
precepts of a watchful and intelligent education. In this
respect those men who are most concerned for the future
of France have now but one opinion : the new generations
must be built up by giving more room for bodily exercises,
and by loading children less with labors ruinous to their

362 NATURE AND LIFE.

health. It is not a question about disturbing classical
studies or the humanities, which will continue to be the
chief element of moral culture ; it is a question merely of
finding out whether children might not gain an acquaint-
ance with the treasures of Latin and Greek learning a lit-
tle more quickly and more thoroughly, and at the same
time live in a little closer intercourse with modern in-
terests. Many of those things are never taught them,
though they are such as might be taught them with great
advantage to their mental development. This is not the
place to dwell upon the subject ; but it does seem, and
nobody doubts it, that by a vigorous training, one that
aims boldly at renovation, it might be possible, if not, as
Leibnitz asserted, to change the nature of a people, at least
to destroy most of those causes of decline to which a people
surrenders itself when uncorrected by suitable discipline.

The conviction that it is possible actively to counter-
vail the dangerous tendencies of heredity, and to triumph
over its ruinous domination, at least in the region of morals,
is, moreover, one of the most wholesome that could gain
currency and credit in the world. To will strongly, is of
itself the power to do. Even though it were not so easy
as it really is to quell those blind forces by the mere ascen-
dency of a firm and enlightened will, there still would be
reasons for persuading men that they are their own masters
as to modifying and correcting themselves ; that they are
not the playthings of an unbending fate, and that they
have no right to give way to their evil instincts without
resistance and without remorse. Let us have faith in the
might of heredity in so far as it can become a means of
melioration and free improvement. Let us have no faith
in it if it is averred to exert so absolute a tyranny that it
would be folly to refuse submission. Education should not
only take the improvement of men for its aim, it should also
assume the task of animating them with a passion for ira-

HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 363

provement by convincing them that they can be made bet-
ter. United with judicious cultivation of heredity when
working for good, education thus conquers heredity in its
evil working, and gives new life to the generations.

Yet we must not concede to education an exaggerated
influence, nor assume that it can by itself alone produce
superior characters of great eminence. It has, like hered-
ity itself, but a limited power. Genius eludes the one, as
it does the other. Genius, the most whole and perfect ex-
pression of the mind regarded as a free creative force,
combines in one immortal consolation with eternal despair
for our nature. It is a solace, because it is the fountain of
all light and all rapture ; it bids us despair precisely because
it is singular, exceptional, capricious, strange, disdainful of
the meddling touch of those who strive to pierce its mysteri
ous secret, stubbornly defiant of the efforts of those who strive
to subdue it, in a word, absolutely beyond the ken of the
logic and discipline of the common run of men. It is a
mighty tree, bearing fruit of food for the ages, and grow-
ing under conditions that forbid us to hope either to incite
or foretell its production, or to rule its existence or calculate
its fertility. We must wait humbly and patiently till it
pleases Providence to bestow on us its blessing and glory.
Happily, men of genius are not indispensable to humanity.
The more the general level of a nation is lifted, the less es-
sential do they become. Now that level rises irresistibly,
whenever the will and the ready force of all citizens know
but one sincere desire, that of self-improvement. The cult-
ure of heredity by relentlessly eradicating all causes that
tend to degeneracy, and fostering causes that work im-
provement, may be commended with all assurance to na-
tions ambitious of winning by its means the foremost rank
in the world.

THE END.

International Scientific Series.

D. APPLETON & Co. have the pleasure of announcing that they have made arrange-
ments for publishing, and have recently commenced the issue of, a SKRIES OF POPULAR
MONOGRAPHS, or small works, under the above title, which will embody the results of
recent inquiry in the most interesting departments of advancing science.

The character and scope of this series will be best indicated by a reference to the
names and subjects included in the subjoined list, from which it will be seen that the
cooperation of the most distinguished professors in England, Germany, France, and the
United States, has been secured, and negotiations are pending for contributions from
other eminent scientific writers.

The works will be issued in New York, London, Paris, Leipsic, Milan, and St.
Petersburg.

The INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES is entirely an American project, and was

" o spent the greater part of a year
The forthcoming volumes are as

originated and organized by Dr. E. L. Youmans, who spent the greater part of a year
in Europe, arranging with authors and publishers. T"

follow

Prof. LOMMEL (University of Erlangen),

Optics. (In press.)
Rev. M. J. BERKELEY, M. A., F. L. S.,

and M. COOKE, M. A., LL. D.,

Fungi; thtir Nature, Influences,

and Uses. (In press.)
Prof. W. KINGDOM CLIFFORD, M. A., The

First Principles of the Exact Sciences

explained to the non-mathematical.
Prof. T. H. HUXLEY, LL. D., F. R. S., |

Bodily Motion and Consciousness.
Dr. W. B. CARPENTER, LL. D., F. R. S., i

The Physical Geography of the Sea. \
Prof. WILLIAM ODLONG, F. R. S., The Old \

Chemistry viewed from the New j

Standpoint.
W. LAUDER LINDSAY, M. D., F. R. S. E.,

Mind in the Lower A nimals.
Sir JOHN LUBBOCK, Bart, F. R. S., The

A ntiquity of Man.
Prof. W. T. THISELTON DYER, B. A.,

B. Sc., Form and Habit in Flower-

i?ig Plants.
Mr. J. N. LOCKYER, F. R. S., Spectrum

A nalysis.

Prof. MICHAEL FOSTER, M. D., Proto-
plasm and the Cell Theory.
Prof. W. STANLEY JEVONS, Money : and

the Mechanism of Exchange.
H. CHARLTON BASTIAN, M. D., F. R. S.,

The Brain as an Organ of Mind.
Prof. A. C. RAMSAY, LL. D., F. R. S.,

Earth Sculpture: Hills, Valleys,

Mountains, Plains, Rivers, Lakes;

how they -were produced, and how

they have been destroyed.
Prof. RUDOLPH VIRCHOW (Berlin Univer-
sity), Morbid Physiological Action.
Prof. CLAUDE BERNARD, Physical and

Metaphysical Phenomena of Life.
Prof. H. SAINTE-CLAIRE DEVILLE, An

Introduction to General Chemistry.
Prof. WURTZ, Atoms and the Atomic

Theory.
Prof. DE QUATREFAGES, The Negro

Races.

Prof. LACAZE-DUTHIERS, Zoology since
Cuvier.

Prof. BERTHELOT, Chemical Synthesis.

Prof. J. ROSENTHAL, General Physiology
of Muscles and Nerves.

Prof. JAMESD. DANA, M. A., LL. D., On
Cephalization ; or, Head-Characters
in the Gradation and Progress of
Life.

Prof. S. W. JOHNSON, M. A., On the Nu-
trition of Plants.

Prof. AUSTIN FLINT, Jr., M. D., The
Nervous System and its Relation to
the Bodily Functions.

Prof. W. D. WHITNEY, Modern Linguis-
tic Science.

Prof. C. A. YOUNG, Ph. D. (of Dartmouth
College), The Sun.

Prof. BERNSTEIN (University of Halle),
Physiology of the Senses.

Prof. FERDINAND COHN (Breslau Univer-
sity), Thallophytes (Algae, Lichens,
Fungi).

Prof. HERMANN (University of Zurich),
Respiration.

Prof. LEUCKART (University of Leipsic),
Outlines of A nimal Organization.

Prof. LIEBREICH (University of Berlin),
Outlines of Toxicology.

Prof. KUNDT (University of Strasburg),
On Sound.

Prof. REES (University of Erlangen), On
Parasitic Plants.

Prof. STEINTHAL (University of Berlin),
Outlines of the Science of Language.

E. ALGLAVE (Professor of Constitutional
and Administrative Law at Douai, and
of Political Economy at Lille), The
Primitive Elements of Political Con-
stitutions.

P. LORAIN (Professor of Medicine, Paris),
Modern Epidemics.

Prof. ScHpTZENBERGER (Director of the
Chemical Laboratory at the Sorbonne),
On Fermentations.

Mons. DEBRAY, Precious Metals.

Opinions of the Press on the "International Scientific Series."

Tyndall's Forms of Water.

I vol., I2mo. Cloth. Illustrated Price, $1.50.

" In the volume now published, Professor Tyndall has presented a noble illustration
of the acuteness and subtlety of his intellectual powers, the scope and insight of his
scientific vision, his singular command of the appropriate language of exposition, and
the peculiar vivacity and grace with which he unfolds the results of intricate scientific
research." — N. Y. Tribune.

" The ' Forms of Water,' by Professor Tyndall, is an interesting and instructive
little volume, admirably printed and illustrated. Prepared expressly for this series, it
is in some measure a guarantee of the excellence of the volumes that will follow, and an
indication that the publishers will spare no pains to include in the series the freshest in-
vestigations of the best scientific minds. "—Boston Journal.

" This series is admirably commenced by this little volume from the pen of Prof-
Tyndall. A perfect master of his subject, he presents in a style easy and attractive his
methods of investigation, and the results obtained, and gives to the reader a clear con-
ception of all the wondrous transformations to which water is subjected." — Churchman.

II.

Bagehot's Physics and Politics.

I vol., I2mo. Price, $1.50.

" If the ' International Scientific Series ' proceeds as it has begun, it will more than
fulfil the promise given to the reading public in its prospectus. The first volume, by
Professor Tyndall, was a model of lucid and attractive scientific exposition ; and now
we have a second, by Mr. Walter Bagehot, which is not only very lucid and charming,
but also original and suggestive in the highest degree. Nowhere since the publication
of Sir Henry Maine's 'Ancient Law,' have we seen so many fruitful thoughts sug-
gested in the course of a couple of hundred pages. . . . To do justice to Mr. Bage-
hot's fertile book, would require a long article. With the best of intentions, we are
conscious of having given but a sorry account of it in these brief paragraphs. But we
hope we have said enough to commend it to the attention of the thoughtful reader." —
Prof. JOHN FISKE, in the Atlantic Monthly.

" Mr. Bagehot's style is clear and vigorous. We refrain from giving a fuller ac-
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worth their while to peruse the book for themselves ; and we sincerely hope that the
forthcoming parts of the 'International Scientific Series' will be as interesting."--
A thenteum.

" Mr. Bagehot discusses an immense variety of topics connected with the progress
of societies and nations, and the development of their distinctive peculiarities; and hu
book shows an abundance of ingenious and original thought "—ALFRED RUSSELI
WALLACK, in Nature.

D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y,

Opinions of the Press on the "International Scientific Series."

m.

Foods.

By Dr. EDWARD SMITH.
I vol., I2mo. Cloth. Illustrated Price, $1.75.

In making up THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES, Dr. Edward Smith was se-
lected as the ablest man in England to treat the important subject of Foods. His services
were secured for the undertaking, and the little treatise he has produced shows that the
choice of a writer on this subject was most fortunate, as the book is unquestionably the
clearest and best-digested compend of the Science of Foods that has appeared in our
language.

" The book contains a series of diagrams, displaying the effects of sleep and meals
on pulsation and respiration, and of various kinds of food on respiration, which, as the
results of Dr. Smith's own experiments, possess a very high value. We have not far
to go in this work for occasions of favorable criticism ; they occur throughout, but are
perhaps most apparent in those parts of the subject with which Dr. Smith's name is es-
pecially linked." — London Examiner.

" The union of scientific and popular treatment in the composition of this work will
afford an attraction to many readers who would have been indifferent to purely theoreti-
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and a part of which could not easily be obtained from other sources. Its interest is de-
cidedly enhanced for students who demand both clearness and exactness of statement,
by the profusion of well-executed woodcuts, diagrams, and tables, which accompany th?
volume. . . . The suggestions of the author on the use of tea and coffee, and of the va-
rious forms of alcohol, although perhaps not strictly of a novel character, are highly in-
structive, and form an interesting portion of the volume." — N. Y. Tribune.

IV.

Body and Mind.

THE THEORIES OF THEIR RELATION.

By ALEXANDER BAIN, LL. D.
I vol., I2mo. Cloth • • Price, $1.50.

PROFESSOR BAIN is the author of two well-known standard works upon the Science
of Mind — "The Senses and the Intellect," and "The Emotions and the Will." He is
one of the highest living authorities in the school which holds that there can be no sound
or valid psychology unless the mind and the body are studied, as they exist, together.

" It contains a forcible statement of the connection between mind and body, study-
ing their subtile interworkings by the light of the most recent physiological investiga-
tions. The summary in Chapter V., of the investigations of Dr. Lionel Beale of the
embo'diment of the intellectual functions in the cerebral system, will be found the
freshest and most interesting part of his book. Prof. Bain's own theory of the connec-
tion between the mental and the bodily part in man is stated by himself to be as follows :
There is ' one substance, with two sets of properties, two sides, the physical and the
mental — a double-faced unity.' While, in the strongest manner, asserting the union
of mind with brain, he yet denies 'the association of union in place,' but asserts the
union of close succession in time,' holding that 'the same being is, by alternate fits, un-
der extended and under unextended consciousness." ' — Christian Register.

D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y.

Opinions of the Press on the " International Scientific Series."

V.

The Study of Sociology.

By HERBERT SPENCER.
I vol., I2mo. Cloth Price, $1.50.

"The philosopher whose distinguished name gives weight and influence to this vol-
ume, has given in its pages some of the finest specimens of reasoning in all its forms
and departments. There is a fascination in his array of facts, incidents, and opinions,
which draws on the reader to ascertain his conclusions. The coolness and calmness of
his treatment of acknowledged difficulties and grave objections to his theories win for
him a close attention and sustained effort, on the part of the reader, to comprehend, fol-
low, grasp, and appropriate his principles. This book, independently of its bearing
upon sociology, is valuable as lucidly showing what those essential characteristics are
which entitle any arrangement and connection of facts and deductions to be called a
science" — Episcopalian.

" This work compels admiration by the evidence which it gives of immense re-
search, study, and observation, and is, withal, written in a popular and very pleasing
sryle. It is a fascinating work, as well as one of deep practical thought." — Bost. Post.

" Herbert Spencer is unquestionably the foremost living thinker in the psychological
and sociological fields, and this volume is an important contribution to the science of
which it treats. ... It will prove more popular than any of its author's other creations,
for it is more plainly addressed to the people and has a more practical and less specu-
lative cast. It will require thought, but it is well worth thinking about." — Albany
Evening Journal.

VI.

The New Chemistry.

By JOSIAH P. COOKE, JR.,

Erving Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy in Harvard University.
I vol., I2mo. Cloth Price, $2.00.

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" This admirable monograph, by the distinguished Erving Professor of Chemistry
in Harvard University, is the first American contribution to ' The International Scien-
tific Series,' and a more attractive piece of work in the way of popular exposition upon
a difficult subject has not appeared in a long time. It not only well sustains the char-
acter of the volumes with which it is associated, but its reproduction in European coun-
tries will be an honor to American science." — Neiv York Tribune.

" All the chemists in the country will enjoy its perusal, and many will seize upon it
as a thing longed for. For, to those advanced students who have kept well abreast of
the chemical tide, it offers a calm philosophy. To those others, youngest of the class,
who have emerged from the schools since new methods have prevailed, it presents a
generalization, drawing to its use all the data, the relations of which the newly-fledged
fact-seeker may but dimly perceive without its aid. ... To the old chemists, Prof.
Cooke's treatise is like a message from beyond the mountain. They have heard of
changes in the science; the clash of the battle of old and new theories has stirred them
from afar. The tidings, too, had come that the old had given way ; and little more than
this they knew. . . . Prof. Cooke's ' New Chemistry' must do wide service in bringing
to close sight the little known and the longed for. ... As a philosophy it is elemen-
tary, but, as a book of science, ordinary readers will find it sufficiently advanced."—
Utica Morning Herald.

D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y.

Opinions of the Press on the "International Scientific Series"

VII.

The Conservation of Energy.

By BALFOUR STEWART, LL. D., F. R. S.

With an Appendix treating of the Vital and Menial Applications of the Doctrine.

I vol., I2mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50.

" The author has succeeded in presenting the facts in a clear and satisfactory manner,
using simple language and copious illustration in the presentation of facts and prin-
ciples, confining himself, however, to the physical aspect of the subject. In the Ap-
pendix the operation of the principles in the spheres of life and mind is supplied by
the essays of Professors Le Conte and Bain."— Ohio Farmer.

" Prof. Stewart is one of the best known teachers in Owens College in Manchester.

" The volume of THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES now before us is an ex-
cellent illustration of the true method of teaching, and will well compare with Prof.
Tyndall's charming little book in the same series on ' Forms of Water," with illustra-
tions enough to make clear, but not to conceal his thoughts, in a style simple and
brief." — Christian Register, Boston.

" The writer has wonderful ability to compress much information into a few words.
It is a rich treat to read such a book as this, when there is so much beauty and force
combined with such simplicity. — Eastern Press.

VIII.

Animal Locomotion;

Or, WALKING, SWIMMING, AND FLYING.

With a Dissertation on Aeronautics.

By T. BELL PETTIGREW, M. D., F. R. S., F. R. S. E.,
F. R.C. P.E.

I vol., I2mo Price, $1.75.

" This work is more than a contribution to the stock of entertaining knowledge,
though, if it only pleased, that would be sufficient excuse for its publication. But Dr.
Pettigrew has given his time to these investigations with the ultimate purpose of solv-
ing the difficult problem of Aeronautics. To this he devotes the last fifty pages of hi«
book. Dr. Pettigrew is confident that man will yet conquer the domain of the air." —
N. Y. Journal of Commerce.

" Most persons claim to know how to walk, but few could explain the mechanical
principles involved in this most ordinary transaction, and will be surprised that the
movements of bipeds and quadrupeds, the darting and rushing motion of fish, and the
erratic flight of the denizens of the air, are not only anologous, but can be reduced to
similar formula. The work is profusely illustrated, and, without reference to the theory
it is designed to expound, will be regarded as a valuable addition to natural history."
— Omaha Republic.

D. APPLETON & CO., PUBLISHERS, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y.

Opinions of the Press on the "International Scientific Series?

IX.

Responsibility in Mental Disease.

By HENRY MAUDSLEY, M. D.,

Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians; Professor of Medical Jurisprudence
in University College, London.

I vol., I2mo. Cloth. . . Price, $1.50.

" Having lectured in a medical college on Mental Disease, this book has been a
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larly clear and satisfactory manner. . . . The volume is a valuable contribution to one
of the most difficult, and at the same time one of the most important subjects of inves-
tigation at the present day." — N. Y. Observer.

"It is a work profound and searching, and abounds in wisdom." — Pittsburg Com-
mercial.

" Handles the important topic with masterly power, and its suggestions are prac-
tical and of great vahie." — Providence Press.

The Science of Law.

By SHELDON AMOS, M. A.,

Professor of Jurisprudence in University College, London; author of "A Systematic

View of the Science of Jurisprudence," " An English Code, its Difficulties

and the Modes of overcoming them," etc., etc.

I vol., I2mo. Cloth Price, $1.75.

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knowledge, has received a good accession in this compact and thoughtful volume. It
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which he who runs may read, and probably Professor Amos himself would be the last
to claim that he has perfectly succeeded in doing this. But he has certainly done much
to clear the science of law from the technical obscurities which darken it to minds which
have had no legal training, and to make clear to his ' lay ' readers in how true and high a
sense it can assert its right to be considered a science, and not a mere practice."— The
Christian Register.

"The works of Bentham and Austin are abstruse and philosophical, and Maine's
require hard study and a certain amount of special training. The writers also pursue
different lines of investigation, and can only be regarded as comprehensive in the de-
partments they confined themselves to. It was left to Amos to gather up the result
and present the science in its fullness. The unquestionable merits of this, his last book,
are, that it contains a complete treatment of a subject which has hitherto been handled
by specialists, and it opens up that subject to every inquiring mind. . . . To do justice
to ' The Science of Law ' would require a longer review than we have space for. We
have read no more interesting and instructive book for some time. Its themes concern
every one who renders obedience to laws, and who would have those laws the best
possible. The tide of legal reform which set in fifty years ago has to sweep yet higher
if the flaws in our jurisprudence are to be removed. The process of change cannot be
better guided than by a well-informed public mind, and Prof. Amos has done great
service in materially helping to promote this end." — ^Buffalo Courier.

D. APPLETON & CO., PUBLISHERS, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y.

Opinions of the Press on the "International Scientific Series."

XI.

Animal Mechanism,

A Treatise on Terrestrial and Aerial Locomotion.

By E. J. MAREY,

Professor at the College of France, and Member of the Academy of Medicine.

With 117 Illustrations, drawn and engraved under the direction of the author.

i vol., 12010. Cloth Price, $1.75

" We hope that, in the short glance which we have taken of some of the most im-
portant points discussed in the work before us, we have succeeded in interesting our
readers sufficiently in its contents to make them curious to learn more of its subject-
matter. We cordially recommend it to their attention.

" The author of the present work, it is well known, stands at the head of those
physiologists who have investigated the mechanism of animal dynamics — indeed, we
may almost say that he has made the subject his own. By the originality of his con-
ceptions, the ingenuity of his constructions, the skill of his analysis, and the persever-
ance of his investigations, he has surpassed all others in the power of unveiling the
complex and intricate movements of animated beings." — Popular Science Monthly.

XII.

History of the Conflict between
Religion and Science.

By JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER, M. D., LL. D.,

Author of " The Intellectual Development of Europe."
i vol., i2mo. Price, $1.75.

"This little ' History' would have been a valuable contribution to literature at any
*ime, and is, in fact, an admirable text-book upon a subject that is at present engross-
ing the attention of a large number of the most serious-minded people, and it is no
small compliment to the sagacity of its distinguished author that he has so well gauged
the requirements of the times, and so adequately met them by the preparation of this
volume. It remains to be added that, while the writer has flinched from no responsi-
bility in his statements, and has written with entire fidelity to the demands of truth
and justice, there is not a word in his book that can give offense to candid and fair-
minded readers." — N. Y. Evening Post.

" The key-note to this volume is found in the antagonism between the progressive
tendencies of the human mind and the pretensions of ecclesiastical authority, as devel-
oped in the history of modern science. No previous writer has treated the subject
from this point of view, and the present monograph will be found to possess no less
originality of conception than vigor of reasoning and wealth of erudition. . . . The
method of Dr. Draper, in his treatment of the various questions that come up for dis-
cussion, is marked by singular impartiality as well as consummate ability. Through-
out his work he maintains the position of an historian, not of an advocate. His tone is
tranquil and serene, as becomes the search after truth, with no trace of the impassioned
ardor of controversy. He endeavors so far to identify himself with the contending
parties as to gain a clear comprehension of their motives, but, at the same time, he
submits their actions to the tests of a cool and impartial examination." — N. Y. Tribune.

D. APPLETON & CO., PUBLISHERS, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y.

THE GREVILLE MEMOIRS.

COMPLETE IN TWO VOLS.

A JOURNAL OF THE REIGNS OF

King George IV. & King William IV.

By the Late CHAS. C. F. GREVILLE, Esq.,
Clerk of the Council to those Sovereigns.

Edited by HENRY REEVE, Registrar of the Privy Council.

12mo. PRICE, $4.00.

This edition contains the complete text as published in the three volumes
of the English edition.

"The sensation created by these Memoirs, on their first appearance, was not out of
proportion to their real interest. They relate to a period of our history second only in
importance to the Revolution of 1688; they portray manners which have now disap-
peared from society, yet have disappeared so recently that middle-aged men can recol-
lect them ; and they concern the conduct of very eminent persons, of whom some are
still living, while of others the memory is so fresh that they still seem almost to be con-
temporaneous."— The Academy.

" Such Memoirs as these are the most interesting contributions to history that can
be made, and the most valuable as well. The man deserves gratitude from his pos-
terity who, being placed in the midst of events that have any importance, and of people
who bear any considerable part in them, sits down day by day and makes a record of
his observations." — Buffalo Courier.

" The Greville Memoirs, already in a third edition in London, in little more than
two months, have been republished by D. Appleton & Co., New York. The three
loosely-printed English volumes are here given in two, without the slightest abridg-
ment, and the price, which is nine dollars across the water, here is only four. It
is not too much to say that this work, though not so ambitious in its style as Horace
Walpole's well-known 'Correspondence,' is much more interesting. In a word, these
Greville Memoirs supply valuable materials not alone for political, but also for social
history during the time they cover. They are additionally attractive from the large
quantity of racy anecdotes which they contain." — Philadelphia Press.

" These are a few among many illustrations of the pleasant, gossipy information con-
veyed in these Memoirs, whose great charm is the free and straightforward manner in
which the writer chronicles his impressions of men and events." — Boston Daily Globe.

"As will be seen, these volumes are of remarkable interest, and fully justify the en-
comiums that heralded their appearance in this country. They will attract a large cir-
cle of readers here, who will find in their gossipy pages an almost inexhaustible fund of
instruction and amusement." — Boston Saturday Evening Gazette.

"Since the publication of Horace Walpole's Letters, no book of greater historical
interest has seen the light than the Greville Memoirs. It throws a curious, and, we
may almost say, a terrible light on the conduct and character of the public men in Eng-
land under the reigns of George IV. and William IV. Its descriptions of those kings
and their kinsfolk are never likely to be forgotten." — N. Y. Times.

D. APPLETON & CO., PUBLISHERS, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y.

THE LIFE OF

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS

THE PRINCE CONSORT.

By THEODORE MARTIN.

With Portraits and Views. Volume the First, izmo. Cloth. Price, $2.00.

"The book, indeed, is more comprehensive than its title implies. . Purporting to
tell the life of the Prince Consort, it includes a scarcely less minute biography— which
may be regarded as almost an autobiography— of the Queen herself; and, when it is
complete, it will probably present a more minute history of the domestic life of a queen
and her ' master ' (the term is Her Majesty's) than has ever before appeared."— From
the A thenaum.

" Mr. Martin has accomplished his task with a success which could scarcely have
been anticipated. His biography of Prince Albert would be valuable and instructive
even if it were addressed to remote and indifferent readers who had no special interest
ia the English court or in the royal family. Prince Albert's actual celebrity is insepa-
rably associated with the high position which he occupied, but his claim to permanent
reputation depends on the moral and intellectual qualities which were singularly
adapted to the circumstances of his career. In any rank of life he would probably
have attained distinction; but his prudence, his self-denial, and his aptitude for acquir-
ing practical knowledge, could scarcely have found a more suitable field of exercise
than in his peculiar situation as the acknowledged head of a constitutional monarchy."
From the Saturday Review.

" The author writes with dignity and grace, he values his subject, and treats him
with a certain courtly reverence, yet never once sinks into the panegyrist, and while
apparently most frank— so frank, that the reticent English people may feel the intimacy
of his domestic narratives almost painful — he is never once betrayed into a momentary
indiscretion. The almost idyllic beauty of the relation between the Prince Consort
and the Queen comes out as fully as in all previous histories of that relation— and we
have now had three — as does also a good deal of evidence as to the Queen's own
character, hitherto always kept down, and, as it were, self effaced in publications
written or sanctioned by herself." — From the London Spectator.

"Of the abilities which have been claimed for the Prince Consort, this work affords
us small means of judging. But of his wisdom, strong sense of duty, and great dignity
and purity of character, the volume furnishes ample evidence. In this way it will be
of service to any one who reads it." — From the New York Evening Post.

" There is a striking contrast between this volume and the Greville Memoirs, which
relate to a period in English history immediately preceding Prince Albert's marriage
with Queen Victoria. Radical changes were effected in court-life by Victoria's acces-
sion to the throne. ... In the work before us, which is the unfolding of a model home-
life, a life in fact unrivaled in the abodes of modern royalty, there is nothing but what
the purest mind can read with real pleasure and profit.

" Mr. Martin draws a most exquisite portraiture of the married life of the royal pair,
which seems to have been as nearly perfect as any thing human can be. The volume
closes shortly after the Revolution of 1848, at Paris, when Louis Philippe and his hap-
less queen were fleeing to England in search of an asylum from the fearful forebodings
which overhung their pathway. It was a trying time for England, but, says Mr. Mar-
tin with true dramatic effect in the closing passages of his book : ' When the storm
burst, it found him prepared. In rising to meet the difficulties of the hour, the prince
found the best support in the cheerful courage of the queen/ who on the 4th of
April of that same year wrote to King Leopold : ' I never was calmer and quieter or
less nervous. Great events make me calm ; it is only trifles that irritate my nerves.'
Thus ends the first volume of one of the most important biographies of the present
time. The second volume will follow as soon as its preparation can be effected." —
From the Hartford Evening Post.

D. APPLETON & CO., PUBLISHERS, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

THE NATIVE RACES OF THE PACIFIC STATES.

By HERBERT H. BANCROFT. To be completed in 5 vols. Vol. I. mm
ready. Containing Wild Tribes : their Manners and Customs,
i vol., 8vo. Cloth, $6 ; sheep, $7.

"We can only say that if the remaining volumes are executed in the same spirit of
candid and careful investigation, the same untiring industry, and intelligent good sense,
which mark the volume before us, Mr. Bancroft's ' Native Races of the Pacific States
will form, as regards aboriginal America, an encyclopaedia of knowledge not only un
equaled but unapproached. A literary enterprise more deserving of a generous sym-
pathy and support has never been undertaken on this side of the Atlantic." — FRANCIS
PARKMAN, in the North A^ merican Review.

"The industry, sound judgment, and the excellent literary style displayed in thu
work, cannot be too highly praised."— Boston Post.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CULTURE.

By JOHN S. HITTELL. i vol., I2mo. Price, $1.50.

" He writes in a popular style for popular use. He takes ground which has never
been fully occupied before, although the general subject has been treated more or less
distinctly by several writers. . . . Mr. Hittell's method is compact, embracing a wide
field in a few words, often presenting a mere hint, when a fuller treatment is craved by
the reader ; but, although his book cannot be commended as a model of literary art, it
may be consulted to great advantage by every lover of free thought and novel sugges-
tions."—^. Y. Tribune.

THE HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN RE
LIGION AND SCIENCE.

By JOHN W. DRAPER, M. D., author of "The Intellectual Develop-
ment of Europe." I vol., I2mo. Cloth. Price, $1.75.
" The conflict of which he treats has been a mighty tragedy of humanity that has
dragged nations into its vortex and involved the fate of empires. The work, though
small, is full of instruction regarding the rise of the great ideas of science and philos-
ophy ; and he describes in an impressive manner and with dramatic effect the way re-
ligious authority has employed the secular power to obstruct the progress of knowledge
and crush out the spirit of investigation. While there is not in his book a word of dis-
respect for things sacred, he writes with a directness of speech, and a vividness of char-
acterization and an unflinching fidelity to the facts, which show him to be in thorough
earnest with his work. The ' History of the Conflict between Religion and Science '
is a fitting sequel to the ' History of the Intellectual Development of Europe,' and will
add to its author's already high reputation as a philosophic historian." — N. Y. Tribune.

THEOLOGY IN THE ENGLISH POETS.

COWPER, COLERIDGE, WORDSWORTH, and BURNS. By
Rev. STOPFORD BROOKE, i vol., I2mo. Price, $2.

"Apart from its literary merits, the book maybe said to possess an independent
value, as tending to familiarize a certain section of the English public with more en-
lightened views of theology. " — London Athenceunt.

BLOOMER'S COMMERCIAL CRYPTOGRAPH.

A Telegraph Code and Double Index — Holocryptic Cipher. By J. G.
BLOOMER, i vol., 8vo. Price, $5.

By the use of this work, business communications of whatever nature may be tele
graphed with secrecy and economy.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS.— SCIENTIFIC.

THE PRINCIPLES OF MENTAL PHYSIOLOGY. With their Ap-

plications to the Training and Discipline of the Mind, and the Study of its

Morbid Conditions. By W. B. CARPENTER, F. R. S., etc. Illustrated, izmo.

737 pages- Price, $3.00.

" The work is probably the ablest exposition of the subject which has been given to the world, and goes

far to establish a new system of Mental Philosophy, upon a much broader and more substantial basis than

U ^Letus^thaT notwfg w^av? sT^ or in any limited space could say, would give an adequate con-
ception of the valuable and curious collection of facts bearing on morbid mental conditions, the learned
physiological exposition, and the treasure-house of useful hints for mental training, which make this large
ani yet very amusing, as well as instructive book, an encyclopaedia of well-classified and often very
startling psychological experiences."— London Spectator.

THE EXPANSE OF HEAVEN. A Series of Essays on the Wonders of

the Firmament. By R. A. PROCTOR, B. A.
" A very charming work ; cannot fail to lift the reader's mind up ' through Nature's work to Nature's

^'p'rof. R. A. Proctor 'is one of the very few rhetorical scientists who have the art of making science
popular without making it or themselves 'contemptible. It will be hard to find anywhere else so much
skill in effective expression, combined with so much genuine astronomical learning, as is to be seen m his
new volume."— Christian Union.

PHYSIOLOGY FOB PRACTICAL USE. By various Writers. Edited
by JAMES HINTON. With 50 Illustrations, i vol., i2mo. Price, $2.25.

" This book is one of rare value, and will prove useful to a large class in the community. Its chief
recommendation is in its applying the laws of the science of physiology to cases of the deranged or diseased
operations of the organs or processes of the human system. It is as thoroughly practical as is a book of
formulas of medicine, and the style in which the information is given is so entirely devoid of the mystification
of technical or scientific terms that the most simple can easily comprehend it." — Boston Gazette.

" Of all the works upon health of a popular character which we have met with for some time, and we
»re glad to think that this most important branch of knowledge is becoming more enlarged every day,
the work before us appears to be the simplest, the soundest, and the best"— Chicago Inter-Ocean.

THE GREAT ICE AGE, and its Relations to the Antiquity of

Man. By JAMES GEIKIE, F. R. S. E. With Maps, Charts, and numerous J llus-
trations. i vol., thick i2mo. Price, $2.50.

" ' The Great Ice Age ' is a work of extraordinary interest and value. The subject is peculiarly
attractive in the immensity o
it can scarcely find expressio
unscientific minds alike."— Boston Gazette.

" Every step in the process is traced with admirable perspicuity and fullness by Mr. Geikie."— Lon-
don Saturday Review.

" ' The Great Ice Age,' by James Geikie, is a book that unites the popular and abstruse elements of
scientific research to a remarkable degree. The author recounts a story that is more romantic than nine
novels out of ten, and we have read the book from first to last with unflagging interest."— Boston Commer-
cial Bulletin.

ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE BRITISH ASSOCIA-

TION, assembled at Belfast. By JOHN TVNDALL, F. R. S., President. Re-
vised, with additions, by the author, since the delivery. lamo. 120 pages.
Paper. Price, 50 cents.

This edition of this now famous address is the only one authorized by the author, and contains addi-
tions and corrections not in the newspaper reports.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MAN. Designed to represent the Existing State
of Physiological Science as applied to the Functions of the Human Body. B>
AUSTIN FLINT, Jr., M. D. Complete in Five Volumes, octavo, of about 500
pages each, with 105 Illustrations. Cloth, $22.00 ; sheep, $27.00. Each vol-
ume sold separately. Price, cloth, $4.50; sheep, $5.50. The fifth and last
volume has just been issued.

The above is by far the most complete work on human physiology in the English language. It treats
of the functions of the human body from a practical point of view, and is enriched by many original ex-
periments and observations by the author. Considerable space is given to physiological anatomy, par-
ticularly the structure of glandular organs, the digestive system, nervous system, blood-vessels, organs of
special sense, and organs of generation. It not only considers the various functions of the body, from an
experimental stand-point, but is peculiarly rich in citations of the literature of physiology. It is therefore
invaluable as a work of reference for those who wish to study the subject of physiology exhaustively. As
a complete treatise on a subject of such interest, it should be in the libraries of literary and scientific men,
as well as in the hands of practitioners and students of medicine. Illustrations are introduced wherever
they are necessary for the elucidation of the text.

D. APPLETON & CO., PUBLISHERS, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y.

., . , ..

ce Age ' is a work of extraordinary interest and value. The subject is peculiarly
mensity of its scope, and exercises a fascination over the imagination so absorbing that
expression in words. It has all the charms of wonder-tales, and excites scientific and

A New Magazine for Students and Cultivated Readers.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

CONDUCTED BY
Professor E. L. YOUMANS.

THE growing importance of scientific knowledge to all classes of the
community calls for more efficient means of diffusing it. THE POPULAR
SCIENCE MONTHLY has been started to promote this object, and supplies a
want met by no other periodical in the United States.

It contains instructive and attractive articles, and abstracts of articles,
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It is designed to give especial prominence to those branches of science
which help to a better understanding of the nature of man ; to present the
claims of scientific education ; and the bearings of science upon questions
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In its literary character, this periodical aims to be popular, without be-
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It will have contributions from HERBERT SPENCER, Professor HUXLEY,
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