Volume 1

Library of mesmerism and psychology : embracing the most popular works on the subject.

Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Library of mesmerism and psychology : embracing the most popular works on the subject. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    192/466 (page 12)
    through their fixed, and sometimes anastomosing channels, even down to the very marrow or pith of the bones. If we rise still higher, we find another kingdom or division, extend- ing to the distance of fifty miles above the earth's surface, called the gaseous, atmospherical, or respiratory; we have corresponding thereto in man, the lungs and their appendages, as his atmospheric and gaseous department, for the constant respiration, retention, and consumption of the elements of these external systems, as seen in the economy of respiration. If the theory of Newton be true (and philosophers almost generally, in this particular, do not differ), we shall find that ■we have another kingdom or division of the external world extending to the sun—if you please an emanation or effluvium from the sun—known as the ether of Newton, the electricity of Franklin, and the electric fluid of Sir James Murray. This, it will be perceived, comes from a distance of ninety-five millions of miles to our globe, from the great material head of the external solar and physical organization. Has not man a nervous system, which, in its operative movements, at least, speaks within the nature of this eman- ation, which also extends from the center to the periphery of his physical organization 1 We have now named four different kingdoms or divisions of the external world, the elements of which are, unquestion- ably, absorbed by the different systems in man, and by this absorption alone is his finite system supported and main- tained. Hence there is an adaptation of means to ends—on the part of the stomach to the reception of food and Avater, on the part of the lungs to the reception and absorption of the atmosphere and gases, and on the part of the nervous system to the absorption or respiration of the electrical fluid of the atmosphei-e.