Insanity tested by science, and shown to be a disease rarely connected with permanent organic lesion of the brain. And on that account far more susceptible of cure than has hitherto been supposed / [Charles Mountford Burnett].

  • Burnett, C. M. (Charles Mountford), 1807-1866
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Insanity tested by science, and shown to be a disease rarely connected with permanent organic lesion of the brain. And on that account far more susceptible of cure than has hitherto been supposed / [Charles Mountford Burnett]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Mode oof union in or- ganic bodies. Their com- plexity shown by the law of synthesis. Prout. 20 THE BLOOD. bodies, or lastly of one binary compound with a simple elementary substance. But in organic bodies there are always three elementary substances mutually united to each other, without any previous binary combination, as we find in vegetables, which are mainly composed of ternary compounds; and in the higher department, the animal creation, the combina- tion of four substances in many instances, and even five, unite to form quaternary and quinary unions, which, by their relative proportions being made to undergo every degree of variation, give rise to the innumerable animal products which are formed for building up that organism which is so admirably fitted for the display of the vital principle. This increased complexity in the formation of animal bodies, cannot be better proved than by the fact, that if submitted to analysis by the action of fire, their primary elements may be easily obtained, although no power yet in the possession of man can re-form them synthetically so as to assume their original cha- racter and appearance. We cannot do this with the more simple vegetable substances, and still less can we succeed with the more complicated liquid and animal substances.* Thus we may imitate most correctly the laws of inorganic bodies, but the laws of organic bodies are the laws of life, and these we have no power of imitating. It is said that “the vital principle, in forming these * This line is most clearly drawn in those animal concretions which dis- ease sometimes throws out ; for example, in the gouty deposits, vulgarly called chalk-stones. These are obviously not endowed with vitality, and they have accordingly no blood-vessels, or blood conveyed into their structure. Dr. Wollaston found, by a synthetic process, a crystalline substance was formed, having the same figure and properties of the ori- ginal crystals, constituting similar concretions in the body.— Phil. Trans., vol. Ixxxviii.