Volume 1

Professional anecdotes, or ana of medical literature.

Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Professional anecdotes, or ana of medical literature. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/320 (page 9)
    machine, endowed with a principle of excita- bility, by means of a great variety of stimuli, both external and internal, some of which are perpetually acting upon the machine; and hence the excitement, iyhich constitutes the life of the machine, is maintained. Excitability, there- fore, is the nervous energy of Dr. Cullen; and, like that, is constantly varying in its accumu- lation and exhaustion; yet, unlike the nervous energy of Dr. Cullen, not under the direction and guidance of a vix conservatrix et medicatrix natures, distinct from the matter of the organi- zation itself, but passively exposed to the effect of such stimuli as it may chance to meet with, and necessarily yielding to their influence. Upon this hypothesis, excitement is the vital flame, excitability the portion of fuel allotted to every man at his birth, and which, varying in every individual, is to serve him without any addition for the whole of his existence; while the stimuli, by which we are surrounded, are the different kinds of blasts by which the flame is kept up. If the fuel or excitability be made the most of, by a due temperature or mean rate of blasts or stimuli, the flame or excitement may be maintained for sixty or seventy years. But its power of supporting a protracted flame may be weakened by having the blast either too high or too low. If too high, the fuel or excitability