A lecture on the physiology of digestion : introductory to a course of lectures on the Institutes of Medicine and Materia Medica : delivered before the medical class of the University of the City of New York, at the session of 1844-5 / by Martyn Paine.

  • Paine, Martyn, 1794-1877.
Date:
1844-5
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A lecture on the physiology of digestion : introductory to a course of lectures on the Institutes of Medicine and Materia Medica : delivered before the medical class of the University of the City of New York, at the session of 1844-5 / by Martyn Paine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    verted into its original form ; it is transformed into flesh and blood in the animal organism. In the formation of vegetable and animal substances the vital prin- ciple opposes, as a force of resistance, the action of the other for- ces,—cohesive attraction, heat, and electricity,*—forces which render the aggregation of atoms into combinations of the highest order impos- sible, except in living organisms. Hence it is, that when those complex combinations which consti- tute organic substances are withdrawn from the influence of the vital force,—when this no longer is opposed to the action of the other dis- turbing forces, great alterations immediately ensue in their proper- ties, and in the arrangement of their constituents. The slightest chemical action, the mere contact of atmospheric air, suffices to cause a transposition in their atoms, and to produce new arrangements; in one word, to excite decomposition. Those remarkable phenomena then take place which are designated by the terms fermentation, putrefaction, and decay. These are the processes of decomposition, and their ul- timate results are to reconvert the elements of organic bodies into that state in which they exist before they participate in the processes of life. —London Lancet, May 18, 1844. Now, gentlemen, you are no doubt astonished, and well you may be, to hear such language, and the latest, too, that he has spoken, from the chief of the school who, in reality, admit of nothing but pure chemistry in their system of physiology. The language which I have just quoted from Liebig, should place him amongst the unqualified vi- talists. It conveys the doctrines which lie at the foundation of my Medi- cal and Physiological Commentaries, and which are opposed, intoto, to the hallucinations of Chemistry. And yet I have already made other quotations from the same writer, and on the same subjects, which you will have observed contradict, in the broadest, and most absolute manner his doctrines as to the vital principle. The latter seem to be thrown out as springes to catch woodcocks, or as others have it, as a tub to the whale. Such, then, are examples of the medley of contradictions in great fun- damental principles, with which the writings of this very extraordinary and successful pretender in medicine, abound. On the same page we meet a purely chemical and a purely vital philosophy of digestion ; and equally so of other important organic processes. Each is laid down without qualification, and with the dictum of a master who is con- scious that the preponderance he gives to the purely chemical philoso- phy of life will establish his Empire in that philosophy with an age more prone than ever to the doctrines of materialism. On the very subject of a vital principle itself he is as^flatly contradictory as on the cause of digestion; for at one moment he avows the existence of such a princi- * Heat, light, and electricity, are often absurdly supposed to constitute forces in their relation to living beings. In that relation they are merely vital stimuli, calling into action the properties of life. These properties are the only forces which have anv con- nection with the phenomena evinced by animals or plants. As to the doctrine of cap- illary attraction, whether applied to the capillary circulation of plants or animals it is th<- very worst of all the physical views of life; since it strikes a fatal blow at all or- ganic, processes and results, and at all the physiological and pathological doctrines which are founded upon them. The doctrine, on the other hand, is contradicted by all the phenomena and results which appertain to organic life; since they are all dependent on special modes of vital action carried on by the capillary system.