Lecture, introductory to the course on the theory and practice of medicine : in the Medical Department of Pennsylvania College, session of 1846-47 / by W. Darrach.
- William Darrach
- Date:
- 1846
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Lecture, introductory to the course on the theory and practice of medicine : in the Medical Department of Pennsylvania College, session of 1846-47 / by W. Darrach. 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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![short concluding remarks on their prominent difterences, viz: first, The vegetable form of life is a single organism; the ani- mal form is a double organism. The former effects two objects; the latter effects six of them. The one, foetus-like, implants its placenta-like roots into its mother earth, the other enjoys, as after birth, a separate and independent existence. The third and last form of life is that of man. The great question, What is man V is pressed upon us. Surely he is more than animal. A worm ! a god ! an insect infinite. He has a triple and transcendent nature; sense, intellect, and soul—functions, faculties, and spirit, a nutritive, reproductive and sentient organism. It was with us a difficult argument to lift vegetation within the precincts of vitality. It ■will be found a more difficult one to confine man within its boundary. He is more than a mere moving creature which has life. He was made in the image and likeness of his Crea- tor, to have dominion over all inferior beings. We have risen high in the scale of being when we have come to the consi- deration of man. Inorganic matter is, as it might seem, a refuse, disregarded by the Creator. The atmosphere and min- erals are atoms in definite proportions to manifest that He is a God of order. Plants show more his wisdom in evolution, bloom and reproduction ; and animals still more in an addi- tional organism for voluntary motion, and self-defence, and preservation. Man illustrates not only His wisdom, but His pity and love, which fill the universe with their fragrance, as the frankincense of a temple; and which will live, when the topic of my lecture is no longer life. Then what is man ? First, man is b. nutritive organism. His beginning, or rather the first manifestation of his being, is a red, pulsating point. It floats in a pellucid fluid contained in a transparent ovoid sac. The sac is the amnios, the fluid is the liquor amnii, and the pulsating point is the primordial of the human heart. It is a red globule—a membrane enclosing a fluid which has a central consistence. The membrane is an interlaced, areolated, extensile, and retractile texture, i. e. matter and breath of life in connate union—an organization. The contained fluid is also an organization. The two organizations reciprocally stimulate each other, and changes result in an ordained series. The globule becomes the sacculated] portion of a ramifying tube filled with a red fluid, the blood. Other sacs form about and communicate with it, and are elongated into another set of branching tubes, the veins, communicating with the former by means of a reticular set of vessels, the capillaries, and thus a circulating apparatus is made. The circulated blood is variously deposited as plastic mat- ter. Here a cylindrical coil, the intestine, appears having a](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21113531_0018.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
