The philosophy of sleep / [Robert Macnish].

  • Robert Macnish
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The philosophy of sleep / [Robert Macnish]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    > organs is laying down particles and another taking them up, with such exquisite nicety, that for the eS RAL momentary waste there is continual momentary repair; and this is capable of going on with the strictest equality for half a century. What is life? Those bodies are called living in which an appropriation of foreign matter is going on; death is where this process is at an end. When we find blood in motion, the process of appropriation is going on. ‘The circulation is the surest sign of life. Muscles retain irritability for an hour or two after circulation ceases, but irritability is not life. Death is owing to the absence of this process of appropriation. Bichat has divided life into two varieties, the organic and the animal. 'The first is common to both vegetables and animals, the last is peculiar to animals alone. Organic life applies to the func- tions which nourish and sustain the object-——ani- mal life to those which make it a sentient being ; which give it thought, feeling, and motion, and bring it into communication with the surrounding world. The processes of assimilation and excretion exist both in animals and vegetables: the other vital processes are restricted solely to animals. The digestive organs, the kidneys, the heart, and the lungs, are the apparatus which carry into effect the organic life of animals. Those which manifest animal life are the brain, the organs of the senses, and the voluntary powers. Sleep is the suspension of animal life; and during its con- oe
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