A discourse delivered before the Humane Society of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at their semiannual meeting, June 12, 1804. ... / By John C. Howard.

  • Howard, John C. (John Clark), approximately 1772-1810.
Date:
1804
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A discourse delivered before the Humane Society of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at their semiannual meeting, June 12, 1804. ... / By John C. Howard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/72 (page 8)
    versal tendency to an equilibrium, that conse¬ quently bodies possessing it in different quanti¬ ties, coming into contact, respectively commu¬ nicate and receive it ; that the presence of this fluid is the necessary, and only cause of the flu¬ idity and mobility of bodies, and that motion is an effeCt of its relative and unequal combinations,. For could once an equilibrium be produced, a cessation of all motion, and universal solidity would ensue. Animated bodies, from the nice and peculiar arrangement of their particles, pos¬ sess the property of maintaining that aCtion, which the first impulse of motion commences, and of longer resisting the perpetual nisus for an equilibrium. Animal heat is an effeCt of this property, and is the criterion of the existence of this distinguishing characteristic. The succes¬ sive expansions and contractions, then, of the an¬ imal fibres, constitute those vibrations which we call life, and they are equally dependent upon the same principle, the same universal cause, which first gave motion to matter. Vain and presumptuous is the attempt to discover this principle, by anatomical investigation or chemic¬ al analysis ; for its evanescent existence waits not their results, and the moment of research is but the signal for its escape*