Zoonomia; or The laws of organic life: in three parts (Volume 1).

  • Darwin, Erasmus, 1731-1802.
Date:
1818
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Zoonomia; or The laws of organic life: in three parts (Volume 1). 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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    phenomena, referable however to the principle of motion, such as the heating of bodies from the influx of soft, round, and smooth particles ; the cooling of them from the ingress of atoms of opposite and irregular figures ; even sensations both of the pleasurable and painful kinds, motion, rest, and time itself, are contingencies to bodies. In short, the whole phenomena of the production, growth, nutrition, decline, and dissolution of bodies, are to be ascribed to an alteration of ar- « rangement in the particles, and to their addition or subtrac- tion. « Minerals, plants, and animals were thus produced in the be- u ginning, according to these mechanical laws of matter and mo- tion, and so was the world they compose and inhabit. They continue to propagate their kinds in regular ways, because nature has become accustomed, by habit, to produce them in an order so uniform as to look like design. The eye, however, was not made for seeing, nor the ear for hearing ; but having « been accidentally formed in such a way as to answer these purposes, the sentient principle within, which is co-existent with the organization, finding them fit for the purposes of sight and hearing, makes use of them accordingly. Sensation, proceeding from the arrangement and texture of « particles, is to be ascribed to their peculiar magnitude, shape, combination, Sec. so that instead of being an original property of matter, it is, in fact, only an occasional quality. Death is the privation of sensation, in consequence of the separation of « the sentient principle from the body ; and this sentient princi- pie, when a man dies, is decompounded into its simple atoms, loses its sensitive powers, and goes into other forms and com- binations. The soul, in this respect, resembling the eye, which is no longer capable of performing its functions than the connection of its organized texture with the body lasts. What Asclepiades did, was to apply the principles of the Efiicurean Philosophy to medicine, and this he did with much ingenuity and acuteness. Building upon that hypothesis, he supposed the human body composed of Epicurus's ultimate atoms, which, by their figure, proximity, and arrangement, ena- bled it to perform its functions; and in a particular manner, that health consisted in the symmetry and permeability of cer- tain passages through the firm parts, which he called /lores ; and the closing up or obstruction of these constituted disease. He imagined the fluids to be formed of particles, varying in fi- gure and size, and thus making all the varieties of them from the thickest blood to the most attenuated animal spirits. And when these fluids move freely through their pores, the body was sound ; but when they were too narrow, so as to produce stagna- tions, or so oblique as not to be readily passable, then indisposi- tion ensued. Such were the leading principles of Asclepiades, and he had