The discovery of the vital principle, or physiology of man.

Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The discovery of the vital principle, or physiology of man. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Every ovum is formed by a certain process, and until this process is perfected, it cannot enter upon the second or foetal stage of animal existence. According to Dr. Roget, “the process itself by which the germs of living beings originate, is veiled in the most impenetrable mystery.” This hitherto inexplicable enigma will, I trust, be elucidated by the manner in which primitive matter became organized into the ovum of this universe. Primitive, or what I shall term celestial matter, was originally simple and homogeneous in its nature.* This matter was the same as that of which the rare and costly diamond now affords a specimen, and existed prior to the formation of sun, moon, or * Plato calls matter the “ receptacle, nurse, mother, place, and subject of all images; affirming that it is touched without sense, and comprehended by an adulterate kind of reason. The property thereof is to undergo the generation of all things, and to cherish them like a nurse, and to admit all forms; being of her own nature expert of all form, quality, and species. These things are imprinted and formed in her as in a table, and she admitteth their figures, not having of herself any form or quality. For, she could not be fit to receive the impressions of several forms, unless she were wholly void of all quality, and of those forms which she is about to receive. They who make sweet unguents of oil, make choice of that oil which hath the least scent; they who would imprint any figures in wax, first smooth and polish the matter, defacing all former figures. It is requisite that matter, capable of all things, if it must receive all forms, must not have the nature of any one of them, but must be subjected to all forms, without any quality or figure ; and being such, it is neither a body nor incorporeal, but a body potentially; as brass is potentially a statue, because then it becomes a statue when it puts on the form thereof.”—-Stanley's Lives of the Philosophers.