The elements of physiology : containing an explanation of the functions of the human body : in which the modern improvements in chemistry, Galvanism, and other sciences, are applied to explain the actions of the animal economy / translated from the French of A. Richerand ... by Robert Kerrison.

  • Richerand, A. (Anthelme), 1779-1840.
Date:
1808
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The elements of physiology : containing an explanation of the functions of the human body : in which the modern improvements in chemistry, Galvanism, and other sciences, are applied to explain the actions of the animal economy / translated from the French of A. Richerand ... by Robert Kerrison. 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.)

    36/496
    that remove organized living bodies from the absolute government of physical laws. The multiplicity and volatility of their elements; the necessary coexistence of liquids and solids; the nutrition and development by intussusception, whilst the increase of other bodies takes place by juxtaposition only; the origin by generation, and termination by death: such are the true characters that distinguish organized beings from inanimate substances. The differences between Animals and Vegetables. As to those circumstances by which vegetables differ from animals, they are much less decided, and consequently more difficult to be distinguished: there is, in fact, very little differ- ence between a zoophyte and a vegetable; and the distance, as far as regards their interior economy, is greater between a man, who is in the highest scale of animal life, and a poly- pus, that is placed in the lowest, than between this animal and a plant. These fugitive gradations, however, can be taken, arid a certain number of sufficiently marked differ- ences established', to assign to vegetables characters that do not relate to individuals of the two other kingdoms. Their nature is more complicated than minerals, but less so than animals; the proportion of solids and fluids is greater than in the latter; therefore, after death, they long preserve the same form and size, although they become lighter. Their constituent principles are less diffusible. In fact, azot, the predominancy of which characterizes animal substances, is a gaseous and volatile production; whilst carbon, that forms the basis of vegetables, is a solid and fixed clement. This circumstance, in conjunction with the small quantity of liquids, accounts for the long existence of dead vegetable matter.