Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An appeal to physiologists and the press / by H. Freke. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
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![pointing to the essential dependency of the latter upon the former. Of what ' formally expressed doctrines have I so obviously profited largely' for that? That is my abstraction ; I call for the reviewer's concretion of that. But I may not thus proceed. To what physiological writers speci- ally, I demand of that reviewer, do I so obviously owe obHgations % It is but justice that he should point to the writers, and at the same time should point to the debts. Does the reviewer mean to convey in his statements an insinuation that I have had the effrontery to feign an ignorance of the researches which, while physiology is science, will be ever held in remem- brance, in connection with the imperishable names Schleiden and Schwann ] If so, I indignantly repel the insinuation, and appeal to the profession. Could such be collected by an impartial reviewer from my own words, ' far- famed 'nucleated cell' V By whose ' hints,' then, ' or more formally expressed doctrines' have I more ' obviously profited largely,' than must every physiological writer at every period have profited by the writings of those by whom he has been preceded? I conscientiously assert that from the commencement of my volume to its close, there is not to be found a solitary opinion which has not originated exclusively and alone with myself, except it be on topics with which the physiologist is as famUiar as is the astronomer v/ith gravity j and had I been writing upon the subject of astronomy, I should not have apprehended the imputation of plagiarism, even though I had not informed my readers that Newton was the discoverer of gravity. Nay, further, I conscientiously assert that into that volume I have not introduced a soHtary argument which has not been altogether and only my own. So much then for the moral, and now for the philosophic justice of this charge of obliga- tion to physiological concretors. It would be difficult for language (in the same number of terms as are comprised in these statements of the reviewer), to evince a more complete and total unacquaintance with the nature of philosophic research. For how stands the enthymeme which the learned reviewer propounds? It is thus—the author's views are but the abstract of truths which were already known in the concrete, and therefore his views are not novel/// Alas, sage reviewer, 'we much apprehend' your sup- pressed premise will be found wanting in logical as well as in ethical truth. What, I would ask that reviewer, does he conceive would constitute a dis- covery, or, if he prefer it, a ' novelty' in natural science 1 K he know not, I shall take the liberty of informing him. It is no more than the reaclmig, in the abstract, truths that may already have been known in the concrete. What was the discovery of gravity but the recognition, in the abstract, of the then concrete truths of astronomy t And were the laws of gravity the less a discovery upon that account—or were they for that reason the less ' novel V To what physical writers was Newton indebted for the concrete of this abstract 1 What ' novelty,' I should be glad to learn, is likely em* to be reached in any branch of inquiry which will not also be likely to prove to be but an abstract of some truth known, perhaps even now, in a more concrete form 1 Away, then, with this ungenerous attempt at mystification. The reviewer thus proceeds :—' In the idea that the lower class of ani- mated being elaborate nutrient materials for the higher, and that in its entrance into the more complex organisms, the food is subject to a series of elaborating processes by which it is gradually prepared to enter into the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21476925_0015.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
