Animal chemistry, or, Organic chemistry in its applications to physiology and pathology / by Justus Liebig ; edited from the author's manuscript by William Gregory.

  • Liebig, Justus, Freiherr von, 1803-1873.
Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Animal chemistry, or, Organic chemistry in its applications to physiology and pathology / by Justus Liebig ; edited from the author's manuscript by William Gregory. 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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    With all its discoveries, modern chemistry has performed but slender services to physiology and pathology ; and we cannot be deceived as to the cause of this failure, if we reflect that it was found impossible to trace any sort of relation between the observations made in inorganic chemistry, the knowledge of the characters of the elementary bodies and of such of their compounds as could be formed in the laboratory, on the one hand, and the living body, with the characters of its constituents, on the other. Physiology took no share in the advancement of chemistry, because for a long period she received from the latter science no assistance in her own development. This state of matters has been en- tirely changed within five-and-twenty years. But during this period physiology has also acquired new ways and methods of investigation within her own province ; and it is only the exhaustion of these sources of discovery which has enabled us to look forward to a change in the direction of the labours of physiologists. The time for such a change is now at hand; and a perseverance in the methods lately followed in physiology would now, from the want, which must soon be felt, of fresh points of departure for researches, render physiology more extensive, but neither more profound nor more solid.