Book Description

Excerpt from The British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, Vol. 21: Or Quarterly Journal of Practical Medicine and Surgery; January-April, 1858 It would, perhaps, have been conducive to greater clearness, if the distinction between Matter and Force, Substance and Agent, had been more consistently preserved. The progress of thought on this subject, during the last few years, has marked out this distinction with great clearness in all that relates to the Inorganic world. The old doctrine of the imponderables has now given place in the minds of all but such as are still entangled in the web of musty traditions, to the doctrine of forces. And these forces are not hypothetical entities, but are cognizable by every man's personal experience. For, when we determinately put forth a certain amount of nervo-muscular power in communicating or resisting Motion, we are conscious of the exertion; and as the force thus developed may be directly or indi rectly metamorphosed into Heat or any other form of physical agency, the relation of each of the Physical Forces to our own sense of effort is definitely established. Now just as the pen which we are at present holding is perfectly passive in itself, and moves only as it is directed by our hand, so is all Inorganic matter inert save when put into activity by one or other of these powers. And that this is equally true of Organized bodies - that they have in themselves no force or spring of action, but derive all their energy from forces external to themselves - is now coming to be generally received as a fundamental truth of Physiological science; and we believe a clear exposition of it to be the surest basis of Physiological teaching. It needs but a very little alteration in the quotation we have just cited, and in similar passages elsewhere, to render them conformable to what we hold to be our present more advanced position; and we trust that in a future edition we shall not meet with the obscurity which is engendered by ranking material substances with other physical agencies. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.