The Simplicity of Life: An Introductory Chapter to Pathology

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Lewis, 1873 - 118 pages
 

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Page 88 - Our idea, therefore, of necessity and causation arises entirely from the uniformity, observable in the operations of nature; where similar objects are constantly conjoined together, and the mind is determined by custom to infer the one from the appearance of the other...
Page 87 - It seems evident that, if all the scenes of nature were continually shifted in such a manner that no two events bore any resemblance to each other, but every object was entirely new, without any similitude to whatever had been seen before, we should never, in that case, have attained the least idea of necessity, or of a connexion among these objects. We might say, upon such a supposition, that one object or event has followed another; not that one was produced by the other. The relation of cause...
Page 80 - It may seem a small thing to admit that the dull vital actions of a fungus or a foraminifer are the properties of their protoplasm, and are the direct results of the nature of the matter of which they are composed.
Page 78 - ... if it be hard to get them out of, it is not for the strength that is in them, but the briars and thorns, and the obscurity of the thickets they are beset with.
Page 80 - I can discover no logical halting-place between the admission that such is the case, and the further concession that all vital action may, with equal propriety, be said to be the result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm which displays it. And if so, it must be true, in the same sense and to the same extent, that the thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your thoughts regarding them, are the expression of molecular changes in that matter of life which is the source of our other...
Page 81 - At any rate, the matter of life is a veritable peau de chagrin, and for every vital act it is somewhat the smaller. All work implies waste, and the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the waste of protoplasm.
Page 98 - From our own experiments on the combustion of a mixture of hay and corn in oxygen gas, we find that each grain of food, consisting of equal parts of undried hay and corn, is able to give 0'682 to a pound of water, a quantity of heat equivalent to the raising of a weight of 557 Ibs. to the height of a foot. Whence it appears that one quarter of the whole amount of vis viva generated by the combustion of food in the animal frame, is capable of being applied in producing a useful mechanical effect,...
Page 7 - When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain proportion, and an electric spark is passed through them, they disappear, and a quantity of water, equal in weight to the sum of their weights, appears in their place.
Page 60 - Life consists in the sum of the characteristic actions of organized beings, performed in virtue of a specific susceptibility, acted upon by specific stimuli ;" or Richerand, when he tells us that " Life consists in the aggregate of those phenomena which manifest themselves in succession for a limited time in organized beings.

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