Part 35

The doctrine of man and the universe having been created an emanation of the Creator, renders the Creator material, or matter itself; matter being considered intelligent, and susceptible of this organization. This was the belief of the Brahmins, and was no doubt transmitted to the Academic and Eleatic schools of Greece by Pythagoras. We find in the Yajur Veid, already alluded to, the following passages, that clearly demonstrate this belief: "The whole universe is the Creator, proceeds from the Creator, and returns to him. The ignorant assert that the universe in the beginning did not exist in its author, and that it was created out of nothing. O ye, whose hearts are pure! how could something arise out of nothing? This first being alone, and without likeness, was the ALL in the beginning. He could multiply himself under different forms. He created fire from his essence, which is light." And further: "Thou art Brahma! thou art Vishnu! thou art Kodra! thou art the moon! thou art substance! thou art Djam! thou art the earth! thou art the world!"

These Brahminical doctrines were, beyond doubt, also held by the Greeks. In a poem ascribed to the fabled Orpheus we find the following lines, translated by Mason Good with as much correctness as elegance:

Jove first exists, whose thunders roll above, Jove last, Jove midmost; all proceeds from Jove. Female is Jove--immortal Jove is male; Jove the broad earth--the heavens' irradiate pale. Jove is the boundless spirit, Jove the fire, That warms the world with feeling and desire; The sea is Jove, the sun, the lunar ball; Jove king supreme, the sovereign source of all. All power is his; to him all glory give, For his vast form embraces all that live.

It may be easily imagined that a subject so recondite and obscure must have led philosophers into the wildest speculations. By some, life was considered as the result of a general consent or harmony between the different organs of which the vital frame is formed; while, as we have seen, many have attributed its phenomena to the blood. That blood, to a certain extent, is endowed with vitality is beyond a doubt; Hunter has endeavoured to prove the fact by various experiments. It is capable of being acted upon and contracting like the solid fibres; this we daily witness when blood is coagulated and comes into contact with the atmosphere. It preserves an equality of temperature in whatever medium an animal may move. He also has shown that this fluid can form solid vessels of every description; and its life is also proved by the death inflicted when any excessive stimulus destroys the muscular fibre. Thus, in a body struck with lightning, the muscles remain flaccid and uncontracted, while the blood preserves its fluidity, and is left uncoagulated.

All this specious reasoning shows that blood is a living fluid, but does not in the slightest degree demonstrate to what principle this vitality is to be attributed. It merely proves that every part of a living animal, whether solid or fluid, is endowed with a certain degree of life; but leaves us in impenetrable darkness as to the nature of life. The one cannot be killed without the other; and, as Mason Good justly observes, "that which is at one time alive, and at another dead, cannot be life itself." It is clear that life cannot exist without blood, but at the same time it is equally evident that the blood is merely a secretion of the living system, and dependent upon the action of the solids, which influence its quantities and properties.[29]

It is from this notion of the vitality of the blood that the absurd idea of transfusing it was first conceived. Transfusion consisted in the injection of the arterial blood of young and healthy animals into the veins of the aged and the debilitated. It was about forty years after the discovery of the circulation of the blood by Harvey that this singular project was tried upon animals, and afterwards upon man. Medicated liquids had already been introduced in Germany into the system by this method, principally by Wahrendorf. Dr. Christopher Wren, an English physician, was the first who proposed the injection of blood, and Dr. Lower put it into practice. The result of his experiments seemed to warrant their adoption. An animal was drained of a considerable proportion of blood, and lay faint and expiring; but the blood of another animal being thrown into the languid system, active circulation was restored, and the patient ran about with as much facility as before the experiment. When too great a quantity of blood was injected, the creature became drowsy, and shortly after died of plethora.

These experiments were reported by the transfusers with many absurd details. In one case a simpleton had become witty by a supply of lamb's blood; in another, an old mangy cur was cured by the vital fluid of a young spaniel; a blind old dog, transfused by a Mr. Gayant, bounded and frisked about like a young pup. Dr. Blundel seriously conceived that this operation might be practised with great advantage in cases of hæmorrhage, more especially in women.

Of late years these curious experiments have again been tried with singular results. Prevost and Dumas have shown that the vivifying power of the blood does not reside so much in the serum as in the red particles. An animal bled to syncope, is not revived by the injection of water or pure serum of a temperature of 68° Fahrenheit into its vessels. But if blood of one of the same species is used, the animal seems to acquire fresh life at every stroke of the piston, and is at last restored. Diemenbach has confirmed these experiments. It is also stated by these physiologists, that revival takes place likewise when the blood injected had been previously deprived of its fibrin.

Another very singular fact has been elicited by these experiments; blood of animals of a different genus, of which the corpuscules, though of the same form, have a different size, effects an imperfect restoration, and the animal generally dies in six days.

The injection of blood with circular corpuscules into the vessels of a bird (in which the corpuscules are elliptic and of a larger size) produces violent symptoms similar to those of the strongest poisons, and generally death, which ensues indeed instantaneously, even when a small quantity only of the blood has been injected. Such, for example, was the effect of the transfusion of some blood of the sheep into the veins of a duck; while in many cases in which the blood of sheep and oxen were injected into the vessels of cats and rabbits, these animals were revived for a few days. The fact of the blood of mammalia being poisonous to birds is very remarkable; it cannot be explained mechanically. The injection of fluids containing globules of greater diameter than the capillary vessels of the injected animal most probably produces death, by obstructing the pulmonary vessels and producing suffocation; but the globules of the blood in mammalia are even smaller than those of birds. In Dieffenbach's experiments, pigeons were killed by a few drops only of the blood of mammalia, and the blood of fishes, it is asserted, is as fatal to mammalia as to birds.

These interesting facts have been confirmed by Dr. Bischoff. In all his experiments made with the fresh blood of mammalia, birds died within a few seconds after the transfusion, with violent symptoms resembling those of poisoning; but when, instead of the fresh unchanged blood, he injected blood from which the fibrin had been removed by stirring, and which was heated to a proper temperature, he was surprised to find that no such symptoms were produced, the animal not appearing to suffer any inconvenience.

It seems indeed from these experiments, that the blood of an animal of a different class, is not adapted for the operation.

When transfusion was first proposed in France, it met with furious opponents; and Lamartinière declared that it was a barbarous operation proceeding from Satan's workshop. The controversy between the transfusers and their adversaries was at length carried on with such virulence, that in 1668 the practice was forbidden by a decree of the Châtelet, unless the operation had been sanctioned by the faculty of Paris. In Italy it continued to be in vogue. Riva and Manfredi frequently performed it; and a physician of the name of Simboldus submitted himself to the experiment. According to the accounts given by the patients who had been thus injected, they first experienced an increased heat with violent pulsation, profuse perspiration with pains in the loins and stomach, and a sense of suffocation. Violent vomiting frequently arose, and the patient gradually sank into a torpid and heavy sleep. Whatever may be the theoretical ingenuity in favour of this practice, it is not probable that it will ever be adopted.

While young blood was thus supposed to give fresh vigour to the aged, the heat communicated by young persons to debilitated bedfellows was also resorted to. This practice seems to have been founded on observation. It is an acknowledged fact that an uncommon depression of vital power takes place in the young when such experiments are tried. This abstraction of vital power is frequently observed in young females married to very old men. In illustration of this fact, Dr. Copeland relates the following case: "I was a few years since consulted about a pale, sickly, and thin boy of about five or six years of age. He appeared to have no specific ailment; but there was a slow and remarkable decline of flesh and strength, and of the energy of all the functions,--what his mother very aptly termed 'a gradual blight.' After inquiring into the history of the case, it came out that he had been a very robust and plethoric child up to his third year, when his grandmother, a very aged person, took him to sleep with her; that he soon afterwards lost his good looks, and that he had continued to decline progressively ever since, notwithstanding medical treatment. I directed him to sleep apart from his aged parent, and prescribed gentle tonics, change of air, &c., and the recovery was very rapid."

This selfish indulgence of the aged in endeavouring to deprive their young bedfellows of heat and strength has been often remarked; and young women thus circumstanced have shrewdly suspected the cause of their debilitated condition. It is extremely probable that in these cases electricity is conducted from one body to another. This hypothesis is in some degree confirmed by the experiments made upon Casper Hauser by Von Feuerbach. This Casper Hauser had been kept from infancy until he was eighteen years of age in a perfectly dark cage, without leaving it, and where he never saw a living creature or heard the voice of man. He was restricted from using his limbs, his voice, his hands, or senses; and his food consisted of bread and water only, which he found placed by him when wakening from his sleep. When exposed in Nuremberg, in 1828, he was consequently at eighteen years as if just come into the world, and as incapable of walking, discerning objects, or conveying his impressions, as a newly born infant. These faculties, however, he soon acquired; and he was placed under an able instructor, who has recorded his singular history. Darkness had been to him twilight. The light of day was at first insupportable, inflamed his eyes, and brought on spasms. Substances, the odour of which could not be perceived by others, produced severe effects upon him. The smell of a glass of wine, even at a distance, occasioned headache; of fresh meat, sickness; and of flowers, a painful sensation. Passing by a churchyard with Dr. Daumer, the smell of dead bodies, although altogether imperceptible to the doctor, affected the young man so powerfully as to occasion shudderings, followed by feverish heat, terminating in a violent perspiration. He retained a great aversion, owing to their disagreeable taste and smell, to all kinds of food excepting bread and water.

When the north pole of a small magnet was held towards him, he described a drawing sensation proceeding outwards from the epigastrium, and _as if a current of air went from him_. The south pole affected him less, and he said it blew upon him. Professor Daumer and Hermann made several experiments of the kind, calculated to deceive him, and, even although the magnet was held at a considerable distance from him, his feelings always told him very correctly. These experiments always occasioned perspiration and a feeling of indisposition. He could detect metals placed under oil-cloths, paper, &c. by the sensation they occasioned. He described these sensations as a drawing, accompanied with a chill, which ascended, according to the metal, more or less up the arm, and attended with other distinctive feelings, the veins of the hand exposed to the metal becoming visibly swollen.

The variety and multitude of objects which at once came rushing upon his attention when he thus suddenly came into existence, the unaccustomed impressions of light, free air, and sense, and his anxiety to comprehend them, were too much for his weak frame and acute senses: he became dejected and enfeebled, and his nervous system morbidly elevated. He was subject to spasms and tremors, so that partial exclusion from external excitements became for a time requisite. After he had learned regularly to eat meat, his mental activity was diminished; his eyes lost their brilliancy and expression; the intense application and activity of his mind gave way to absence or indifference, and the quickness of apprehension became diminished. It may be questioned whether this alteration proceeded from the change of diet, or the painful excess of excitement that had preceded it.

Among the various doctrines regarding the creation of animals, that of _Panspermia_ was most ingenious and attractive. According to this theory, maintained by Anaxagoras and Heraclitus, all bodies contained the germ or the organic molecules necessary for their generation. Hippocrates favoured this idea, as plainly appears in his book _de Diætâ_; and in modern times Perrault, Gésik, Wollaston, Sturm, and other physiologists, have endeavoured to revive the doctrine, of which the organic molecules of Buffon and the living molecules of Ray were merely modifications. The expression in Genesis which sanctions the belief that the earth spontaneously germinated its productions, cannot be referred to the animal kingdom. Were this the case, similar animals would be found in every quarter of the globe. Spontaneous generation was also attributed to putrefaction; and Virgil describes the manner in which Aristæus drew forth a swarm of bees from the corrupted entrails of a heifer. Pliny admits the spontaneous creation of rats, mice, frogs, and other small tribes of animals. These errors, however, were soon dispelled by the light thrown on the subject by the microscopic experiments of Valisnéri, Swammerdam, Réaumur, and many other naturalists, who discovered sexual organs in all these supposed self-created individuals.

This doctrine was the foundation of the classification of the generative principle into _equivocal_ and _univocal generations_,--the former the effect of putrefaction, but which in reality was _univocal_, since it was soon ascertained that this production arose from the incubation of numerous eggs deposited by various insects and animalculi in these corrupted bodies. The following experiment afforded a convincing proof of the fact: A piece of meat was placed in an open vessel, and another in a vase hermetically closed; so soon as these animal substances entered into decomposition, myriads of insects pullulated in the exposed meat, whereas that which was protected from external agency remained free from this invasion.

It is a recognised fact that it is only through organized beings that organization can be transmitted; for how can corrupt substances, dead and deprived of vitality, give life to any organized matter? Generation is life; putrescence is death. By a law of nature, generation may be said ultimately to destroy the generative powers; a striking illustration of mortality, since life is transmitted at the expense of our very existence, and many individuals in the catenation of organized beings perish the very moment that they have tended to perpetuate their race. Death advances with rapid strides in the very ratio of the energies of life; and the surest method to attain longevity is to be sparing in the exercise of our exhausting faculties.

Et quasi vitaï lampada tradunt.

_Latent_ or insensible life, such as that of the seeds of plants, or the animal enveloped in its egg, may last for a number of years, so long as they are able to germinate; here vitality is not worn out by relative life. Various species of the snail, the wheel-polybe, the tile-eel, and divers animalcules, have been kept apparently dead, and in the form of dried preparations, withered and hardened, for months and even years, but have afterwards been restored to life by the agency of warmth, moisture, and other stimulants. Snails have been thus reanimated after a lapse of fifteen years; and Bauer revived the _Vibrio tritici_, after an apparent death of five years and eight months, by merely soaking it in water. Adders have been found in hard winters not only completely frozen but absolutely brittle, yet have been restored to life when thawed. A shower of fragments of ice has fallen at Leicester, containing the horsehair eel, with the nuclei of a greater number. Colonel Wilks found eggs in the solid rocks of St. Helena susceptible of being hatched. The vitality in the seeds of plants is truly amazing; barley taken out of the bodies of mummies, Indian corn discovered in the tomb of a Peruvian Inca, and the bulb of an onion found in the hand of a mummy 3000 years old have been sown and have thriven luxuriantly. The most intense heat cannot destroy the vital property. The seeds of roasted apples, the kernels of baked prunes and boiled elder-berries have germinated. Sir John Herschel found that the _Acacia Lophanta_ lived after having been steeped in boiling water for twelve hours, and Ludwig informs us that the seeds of a species of cedar only germinated after ebullition. Fresh-water shells have been found in the thermal waters of Gastein at a temperature of 117°, and Niebuhr found a conferva growing in water at 142°. Raspberry-seeds taken from the corpse of an ancient Briton, contemporaneous with the Druids, have produced fruit when recommitted to the earth.

Some have endeavoured to explain the resurrection of the dead by these natural phenomena; forgetting that in these instances no corruption or actual disorganization had taken place. Stahl expresses himself in the following words when defining life: "Life is formally nothing more than the preservation of the body in mixture, corruptible indeed, but without the occurrence of corruption;" and in Junker we find, "What we call life is opposite to putridity."

The next theory attributed the principle of life to a subtle _gas_ or _aura_. This doctrine constituted one of the principles of the Epicurean philosophy, and was illustrated by Lucretius in his poem on the Nature of Things:

Nam penitùs prorsùm latet hæc natura, subestque; Nec magis hac infra quidquam est in corpore nostro; Atque anima est animæ proporrò totius ipsa.

According to these notions, there existed a volatile principle that bore no specific name, but was diffused through every part of living bodies, more subtile than heat, air, or vapour. In later times this same gaseous agent received various appellations. Van Helmont designated it as the _aura vitalis_, while other philosophers called it the _aura seminalis_ and the _aura sanguinis_. The _archeus faber_ of Van Helmont, the _astrum internum_ of Crollius, the _principium energoumenon_ of Michael Alberti, the _substantia energetica naturæ_ of Glisson, may all be referred to this unseen but powerful agency. Hippocrates called it [Greek: physis], or nature, which he elsewhere denominates [Greek: enorônta]. It was also the [Greek: dynamis xôtikê] of Galen. This soul, or breath, or spirit, directed and preserved the whole economy; and Chrysippus asserts that it acted like salt upon pork.

Modern chemistry has sought this principle in specific agents. Caloric, or the matter of heat; oxygen, or the vital part of atmospheric air, first discovered by Priestley, and explained by Lavoisier; and finally, the fluid collected by the Voltaic trough, were then considered as the principle of life. The experiments of Professor Galvani of Bologna, in which he produced the phenomena of life many hours after death, induced many physiologists to maintain that the identity that existed in galvanic electricity and the nervous influence, proved that this _aura_ was the creative agent in our economy.

The late experiments of Mr. Crosse seemed to show that insects were produced in silicate of potash under a long-continued action of voltaic electricity. Now whether this be really the case or not, it is grievous in the present enlightened age, to see these experiments and the assertions that resulted from them, denominated the work of atheism, and the labour of another Frankenstein!--I do not suppose for one moment that Mr. Crosse pretended to have discovered the power of imparting life, but merely of having developed a vital principle in substances supposed to be inorganic. Every experimentalist who thus develops the vital principle may be said to bestow life, without being exposed to the absurd charge of impiety.--The man who brings forth chickens from the incubation of eggs, instead of eating them; the physiologist who rots a piece of meat to develop myriads of living beings in the putrid nidus, might just as well be called an atheist.

While naturalists were thus groping in nature's dark labyrinth, endeavouring to account for the wonders of the _natura naturans_, that divinity of the Stoics that Lucan thus describes,

Superos quid quærimus ultrà? Jupiter est quodcumque vides, Jovis omnia plena,--

other wise men fancied that they had actually discovered the seat of life, which, according to their fanciful speculations, they had lodged in certain organs. The nervous system, the spinal marrow, the brain, the heart, were all and each of them considered in turn as the head-quarters of vitality; while the workshop of alimentation, or much-abused stomach, did not pass unnoticed and unhonoured. The heart of a turtle, and of some reptiles, has been seen contracting and dilating hours after its extraction from the body; the stomach has been excited into an action bearing some analogy to vomiting, when separated from the trunk; but all these curious phenomena, explained and accounted for (in some measure, at least) by physiology, do not tend to prove that any one organ, or any chain of organs, is possessed of separate vitality independent of the general principle of life. The brain, which has been regarded as the chief seat of this principle, is not always essential to life; for although man perishes, or at least his vital functions cease to act, when he is decapitated,[30] yet various birds and reptiles continue to live for hours and days after the head has been severed from the body, while we actually behold a regeneration of the head in the earth-worm. Moreover, we have upon record many cases of _acephalous_ children, or born without any head; and _anencephalous_ children who lived (for a short time, it is true) without any brains. Fontana removed the entire brain of a turtle, yet it lived six months, and walked about as before.