PHYSIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY.

N classifying the above-mentioned empirical corrobora tions of my doctrine according to the sciences from which they come, while I take the graduated order of Nature from the highest to the lowest degree as a guidingthread to my expositions, I must first mention a very striking confirmation lately received by my chief dogma in the physiological and pathological views of Dr. J. D. Brandis, private physician to the King of Denmark, a veteran in science, whose "Essay on Vital Force" (1795) had received Reil's hearty commendation. In his two latest writings: "Experiences in the Application of Cold in Disease" (Berlin, 1833), and "Nosology and Therapeutics of Cachexia" (1834), we find him in the most emphatic and striking manner stating the primary source of all vital functions to be an unconscious will, from which he derives all processes in the machinery of the organism, in health as well as in disease, and which he represents as the primum mobile of life. I must support this by literal quotations from these essays, since few save medical readers are likely to have them at hand.

In the first of them, p. viii., we find: "The essence of every living organism consists in the will to maintain its own existence as much as possible over against the macrocosm; -p. x.: "Only one living entity, one will can be in an organ at the same time; therefore if there is a diseased will in disagreement with the rest of the body in the organ of the skin, we may hold it in check by applying

cold as long as the generation of warmth, a normal will, can be induced by it." P. 1: If we are forced to the conviction that there must be a determining principle—a will, in every vital action, by which the development suited to the whole organism is occasioned, and each metamorphosis of the parts conditioned, in harmony with the whole individuality, and likewise that there is a something capable of being determined and developed," &c. &c.-P. 11: "With respect to individual life, the element which determines, the organic will, if it is to rest satisfied, must be able to attain what it wants from that which has to be determined. This occurs even when the vital movements are over. excited, as in inflammation: something new is formed, the noxious element is expelled; new plastic materials are meanwhile conveyed through the arteries, more venous blood is carried off, until the process of inflammation is finished and the organic will satisfied. It is however possible to excite this will to such a degree, as to make satisfaction impossible. This exciting cause (or stimulus) either acts directly upon the particular orgau (poison, contagion) or it affects the whole life; and this life then begins to make the most strenuous efforts to rid itself of the noxious element or to modify the disposition of the organic will, and provokes critical vital activity in particular parts (inflammations) or yields to the unappeased will.”— P. 12: The insatiable will acts destructively upon the organism unless either (a) the whole life, in its efforts to attain unity (tendency to adapt means to end), produces other activities requiring satisfaction (crises et lyses) which hold that will in check-called decisive (crises complete) when quite successful; crises incomplete, when only partially so-or (b) some other stimulus (medicine) produces another will which represses the diseased one. If we place this in one and the same category with the will of which we have become conscious through our own representations, and

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bear in mind that here there can be no question of more or less distant resemblance, we gain the conviction that we have grasped the fundamental conception of the one unlimited, therefore indivisible, life which, according to its different manifestations in various more or less endowed and exercised organs, is just as able to make hair grow on the human body as to combine the most sublime representations. We see that the most violent passion-unsatisfied will-may be checked by more or less strong excitement," &c. &c.-P. 18: "The determining element-this organic will without representation, this tendency, to preserve the organism as a unity-is induced by outward temperature to modify its activity now in the same, now in a remoter organ. Every manifestation of life, however, whether in health or in disease, is a manifestation of the organic will: this will determines vegetation: in a healthy condition, in harmony with the unity of the whole; in an unhealthy one. it is induced not to will in harmony with that unity .-P. 23: "Cold suddenly applied to the skin suppresses its function (chill); cold drinks check the organic will in the digestive organs and thereby intensify that of the skin and produce perspiration; just so with the diseased organic will: cold checks cutaneous eruptions," &c. &c.-P. 33: "Fever is the complete participation of the whole vital process in a diseased will, i.e. it is to the entire vital process what inflammation is to particular organs-the effort of our vitality to form something definite, in order to content the diseased will and remove the noxious element.-We call this process of formation crisis or lysis (turning-point or release). The first perception of the pernicious element which causes the diseased will, affects the individuality just in the same way as a noxious element apprehended by our senses, before we have brought to clear representation the entire relation in which it stands to our individuality and the means of

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