IAATTEUCCI'S LECTURES ON THE PHYSICAL PH2ENOMENA OP LIVING BEINGS.
Du. PEREIRA, the English editor of this translation, informs his readers, that "in 1844 Professor Matteucci was appointed by the Government of Tuscany to deliver in the University of Pisa a course of lectures on the Physical Phseuomena of Living Beings. These lectures were subsequently published; and their popularity is attested by the fact that they have already passed through two editions in Italy and one in France." The English translation, however, is not made from either of these editions, but from a copy furnished by Professor Matteucci, containing a very large • [The condensed and glancing style of Cantu has induced some perversion of Sarpi's meaning here. Serpi uses the term "wild beasts" as illustrative of the careful treatment the Greeks require. This is the passage from an old translation of The Maxims of the Government of Venice, (Loudon, 1707,) that we happen to have by us—" There is no doubt but greater regard is to be had to the Greek subjects of the kingdom of Candia and to the islands of the Levant, because the Grecian fidelity is never secure; and it would be no hard matter to persuade them to exchange the government of the Republic for that of the Turk, they having be- fore their eyes the example of the rest of their own nation which live uuder the Turkish dominion. These people, therefore, ought to be kept, like wild beast!, with greater diligence, that they may not be able to use their teeth and their claws, as their natural wildness leads them to do."—Page 52.] number of additions and corrections. Dr. Pereira has also added a few notes, and increased the number of the illustrative wood-cuts.
The Lectures are twenty in number, on the various actions or functions exhibited in organic beings, from man down to plants; but their leading subjects are three. 1. The phyaico-chemical phenomena, as generically exhibited in living bodies; embracing imbibition, elasticity, caloric, electricity, light, and affinity. 2. The operation of their principles in particular actions of the animal economy,—as digestion, respiration, magnification, electricity; which, with some other phinnomena, are shown to be chemical, not vital as has been commonly supposed, and producible by experiment after death, or out of the body, though life is evidently necessary- to preserve the organs in a fit condition to exercise these func- tions; which Mattencci perhaps does not sufficiently impress. 3. Those actions which can only be ascribed to vital power,—as the nervous in- fluence; and its results in the action of the senses,—as sight and hearing.
This general description, however, conveys but a very slight idea of 'fattened's work ; which both in its scope and its treatment is one of the most remarkable contributions to the "phenomena of living beings" that modern patience and experiment, under the direction of scientific genius, has given rise to. The laws which rule throughout the wide ex- tent of animal and vegetable life are examined in their essence, so far as we can penetrate to it. Actions which are generally assumed to depend on vitality are shown, by a clear and convincing series of experi- ments, to be purely physical in their nature, though the apparatus for performing them is kept in order, as we have already said, by the vital power. The line between certainty and uncertainty, between experi- mental deduction and hypothesis grounded on experiment, is pre- served with as much distinctness as in any philosophical writer we re- member to have met with, if not with more. Phrases are never substi- tuted for things ; but the laws which produce the phscuomena are sought for as a first principle, and either found or ignorance is acknowledged and its extent measured.
" If Newton," says Professor Matteucci in his Introductory Lecture, " had felled the force which rules the wondrous system of the celestial machine merely attraction, or attractive force, his name would long since have fallen into ob- livion: but, by demonstrating that attraction is exercised in the direct ratio of the masses and in the inverse ratio of the squares of the distance, and by thus un- folding the eternal laws of this force, Newton has rendered his name immortal. " To speak of the vital forces, to give them a definition, to interpret phsenomena byy their aid, and yet to be ignorant of the laws which govern them, is doing no- , or rather it is doing what is worse than nothing: it is to attempt an im- poss'ibbility, it is to content the mind to no purpose, to atop the search after truth. To state that the liver separates the elements of the bile from the blood by means of the vital force, is merely to assert that the bile is formed in the liver. By thus varying the expression, a dangerous illusion is established."
It will not be assumed that theie Lectures are an exposition of par- ticular life : they concern only general actions, which in their essence are found wherever life exists, or distinguish entire genera ; the exceptions being the phosphorescence of the glowworm or the electricity of the tor- pedo, with a few other classes of animals in which these pinenomena are found. Special life, however, is often taken, according as it is more favourable for the display of the particular experiment in view; and this specialty varies from vegetables to man. Frogs are frequently selected
for experiment. The following is from the lecture on Absorption : the object is to show that matter introduced into the body reaches the blood- vessels by the purely physical process of imbibition, quite irrespective of any vital act, and is transmitted through them by the hydraulic process of circulation ; which, however, originates in the nervous force.
" Absorption, considered as a function of living animals, consists not merely of the imbibition of a liquid by a tissue, but also of the passage into the blood- vessels of the liquid with which such tissue is in contact. It is at the blood that the absorbed matter ought to arrive; this is the final object of the phenomenon. Let us distinguish, then, two things in absorption,—the introduction of the sub- stance to be absorbed through th interstices of an organized body; and its sub- sequent passage into the circulation. It is easy to demonstrate the existence of the first part of this function. Here is a frog, whose inferior extremities only have been immersed for several hours in
a solution of ferrocyanide of potassium: if we remove the animal from the liquid, carefully wash it with distilled water, and then cut it in pieces, we can easily prove that the solution has penetrated into every part. Wherever we touch the viscera or tissues with a glass rod moistened with a solution of the chloride of iron, a more or less deep blue stain is produced. " I shall the more insist on this manner of demonstrating the reality of absorp- tion, because it explains to us very clearly the two parts of which we have stated this function to consist. if a living frog be immersed, by its inferior extremities Only, in a solution of ferrocyanide of potassium, and the animal soon after killed, we can scarcely detect any traces of the salt in the muscles of the legs and thighs; whereas the heart and lungs give very distinct evidence of it when they are touched with chloride of iron.
" One experiment more, and the conclusion will be evident. I immerse another frog, which has been dead for some minutes, in the same solution, and leave it there for the same time that I did the other: when tested, the lungs and heart offer no greater evidences of the presence of the ferrocyanide than does any other Part of the body.
"Here is the explanation of these experiments. The solution was introduced into the body of the frog simply by imbibition; and this phenomenon, being ef- fected in the living as well as in the dead frog, certainly cannot be regarded as different from the imbibition which we have already studied, which belongs to both organic and inorganic bodies, and which is the consequence of their cellular and vascular structure, &c. "But there is something more than this. In the heart and lungs of a living frog we find a much larger quantity of the absorbed solution than in the other Putts of the body, although these latter were much nearer the part immersed.
ese viscera are the centre of the circulatory system ; in them commence or ter- Inmate the trunks of the blood-vessels. The solution of the ferrocyanide, there- fore, has penetrated the blood-vessels by imbibition, mingled with the blood, and thus arrived at the heart and lungs.
"We have another very simple experiment proving the same facts : I take two frogs, and from one remove the heart; the animals are equally lively. Both are Pleed in a large glass containing a solution of the extract of nax vomica. The animal with the heart is soon poisoned, and long before the other becomes affected."
This curious fact is from the lecture on Nervous Force; and it shows the great advantage of nature over art, the power of the vital over the Physical and the chemical.
" While travelling on one occasion with the celebrated Robert Stephenson, we were obliged to send a man on foot forty miles. I asked Mr. Stephenson what quantity of carbon was necessary to transport a man forty miles by a locomotive. He replied, about 5 kilogrammes [about 11 lbs. avoirdupase]. " The person we had despatched accomplished his journey, by walking, in less than ten hours, consuming by his respiration a quantity of carbon not exceeding 150 grammes; that is about 1-34th of the quantity, which would have been neces- sary if this transit had been effected by a locomotive. M. Dumas has calculated how much carbon would be burnt in a steam-engine in conveying a man from the level of the sea to the summit of Mont Blanc. The quantity would be from 1,000 to 1,200 grammes: but a man accomplishes this feat by a two days' march, and consumes only 300 grammes. The difference in the second example is not so great as in the first; because the useful result which we obtain from a stationary steam-engine is much more considerable than that from a locomotive. It is equally true that the difference is very great, and that the work produced from nervous force derived from a certain chemical action is much greater than that which this same action produces when converted into heat. " I can show you in another way the great advantage which results from the transformation of chemical action into nervous force in an animal. • • • "Everything, then, leads us to the conclusion that the mechanical work de- veloped by chemical action and transformed into nervous force, in an animal, is very great; and that in all the machines which man has invented, be is always, and will be perhaps for along time to come, far from attaining that degree of per- fection which exists in those machines which we know not how to imitate and can only admire."
Nobody, of course, will suppose that this work is entirely original ; for that is simply impossible. The facts and sometimes the conclusions are very often drawn from other authors ; the learning of Matteucci being as remarkable as his ability, and ranging over German, French, and English, as well as Italian medical and scientific literature. The originality of the work is in its general views, and in the skill with which the author's own researches, and those of other experimentalists, are applied to prove his view. The technical merit of the Lectures con. sista in the well-chosen and conclusive nature of the experiments; the literary merit, in the clearness of the arrangement, the perspicuity of the style, and the high philosophical character.
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