TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, BY A. R. MACDONOUGH, ESQ. IN all ages essentially the most completely different opinions as to the seat and the principle of life have been expressed; yet, the techniques bequeathed to us by the ancients on this topic contain a common perception, simple sufficient to be very extensively shared, and seemingly nicely based sufficient to endure for centuries. One reality of commonest statement demise resulting from haemorrhage gave rise to the notion that life dwells solely within the blood. Homer's heroes breathed out their souls with their blood; among the many Hebrews, as among the many Greeks, providing the sacrifice of a life, and shedding the blood of a victim, had been equal expressions. From Galen to Harvey, males of science supposed that the guts solely sends out the fluid of the blood from the centre to the floor. In their theories, the blood was incessantly formed and renewed inside the liver, and was impelled by centrifugal drive into the veins and arteries alike.

Harvey first demonstrated that the blood returned in its course. The idea of the transfusion of blood takes its beginning-point from the discovery of Harvey. As quickly as it was recognized that the blood can return to the heart, and be taken up once more by the vessels, what was extra pure than to hunt to introduce it right into a diseased physique? Shouldn't be the blood still regarded as the only real precept of life, as it was in the early ages of medication? And, since it may be transfused in variety, we shall be in a position to revive health, to heal disorders, perhaps, even to lengthen life. In a moment of pride the human thoughts believes it has penetrated the secret of life, and supposes that henceforward will probably be its grasp. Probably the most famous alchemists of the middle ages by no means surrendered themselves to hopes so wild. Besides, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the beginning of so many discoveries in natural sciences, that nothing appeared unattainable.

The schools of medication enter with feverish ardor on these questions, so full of promise; however, amid the sunshine that bursts upon them, they typically neglect that severe observation of information which led to the discovery of the circulation. Physicians of that day trouble themselves little or BloodVitals monitor no with inquiries whether or not the historical notions concerning the blood are true or false; they settle for them without reserve, and publish them abroad with those kinds of discussion and those out of date principles which brought upon them the properly-deserved ridicule of our satirists. Medicine and physiology in that period had been treated below the type of philosophic argument, science and imagination were blended, and "reasoning banished reason." The historical past of transfusion, at its beginning, appears to be like like an vital but empirical discovery; new experience rests simply on scholastic discussions, the true mingles with the false, and, after the spectacle of a barren contest introduced by detractors and enthusiasts, transfusion was proscribed, and doomed to oblivion; and it will likely be long before its recovery, for the true scientific method has not yet been discovered.

Within the last half-century we have now returned to the method of statement; nor is that methodology now, because it was in Harvey's time, the privilege of some savants; it has change into the guide of all males of science in our day, and the actual trigger of scientific progress. Amid the general development of the sciences, transfusion has come up as soon as extra, remodeled and widened; it is not going to satisfy the extravagant hopes indulged at first, but it'll throw a broad gentle on the problem of health and BloodVitals monitor disease. The rules on which this grand experience now rests are nicely settled-the functions of the blood have been clearly decided. We all know that life dwells in each fragment of our being; the mass of nerves, the flesh of our muscles, the tissue of our glands, need the indispensable help of the blood, yet live by themselves. If general anatomy has adopted out the work of Bichat, in learning the weather of lifeless Nature, physiology has realized Haller's conception, in analyzing the features of these parts.