no foundation, in fact, for such an impression. In my present position, all homeopathic medical colleges are to me alike. So long as all strive for the best interests of homœopathy, I shall not oppose any one of them. There are men in each faculty who are excellent teachers, and reliable exponents of our system. I have, this winter, influenced students to attend each of the several colleges, Hahnemann among the rest; and in this I have acted according to my judgment, without prejudice, but advising that which I considered for the best interests of the student. Very sincerely yours,

Chicago, December 24, 1868. E. M. HALE. HOMEOPATHIC MEDICAL SOCIETY OF Опо.-The fifth annual meeting of the Homœopathic Medical Society of Ohio will be held in Cleveland on the 16th and 17th of February. An interesting programme is prepared. We thank our friends for their kind invitation to attend, but fear that our convalescence will not be so well established as to allow of our traveling at the date named.

Physiology and Principles of Medicine.

PROF. H. P. GATCHELL, EDITOR.

EXCERPTA.

ORGANIC POWER.

The learned and prolific Carpenter, in attempting to set aside a current hypothesis relative to the development of the germ-cell into an adult being, elephant or oak, seems to me to have overlooked the essential agency in the transformation, in consequence of not having defined the idea of force, and to have contended in some degree against an imaginary difficulty; nor has the more profound Groves avoided the same error, as appears from the following extract from one of his admirable essays on the Correlation of Physical Forces: "By an application of the doctrine of Correlative Forces, Dr. Carpenter has shown how a difficulty arising from the ordinary notion of the development of an organized being from its germ-cell may be lessened." Groves, it appears, regards it as only lessened, not removed.

Dr. Carpenter says, in allusion to the doctrine that the being is built up by a power inherent in the germ: "In this mode of viewing the subject, all the organizing force required to build up

an oak or palm, an elephant or whale, must be concentrated in a minute particle only discernable by microscopic aid, and the aggregate of all the germ-forces appertaining to their descendants, however numerous, of a common parentage, must have existed in their common progenitors." He then proceeds to show how external agencies, light, heat, etc., may have contributed; regarding these as the efficient forces and the germ as having merely a "directive agency." Where the directive agency is to be sought, when the being has passed beyond the germ - state, he fails to inform us.

In all this he seems to me to have overlooked the essential nature of the forces most intimately concerned in building up the plant or animal and this because he has failed to define the nature of force itself.

If we consider that the force of any body is due to the constituents of that body, that the force is but the body acting and is in proportion to the component elements, as for instance in gravitation, the difficulty disappears.

Again, no one, when the smith smites the anvil, looks for the immediate force that impressed the anvil beyond the momentum of the hammer itself, and what is true in this respect of mechanical force, is true of all other force.

If the molecules of the germ-cell, in virtue of their constituent atoms, possess a certain amount of force, not even Dr. Carpenter would conceive any difficulty in the way of their adding another molecule to their bulk. This molecule, in virtue of its constituent atoms, must necessarily add to the sum of the forces of the cell; and thus, with every addition of molecules, the aggregate force is increased, and with the increase, the capacity to add other molecules, until elephant or oak is the perfected result. The forces, in every state of the being are to be found in the constituent atoms of that stage.

That the organic power must be increased by each addition of substance, is just as certain as that we know nothing of force but as action of substance; and added organic molecules must increase the capacity to appropriate additional material as surely as a thousand atoms of oxygen have greater combining capacity than ten atoms; or, as evidently as a crystal of lime or magnesia in a solution of its constituent material, can appropriate more of that material to a surface of three inches than to a surface of two inches; nor is it one whit more mysterious how an organic

body adds to itself and increases according to a definite type, than it is how a crystal adds to itself and increases according to its own proper type. And I imagine, when the secret of the formation of the fern-like glacial crystal on the window pane is discovered, that the secret of all organization will stand revealed. A minute crystal in a solution of its appropriate material, acquires a new layer on each of its faces, and thus continues to enlarge. Each enlarged face is capable of appropriating and converting to the crystalline state a greater quantity of material in a given time, in proportion as itself has become enlarged, and this in virtue of increased power, furnished by increased size; and I opine that the history of its growth is in its essential relations to force, the same as that of an organic body, vegetable or animal, however contrasted it may be in its modes.

ORIGIN OF INFUSORIA.

The distinguished Prof. J. H. Bennet read a paper before the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, in which he stated that the infusoria, "vegetable and animal, which we find in organic fluids during fermentation and putrefaction, originate in oleo-albuminous molecules, which are formed in the fluids," and that "under the influence of certain conditions, such as temperature, light, chemical changes, density, and composition of the atmosphere and of the fluid, etc., the molecules by their coalescence produce the common forms of vegetable and animal life." He regards the vibriones and other filaments as evidently formed from the molecules.

He also made experiments with a view to determine whether means calculated to destroy germs would prevent the development of infusoria. The result of these experiments, in which he used nearly all the agents that have been proposed for destruction of germs, was, that infusoria continued to develope, and that Prof. Bennet concluded that organic forms are first produced, and that vital properties are afterwards added to them.

Prof. Clark arrived, some years since, at similar conclusions, as did apparently the eminent Prof. Jeffries Wyman, of the same University, from a series of most carefully conducted experiments made by himself.

SOURCES OF NUTRITION.

The following interesting paragraph was cut from the New

York Tribune, where it appeared among excerpta, with no statement as to its origin:

There has prevailed, for an indefinite period, an idea that vegetable life, evolving albumenoid bodies, must precede animal life; that the nerves, muscles, and integuments of animal life, of whatever grade, must be produced from the albumen elaborated in the plants. But Pasteur has shown that the lower orders of microscopic animal life develop their germs in water, containing only non-nitrogenous matter (tartrate of potassa), a salt of ammonia, and phosphates of the alkalies and alkaline earths. The inorganic ammonia furnished the nitrogen, as the inorganic phosphates supplied the other required mineral constituents of the animal tissues and complete organs. Animals then, possess the power of elaborating albumenoid bodies containing nitrogen and the phosphates out of pre-existing materials in which the ingredients are found in separate states. This discovery prepared the way for the observation of Collas that recently prepared (gelatinous) phosphate of lime added to animal matters greatly promotes their decay. The germs of microscopic life find the food for their growth in condition to be readily assimilated. They multiply and feast upon crude animal matter, which, passing through their organism, is resolved into the finest material for plants.

ETIOLOGY OF PHTHISIS.

Readers of the OBSERVER may remember that, in an article on phthisis, written for May number of the OBSERVER, I suggested that it has its origin chiefly in a feeble constitution of the organic nerve system.

Dr. P. Eade, of Norwich, has recently read a paper before the British Medical Association, in which the same doctrine is maintained.

Dr. Eade "endeavored to show that tubercle was essentially but an expression of feeble vitality and exhausted nerve-power, permitting the occurrence of an ill-regulated or unrestrained cellgrowth or development. Cells more or less simple were the original and lowest form in which animal life was presented. Higher animal structures were formed of such cells elaborated under the influence of more highly developed nerve-centres. Any defect of these centres would tend to allow the body to be

Uor M

formed of less highly organized and vitalized tissues, with a constant tendency to revert to the original form of cells."

RESPIRATION OF ANIMALS.

M. Reiset, in a memoir to the French Academy of Sciences, gives an account of his exhalations of calves, sheep, etc. The apparatus used by him was large enough to enclose the whole animal. Under normal conditions he found, during the respiration of calves and sheep, that carburetted hydrogen was given off in considerable quantity; but this was not the case when calves were fed upon milk. M. Reiset, regards carburetted hydrogen as the result of incomplete combustion, and draws the general conclusion that the respiratory products depend much more upon the nature of the food than upon the species of the animal.

NOTE.-The notices of the views of Bennet and Eade are made up from articles in Hays' Journal.

CORRECTION.-Dr. Hale mistakes when he states that, in using Solanum nigrum, I was guided mainly by the symptom "horrid headache."

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Lester

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