The more you examine the structure of the organs and the
laws of life, the more you will find how resolutely each of the
cell-republics which make up the E pluribus unum of the body maintains
its independence. Guard it, feed it, air it, warm it, exercise or rest
it properly, and the working elements will do their best to keep well or
to get well. What do we do with ailing vegetables? Dr. Warren, my
honored predecessor in this chair, bought a country-place, including half
of an old orchard. A few years afterwards I saw the trees on his side of
the fence looking in good health, while those on the other side were
scraggy and miserable. How do you suppose this change was brought about?
By watering them with Fowler's solution? By digging in calomel freely
about their roots? Not at all; but by loosening the soil round them, and
supplying them with the right kind of food in fitting quantities.
Now a man is not a plant, or, at least, he is a very curious one, for he
carries his soil in his stomach, which is a kind--of portable flower-pot,
and he grows round it, instead of out of it. He has, besides, a
singularly complex nutritive apparatus and a nervous system. But
recollect the doctrine already enunciated in the language of Virchow,
that an animal, like a tree, is a sum of vital unities, of which the cell
is the ultimate element. Every healthy cell, whether in a vegetable or
an animal, necessarily performs its function properly so long as it is
supplied with its proper materials and stimuli.
Pages:
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305