Life and Specific Medicines

It is a great error in physiology not to distinguish between what may be called the general or fundamental life -- the _principium vitae_, and the functional life -- the life in the functions. Organization must presuppose life as anterior to it: without life, there could not be or remain any organization; but then there is also _a_ life in the organs, or functions, distinct from the other. Thus, a flute presupposes, -- demands the existence of a musician as anterior to it, without whom no flute could ever have existed; and yet again, without the instrument there can be no music.

It often happens that, on the one hand, the _principium vitae_, or constitutional life, may be affected without any, or the least imaginable, affection of the functions; as in inoculation, where one pustule only has appeared, and no other perceptible symptom, and yet this has so entered into the constitution, as to indispose it to infection under the most accumulated and intense contagion; and, on the other hand, hysteria, hydrophobia, and gout will disorder the functions to the most dreadful degree, and yet often leave the life untouched. In hydrophobia, the mind is quite sound; but the patient feels his muscular and cutaneous life forcibly removed from under the control of his will.