Identifier: someapostlesofph00stir (find matches)
Title: Some apostles of physiology : being an account of their lives and labours, labours that have contributed to the advancement of the healing art as well as to the prevention of disease
Year: 1902 (1900s)
Authors: Stirling, William, 1851-1932
Subjects: Physiology Physiologists Physiology
Publisher: London : Priv. print. by Waterlow and sons limited
Contributing Library: West Virginia University Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: LYRASIS Members and Sloan Foundation

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em to move these machines; its animal spirits to the waterwhich impels them, of which the heart is the source or fountain ; while the cavities ofthe brain are the central reservoir. Moreover, breathing and other like acts which are asnatural and usual to the body or machine, and which depend on the flow of the spirits,are like the movements of a clock, or of a mill, which may be kept going by the ordinaryflow of water. External objects which, by their mere presence, act upon the organs ofsense ; and which, by this means, determine the machine to move in many different ways,according as the parts of the brain of the machine are arranged, may be compared tothe strangers who, entering into one of the grottoes of these waterworks, unconsciouslythemselves cause the movements which they witness. For they cannot enter withouttreading upon certain planks which are so disposed that, if they approach a bathingDiana, they cause her to hide among the reeds; and if they attempt to follow her, they
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o ( 27 ) see approaching-towards them a Neptune, who threatens them with his trident; or ifthey pass in another direction they cause some sea-monster to dart out who vomits waterinto their faces ; or like contrivances, according to the fancy of the engineers who madethem. And lastly, when the rational soul—Idme raisonnable—is lodged in thismachine, it will have its principal seat in the brain, and will take the place of theengineer or fountaineer, who ought to be in that part of the works or reservoir withwhich all the various tubes are connected, when he wishes to quicken or to slacken, or inany way to alter their movements. (Trerite de VHomme, Victor Cousins ed. 1824,pp. 347-8.) The final summary is as follows (p. 427) :—I desire you to consider all thefunctions which I have attributed to this machine (the body), as the digestion offood, the pulsation of the heart and of the arteries; the nutrition and the growth ofthe limbs ; respiration, wakefulness, and sleep; the reception

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