An inquiry into the opinions, ancient and modern, concerning life and organization / by John Barclay.

Date:
1822
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the opinions, ancient and modern, concerning life and organization / by John Barclay. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Of the truth of this assertion, the reader will probably be fully convinced on perusing the pages of the following Inquiry. It consists of four chapters, each divided into sections: the first chapter contains an account of the philosophical and popular opinions entertained by the ancients concerning the nature and the variety of animat- ing causes, an account also of the principal argu- ments which they employed to prove that these causes originate in matter: the second, an account of some very general and vague terms of no precise application or meaning, but which frequently and almost unavoidably occur in all physiological in- vestigations: the third, an account of the opinions entertained by those modern physiologists who are either disposed to ascribe the whole pheno- mena of life, or at least organization, sensation, and instinct, to the powers of mechanism and the ef- fects of chemical affinities: the fourth, an account of the opinions of some distinguished ancients and moderns, who have ascribed organization and all the other vital phenomena to an internal animating principle. As the authors who have written upon these subjects are extremely numerous, while their lead- ing opinions as well as their arguments are com- parative! v few, it has not been thought necessary