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Updated: June 13, 2025
This mechanism consists of the brain, which, through certain special centres, regulates all vital activity; the adrenal glands, the secretion of which adrenalin acting as a stimulant of the sympathetic system, so controls the tone of the blood vessels as to maintain efficient oxidation of the tissues; and the liver, which stores and delivers glycogen as it is required by the muscles, and in addition, deals with the by-products of metabolism.
This constant and steady circulation of the blood makes possible the complex metabolism of the higher animals. But, however important the vascular system may be to the more advanced and larger and highly-differentiated animals, it is not at all so indispensable an element of animal life as is commonly supposed. The older science of medicine regarded the blood as the real source of life.
During these eras the salts of the sea have come to play a dominant rôle in its being. The lime salts, because of their peculiar properties of dissolving or precipitating themselves according to electrical conditions in their medium, have come to occupy a central position in all the processes of growth, metabolism and sex differentiation.
Professor Conn applies his searching analysis to most of the functions of the human body, to digestion, to assimilation, to circulation, to respiration, to metabolism, and so on, and he finds in every function something that does not fall within his category some force not mechanical nor chemical, which he names vital.
The intermediate grades consist, he says, of women whose metabolism leans toward the masculine type. Some have sexual desires but no maternal impulse. Others desire maternity but take no interest in sex activity, or positively shun it. The physical manifestations of masculine glandular activity take the form of pitch of voice, skin texture, shape and weight of bones, etc.
Life cannot go on without water, but water is not a food; it makes the processes of metabolism possible; assimilation and elimination go on through its agency. Water and air are the two ties between the organic and the inorganic. The function of the one is mainly mechanical, that of the other is mainly chemical.
"In this case, Doctor, I hope and believe you are wrong. Read this note!" It was two hours before the work of reviving the passengers could be started. Despite all the laws of physics, their body temperature had remained constant after it had reached seventy-four, showing that some form of very slow metabolism was going on.
A disturbance of sugar metabolism might then cause a disturbance of growth. The advantages and disadvantages are before us of having, in the glands of internal secretion, an interlocking directorate, rulers over all the varied and manifold activities of the organism. Behind the body, and behind the mind is this board of governors.
There are some to whom living protoplasm is a substance, even such as Harvey conceived the blood to be, "summa cum providentia et intellectu in finem certum agens, quasi ratiocinio quodam;" and who look with as little favour as Bichat did, upon any attempt to apply the principles and the methods of physics and chemistry to the investigation of the vital processes of growth, metabolism, and contractility.
So long as it still retains within itself a sufficiency of already formed tissue for its destructive metabolism, it can continue to move around actively and behave like a complete cell, but eventually it dies from starvation.
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